食經

My birthday present this year is a five-volume set of [食經] by 陳夢因.

It is in fact a (selected) re-print of the newspaper columns by Chan, one of the earliest food critics in Hong Kong. Although one could never learn how to prepare any specific dish - it is not meant to be a collection of recipes - there is a wealth of insight here and there, explaining why rather than how the dishes should be prepared in the specific way.

And, just by thumbing through the pages, I have good mental pictures on how (southern) Chinese lived a century ago. For example, the strength of the stove was defined according to the number of wood burning and the diameter of the wok.

The world has changed a lot since then.