Mooncakes and Milk Bread is a useful and beautifully curated baking book with recipes from Kristina Cho. Due out 12th Oct 2021 from Harper Collins on their Harper Horizon imprint, it's 304 pages and will be available in hardcover and ebook formats.
Despite being red haired, freckly, and mostly Irish, I remember very fondly being "adopted" by the family who owned of our local Chinese bakeries. My family were customers for many (many) years and I was happy to recently find that they're still in business and under the management of the original owners' grandchildren now. This book is *full* of recipes for those Chinese bakery goodies which I remember so fondly and never thought I could ever recreate at home.
The introduction which includes a good overview over ingredients, tools, and sourcing specialty items (including how to shop at your local Asian grocery store), the actual recipes are arranged thematically: bread - bing - bao, not-too-sweet buns, pork buns & beyond, gao (cakes & tarts), no fortune cookies, Chinese breakfast, and sips (drinks).
Recipes contain a title and description, yields, ingredients in a bullet list in a sidebar, and step by step directions. Ingredients are listed with American standard measures only. Nutritional information is not included. There are so many gorgeous and clear color photos included. Most (but not all) of the dishes are accompanied by one or more photos. This helped me to know how to arrange and prepare the dishes with which I wasn't already familiar.
Additionally, the book is full of chatty and warm reminiscences from the author about her family and growing up as a 1st generation American in a restaurant family. She has an honest and friendly voice and I really enjoyed reading about her childhood, her family, and her family's stories.
Five stars. Wonderfully comprehensive and versatile.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
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