annieb123's Review of Modern Asian Kitchen

by Kat Lieu

The New Asian Cooking is bolder and more assertive, less fussy and more casual. With these easy-to-shop-for, quick-to-cook recipes, you can try—and will fall in love with—this trending style right in your own kitchen.

Heaped on big plates, Sichuan beef and broccoli and Indian chicken tikka masala are timeless comfort foods, to be sure, but there’s a brand-new style of Asian cooking that’s giving them a run for their money. It’s more about grazing through small plates than sinking into one big one. It’s more about pan-Asian fusions—“third culture” foods, the cooking of the Asian diaspora—than about each culture’s oldest traditions. It’s more plant-forward than meat-centered. It’s irreverent and fun and incredibly delicious. And it’s all captured in Modern Asian Kitchen.

Kat Lieu—the blogger and online personality who presides over the Subtle Asian Baking corner of the enormously popular Subtle Asian Traits online community, and who is the author of Modern Asian Baking at Home—serves up more than 80 inventive recipes for:

Vibrant vegetable dishes like Sichuan-style fish-fragrant eggplant and umami-packed braised shiitake mushrooms
Quick noodle dishes for super-easy lunches
Quick-fix matcha ramen bowls and simple miso soups
Dim sum, with tricks and food hacks like rice-paper shrimp dumplings
Street-food favorites like Taiwanese popcorn chicken in the air fryer
Customizable bibimbap bowls for busy-weeknight dinners
Southeast Asian favorites like cold-papaya salads, streaming hot phos, and spring rolls with surprising things inside and punchy chile-crisp coatings on the outside

The recipes also include:

Umami-Packed Spiral Cucumber Salad
Sumptuous Siu Mai and Easy Dim Sum
Melty Cheesecake Bao
Tony’s Spicy Cumin Skewers
Crispy Crackling Roast Pork
Clay Pot Taiwanese Three-Cup Chicken
Mapo Tofu and Veggies
Pandan Tres Leches with a Kaya Drizzle

Whether you are cooking a family-style feast of a dozen exciting dishes for the sharing table, or you just want a simple and hearty one-bowl meal at the end of a busy workday (or a quick meal when you work from home), you will find a lifetime of tasty ideas in the pages of Modern Asian Kitchen.

Originally posted on my blog Nonstop Reader.

Modern Asian Kitchen is a very well written and curated list of a wide range of recipes collected and developed by Kat Lieu. Released 9th April 2024 by Quarto on their Harvard Common Press imprint, it's 208 pages and is available in hardcover and ebook formats.

This is a warm and welcoming cookbook with so many stories and memories to accompany. The author is gifted at relaying the background and community contained in the recipes she shares and it really feels like a warm visit with a dear friend (alongside great food). The book has a practical layout with a really good table of contents and index, so information is easy to find.

The introduction includes a good overview over ingredients, tools, and sourcing specialty items; the actual recipes are arranged thematically: vegetable salads and starters, dim sum & street food, one-pan-dishes, sharing dishes, rice (the bibimbap recipe is *perfect*), noodles (so.many.noodles), sauces/dips, and sweets.

Recipes contain a title and description, yields, ingredients in a bullet list in a sidebar, and step by step directions. Ingredients are listed with imperial (American) standard measures with metric equivalents in parentheses (yay!). Nutritional information is not included. There are so many gorgeous and clear color photos included. Most (but not all) of the dishes are accompanied by one or more photos. This will help readers to know how to arrange and prepare the dishes with which they aren't already familiar.

Five stars. Wonderfully comprehensive and versatile. Perfect choice for public library acquisition, home use, or gifting to a food adventurous friend.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

Reading updates

28 April, 2024: Started reading

28 April, 2024: Finished reading

28 April, 2024: Reviewed