First, this was a delightfully informative cookbook. It’s inventive and traditional and made from scratch, like the recipes. I really appreciate that the author includes a basic dumpling wrapper recipe for those that like to start from complete scratch. Though, of course, if I am feeling lazy or short of time, I can always use the pre-made wrappers available at my local grocery store.

This book has a wide range of appeal. There’s recipes for vegetarians and recipes for meat lovers as well. I also quite enjoyed the culture food fusion recipes, like the Mushroom and Ricotta Dumplings recipe. There’s dumplings for the sweet tooth as plenty of savory dumpling recipes.

The book is well organized and easy to navigate. The recipes are simple and straight forward. I can easily see making modifications for taste or dietary reasons (or if I simply don’t have one of the ingredients handy). This book made it easy for me to make some spin offs and it was fun explore the possibilities. I especially liked the Hispanic dumpling recipes as we do plenty of Hispanic cooking and turning some of the left overs into dumplings was a nice change of pace. In fact, there is a whole section on taking your left overs and turning them into dumplings. This just seems like a natural thing to do. While I didn’t try any of the sauce recipes (rather just went sauceless or just a little soy for me), I am glad the book includes them for when I want to be fancy and serve dumplings to family and friends.

The wonton soup and dumpling soup recipes are a nice edition as well. While I did not try any of these (yet!), I have made wonton soup in the past and I look forward to trying these recipes out. Also, the book comes with a little bonus to treat your four legged friends as well. Of course my dog would love to try a dumpling! For those that worry about it, there’s a handy metric volume conversion table near the end. There’s a handful of pictures scattered through the book and these made a nice little addition. Food is beautiful and it is nice to have a visual reminder of that.

I received a review copy of this book via Reading Addiction Book Tours. ( )