Cookbook Review: Feeding the Dragon

Feeding the Dragon: A Culinary Travelogue Through China with Recipes is an interesting combination of travel journal, cultural travelogue and cookbook.

The authors, brother and sister Nate and Mary Kate Tate, took two backpacks, a camera, and a tarp, and traveled more than 9,700 miles throughout China to learn about and share the country's inspiring culture and cuisine with kitchens in the West.

The Tates offer us a beautiful journey through Chinese history, culture, tradition and food in their book. It is a beautifully photographed book with stunning images of the countryside and the people as well as the recipes.

From Buddhist vegetarian dishes they enjoyed on the snow topped mountains of Tibet to lamb kebabs served on the scorching desert of Xinjiang Province, the Tate's give us one hundred authentic Chinese recipes alongside their travel photographs and stories of their experiences.

The recipes are easy to prepare for the most part and quite healthy. The book also provides handy reference sidebars to guide cooks with time-saving shortcuts such as buying pre made dumpling wrappers instead of making them from scratch, or using a blow-dryer to finish your Peking Duck. The Tates also include a comprehensive glossary of Chinese ingredients and their equivalent substitutions, which is very helpful.

Feeding the Dragon is not an Americanized adulteration of classic Chinese cuisine. Instead, they have gone into Chinese kitchens all across the country to bring us authentic Chinese recipes from restaurants and home cooks.

Some of the recipes you will find in Feeding the Dragon: A Culinary Travelogue Through China with Recipes include:

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• Ginger Steamed Fish
• Peanut Pork Chop Soup
• Chicken Lettuce Cups
• Hot and Sour Soup
• Bang Bang Chicken
• Fish Fragrant Eggplant
• Kung Pao Chicken
• Dan Dan Noodles
• JiaZi Dumplings
• Comfort Beef Noodle Soup
• Jianbing Crepes
• Hunan style Hong Shao Pork
• Yangzhou fried rice
• Guotie Pot Stickers
• Kashgar Onion Salad
• Shanghai Soup Dumplings
• Pineapple Rice
• Coca-Cola Chicken Wings
• Green Tea Shortbread Cookies
• Wild Mushroom Salad

We have permission to share two authentic Chinese recipes from this cookbook with you. Have a look at:

Shanghai Fried Noodles

Stir-Fry Sugar Snap Peas

What others are saying about Feeding the Dragon

"This is a heartwarming and often gripping tale of a brother-sister team who bike back roads, slog muddy fields, trudge across mountains, and navigate ancient alleyways to explore the kitchens and culinary soul of China. The recipes they gather from China's wonderfully hospitable people will tantalize your taste buds as Nate and Mary Kate's decade-long adventure inspires your sense of wanderlust."
James McGregor, author of One Billion Customers: Lessons from the Front Lines of Doing Business in China

"Feeding the Dragon is a stunning achievement; it's a foodie's Far East fantasy come true, with pictures and recipes to match."
Adam Roberts, creator of The Amateur Gourmet

"The Tate siblings are my kind of travelers, my kind of eaters, and my kind of cooks. In Feeding the Dragon, they have combined adventure travel, history, and culture to create a personal, fun, and interesting cookbook. The photos, recipes, and stories are all fabulous. I love this cookbook!"
Lisa See, author of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan and Shanghai Girls

Larry Mark wrote this in his 5 Star review:
"Mary Kate and Nate, with roots in Texas schools and some photo training at SVA in NYC, flew off to China and traveled, ate, hung out and blogged They have created a recipe book for travel lovers, and a travel book for foodies. The pictures are great, the design is beautiful, the stories are authentic.. it is just brilliantly designed and executed in my opinion.

This is the perfect cookbook for someone who loves Chinese food and the culture and would love to reproduce authentic Chinese recipes at home. It would make a great gift.

Nate Tate was one of the first Texas college students to study at Beijing's prestigious Tsinghua University. He is a self-professed Chinese food obsessive, and in his quest to master the cooking of Chinese food, he has talked his way into restaurant kitchens across China to learn straight from the cooks. He has toured seventeen of China's twenty-two provinces, and while living in Beijing, Nate worked as a restaurant designer and as an art director at an international advertising agency. In New York City, he cofounded a creative agency with his sister.

Mary Kate Tate first became interested in China after visiting the faraway country as a high school student. She later studied Mandarin and Chinese history at the University of Texas at Austin and at Nanjing Normal University in China. In addition to cofounding a creative agency with her brother and working as a copywriter in New York City, she has worked as a teacher in China's Hebei Province and as a writer in Beijing.