When I was in New York last week, I had the great pleasure to meet and work with Wai Hon Chu, the co-author of The Dumpling (William Morrow, 2009). I’d heard about Wai’s book last year and was eager to find out what his international coverage of dumplings would be like. I’m always looking for good resources to add to my library and culinary understanding. Turns out that Wai often teaches classes and assists at the Bowery Whole Foods Culinary Center in New York – where I taught last Saturday, October 31. So in between prepping and conducting the class, we geeked out on dumplings, discussing technique, ingredients and the writing process.
Wai and his writing partner, Connie Lovatt, worked many years on this collection that spans the globe to capture the world of dumplings. It was a difficult task as they had to come up with cohesive definition of dumpling. For my Asian Dumplings cookbook, I spent a fair time researching and defining Asia and Asian dumplings, but how do you unify Alsatian matzo balls and Nigerian moyin moyin with Japanese mochi, Korean mandu, and Tibetan momos? Wai flipped his book over and pointed to the back of the jacket to this definition:
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