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Crispy Fish with Ginger-Scallion Sauce in Katie Chin's Everyday Chinese Cookbook.

As an American who is over-familiar with what happens to Chinese food when it goes abroad, I couldn't resist asking Chin if she and her mother had found the origin of lemon chicken－mom's signature dish in Minnesota－on their journey to Leeann's native Guangzhou.

"LOL!" she quickly texts in response to my tease. "My understanding is that it wasn't invented in China but in NYC at Pearl's Chinese Restaurant. The general consensus is that it's a Chinese-American invention for sure."

Such liberties never seemed out of line to mother or daughter, for whom Chinese food clearly represents a living art.

Leeann Chin once told chef Raghavan Iyer that while she missed the regional Chinese cooking that she grew up eating in Guangzhou, she had no problem serving up the Chinese-American staples had become synonymous with her myriad restaurants.

"Her business acumen shone through as she admitted to serving Minnesotans foods that she knew would appeal to their palates," he writes in the book's introduction. Quoting Leeann: "Just a bit sweeter than I eat at home."

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