Title:	Adventures of Fat Rice: Recipes from the Chicago Restaurant Inspired by Macau
	Author:	Abraham Conlon, Adrienne Lo, Hugh Amano
	Published:	October 25, 2016, Ten Speed Press
	No. of Pages:	320
	Cover Price:	$35.00 Hardcover, $18.99 Kindle

---

You can tell by the whimsical cover that Adventures of Fat Rice: Recipes from the Chicago Restaurant Inspired by Macau is a fun cookbook. However, once into the book, you’ll see that the number of recipes for dishes you actually want to make is almost overwhelming. While many aren’t familiar with Macau, which is located across the Pearl River estuary from Hong Kong, the history is fascinating, and most will want to jump on an airplane and travel there as soon as possible. Alternately, most will be able to at least jump on an airplane and travel to Chicago where the restaurant, Fat Rice, is located.

The recipes in this delightful cookbook have a decidedly Portuguese influence as well as Chinese, Indian, Malay, and African. These are not your run-of-the-mill Asian dishes found on every restaurant menu; rather the recipes are for very innovative and mouthwatering delights that are hard to resist. The first recipe I tried is Baked Pork Chop Rice; there was a bit of prep involved, and it wasn’t a quick and easy dish, but it was well-worth the effort. Macau is famous for their curries, and I couldn’t resist making the Diabo or Devil’s Curry. Again there was quite a bit of prep – Diabo Pickle, Blistered Onion Pickles, Ginger Acher, and Tea Eggs – but it was fun, and the curry was awesome.

The book includes basic recipes like Malacca Sweet and also hot Curry Powders as well as Macau Hot Curry powder, Five Spice Powder, Vegetable, Chicken, & Pork Stock, and Refogado (Portugese soffritto), to name a few, as well as several pickle recipes to serve as accompaniments to the unique Macau dishes. There is also an excellent, fairly comprehensive section on ingredients – very informative, and it turns out that the ingredients are not so exotic that they can’t be found in larger grocery stores, or Asian grocery stores.

The pictures in this cookbook are amazing. The authors definitely have vivid imaginations, which is good for cooks everywhere who want to cook innovative and delicious dishes. There are also whimsical illustrations of “how-to’s” like shaping potstickers and croquettes, making fried rice, and butchering the surf clam, to name a few. Some are formatted so they look like a comic book which adds to the fun.

While Adventures of Fat Rice: Recipes from the Chicago Restaurant Inspired by Macau isn’t a basic cookbook for beginning cooks, it is so much fun that beginning cooks will want to practice on these recipes and become quite accomplished. It is also not for those who want to get out of the kitchen as soon as possible. It is recommended for anyone who loves good food and is willing to spend the time to prepare it. Fun! Fun! Fun!

Special thanks to NetGalley for supplying a review copy of this cookbook.

This book may be purchased at Amazon:
The Adventures of Fat Rice: Recipes from the Chicago Restaurant Inspired by Macau