OP: The Mandarin Way

Cecilia Chiang (1920–2020) is widely credited with introducing northern Chinese food to the US, which previously had been exposed almost exclusively to the Cantonese cuisine of the South and to the American-invented chop suey popularized during the early years of Chinese immigration to the West.  Having no culinary or business background whatsoever, Chiang opened the Mandarin restaurant in San Francisco in 1960, and it quickly became the “it” spot for celebrities and epicures alike. Her first book—part memoir, part cookbook—The Mandarin Way (1974) tells the story of Chiang’s well-to-do upbringing in Peking and the years of tremendous hardship during the Japanese occupation and WWII. Chiang's account of dining in her youth focuses on the memorable feasts supplied by household cooks and servants, rather than on the starkly contrasting years of scarcity and difficulty that followed. With the aid of translator Allan Carr, Chiang vividly recreates a vanished time and place. Each chapter is