China & Southeast Asia

China & Southeast Asia covers a region where the differences between regional cuisines are greater than those between European countries, and the books have been chosen accordingly.

Fuchsia Dunlop is the obvious place to start. She was the first Westerner to train at the culinary school in Chengdu and writes with a credibility unmatched by any other writer in English. The Food of Sichuan covers the hot and numbing cuisine of Sichuan with more than 200 recipes, Land of Fish and Rice the considerably milder Jiangnan cuisine around Shanghai, and Every Grain of Rice everyday Chinese cooking as it is actually prepared at home.

China: The Cookbook by Kei Lum Chan and Diora Fong Chan brings together 650 recipes from the country's 33 regional cuisines and works more as a reference book than something to read from cover to cover.

Further south, everything changes. Jean-Pierre Gabriel's Thailand: The Cookbook documents Thai cuisine region by region through 500 recipes, while Penang represents the Malaysian and Nyonya influenced cooking where Chinese, Indian and Malay traditions meet in the same pot.