Chinese Enough: Homestyle Recipes for Noodles, Dumplings, Stir-Fries, and More

by Kristina Cho

In an exploration of her own experience as a first-generation American, Kristina Cho, author of the award-winning baking book Mooncakes and Milk Bread, offers 100 recipes that blend the flavors of traditional Cantonese cooking with California ingredients and a midwestern sensibility.   In Chinese Enough, Cho turns to the savory side of cooking with recipes that are neither entirely Chinese nor entirely American, but Chinese enough. Here is an array of dishes to pair with rice, the cornerstone of Cantonese cuisine, including Triple Pepper Beef, Miso Pork Meatballs, and Seared Egg Tofu with Honey and Soy. Recipes like Smashed Ranch Cucumbers and Saucy Sesame Long Beans honor the Cantonese focus on vegetables. There’s a chapter dedicated to the joy of noodles, with creative takes on traditional dishes, birthed anew in a California kitchen—from San Francisco Garlic Noodles to Creamy Tomato Udon. Plus, a chapter of Banquet-Worthy Dishes teaches the Chinese art of food as celebration, a step-by-step guide shows how to employ friends and family in the kitchen to make dumplings, and the fruit-focused dessert section acts as a lesson on finishing a meal with a small, sweet act of affection. Woven throughout, Cho’s stories of her grandmother’s Chinese garden situated in the middle of Cleveland and falling in love over dim sum are a warm tribute to the nuanced and personal ways in which one can discover and define their own culture.

Genres: Cookbooks, Cooking, Food, Nonfiction, Food and Drink

368 pages, Hardcover

Published October 1, 2024

Reviews

[Katie K-N · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is Kristina Cho’s second cookbook and it is phenomenal. A great balance of weekday meals and recipes that you can invest in. I made the dumplings on a weeknight, had plenty freeze, and enjoyed them thoroughly! I used to live in LA (SGV side, IYKYK), so my dumpling standards are high - these hit the mark!

Kristina’s blog has great recipes. The cookbook is worth buying because it has many more recipes AND she explains a lot of core concepts and ingredients needed for the recipes.

A great compliment to other books on the shelf for Chinese cooking from different regions! More accessible than many other cookbooks of its class, but not sacrificing flavor or deliciousness.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a cookbook by a Chinese-American author who grew up in Cleveland Ohio, then moved during college to the San Francisco Bay Area, where she still lives. The book offers neither "authentic" Chinese cooking, nor fully Americanized Chinese food. Rather, the recipes represent the home cooking of someone who grew up in a household with parents and grandparents who had a Chinese restaurant in Cleveland in the 80s and 90s.

Most of the recipes are very clearly written and easy to understand, although like nearly every cookbook there are a few points of ambiguity, most often I think around how to handle alternative ingredients. The eight chapters are each organized around a theme ("best with rice", "banquet-worthy", "know your vegetables", etc.) rather than a course (appetizers, soups, mains, etc.), although the final, fruit-themed chapter appears to be all desserts. Reading through I'm struck by how many of the dishes and preparations described are things I want to make, easily 5 or more per chapter, which is huge, considering the chapters have about 15-16 recipes each. There is also a great introductory section on ingredients, techniques, and equipment, as well as a a dozen sample menus, for different sized groups, at the end.

At this point I've used a couple recipes as rough guidelines (my normal way of cooking), and followed one recipe to the letter. I've been very happy with the results overall, although the one I followed literally was too salty. I was willing to attribute that to a difference between my oyster sauce and the author's preferred brand, until I got to the chapter that includes a chicken stock recipe. There, she has you add two tablespoons (!) of kosher salt to only 12 cups of water (for one pound of chicken wings/feet). That, to my mind, is insane. Even assuming a typo where it should be teaspoons, that's still a lot to add before the stock has had a chance to reduce.

To sum up: if you're looking for a good source of approachable, tasty, Chinese (or Chinese-adjacent) recipes, you may want to check this out. But watch out for the salt!

[Elle Flanagan · Rating 5 out of 5]

favorite cookbook of 2025! we made so many yummy things.

[Sonja · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this cookbook! The recipes are very easy to follow, using every day ingredients. The pictures and layout are very well done. The meals are delicious!

[Beth Clark · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had the pleasure of meeting Kristina Cho at the Tucson Festival of Books in March 2025 and I attended her cooking demonstration as well. I was very impressed with her story, her storytelling, and the ease with which she prepared her spring rolls all while talking to the audience.

I held off on buying her cookbook at the festival because it's BIG and HEAVY and I'd flown to the event so I was REALLY judicious with my purchases. I opted to check the book out of the Penn State Library upon my return, knowing that I could have it for a few months to really pour over it in detail.

I've spent the last few months reading the cookbook and all the recipes. There are about a dozen or so that I am intrigued to try, but a lot of them feel intimidating, time-consuming, or ingredient-intensive and that wound up making them unappealing.

Maybe I'm not the intended audience here and that's OK. I surely enjoyed hearing from and meeting Ms. Cho, and greatly respect her story and what she's doing with this cookbook. There's a population that clearly struggles with the label of being "Chinese enough," and I suspect that her cookbook will help resolve some cognitive dissonance I don't have...bridging the gaps between their Chinese and American identities with the universal love language - food!

[Clare · Rating 4 out of 5]

I know nothing about Chinese food beyond the occasional takeout order. I liked how approachable this book makes the unknown ingredients and processes. I made the brussel sprouts and the fried rice. I thought they had way too much spicy sauce flavor, overpowering the other ingredients, but some of that was probably my fault for getting the proportions wrong. I still want to make the tomato rice and pickled carrots recipes.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

borrowed from the library but the recipes are so good I'm going to purchase

[Margaret Gerberding · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved to make stir fry or fried rice, but hope to make more complicated recipes. The recipes in here were not complicated but look great!

[Kwan L · Rating 5 out of 5]

simple ingredients and easy to follow receipes

[Anna Catherman · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fine book.

[A. · Rating 1 out of 5]

Nothing in here that I would want to make

[Kate]

Made the chilly silken tofu with spicy tomato salad and bookmarked a few others.

[Shea · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very hit or miss, with gems of homestyle Chinese American dishes hidden among unsavory fusion amalgamations.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I want to eat all of this.

[Autumn Kearney · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book may be called Chinese Enough, but in my opinion, it's close enough. It did not do much for me. So sorry.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the kind of cookbook that is fun to read! It's also the kind of cookbook that initially sounds like too many steps and ingredients, but the more you read, the more inspiration you feel!

[Justine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just made the miso pork meatballs, and… wow. So delicious. Looking forward to making the tomato udon and dumplings next.