BRUCE COST'S ASIAN INGREDIENTS: Buying and Cooking the Staple Foods of China, Japan, and Southeast Asia

With Asian ingredients increasingly available in American markets, San Francisco cooking teacher and food columnist Bruce Cost's guide can come in handy. Like The Von Welanetz Guide to Ethnic Ingredients (1982), this consists of short entries on the ingredients and recipes that use them, though Cost provides more historical lore and a higher recipe-to-ingredient ration (close to one-on-one). Still, a surprising number of Cost's ingredients are covered, and covered as helpfully, in the earlier and more inclusive Von Welanetz Guide; and Cost's less-than-felicitous prose (""More than just their expense, these foods, which would seem to have nothing in common, are gastronomic soul brothers"") can make for dull plodding.