Zao Fan: Breakfast of China
Ebook
Overview
Breakfast in China is an important affair. At dawn, the streets come alive with vendors setting up for the morning breakfast rush. Each will have their speciality that they make day in, day out, honing their recipe over years, and even generations. Locals are spoilt for choice, with a huge variety of spicy noodles, plump dumplings and fluffy buns all made fresh to order right on their doorsteps.
Michael Zee, creator of the popular SymmetryBreakfast account, has eaten his way around China, hunting down the very best versions of these morning favourites and recreating them at home so that you can too. In China, these are recipes devised for speed and convenience and so are also perfect for filling lunches, nourishing dinners and quick and tasty snacks.
Why not try:
Dan dan mian – Sichuanese street-style noodles with a sesame paste sauce
Jian bing – savoury filled crêpe
Xiaolongbao – steamed Shangainese soup dumplings
Youtiao – sweetened fried dough sticks, delicious dipped in fresh soy milk or covered in soft serve ice cream
With Michael as your knowledgeable tour guide, you’ll be transported to the bustling streets of China, see the mesmeric pulling of noodles and pleating of dumplings and be fully immersed in one of the most exciting and diverse food cultures in the world.
Zao Fan: Breakfast of China is a cookbook exploring the huge variety of dishes 1.4 billion people eat every morning. Recipes for buns, soups, noodles and dumplings, delicious any time of day, have been expertly adapted for the home kitchen by SymmetryBreakfast creator, Michael Zee
Michael is British Chinese, grew up helping out in his parents’ Chinese restaurants, and lived in Shanghai for five years. He is uniquely placed to document the huge variety of Chinese breakfast foods and to break down any barriers to Chinese cooking for a Western audience.
Cookbooks on China and other ESEA countries are proving popular, with those by Fuchsia Dunlop, Kwoklyn Wan, Tim Anderson, Pippa Middlehurst etc selling well
The photography is all from Michael’s travels in China, and the recipes will feature QR codes that allow you to watch the pros making the dishes making the reading experience very immersive
@SymmetryBreakfast has a phenomenal 674k followers (Sept ‘23)
Zao Fan warped me back to the streets of China. His intricate descriptions of the breakfast eating culture and recipes of China take you on an irresistible, winding, delectable adventure
- Title: Zao Fan: Breakfast of China
- Author: Michael Zee
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
- Print Publication Date: 2024
- Logos Release Date: 2024
- Pages: 304
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781526657275, 9781526657282, 1526657287, 1526657279
- Resource ID: LLS:9781526657275
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2025-04-22T11:55:04Z
Michael Zee is the creator of the online sensation SymmetryBreakfast, which has been featured in the Guardian, Washington Post, Telegraph and many others. Being British-Chinese, growing up helping out in his parents' Chinese restaurants and spending five years living in Shanghai, he is uniquely placed to document the huge variety of Chinese breakfast foods and to break down any barriers to Chinese cooking, making the recipes as accessible as possible. Zao Fan: Breakfast of China is his third book after SymmetryBreakfast: Cook Love Share (2016) named one of the Guardian's best food books of the year, and Eat Like a Local: Shanghai (2019). He lives in Bologna with his husband.