Steaming: The Essential Kitchen Series

by Brigid Treloar

Whether you're a connoisseur of Asian-style food or looking for simple, great-tasting low-fat recipes, Steaming will place the secrets of this ancient technique at your fingertips. Steaming is easy-all you need is a pot of water. The step-by-step instructions show you how to use a variety of steaming equipment, even how to create your own steamer. Make mouth-watering appetizers, crisp and flavorful vegetables, wonderful meals with chicken, beef, pork, and seafood, even fabulous desserts.

Genres: Cookbooks

112 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001

Reviews

[Stephen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interest in steaming as a cooking method has increased with heightened health consciousness. The method has been around for several millennia and probably was first practiced by exposing raw foods to naturally-occurring volcanic steam vents. Treloar's book offers techniques and illustrative recipes for starters, grains, meat (including poultry and seafood), vegetables and desserts. The collection is long on Asian recipes, which is unsurprising given the popularity of steaming in Asia and the publisher's location in Singapore. The book is enhanced by numerous step-by-step photographs. Her suggestions for steaming fowl are likely to produce a pale, nearly colourless dish which she suggests be hidden in a colourful sauce. I take exception to her suggestion (in two recipes) that a liquid which has been used to marinate meat ought be reserved and then used in a sauce. This is potentially dangerous. She strains to include some recipes better prepared using other methods, e.g. I would more likely cook her Grand Marinier Crème Caramel in ramekins by baking them in a hot water bath in the oven than by steaming them. The recipes helpfully include suggestions for two or three or four ways to accomplish roughly the same thing, depending upon equipment, ingredients and preferences. A bit more information on how to keep an Asian bamboo steamer clean and fresh would have been helpful.