Chinese Cooking With Rocky Aoki

This is a handsomely packaged (read cataloging and display nightmare) video and book set consisting of a 90 minute instructional tape and a copy of HPBooks Chinese Cookery by Rose Cheng and Michelle Morris, a full-color 192 page cookbook featuring over 220 recipes (which retails for $9.95). At first, the video seems doomed to failure. Rocky Aoki, founder of the Benihana Restaurant chain, has a very thick accent which makes him extremely difficult to understand. Fortunately, after a short introduction, Rocky turns the program over to renowned cooking instructor, Rosa Ross. In Rosa's kitchen, viewers are able to see the proper way to prepare a wok; the right utensils to use in Chinese cooking; the five cooking methods: stir-frying, deep-frying, steaming, red-stewing, and poaching; and a variety of mouth-watering dishes including: Dims Sum, Egg Drop Soup, Shrimp with Snow Peas, Almond Chicken, Rice, and Candied Banana Fritters. Throughout the tape, a little fortune cookie symbol in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen directs viewers to the corresponding page number in the book (this is particularly helpful since Ms. Ross does not always make the quantity of an ingredient known). This is an excellent combination of the mediums of print and audio-visual; the book provides the facts, and the video shows--in a way that print, or even a series of still pictures, cannot--the technique. Highly recommended. Available from: Best Films & Video, 98 Cutter Mill Road, Great Neck, NY 11021.