Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I have dined at the Nom Wah Tea Parlor in New York's Chinatown before and was hoping to recreate their stellar scallion pancakes and beef rice noodles with this cookbook, but was a tiny bit disappointed by the lack of troubleshooting guidelines as well as imprecise recipe specifications, such as water temperatures and cooking temperatures. In short, the recipes do work, but the results do not match the flavors from the restaurant 100%... One can probably achieve results of 80% to 85% of the restaurant's quality by following the recipes exactly, which is still a good investment considering that Nom Wah is such a phenomenal restaurant. I just tested the recipe for the scallion pancakes today and found that while it is a good recipe, the pancakes I produced were nowhere near the texture of those served at the restaurant. I remember the pancakes at the restaurant being the perfect sublime combination of crispy, flaky, and slightly chewy at the same time. The recipe in the cookbook resulted in much less flaky pancakes. Delicious and crispy, yes. But not the exact pancakes served at Nom Wah. Update: I made the scallion pancakes a second time and was able to improve the texture by using water that was heated to a rolling boil rather than simply a light boil. However, the flavor is still not exactly the same as those served at Nom Wah. You can also produce more flaky layers by being more generous with the dusting of flour when rolling the pancakes. The second disappointment was that the cookbook doesn't provide the recipe for the master beef filling for either beef rice noodles or beef balls, both of which are amongst the most popular dim sum dishes. And in the noodles section, they didn't include a beef ho fun recipe. How could they? LOL... I tested the plain rice noodle (cheung fun) recipe and the recipe seems problematic as the rice noodles had an extremely mushy texture and were prone to cracking. This is where troubleshooting guidelines from Uncle Wally would have been helpful. Apparently steaming at high heat vs. low heat will impact the texture of the noodles slightly. Recipes from elsewhere also state to allow the rice noodles to cool down before rolling. The Nom Wah Cookbook should have specified what temperature to steam at and how long to wait before rolling the rice noodles. I tested the har gow recipe as well and the wrappers turned out good enough, but not perfect as can be seen from the pictures above. The proportions of water to starches given in the recipe are correct as I was able to make wrappers exactly as specified by the recipe. The key is to use water that is at a rolling boil and to stir the starches really rapidly with a spoon or chopsticks. If any of the starch doesn't look gelatinized, then it is better not to incorporate it into the dough or that part will have a very odd uncooked flavor that is highly unpleasant. While the har gow filling was delicious, once again, it wasn't the exact flavor of those served at Nom Wah. I believe they may have made a mistake in including the lard in the wrappers rather than the filling. I have made other har gow recipes before and usually the lard goes in the filling. The Nom Wah Cookbook recipe indicates that a neutral oil should be used in the filling. This makes the filling especially difficult to work with since the oil edges out on the wrapper, making it so difficult to seal. Moreover, it seems the wrapper size of 3" that they specify is way too big compared to the restaurant ones. It seems they should really have specified for us to split the dough into more portions, resulting in more dumplings from the same amount of dough. Again, I had a problem with the har gow wrappers cracking. Update: I made the shrimp and chive dumplings, which are a variation of the har gow recipe, and they turned out really well. In addition to using water that is a rolling boil, I covered the dough with cling film and rested it for about an hour before rolling out the wrappers this time. I found that resting the dough sufficiently makes it a little easier to work with. I steamed the dumplings for 6 minutes before pan frying them for about two minutes on each side and the wrappers were nicely translucent and deliciously crispy. I used a combination of wheat starch and corn starch and swapped out some of the corn starch and replaced it with potato starch and tapioca starch. The exact proportions were 1 cup wheat starch, 4 tablespoons corn starch, 2 tablespoons tapioca starch, and 2 tablespoons potato starch. This veers from the original recipe, but I rather liked this version for the shrimp and chive dumplings. The recipes in the cookbook will no doubt get you on your way to creating 85% of the restaurant's actual flavors and textures even when you follow the recipes to the letter. Their daikon cake recipe is virtually identical to the recipe on The Woks of Life, a popular blog. As I cook through this, I often wonder if these are Nom Wah's actual recipes. It could well be the result of masterpieces being lost in translation since most of the old dim sum masters only measure ingredients by eye. Another factor affecting overall accuracy of the recipes is that the book provides cup measurements and not weight measurements, which would have been more precise. Either way, there will be a lot of experimentation and possibly disappointments ahead by cooking from this verbatim. However, it's still a cookbook worth learning from and experimenting with, especially considering how no one else has published anything close to the wealth of knowledge and expertise that Nom Wah has shared here. Though they have not provided all their secrets, the secrets they have shared are nonetheless valuable. They provide precise salt and sugar measurements, for instance. Many cookbooks on dimsum will only provide a vague 'salt - to taste.' So that is to be applauded. I will provide updates on other recipes I test as I cook my way through this cookbook. Update: After testing the Nom Wah Pan Fried Noodles in Superior Soy Sauce recipe, I discovered it was a complete dud that resulted in the oddest and worst tasting Soy Sauce Noodles I have ever tried. The recipe as it was written was seriously wrong and for some time, I didn't cook from the Nom Wah Cookbook anymore since that recipe was so poorly conceived that I thought other recipes could well be a waste of ingredients, time, and effort too. Then recently, I followed a hunch to try again by switching the proportions of dark soy sauce and light soy sauce. I also added a tiny bit of oyster sauce to the mixture to heighten the flavor. Switching the proportions of the dark and light soy sauce on the original Nom Wah recipe was a good move as the noodles turned out much more delicious on the second attempt and virtually identical to those iconic noodles served at New York's better Chinatown restaurants. So the key to good Soy Sauce Noodles is apparently a lot of wok hei in addition to a tasty sauce mixture. It seems like such a simple dish to make, but without the wok hei, it just wouldn't be the same. Ensuring that all the noodles are slightly browned before adding the sauce mixture to the pan will really make a difference here, so high heat is absolutely critical. It will also take a lot longer to achieve the browning of the noodles at home - and a lot more oil! It took me at least 20 minutes on the highest heat setting and I used at least 7 tablespoons of oil. Without adding this much oil, the noodles will be much too dry. I was totally working up a sweat and nearly set off the smoke detector making these Soy Sauce Noodles, but it was completely worth it as it was so delectable.