China Moon Cookbook

The "Julia Child of Chinese cooking" (San Francisco Chronicle), Barbara Tropp was a gifted teacher and the chef/owner of one of San Francisco's most popular restaurants. She was also the inventor of Chinese bistro, a marriage of home-style Chinese tastes and techniques with Western ingredients and inspiration, an innovative cuisine that stuffs a wonton with crab and corn and flavors it with green chili sauce, that stir-fries chicken with black beans and basil, that tosses white rice into a salad with ginger-balsamic dressing.

Casual yet impeccable, and as balanced as yin and yang, these 275 recipes burst with unexpected flavors and combinations: Prawn Sandpot Casserole with Red Curry and Baby Corn; Spicy Tangerine Beef with Glass Noodles; Pizzetta with Chinese Eggplant, Wild Mushrooms, and Coriander Pesto; Chili-Orange Cold Noodles; Sweet Carrot Soup with Toasted Almonds; Wok-Seared New Potatoes; Crystallized Lemon Tart; and Fresh Ginger Ice Cream.

Winner of an IACP/Julia Child Cookbook Award.

Barbara Tropp, the "Julia Child of Chinese cooking" (San Francisco Chronicle), invented Chinese bistro--a marriage of home-style Chinese tastes and techniques with Western ingredients and inspiration. Here are 250 recipes--bursting with unexpected flavors and combinations--from this casual, innovative cuisine. Winner of a 1992 IACP/Julia Child Cookbook Award. 2-color illustrations throughout.

A stunning marriage of Chinese tastes and techniques with California flair, Barbara Tropp's China Moon cooking is a cuisine like no other. Chinese Bistro is stir-fries, sandpots, and salads of baby greens. It's dim-sum and ice cream. It's noodle pillows, crispy potatoes, and sesame breadtwists, too. And instead of fortune cookies, fabulous cookies of good fortune. Bursting with unexpected flavors-from ginger to Fresno chiles, curry to basil-Chinese bistro is light and fresh, casual yet impeccably flavored, and as balanced as yin and yang.

A DAZZLING SAMPLER

Chili-Orange Cold Noodles

Crispy Ten-Spice Spring Rolls with Crushed Peanuts

Stir-fried Hot and Sour Chicken with Black Beans and Basil

Eggroll-cartwheel Soup

Fresh Ginger Ice Cream with Bittersweet Chocolate Sauce

Spicy Tangerine Beef with Glass Noodles

Tea and Spice Smoked Duck Breast

Clear-Steamed Salmon with Fresh Coriander Pesto

Ma-La Cucumber Fans

Sandpot Casserole of Spicy Sparerib Nuggets with Garlic

Publishers Weekly

In this wide-ranging collection of recipes from her famed Chinatown cafe, the doyenne of California Chinese cuisine offers a ``private cooking school'' for cooks who want to enter the ``world of traditional Chinese flavors combined with exclusively fresh ingredients.'' Beginning with the ``pantry'' chapter on basic condiments like five-flavor Oil and China Moon pickled ginger, Tropp ( The Modern Art of Chinese Cooking ) moves throughout the meal, offering signature recipes, like plum wine chicken salad with sweet mustard sauce, and Hoisin pork buns with ginger and garlic. An entire chapter is devoted to the meat that is ``symbolically central to the entire Chinese culture''--pork. Not surprising for a book that is as much a course in method and culture as a collection of recipes, instructions are detailed and descriptive. True to her hybrid East-West cuisine, Tropp reveals eclecticism in her observations about cooking: In one chapter she praises traditional Chinese seafood cooking and presentation practices for following ``the integrity of the fish''; a few pages later, she muses about that modern American invention, plastic wrap. Stylish illustrations that simultaneously recall a modern upscale restaurant menu and a 1950s Vogue are also true to the mixed nature of Tropp's cuisine. Author tour. (Dec.)

Barbara Tropp is the chef and owner of China Moon Cafe, a small Chinese bistro-style restaurant in San Francisco. Before establishing herself as one of America's foremost chefs and cooking teachers, Barbara studied Chinese language, poetry, and art history at Columbia, Yale, Princeton, and the University of Taiwan. While living in Taiwan, she developed her passion for the simplicity of fresh home cooking, Chinese-style. Barbara is an elected member of Who's Who in Food & Wine in America. She has been profiled in the New York Times Magazine, House Beautiful, Bon Appetit, Metropolitan Home, Self, and the United Airlines in-flight magazine, Vis-a-Vis. She was profiled as well in the PBS series Great Chefs in San Francisco. She continues to teach, most recently at the Great Chefs Cooking School at the Robert Mondavi Winery, Fetzer Winery's Valley Oaks Food & Wine Center, and the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.