A-Gong's Table (George Lee)

A rendering of food through the memories of family and of home: over ninety plant-based recipes from George Lee, the creator of Chez Jorge, with Laurent Hsia's images of Taiwan.George Lee grew up with his A-Gong (grandfather) in the quiet refuge of Tamsui, Taiwan. He took part in the myriad Taiwanese food traditions his A-Gong nurtured, until he was seventeen, when his A-Gong passed. In observation of the death, he and his family undertook a set of Buddhist funeral customs and abstained from eating meat. For a hundred days, they ate at the monastery and the nuns there taught him to cook.Years later, he revisits the lessons and pieces them into the story of his family’s cooking. Some recipes he shares here are directly from childhood: Han-tsî-bê, an everyday breakfast congee floating with fist-sized chunks of golden sweet potatoes, or the quintessential preserve Tshài-póo, crunchy strips of sun-dried daikon radish that salt the air for a few days in January. Others tread the boundaries