while it's understandable that most people who buy this book will not be chinese, this is NOT the book to get if you want to duplicate the dishes you've tasted before.

And why did i give it 1 star instead of the 0 it deserved? it has nice pictures.

17 of 17 found the following review helpful:

Dim Sum Lite  Feb 26, 2005
By F. Liljeblad
This is a REALLY bad book. I was very disappointed in the complete lack of authenticity of the recipes. That they should be simplified is something I've come to expect, but that they should be so inauthentic is inexcusable in this day and age when Chinese ingredients are so widely available--in supermarkets, Chinatowns, or online. Here are some examples:

In the section on ingredients, Ms. Liley includes (Vietnamese) rice paper wrappers (although the Chinese do in a very few cases use a type of rice paper wrapper, it bears no resemblance whatever to the hard, glassy Vietnamese kind); she states erroniously that Spring roll wrappers are made of rice flour (see Eileen Yin-Fei Lo's "The Dim Sum Dumpling Book" for the authentic recipe and method); and she labels as wonton wrappers, which are square and egg-based, potsticker/gyoza wrappers, which are round and water-based.

In the recipe for Pearl Balls (p.26), she lists short-grain rice instead of glutinous rice for the coating, and suggests that the rice be soaked for 30 minutes. I have been making pearl balls since I was 16 years old, and you *must* use glutinous rice, because even short grain non-glutionous rice won't soften in the relatively short steaming. Also, the rice needs at least 1.5 or 2 hours soaking.

Finally, Ms Liley in recipe after recipe suggests fish sauce (widely used in Vietnamese, Thai, and Filipino cooking, but never in mainstream Chinese) as, presumably, a substitute for light soy sauce, since most Chinese recipes specify light soy sauce (or a combination of light and dark soy sauces) for fish or seafood-based dishes.

The photos are exquisite, but what good are glamourous photos when the content is so falsified? Better to take the extra money and buy Lo's dim sum book, or the book "Dim Sum" by Rhoda Yee (the text is excruciating, but the recipes are good and really work), or for those who really want to get into this in depth, the dim sum books by Wei-Chuan Publishing.

20 of 21 found the following review helpful:

Pretty pictures, but...  Jan 17, 2002

A friend of mine has given me this book as a gift because she knew I love dim sum and eat it every week with my Chinese family every single Sunday. It is a Chinese tradition to have dim sum frequently with friends and family, especially in a city like Vancouver that is so filled with so many excellent dim sum restaurants. This book does have plenty of pretty pictures of what the food should look like when it is made and also has an excellent section on how to prepare and cook the food. Most of the recipes in this book are not even found in dim sum restaurants. Recipes that are most common in dim sum restaurants like ha gow, sui mei, chicken feet, low bac gow (chinese turnip pancake) and many others that are not even in this book at all even though they are some of the most eaten dishes in the restaurants. It is extremely disappointing to have a book that is specific for dim sum but hardly have any of the most common dim sum dishes in it. There are recipes in the book like "salmon money bags" and grilled mushrooms that are not even heard of in the restaurants. I do have to admit that the instructions are easy to follow and most of the ingredients are quite easy to find in the markets.

20 of 23 found the following review helpful:

this is a pretty picture book...  May 09, 2000

I didn't buy this book. I actually borrowed it from the library. The glossy pictures attracted me and I was convinced to buy it here on amazon.com. Then I flipped through it and I'mglad I didn't buy it! Only some of these recipes are the traditional chinese dim sum you'd find in chinatown. The rest seem to be gourmet style dim sum; like maybe something in a Wolfgang Puck restaurant. Anyhow, if you want authentic chinese dim sum...look elsewhere.

2 of 2 found the following review helpful:

Not very authentic  Oct 12, 2006
By Floyd Cerati
Truth is, the pictures are quite nice and it makes for a nice cofeetable book but I think several reviewers here pointed out correctly that this is not an authentic chinese dim sum book. The recipes have incorrect ingredients (fish sauce in chinese cooking?) and the few recipes I tried didnt have complete lists of ingredients and lacked in flavor. This is made for an uneducated, simplified western audience. With more and more people dining in dim sum establishment nowadays, our palates are more discriminating. I really liked the "Dim Sum - The Art of Chinese Tea Lunch" by Ellen Leong Blonder.

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