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daumari's review
While I agree with other reviewers that it's a little odd there's no food pictures when the author even mentions taking photos of her aunties' dishes, but it was a good mix of discovering family history through food.
knod78's review
4.0
This completes Task 11: Read a food memoir by an author of color, Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge.
I loved this book. I could be biased and completely full of nostalgia, but I loved it. I loved the challenge she set for herself for a year to truly learn her family dishes. I would kill for something akin to this experience. Hell, I want to go to her family's kitchens and cook with them. I especially loved all of the Singapore talk of their food. I love Singapore even though it's a very different Singapore to when I lived there. But I can't help it. When she talked about going to the Cold Storage for supplies off of Orchard Road in downtown Singapore, I burst with smiles and love and memories. I remember walking up there with friends and buying some Tang to drink. I also loved all of the stories she learned about her family members and especially her grandmothers. This would be my ideal thing sitting around cooking and learning family history.
The book is pretty well organized and easy to read. It is food porn for sure. My gripe is that I wasn't sure where we were in relation to the year sometimes. She talked about going to see her aunties, but then also said she hadn't see them since Chinese New Year even though we just had a chapter about August with the Aunties. I know it was from one Chinese New Year to the next. On occasion, I got confused. I didn’t understand the need for the bread challenge, as well. I kept wondering if she was trying these dishes at home. I mean the pineapple tart to my knowledge she had only done twice and apparently she was an expert. And if she hadn’t been practicing, well it’s no wonder some of her dishes were off for the finale. I just wasn’t clear.
So, if you love food and family, this is the book for you. It even inspired me to make a dinner for Chinese New Years this year (Year of the Ox - my husband) and maybe I will attempt one of her recipes.
I loved this book. I could be biased and completely full of nostalgia, but I loved it. I loved the challenge she set for herself for a year to truly learn her family dishes. I would kill for something akin to this experience. Hell, I want to go to her family's kitchens and cook with them. I especially loved all of the Singapore talk of their food. I love Singapore even though it's a very different Singapore to when I lived there. But I can't help it. When she talked about going to the Cold Storage for supplies off of Orchard Road in downtown Singapore, I burst with smiles and love and memories. I remember walking up there with friends and buying some Tang to drink. I also loved all of the stories she learned about her family members and especially her grandmothers. This would be my ideal thing sitting around cooking and learning family history.
The book is pretty well organized and easy to read. It is food porn for sure. My gripe is that I wasn't sure where we were in relation to the year sometimes. She talked about going to see her aunties, but then also said she hadn't see them since Chinese New Year even though we just had a chapter about August with the Aunties. I know it was from one Chinese New Year to the next. On occasion, I got confused. I didn’t understand the need for the bread challenge, as well. I kept wondering if she was trying these dishes at home. I mean the pineapple tart to my knowledge she had only done twice and apparently she was an expert. And if she hadn’t been practicing, well it’s no wonder some of her dishes were off for the finale. I just wasn’t clear.
So, if you love food and family, this is the book for you. It even inspired me to make a dinner for Chinese New Years this year (Year of the Ox - my husband) and maybe I will attempt one of her recipes.
jwsg's review
2.0
I came across this randomly while browsing the food literature section of the library and was intrigued by the prospect of a memoir of Singaporean food and family. What I liked about this book: it is about food. And I could connect with the context - educated and Westernised female who took her grandmother's cooking for granted as a child and never took an interest in food preparation wishes, as an adult, to be able to create and taste those familiar recipes again.
What I disliked: the writing. I've read plenty of food related literature by different writers. Bourdain, Ruhlman, Reichl, Gabrielle Hamilton, Fuchsia Dunlop - they all have very different styles. Some are lyrical, some have more muscular, punchier styles of writing. Different, but all excellent. Tan's writing reminded me of a top Singaporean student writing an essay during the Cambridge O level examinations. Content is all there, grammar is impeccable, but stilted and lacking in flair. Like "The piece de resistance, however, was a dish of hello dollies I very enthusiastically attempted after spying the recipe on a bag of chocolate chips at the grocery store." I can't quite put my finger on it but reading this sentence (and many others) just made me squirm. Maybe because it reminded me of my own awkwardly composed exam scripts as a teenager.
If you're familiar with the Singaporean dining scene, you'd either be impressed or put off by Tan's casual mentions of the F&B heavyweights she's bffs with - dining at Per Se with KF Seetoh, the "founder of Makansutra, a Zagat-style guide to restaurants in Singapore, a fact that our waiter had duly noted and conveyed to the chef"! Cooking with Willin Low! Drinking "expensive gin" with Gunther, the "head chef of one of Singapore's most expensive French restaurants"! Having Teochew porridge with "well-regarded Singaporean chef" Ignatius Chan.
Oh and one last final gripe: what is WITH the red Chinese cheongsam on the front cover? When I went to college, I used to snigger when (non-Chinese) students would wear the gold embroidered red cheongsams they had picked up from Chinatown to formals, thinking it exotic and sexy. Back home, only waitresses in Chinese restaurants (and even then, only the very old school Chinese restaurants) would wear cheongsams like that. With an image like that on the front cover, I'm not quite sure what the target audience of this book is.
What I disliked: the writing. I've read plenty of food related literature by different writers. Bourdain, Ruhlman, Reichl, Gabrielle Hamilton, Fuchsia Dunlop - they all have very different styles. Some are lyrical, some have more muscular, punchier styles of writing. Different, but all excellent. Tan's writing reminded me of a top Singaporean student writing an essay during the Cambridge O level examinations. Content is all there, grammar is impeccable, but stilted and lacking in flair. Like "The piece de resistance, however, was a dish of hello dollies I very enthusiastically attempted after spying the recipe on a bag of chocolate chips at the grocery store." I can't quite put my finger on it but reading this sentence (and many others) just made me squirm. Maybe because it reminded me of my own awkwardly composed exam scripts as a teenager.
If you're familiar with the Singaporean dining scene, you'd either be impressed or put off by Tan's casual mentions of the F&B heavyweights she's bffs with - dining at Per Se with KF Seetoh, the "founder of Makansutra, a Zagat-style guide to restaurants in Singapore, a fact that our waiter had duly noted and conveyed to the chef"! Cooking with Willin Low! Drinking "expensive gin" with Gunther, the "head chef of one of Singapore's most expensive French restaurants"! Having Teochew porridge with "well-regarded Singaporean chef" Ignatius Chan.
Oh and one last final gripe: what is WITH the red Chinese cheongsam on the front cover? When I went to college, I used to snigger when (non-Chinese) students would wear the gold embroidered red cheongsams they had picked up from Chinatown to formals, thinking it exotic and sexy. Back home, only waitresses in Chinese restaurants (and even then, only the very old school Chinese restaurants) would wear cheongsams like that. With an image like that on the front cover, I'm not quite sure what the target audience of this book is.
annaptobias's review
1.0
In theory, I should be the biggest fan of this book. It hits all the topics that I enjoy: food, immigrant life, reconnecting to family history. When Cheryl Lu-lien Tang wrote about being an overachieving student in Singapore who then had to move to the US to study and missing certain foods, it reminded me of my own experience since I had to go through a similar situation.
That being said, I don't think this book was ready for prime time. As other reviewers have noted, the chapters are somewhat disorganized and disjointed. Ms. Tan introduces her plan to return to Singapore to learn her paternal grandmother's recipes. Which she does. But along the way, she talks about her bread-baking blog collaborative project... which I suppose makes sense as she's trying to tell us how good she is in the kitchen, but I felt that it muddled the central focus of the book.
It's also curious how Ms. Tan wants to learn how to cook the authentic dishes passed down through her family, but there were several instances where she admitted that she didn't want to touch the food, namely the pork belly and duck. It felt like she only wanted the cute, sanitized experience but when she has to deal with the yucky parts, she would rather pass. It didn't convince me that the author really wanted to cook; she only wanted to eat good food. (Originally posted on LT, 9-Sep 2011)
That being said, I don't think this book was ready for prime time. As other reviewers have noted, the chapters are somewhat disorganized and disjointed. Ms. Tan introduces her plan to return to Singapore to learn her paternal grandmother's recipes. Which she does. But along the way, she talks about her bread-baking blog collaborative project... which I suppose makes sense as she's trying to tell us how good she is in the kitchen, but I felt that it muddled the central focus of the book.
It's also curious how Ms. Tan wants to learn how to cook the authentic dishes passed down through her family, but there were several instances where she admitted that she didn't want to touch the food, namely the pork belly and duck. It felt like she only wanted the cute, sanitized experience but when she has to deal with the yucky parts, she would rather pass. It didn't convince me that the author really wanted to cook; she only wanted to eat good food. (Originally posted on LT, 9-Sep 2011)
katiez624's review against another edition
3.0
Memoirs about Asian food is a niche that I am constantly in search of, so I had high hopes for this book. Although there is plenty in the book about preparing food (both Singaporean and American), the structure of the book was very disjointed. She took an entire year off, flying back and forth from Singapore to NYC every other week, jumping from making Teochow food with her relatives to baking bread in her apartment to learning from her mother-in-law in Hawaii. She devotes a tremendous amount of time and energy solely to learning how to make food, all while being unemployed (in NYC!).
The contrast between her inability to cook any Singaporean food paired with her love of baking and embarking on a professional baking challenge seemed too vast to be believable. I enjoyed reading about her family history, but I didn't feel like it was used to weave the cooking lessons together very well. She mentions countless times that most people don't make these dishes because they are so accessible and easy to buy. These dishes are, for the most part, fairly complex and labor-intensive. Overall, I, as the reader, did not feel inclined to try my hand at these recipes.
Overall, the descriptions of the food and cooking process were fun to read, but the disconnectedness of the story really left me wanting more.
The contrast between her inability to cook any Singaporean food paired with her love of baking and embarking on a professional baking challenge seemed too vast to be believable. I enjoyed reading about her family history, but I didn't feel like it was used to weave the cooking lessons together very well. She mentions countless times that most people don't make these dishes because they are so accessible and easy to buy. These dishes are, for the most part, fairly complex and labor-intensive. Overall, I, as the reader, did not feel inclined to try my hand at these recipes.
Overall, the descriptions of the food and cooking process were fun to read, but the disconnectedness of the story really left me wanting more.
fancy_reads's review
3.0
A must read for foodies! A fun read about culture, food and family. I love that the author includes the recipes she talks about.
cherylanne's review
4.0
A well-written and engaging memoir. In some ways I liked the idea of the book more than the reality - I ended up skimming a lot of the cooking minutiae (needless to say, I'm not much of a cook) - but her journey was interesting and well told.
jessrad505's review
5.0
It's good I'm done with this book because reading it on my bus ride home from work made me ravenous every day. I want to go to Singapore and eat all the food. Cheryl describes her family and her cooking adventures in such a vibrant way, I truly felt attached to everyone and connected to her search for her place in a culture she had been so far removed from. A really fun enjoyable read. I'm so glad I grabbed it on a whim at the library.