One of the best ways to approach food is during those moments when you talk about it with a good friend. This is exactly what happens while you read A Spoonful of Promises by T. Susan Chang (or Susie as she introduces herself to readers at the book’s beginning)-—if your good friend happens to be the granddaughter of a Chinese financier, millionaire, and “mobster (probably),” the daughter of the man who practically invented the coffee table book in all of its sumptuous glory, and an adventurous eater who enjoys every cuisine on the planet.

Approach this book with the advice Susie gives her children. “Try one bite.” Whether it’s paella or phad thai, scallion pancakes or stroopwafels, you’re going to find something that you’ve never tasted before and certainly never dreamed of cooking, or drinking either. No matter if it’s a Basil Mojito, a Lavender Vodka tonic, or the non-alcoholic Longest Day Tea, this lady is going to convince you to make and sip a “Garden in a Glass.”

At times Susie seems formidable. She’s often spent half an hour making steamed eggs or a soufflé omelet for a very young son who would eat eggs in no other form until she introduced him to egg crepes with truffle oil. But she becomes less terrifying when she provides easy recipes for apple sauce, pumpkin bread, or a cold mixed-berry soup for those summer days when cooking is the last thing on anybody’s mind. She admits to almost committing arson with a funnel cake and confesses that she once stole chanterelles to cook with roasted monkfish and garlic chives. “It was good enough to be a last meal on Death Row … amorally delectable.”

She assumes nothing and tells all, how to clean a monkfish, how to use a knife, how to cook rice, how to make a simple syrup, and how to roll “jiao zie,” the traditional New Year’s dumpling, in three easy steps, with photographs. And she doesn’t ignore her single friends. There are six recipes that will launch an assortment of meals for a solitary eater, including a chocolate mousse that “serves one on a bad day.”

Hungry for Braised Chinese-Restaurant-Style Spareribs? Daunted by the thought of tracking down ‘the Elusive Red Bean Curd?” Look for it in “the Scary Inscrutable Jars section” of an Asian grocery, and if you “just can’t find it, make the recipe anyway.” Want Thai food without leaving the house? Yam Neua is worth the “tearful complications” of slicing those lethal little bird chiles and the four or five shallots. “Mere flickers of agitation,” Susie Chang warns, “could prove incendiary," which is probably why her recipe for yam neua calls for a paltry ½ of a Thai chile, or perhaps one for the daring cook.

A Spoonful of Promises offers more than recipes. It's studded with wit —“There’s nothing wrong with canned pumpkin puree, other than it lacks poetry.” An essay about saffron leads to an insightful examination of living with an aging father, The unfading presence of a mother who died young pervades the page of this book, evoked in tender stories and the fragrance of baked apples. “We are dreamed of by our parents and remembered by our children,” Susie says. Dream and remember as you read her "food autobiography."