bookbrig's review
hopeful
informative
medium-paced
4.5
I looooooved this book. Her descriptions of food are mouth-watering, and the story of her family is super interesting. I only wish there were photos included, as so many of the dishes were unfamiliar to me. I will definitely have to spend some time Googling around to learn more.
I also wanted recipes for pretty much everything she describes, since her writing makes it all sound so delicious. The recipes at the end are great; I just wanted more!
*This is my Food Memoir chioce for the Read Harder challenge*
I also wanted recipes for pretty much everything she describes, since her writing makes it all sound so delicious. The recipes at the end are great; I just wanted more!
*This is my Food Memoir chioce for the Read Harder challenge*
katiez624's review
3.0
Memoirs about Asian food is a niche that I am constantly in search of, so I had high hopes for this book. Although there is plenty in the book about preparing food (both Singaporean and American), the structure of the book was very disjointed. She took an entire year off, flying back and forth from Singapore to NYC every other week, jumping from making Teochow food with her relatives to baking bread in her apartment to learning from her mother-in-law in Hawaii. She devotes a tremendous amount of time and energy solely to learning how to make food, all while being unemployed (in NYC!).
The contrast between her inability to cook any Singaporean food paired with her love of baking and embarking on a professional baking challenge seemed too vast to be believable. I enjoyed reading about her family history, but I didn't feel like it was used to weave the cooking lessons together very well. She mentions countless times that most people don't make these dishes because they are so accessible and easy to buy. These dishes are, for the most part, fairly complex and labor-intensive. Overall, I, as the reader, did not feel inclined to try my hand at these recipes.
Overall, the descriptions of the food and cooking process were fun to read, but the disconnectedness of the story really left me wanting more.
The contrast between her inability to cook any Singaporean food paired with her love of baking and embarking on a professional baking challenge seemed too vast to be believable. I enjoyed reading about her family history, but I didn't feel like it was used to weave the cooking lessons together very well. She mentions countless times that most people don't make these dishes because they are so accessible and easy to buy. These dishes are, for the most part, fairly complex and labor-intensive. Overall, I, as the reader, did not feel inclined to try my hand at these recipes.
Overall, the descriptions of the food and cooking process were fun to read, but the disconnectedness of the story really left me wanting more.
archytas's review
informative
reflective
fast-paced
3.5
This was a book club read, and I enjoyed it well enough. It made me hungry though, I did far too much midnight snacking while reading it. The net of relationships in her life and cultures in Singapore is well evoked through this food. So is the food - did I mention hungry?
anneaustex's review
3.0
I've enjoyed reading quite a few food related books by the likes of Ruth Reichl, Anthony Bourdain, and Julie Powell's Julie and Julia. It's with this last book that I think this book will most often be compared but it is so much more.
Cheryl Tan, born in Singapore but living in New York City has begun to miss the flavors of her childhood food but has absolutely no idea where to begin to replicate them. So she sets out on a mission to visit her family members and to learn how to prepare the favorite family foods and others she learns about along the way.
Cheryl tells us about her family, her extended family and the stories she learns while spending times in the kitchen with her grandmother, her aunties and even her own mother and father. And then she tells us about the recipes, the sometimes strange and stranger ingredients and the process of learning to feel the food--agak-agak--despite her need to measure every ingredient and every time interval with precision.
It's fun through the course of her story to watch Cheryl grow in her heritage and in her confidence in the kitchen. I think this book is a must read for anyone who loves food, enjoys time in the kitchen or reading about others who do.
Cheryl Tan, born in Singapore but living in New York City has begun to miss the flavors of her childhood food but has absolutely no idea where to begin to replicate them. So she sets out on a mission to visit her family members and to learn how to prepare the favorite family foods and others she learns about along the way.
Cheryl tells us about her family, her extended family and the stories she learns while spending times in the kitchen with her grandmother, her aunties and even her own mother and father. And then she tells us about the recipes, the sometimes strange and stranger ingredients and the process of learning to feel the food--agak-agak--despite her need to measure every ingredient and every time interval with precision.
It's fun through the course of her story to watch Cheryl grow in her heritage and in her confidence in the kitchen. I think this book is a must read for anyone who loves food, enjoys time in the kitchen or reading about others who do.
rainyoctober's review
3.0
This was the first nonfiction novel / memoir I've ever read for "fun", and it was certainly an interesting and enjoyable read. Tan's story is fascinating in large part because it weaves together the author's past memories and present life not just through reflection upon each of the dishes she cooks, but because the journey she details in this book is also very much a physical one; in order to learn how to recreate pineapple tarts, braised duck, and other remembered favorites, she takes it upon herself to make periodic trips across the Pacific ocean to learn firsthand from her relatives all of the recipes that have been passed down for literally hundreds of years. In addition to learning how to cook, she also learns more about her family's history and ultimately grapples with her own identity. If you're interested in exploring underrepresented genres/styles or reading memoir focused on cultural identity, I absolutely recommend this book.
reallifereading's review
3.0
"A bowl of porridge – a hallmark of traditional Teochew cuisine – appeared. The water was just slightly milky, the grains of rice soft, yet still separate and not so soft that they were mushed together, as they often can be in lesser versions. The porridge was simple and clean – a lovely canvas for the subtle dishes that would follow. A giant steamed fish came prepared with silvers of ginger and swimming in a slightly sweet broth with tinges of the tomatoes and sour plums that had been steeped in it. A crunchy beggar’s purse erupted in an avalanche of diced chicken when sliced open. Perfectly fried prawn balls were crunchy outside and hot and juicy inside. Goose legs and wings were braised in sweet soy sauce to such softness that the meat was like cotton puffs on our tongues."
Being part Teochew myself, I salivated over the many Teochew and Singaporean dishes that Tan, who lives and works in the US, consumes and learns to make from her family in Singapore. I longed for more, much more. I got some, with my fill with her tales of making pineapple tarts, rice dumplings, duck soup. But to be honest, in the end I was a little disappointed.
With a myriad of food-related memoirs out there, it’s a tough market. This book’s hook – Singapore food. A rojak of Singapore food. There’s Chinese New Year pineapple tarts, duck soup, a Malay dish, and plenty of bread baking. Reading A Tiger in the Kitchen made me think of home, it made me think of my late grandmother, whom I would find sitting in the kitchen when we visited for Sunday dinners. ‘Mama’ I would greet her and nose around the dining table to check out what we were having for dinner (of course the kids ate at the plastic table on the front porch, not with the adults at the rosewood table). I would request for her kong bah (stewed pork belly with steamed buns) and prawn fritters for my birthdays. But what I miss most are her rice dumplings, orh nee and braised duck, the recipes of which have been lost forever.
Reading this book made me think of the wonderful times spent with my mum in kitchen, helping her chop and wash and cook, helping her whack out the snowskin mooncakes from their wooden moulds. It’s been so long since I’ve had her mooncakes, her simple yet delicious quiche, her sayur lodeh (a vegetable curry). I can’t wait till August when she and my dad come to visit! Hopefully she won’t mind doing some cooking when she’s here! So in that respect, all good. A book that brings up such fond memories, that stirs up the appetite – what could be better?
But there was this sense of disconnect in A Tiger in the Kitchen. Tan’s from Singapore, but lives in the US. First a fashion writer, then a food writer. She starts out quite clueless but thanks to help from her family in Singapore, and her friends and ‘uncles’ in the US, she begins to learn to cook and bake. The book isn’t just about Singapore food, as Tan is fond of baking and breadmaking. And sometimes it’s a bit too back and forth. In Singapore, in the US, cooking Singapore food, baking bread. I mean I understand it’s not all about making mee siam and nasi padang, life in Singapore is very ‘rojak’, but it left me feeling like tighter editing might have come in handy. This book is also a story about her family. However I felt that while bits of her family are revealed, there is much more left unsaid. I can understand, Singapore is a small country, somehow it always seems like there are less than six degrees connecting each other, and I wouldn’t really want people to read about my life! So I kept having this impression that I was always just skimming the fat off the surface of the soup (yeah those food metaphors were just prepped and ready to be used). I wanted to plunge my spoon in deeper, to dig to the bottom of the soup bowl for all the good stuff, to learn more about her family, her passion for food.
I know photos can be a little overdone when it comes to memoirs/food-related books, but just to have a hint of the food in the recipes would be better, especially for those who are unfamiliar with Singapore food. And then there’s the cover. I really hate this whole ‘oriental’ rubbish. This is a book about food, so why the red cheongsam? It’s as if they searched ‘Asia’ or ‘Oriental’ and used the first image they found. Then added the chopsticks to signal that this book is not just ‘Oriental’, it is food-related. So why not a picture of food?
A Tiger in the Kitchen may have its flaws (which book doesn’t) but it did something that few books have. It made me long for home, for my family, for my food.
Being part Teochew myself, I salivated over the many Teochew and Singaporean dishes that Tan, who lives and works in the US, consumes and learns to make from her family in Singapore. I longed for more, much more. I got some, with my fill with her tales of making pineapple tarts, rice dumplings, duck soup. But to be honest, in the end I was a little disappointed.
With a myriad of food-related memoirs out there, it’s a tough market. This book’s hook – Singapore food. A rojak of Singapore food. There’s Chinese New Year pineapple tarts, duck soup, a Malay dish, and plenty of bread baking. Reading A Tiger in the Kitchen made me think of home, it made me think of my late grandmother, whom I would find sitting in the kitchen when we visited for Sunday dinners. ‘Mama’ I would greet her and nose around the dining table to check out what we were having for dinner (of course the kids ate at the plastic table on the front porch, not with the adults at the rosewood table). I would request for her kong bah (stewed pork belly with steamed buns) and prawn fritters for my birthdays. But what I miss most are her rice dumplings, orh nee and braised duck, the recipes of which have been lost forever.
Reading this book made me think of the wonderful times spent with my mum in kitchen, helping her chop and wash and cook, helping her whack out the snowskin mooncakes from their wooden moulds. It’s been so long since I’ve had her mooncakes, her simple yet delicious quiche, her sayur lodeh (a vegetable curry). I can’t wait till August when she and my dad come to visit! Hopefully she won’t mind doing some cooking when she’s here! So in that respect, all good. A book that brings up such fond memories, that stirs up the appetite – what could be better?
But there was this sense of disconnect in A Tiger in the Kitchen. Tan’s from Singapore, but lives in the US. First a fashion writer, then a food writer. She starts out quite clueless but thanks to help from her family in Singapore, and her friends and ‘uncles’ in the US, she begins to learn to cook and bake. The book isn’t just about Singapore food, as Tan is fond of baking and breadmaking. And sometimes it’s a bit too back and forth. In Singapore, in the US, cooking Singapore food, baking bread. I mean I understand it’s not all about making mee siam and nasi padang, life in Singapore is very ‘rojak’, but it left me feeling like tighter editing might have come in handy. This book is also a story about her family. However I felt that while bits of her family are revealed, there is much more left unsaid. I can understand, Singapore is a small country, somehow it always seems like there are less than six degrees connecting each other, and I wouldn’t really want people to read about my life! So I kept having this impression that I was always just skimming the fat off the surface of the soup (yeah those food metaphors were just prepped and ready to be used). I wanted to plunge my spoon in deeper, to dig to the bottom of the soup bowl for all the good stuff, to learn more about her family, her passion for food.
I know photos can be a little overdone when it comes to memoirs/food-related books, but just to have a hint of the food in the recipes would be better, especially for those who are unfamiliar with Singapore food. And then there’s the cover. I really hate this whole ‘oriental’ rubbish. This is a book about food, so why the red cheongsam? It’s as if they searched ‘Asia’ or ‘Oriental’ and used the first image they found. Then added the chopsticks to signal that this book is not just ‘Oriental’, it is food-related. So why not a picture of food?
A Tiger in the Kitchen may have its flaws (which book doesn’t) but it did something that few books have. It made me long for home, for my family, for my food.
bookwormmichelle's review
4.0
I've seen some criticism of this because of poor editing. The author does have a very informal style which one could dissect for style and grammar---but the book was so much fun! I didn't have the heart to try to analyze its grammar. I was too involved in the author's memories of food during her childhood in Singapore, and her quest to learn how to cook her family's recipes. And she included recipes! This was a great book, I loved the author's sense of humor, and how I wish I could do something similar, move home and spend all my time learning to cook my family's recipes. I can already do many of them, my problem right now being that I'm from Midwestern farm folk and my diet can't take my ancestral food. LOL But I love this thought of learning about yourself, your childhood, your family, your ancestry--through food. Very entertaining book. I'm just glad if I ever do undertake a similar journey, I'll never have to eat jellied sea worms. :-)