Sweet and Sour
Chinese Cookery. By M. P. Lee. (Faber. 35. 6d.) Simple Salads. By Ambrose Heath. (Faber. 35. 6c1.)
SINC.E the earliest times the preparing and eating of food has played a most important part in the ritual of Chinese life. The Analects contain precise instructions on the subject. None of your shame- faced English approach to the table which has nearly changed Britannia's trident into a tin-opener, and has tied the bottle of patent sauce to the skirts of British freedom, nor the self-conscious ecstasies of your English gastronomic dubs with their jargon of "delectable
dainties" and "unctuous sauces "; but a quiet assumption that good cooking is an indispensable pier of civilisation.
Indeed, towards evening the whole of China in happy times seems to have become one majestic kitchen ; as you pass the meanest cottage your nostrils are flicked by a whole bouquet of strange cooking scents that drone their way like cockchafers into the paling sky ; even the coolies, sweating out their guts on a new railway, will contrive a delicious meal out of nothing. Malnutrition is of Course widespread, but it comes from sheer lack, not from waste nor want of ingenuity. Spoiled by centuries of ease, we English would starve where the Chinese succeed in living very well. In no other country, I imagine, are such superb meals conjured out of so little.
For that very reason Mr. Lee's Chinese Cookery is of the greatest use in these lean times. His recipes have been deliberately sim- plified, so as in the main to dispense with most of those Chinese condiments, normally indispensable, which have lately, alas! dis- appeared even from Soho ; and in almost any well-conducted English kitchen Ins instructions an be followed with an admirable relief from monotony and an apparent extension of rations. To cite my own experience : recently our meat ration, which that week happened to be pork, was cooked according to his "Sweet and Sour Pork" recipe (page 37)—one of the classic dishes of China. Not only did it last for two ample meals, but to the second of them there came three hungry guests. (Naturally the pork was supported by plenty of rice and several dishes of vegetables ; but the cooking of vege- tables in the Chinese style is a remarkably simple and effortless affair. No tedious boiling away of essential virtues, but the in- telligent wielding of a knife, a frying pan and a little hot fat. This is a cookery book which I can warmly recommend to all who agree that life holds more than Yorkshire pudding and " chou a l'eau."
No less valuable is Mr. Heath's little book on war-time salads. A book of most ingenious improvisations, which will not, let's hope, be needed for many more seasons, it is also most useful for the succinct statement of principles with which Mr. Heath delights us in his Foreword. How fervently I agree with his remarks on the presence of beetroot or tomato in the salad-bowl (pages 11-12). Mr. Heath not only gives some new combinations of vegetables, but also some remarkable recipes for oilless dressing and eggless mayon- naises. Thank God, I still have half a bottle of oil and four eggs. I e.an therefore not yet speak with experience on this part of his
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