Through recipes that use traditional medicinal ingredients, "A Tradition of Soup" provides a narrative of the Southern Chinese immigrants who migrated in large numbers during the last half-century, the struggles they faced and overcame, and the soups they used to heal and nourish their bodies. Author Teresa Chen, PhD, who was born into a Cantonese family that valued the many traditions of its regional cuisine, weaves in colourful threads of Chinese culture including food, medicine, festivals, pottery, language, and geography. She covers soup tradition, terminology, techniques, and utensils, and presents close to 150 delicious recipes.Consistent with the Chinese approach to health, Chen groups her soup recipes according to seasons and health concerns and presents a range of soup categories from Cantonese taxonomy: tong (simple broths, soups, and stews), geng (thickened soups), juk (rice soups or porridges), and Tongshui (sweet soups), as well as noodle soups, wonton and dumpling soups, and vegetable soups. She also focuses on dahn (steaming) and louhfo (slow-cooking) soups associated with medicine and healing. Chen's recipes feature fresh, natural, and seasonal food for nurturing and her ingredients are selected to balance a person's physical constitution, be it cold or hot or leaning toward dampness or sluggishness. This conscious integration of medicine and food is especially prominent in the preparation of soups, which can be looked upon as a palatable version of herbal tea.While the recipes in "A Tradition of Soup" call for ingredients that may seem foreign to Western readers, most of them are available in Chinese grocery stores. To help readers identify and procure these items, Chen provides a beautifully photographed ingredients glossary complete with Chinese names, pronunciation and detailed descriptions.

Reviews

"For soup enthusiasts like me, this book is simply invaluable."
--From the foreword by Martin Yan, bestselling author and host of "Yan Can Cook "
"[Teresa Chen's] new book, "A Tradition of Soup: Flavors from China's Pearl River Delta," a collection of 144 recipes from southern China, is the result of years invested in health education...The recipes, intermingled with information about southern Chinese culture, traditional medicine, and immigration history, are grouped by seasons and health concerns, including gaining and losing weight, getting rid of acne, and preventing wrinkles."
--"Harvard""Magazine
""Chen lays out the basics of nearly the whole of Chinese gastronomy...[she] has made it safe for me to walk into any Chinese pharmacopeia and conduct myself well.""
"--Olivia Wu, "The Art of Eating Magazine
"
"I've often wondered why our family had so humble a name: Hong (meaning soup). Thanks to Teresa Chen, I now understand that soup has as long and powerful a tradition as tea. Soup is a healing medicine, and soup sustains and extends life. Soup has its myths and stories. And soup made its way from China to America, from the Pearl River Delta to the San Joaquin Delta, in the cookery of immigrants such as my mother."
--Maxine Hong Kingston, author of the award-winning "The Woman Warrior" and recipient of the 2008 National Books Awards' Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters
"While there are dozens of superb cookbooks that translate Cantonese cooking for Americans, none take Teresa Chen's expansive medicinal approach to food. I recommend this book not only to those interested in health, but also to those who want to discover a whole new and thoroughly fascinating branch of Chinese cuisine."
--Ken Albala, professor of history at University of the Pacific and award-winning author of "Beans: A History"
""A Tradition of Soup "is a treasure chest of Cantonese soup recipes generously garnished with cultu