I misspelled the author's name in the other "wok hay" post so use this link. c

Thank you. I ordered a copy.

WOW ok. You will be so glad and will never need another book...unless you want the Dunlop...it is a treasure also. c

Thanks for the recommendation trailrunner. I think I'll give the Dunlop book a try.

The Good Food of Szechuan (Delfs) arrived at my house today, complete with comments written in the margins such as "Delicious!" and "Not good" (referring to Chicken Shreds with Bean Sprouts and Green Pepper) and "Recipe in Time-Life cookbook is better." The recipes look interesting too.

My favorite Chinese cookbook so far is Mrs. Chiang's Szechuan Cookbook by Ellen Schrecker. It's really a good one, my old copy is stained and tattered. The Schreckers met Mrs. Chiang in Taiwan, where she was a well-known cook. She grew up in Szechuan, and the wonderful recipes come with family stories and reminiscences.

Thanks again for the suggestion.

Here is a link that might be useful: Mrs. Chiang's

I used to have Mrs Chiang's book! Unfortunately it got lost at some point. I'm actually not much of a recipe-follower. Usually I'll browse cookbooks and take away ideas, spices, ingredients, etc, then put my own spin on it.

A funny thing happened to me at PF Chang's last year. I ordered a szechuan dish, and the waitress said "You're the first customer I've had that's pronounced "szechuan" properly!" It was good for a chuckle - I had to ask her how other people have been pronouncing it!

Reminds me of another time at a sushi place, must have been a new waitress. I ordered something and she asked me I wanted the "nigh jee ree". I looked at her blankly for a few seconds, then said, "oh! nigiri!"

I'm the same way about recipes, but I do love looking through many of my cookbooks for fun and for the techniques. I have followed the recipes in Mrs. Chiang's pretty closely though.

In some parts of the country, there is no sushi, let alone people knowing how to pronounce nigiri. I only know one or maybe two ways to say Szechuan -- wonder how the other customers were mispronouncing it.

Yes DH and I both look at lots of ideas and then wing it to make it our own. Sometimes though I will follow a recipe exactly after reading it if it seems to be right on. I am not familiar with the Mrs Chiang's book and there is no info on Amazon about it. I will do some looking. We used the Dunlop book on Sunday for my son's B'day dinner. He is a chef so we always do something very special to impress him...LOL. DH did the sizzling rice and pot stickers and the hot sour soup. It was all wonderful. We found black vinegar at our local Thai grocery. One of our nephews is in China and we are going to try and get him to send us the best Chinese vinegar as it is not exported. I'll keep you posted. c

I found a bunch of copies at another site on Amazon...low as .99. Will get a copy asap. Thanks for the tip. c

Trailrunner, where in China is your nephew? My son and his wife are in Beijing. She learned to cook from her father, and I've learned a lot about cooking vegetables from her. She is from Suzhou, where they do a lot of the small plates kind of dishes, lots of fish and vegetables.

Traditional Beijing food is very strange to me, different from any other Chinese food we've ever had.