WW Norton & Co Chop Fry Watch Learn: Fu Pei-mei and the Making of Modern Chinese Food

"In 1949, a young Chinese woman arrived in Taiwan, fleeing from the chaos of war on the mainland. At the time, Fu Pei-mei had no idea how to cook. Yet as a young housewife she taught herself and launched a career as a television instructor that would last four decades, entrancing millions of viewers who grew up watching her prepare thousands of delectable dishes with skill and verve. As her fame grew, she traveled beyond the borders of Taiwan, teaching the rest of the world how to cook Chinese food. Woven into this lively account of Fu's life and times are Michelle King's own family stories, personal reflections, and contemporary oral history, raising questions about food, gender, diaspora, and cultural identity. Chop Fry Watch Learn 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"-- 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.Chop Fry Watch LearnAnd 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. New York Times Book Review Autorid: Michelle T. King