MADAME CHU'S CHINESE COOKING SCHOOL

This volume should enhance the devoted following of Mme. Chu's The Pleasures of Chinese Cooking (1962). Her selection of recipes is artfully varied, from those demanding only familiar ingredients (stir-fried asparagus, chicken watercress soup) to the more exotic but still uncomplicated (the pork dish called Lion's Head) to the highly ambitious (fried custard in sesame sugar--for which she recommends enlisting the aid of a friend). There are several useful question-and-answer sections (did you know that the original purpose of those nuclear-powered Szechuanese spices was to make a very little meat go a very, very long way in a country with more rice than anything else?) and lists of shopping suggestions. Some will prefer the more de luxe effort of Craig Claiborne and Virginia Lee (The Chinese Cookbook, 1972), but Mme. Chu's quiet, straightforward presentation is, if anything, more inviting.