Sweet Mandarin by Helen Tse
Spanning almost a hundred years, this rich and evocative true story recounts the lives of three generations of remarkable Chinese women. Their extraordinary journey takes us from the brutal poverty of village life in mainland China, to newly prosperous 1930s Hong Kong and finally to the UK. Their lives were as dramatic as the times they lived through. A love of food and a talent for cooking pulled each generation through the most devastating of upheavals. Helen Tse's grandmother, Lily Kwok, was forced to work as an amah after the violent murder of her father. Crossing the ocean from Hong Kong in the 1950s, Lily honed her famous chicken curry recipe. Eventually she opened one of Manchester's earliest Chinese restaurants where her daughter, Mabel, worked from the tender age of nine. But gambling and the Triads were pervasive in the Chinese immigrant community, and they tragically lost the restaurant. It was up to Helen and her sisters, the third generation of these exceptional women, to re-establish their grandmother's dream. "Sweet Mandarin" shows how the most important inheritance is wisdom, and how recipes - passed down the female line - can be the most valuable heirloom.
Helen Tse was born in 1977 and grew up in Manchester, UK. She studied law at Cambridge University before working as a finance lawyer in London, Hong Kong, Manchester, and the Cayman Islands. She opened the award-winning restaurant Sweet Mandarin with her two sisters, Lisa and Janet, in 2004, following the culinary footsteps of her mother and grandmother: www.sweetmandarin.com. Sweet Mandarin is Helen's first book.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780091913625 |
| ISBN 10 | 0091913624 |
| Title | Sweet Mandarin |
| Author | Helen Tse |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Ebury Publishing |
| Year published | 2008-02-07 |
| Number of pages | 288 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |