This review was prepared by Jillouci.

In The Steamy Kitchen Cookbook: 101 Asian Recipes Simple Enough for Tonight's Dinner, Jaden Hair of Steamy Kitchen has delivered a book that I feel is a fantastic and exciting addition to my collection.

First, though, I’d like to share a couple of the things I didn’t like about The Steamy Kitchen Cookbook.

In a few of the recipes I tried it seemed like the portions were off or inconsistent. Most recipes are written for four servings (many say “serves 4 as part of a multicourse meal”; I took that into account), and I doubled most since I was serving seven. What I found was that sometimes it was vastly too much, and sometimes there was barely enough. How many portions you get out of any recipe will obviously depend on the appetites of your eaters, but while the garlic butter noodles made four very skimpy servings, the Korean jap chae noodles made four meal-sized servings.

Also, in recipes requiring broth—the crab and pork wonton soup and the mussels in coconut curry broth, for example—it seemed as if I consistently had to add far more broth than the recipe called for. This is a small issue, and easily remedied, but it is something to be aware of when one is shopping for ingredients.

And that brings up another potential issue: shopping for ingredients. While I’m lucky enough to have a well-stocked Asian grocery close to my home with an owner who is willing to help me find or order what I need, many people aren’t. If you don’t live near such an Asian grocery, you will probably have some difficulty finding several of the necessary ingredients without ordering them online. Which is not to say that it wouldn’t be worth the extra effort; these ingredients can sometimes (and do in many of the recipes I made) make a good dish fabulous. If you’re a lover of Asian food and dedicated to making the recipes work, this shouldn’t be a problem.

One more thing—and I say this knowing full well that I’m a punctilious, persnickety copy-editor—the text of the book could have been edited better. There are enough typos that it was a little distracting for me to read, but really, it probably won’t bother anyone else.

Probably my biggest problem with the cookbook is one that many people won’t share. At the risk of sounding sacrilegious, I have to say that I don’t really enjoy the tone of the writing in the cookbook, something that carries over from Jaden’s wildly popular blog. Perhaps I’m a particularly stodgy and prim twenty-six year old woman, but I can do without sexual innuendos involving rice cookers or punny imprecations in my cookbooks. None of that offended me, exactly, it just doesn’t seem necessary in a cookbook otherwise chock-full of delicious Asian goodness. Readers of Steamy Kitchen will know what to expect from the cookbook, but the average buyer may not.

Mise en place for our noodle dinner.

Korean jap chae noodles, pg. 135, with the delicious garlic butter noodles in the background. There were none of those left to photograph!

That said, the two most important aspects of a cookbook to me are vibrant, enticing pictures and, of course, delicious and easy-to-follow recipes. This cookbook delivers on both. Jaden’s photography and food styling, as many already know, are proof that a home cook can compose beautiful food photos full of color, life, and light. Her photography and composition make you want to create and eat her dishes. Now, when it’s easy to find recipes for most things online, good photography is particularly important in cookbooks, and it sets this one apart from many others I’ve seen.

Pork and mango potstickers with Chinese dipping sauce (pgs. 46 and 29, respectively)

The way I approached the cooking side of the review process was to let each member of my test audience (my husband, parents, and siblings) pick one or two recipes they’d like to try. Then I organized those recipes into four major meals, which I served to the aforementioned test audience. I made fourteen of Jaden’s recipes within one week, and it’s probably a testament to the fabulousness of the food that after that marathon week I didn’t want to put the cookbook back on the shelf. I’ll spare you a long list of everything I made, but here are some notes and standouts:

1) The mustard miso dressing from the baked tofu salad is to die for. Make it now. Since I bought probably five pounds of miso, I’m going to make a ton of this dressing to bottle and give as gifts.

2) My family’s favorites so far are the Chinese beef broccoli (authentic, except perhaps more delicious), garlic butter noodles (I could have eaten these all by myself if, you know, I didn’t care about gaining twenty pounds), and the Chinese sausage fried rice (Chinese sausage makes everything delicious, but this was so fantastic that I made some more the next day. Umm, I might go make some more right now). Those are just a few. Lots of other things were really good.

I’d like to blame the cookbook for this hot mess, but really we just overcooked the broccoli while making the fried rice. Chinese beef broccoli, pg. 94, was fantastic anyway, and loved by all.

3) Everybody should make the pork and mango potstickers. They should also dice everything up a lot finer than I did, but that was totally my mistake. Despite that, they were delicious.

4) A word of warning about the mussels in coconut curry broth: be super careful about the curry paste. My curry paste was obviously very different from Jaden’s, because I used only a quarter the amount suggested and it was still quite spicy for everyone in my family. This is true about all variable ingredients, though. Taste what you have and use common sense, and you’ll be fine.

I could eat pots of this stuff: Chinese sausage fried rice, pg. 131

Despite my small issues, I really like Jaden's Cookbook.

I have a whole list of recipes still to try, and it’s not a daunting prospect because the recipes are, for the most part, simple and easy to follow. You can purchase Jaden's book online through Amazon, and if you buy through The Daring Kitchen’s Amazon store, you’ll be supporting our beloved Daring Kitchen community as well!

If you love all types of Asian cooking as much as I do, I think you’ll find The Steamy Kitchen Cookbook: 101 Asian Recipes Simple Enough for Tonight's Dinner a valuable addition to your repertoire.