Home cooks who yearn to make authentic Chinese dishes will find culinary delight in the Bao Family Cookbook: Recipes from the Eight Culinary Regions of China. Paris-based author Céline Chung shares more than 80 recipes that straddle flavors from Chung's Shanghai roots and her Paris upbringing, with the majority falling in the Bao & Dim Sum and Mains categories (Mains are thoughtfully separated into protein and vegetarian dishes). For the uninitiated, Chung and her team provide a list of utensils and sauces that prove helpful for many dishes. Clever bookbinding allows for easy reference as the pages lie flat, and the matte paper and black-and-white recipes evoke printer paper. Placed between the list of ingredients and instructions on each recipe is an index card-sized white space, ideal for adding notes. That's not to say there isn't plenty of color: opposite each primarily single-page recipe is a bright, hunger-inducing plated example of the dish being presented (beautifully photographed by Grégoire Kalt). --Nina Semczuk, writer, editor, and illustrator