Lucky Peach: 101 Easy Asian Recipes

Cofounder/editor Meehan (Momofuku) and his cohorts at Lucky Peach, an award-winning quarterly culinary journal with a rabid following, show novices what all the fuss is about with this entertaining and useful collection of Asian-inspired dishes. Guided by two rules—no frying and no subrecipes—the team produces a terrific store of dishes. Some suggestions, such as serving oranges for dessert and roasted sweet potatoes as a side, take simplicity literally—there are no other ingredients—but the rest of the dishes, such as kimchi pancakes and lacquered roast chicken, are criminally easy to prepare. The bulk of the book’s recipes are staples such as a soy sauce kimchi that doesn’t require weeks of fermentation, hot and sour soup, and pad see ew, but there are surprising, tasty riffs as well: Sichuan pork and spicy mushroom ragus for noodles, and Mall Chicken, a wildly inauthentic but highly addictive version of the ubiquitous sticky-sweet chicken nuggets served with toothpicks in food courts throughout America. Readers will also appreciate the surprising lack of prep for many dishes; few require chopping and dicing multitudes of vegetables or sourcing ingredients that are difficult to find in the U.S. This is an outstanding, practical guide sure to inspire even the most discouraged home cook. (Oct.)