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Let Michael Zee, creator of the popular SymmetryBreakfast account, be your knowledgeable guide to breakfast in China.

Contains over 40 recipes with QR codes that allow you to watch how the dishes are made in China

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 by Michael Zee (Hardback)

£26.00Price
  • Michael’s passion for cooking comes from his parents. His mixed English, Scottish and Chinese heritage. Weekends and school holidays would be spent working in his father’s Chinese and English chippies in Liverpool and teaching himself to bake for his mother’s sweet tooth.


    Michael created SymmetryBreakfast for his partner Mark in their Hackney flat in 2013. Mark’s hectic job as a menswear fashion designer means late nights and weekends in the office. Early on in their relationship, breakfast became a sacred moment in the day and Michael started on his mission to make each meal as celebratory as possible. Over 1,000 breakfasts later, Michael still wakes up early to make breakfast for Mark, looking carefully around the world and at home for inspiration, taking a simple idea and making it beautiful.


    SymmetryBreakfast is an online phenomenon that incorporates world cuisines, contemporary design and a story of love over the meal of breakfast. Featured in the Guardian, Washington Post, Telegraph and endorsed by Jamie Oliver, it is also a favourite account of Kevin Systrom, Instagram CEO and co-founder. He now works on SymmetryBreakfast full time.


    In August 2016, Michael published a cookbook titled Cook Love Share that contains over 100 recipes from around the world. The book takes an anthropological view of how food shapes culture and vice versa and how in the many different ways we break the fast.


    The book has been published by Transworld (part of Penguin Random House) in the UK and Commonwealth, by PowerHouse in North America and by Shanghai Insight in mainland China.

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