Chef Mandy Lee

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When Mandy Lee moved from New York to Beijing for her husband’s work, she was hit with a soul-killing depression unlike anything she had felt before. Growing increasingly exasperated with the country's choking pollution and infuriating bureaucracy - she began “an unapologetically angry food blog,” Lady and Pups, to keep herself from going mad.
            Mandy blogged and filled her kitchen with warm spices and sticky sauces because it channeled her focus and helped her cope with the difficult circumstances of her new life.
            In Mandy’s own words, “This book is written for those who share the same perverse tendency to engage in cooking as a loner spends time with his Xbox....ultimately as a delicious evasion of unpalatable realities. Escapism cooking. It’s not a passion; it’s a drug. I’m not selling you a lifestyle; I’m telling you how I evaded one. If you need to know how to cook a chicken breast with one hand while you hold a baby in the other, sorry, I’m not about solving your problems. But I can show you how I cooked mine. This book is a memoir of recipes and stories that I documented during a desperately unpleasant time of my life, the delicious aftermath of how I cooked my way out of six miserable years in Beijing, my lemons and lemonade.”
            Inventive, intensely personal, and entirely illustrated with Mandy’s own gorgeous photography, THE ART OF ESCAPISM COOKING is infused with the sublime comfort that only a good meal can provide. She divides her recipes into categories by mood and occasion, and these innovative, crave-worthy dishes include:

People Food:
Crackling-Studded Pork Belly Burger - Buffalo Fried Chicken Ramen - Fast and Furious Carbonara - Poached Eggs with Miso-Browned Butter Hollandaise - Mochi with Peanut
Brown Sugar and Ice Cream - Wontons with Shrimp and Chili Coconut Oil  and Herbed Yogurt -
Recycled Nuts & Carmel Apple Cake
Pup Food:
Ombre Birthday Meatcake - Bombay Jerkey - Cheese Cookies

About the author: MANDY LEE founded her award-winning “angry food blog,” LadyandPups.com, in 2012 out of sheer frustration after moving from New York City to Beijing. She and her blog have been featured in numerous publications, including Saveur, FoodandWine.com, Yahoo, Food 52, and the WashingtonPost.com. She lives in Hong Kong with her husband and pups.