Grace Young is celebrated and award winning Chinese America chef and cookbook author. Born and raised in San Francisco, California with her brother and Cantonese parents, Young’s love of Cantonese cuisine began early in her childhood. She fondly recalls her mother’s home cooked meals made with authentic Chinese ingredients and cooking techniques. Young’s introduction to non-Chinese food came through Julia Child’s television show, which inspired Young to apprentice under French cooking teacher Josephine Araldo at age thirteen. From that point on, she set off on her career path through the culinary world. Young spent her early professional life in test kitchens, developing recipes for dozens of Time Life Books cookbooks. By the early 1990s, she was drawn back to the Chinese cuisine of her childhood. Working with her mother and father to learn their traditional recipes, Young published her first cookbook The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen. This award-winning memoir cookbook not only documented the technical details of her family’s time-honored dishes, but also chronicled the Chinese American experience through the life narratives of her parents. Some of Young’s greatest contributions to the American culinary world include her work promoting the traditional iron wok and stir frying. While Young has a deep appreciation for the authenticity of Chinese food, she embraces the regional adaptations that the Chinese diaspora has contributed to Chinese cuisine.