Sign-In
Cart
Chop Fry Watch Learn: Fu Pei-Mei and the Making of Modern Chinese Food
Hardcover
Culinary BiographiesBiographies GeneralFood Writing
Publisher Price: $29.99
ISBN13: 9781324021285
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: May 7 2024
Pages: 336
Weight: 1.27
Height: 1.40 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.10
Language: English
In 1949, a young Chinese housewife arrived in Taiwan and transformed herself from a novice to a natural in the kitchen. She launched a career as a cookbook author and television cooking instructor that would last four decades. Years later, in America, flipping through her mother's copies of Fu Pei-mei's Chinese cookbooks, historian Michelle T. King discovered more than the recipes to meals of her childhood. She found, in Fu's story and in her food, a vivid portal to another time, when a generation of middle-class, female home cooks navigated the tremendous postwar transformations taking place across the world.
In Chop Fry Watch Learn, King weaves together stories from her own family and contemporary oral history to present a remarkable argument for how understanding the story of Fu's life enables us to see Chinese food as both an inheritance of tradition and a truly modern creation, influenced by the historical phenomena of the postwar era. These include a dramatic increase in the number of women working outside the home, a new proliferation of mass media, the arrival of innovative kitchen tools, and the shifting diplomatic fortunes of China and Taiwan. King reveals how and why, for audiences in Taiwan and around the world, Fu became the ultimate culinary touchstone: the figure against whom all other cooking authorities were measured.
And Fu's legacy continues. Her cookbooks have become beloved emblems of cultural memory, passed from parent to child, wherever diasporic Chinese have landed. Informed by the voices of fans across generations, King illuminates the story of Chinese food from the inside: at home, around the family dinner table. The result is a revelatory work, a rich banquet of past and present tastes that will resonate deeply for all of us looking for our histories in the kitchen.
Also in
Culinary Biographies
Make It a Double: From Wretched to Wondrous: Tales of One Woman's Lifelong Discovery of Whisky
Sackier, Shelley
Hardcover
Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect
Guidara, Will
Hardcover
Kitchen Confidential Annotated Edition: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly
Bourdain, Anthony
Paperback
Main, Middle & Gay: A Chef Finds His Place in the World Against All Odds
O'Connell, Patrick
Hardcover
What Could Possibly Go Right?: The Essential Journey to Scale an Enduring Culture
Meyer, Danny
Hardcover
Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook
Bourdain, Anthony
Paperback
Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts: Stories and Recipes from Five Generations of Black Country Cooks
Wilkinson, Crystal
Hardcover
The Devil in the Kitchen: Sex, Pain, Madness, and the Making of a Great Chef
White, Marco Pierre
Paperback
El Chef Migrante: La Vida Y Los Tiempos de Lalo García / The Migrant Chef: The Life and Times of Lalo García
Tillman, Laura
Paperback
The Meat Teacher Cookbook: The Ultimate Backyard BBQ Guide for an A+ in Pitmastery
Groark, Matt
Hardcover
The Secret in the Sauce: Kitchen Wisdom and Life Lessons from an Irish Cookery School, with Recipes
McMichael, Kelly
Paperback
Roasting in Hell's Kitchen: Temper Tantrums, F Words, and the Pursuit of Perfection
Ramsay, Gordon
Paperback
Dining Out: First Dates, Defiant Nights, and Last Call Disco Fries at America's Gay Restaurants
Piepenburg, Erik
Hardcover
Cork Dork: A Wine-Fueled Adventure Among the Obsessive Sommeliers, Big Bottle Hunters, and Rogue Scientists Who Taught Me to Live for Taste
Bosker, Bianca
Paperback
Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef (Large Print Edition)
Hamilton, Gabrielle
Paperback
Julia Child's Kitchen: The Design, Tools, Stories, and Legacy of an Iconic Space
Johnson, Paula J.
Hardcover
The Upstairs Delicatessen: On Eating, Reading, Reading about Eating, and Eating While Reading
Garner, Dwight
Paperback
Make the Bread, Buy the Butter: What You Should (and Shouldn't) Cook from Scratch to Save Time and Money
Reese, Jennifer
Paperback
Eat Like a Fish: A James Beard Award Winner: My Adventures Farming the Ocean to Fight Climate Change
Smith, Bren
Paperback
Waiter Rant: Thanks for the Tip--Confessions of a Cynical Waiter (Harper Perennial)
Dublanica, Steve
Paperback
The Gentleman's Companion: Being an Exotic Drinking Book Or, Around the World with Jigger, Beaker and Flask
Baker, Charles Henry
Hardcover
Hunger Like a Thirst: From Food Stamps to Fine Dining, a Restaurant Critic Finds Her Place at the Table
Rodell, Besha
Hardcover
The California Pizza Kitchen Story: How Two Federal Prosecutors Changed the Way America Eats Pizza
Rosenfield, Rick
Hardcover
The Food Explorer: The True Adventures of the Globe-Trotting Botanist Who Transformed What America Eats
Stone, Daniel
Paperback
Rambutan: Recipes from Sri Lanka, Accompanying the Acclaimed New London Restaurant
Shanmugalingam, Cynthia
Hardcover
What Could Possibly Go Right?: The Essential Journey to Scale an Enduring Culture (Large Print Edition)
Meyer, Danny
Paperback
From Here, You Can't See Paris: Seasons of a French Village and Its Restaurant
Sanders, Michael S.
Paperback
We Thought They'd Never Leave: Musings on Food and Family (Large Print Edition)
Adams, Josie
Shalhoub, Tony
Hardcover
Beaujolais In My Blood: Growing Up Gay and Well-Fed in a Family-Run French Restaurant
Pitsenbarger, Eric Neil
Paperback
Jean Paré an Appetite for Life: The Inspiring Story of Canada's Most Popular Cookbook Author
Schultz, Judy
Paperback
Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany
Buford, Bill
Paperback
We've Always Had Paris... and Provence: A Scrapbook of Our Life in France
Wells, Patricia
Wells, Walter
Paperback
Hunger Like a Thirst: From Food Stamps to Fine Dining, a Restaurant Critic Finds Her Place at the Table
Rodell, Besha
Paperback
The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears in Paris at the World's Most Famous Cooking School
Flinn, Kathleen
Paperback
Dumpling Therapy: My Mother, Chinese Food, and Five Thousand Years of Not-So-Ancient Recipes
Brown, Miranda
Hardcover
Old Farm Country Christmas: Favorite Recipes, Homespun Crafts, and Merry Memories
Apps, Jerry
Apps-Bodilly, Susan
Paperback
Reflections of a Vintner: Stories and Seasonal Wisdom from a Lifetime in Napa Valley
Kenward, Tor
Hardcover
Hungry: Eating, Road-Tripping, and Risking It All with the Greatest Chef in the World
Gordinier, Jeff
Paperback
Gluten for Punishment: Just Desserts for the Heartbroken, Lovesick, and Jilted
Seyler, Julie
Paperback
Life, on the Line: A Chef's Story of Chasing Greatness, Facing Death, and Redefining the Way We Eat
Achatz, Grant
Kokonas, Nick
Paperback
The Roast Penguin Chronicles: Hoosh, Scurvy Days, Sleeping with Vegetables, and Other Adventures in Antarctic Cuisine
Anthony, Jason C.
Paperback