"This is real mama's cooking," declares Fuchsia Dunlop approvingly as she watches chunks of tender pork belly bobbing about in a gorgeous mahogany bath of soy sauce, ginger and scallion. The James Beard-award winning author is in Food Network Kitchen demonstrating how to make Shanghai Red-Braised Pork with Eggs, one of the dozens of seductive dishes she lays out in her new book, Land of Fish and Rice. Here is a step-by-step lesson for beginners.

By Lygeia Grace; photographs by Heather Ramsdell and Angela Carlos