Not Only Soups? Over fifty percent of this book is regular dishes. Most Chinese Cook Books don't emphasize soups; my favorite part of the meal. There are maybe 4 - 45 recipes of soups in most Cookbooks. In almost 5000 years of Chinese history; I want to illuminate the fact that the Chinese have perfected the art of soup, or the art of soup making. Soups have been a pleasant delicacy since cooking was invented. It is even more so with Chinese cooking. The nutritional value and flavor have been renowned throughout the ages. It is not just a pre-cursor to the main meal. It wets your appetite for the main dish and enhances digestion. It can be a meal in itself, as you shall see. There are up to and over 300 kinds of soups in China; some of which claim to have medicinal purposes. This comes from folklore and myth before modern medicine happened, and even still today. Chinese people used Herbs from vegetables roots, tree bark and the like to cook soup to heal all their ills. These 'cure-alls' are listed as notes in every applicable recipe. Some of the soups take 2 or more hours to cook. As an alternative: a slow cooker can be used and annotated as an option in the recipes. Here are over sixty or so soups with variations. | The Chinese Soup Kitchen by John Mak, Paperback | Indigo Chapters