Anissa Helou beat me to it with her blog post about today’s culinary collaboration! Anyway, here’s mine. Anissa (a brilliant cook and food writer specialising in Middle Eastern culinary cultures) and I had been planning a joint Sino-Lebanese lunch for months, and we finally did it, sort of, because in the end it turned out to be Sino-Moroccan. I was in charge of the first course, Anissa of the main course and dessert. As I was cooking at home and planning a ‘Chinese takeaway’ delivery to Anissa’s place, it seemed like a good opportunity to use one of my Sichuanese cuan he ( 攒盒), the gorgeous lacquered boxes that are sometimes used for banquet appetisers. Each box comes with an ornamented lid – in this case a dragon and phoenix (see below), and a neat jigsaw of detachable compartments for the food. The smallest boxes have one central compartment with four others around: this is known as a ‘five-colour’ box. The one I used today is a ‘nine-colour’ box, although I cheated slightly because I only made eight dishes (as you can see, one is duplicated in two compartments).

These boxes bring a real sense of occasion to a meal, because you can present the box intact and then remove the lid with a theatrical flourish. With a small group, as we were today, you can just help yourself from the compartments in the box. If a larger number of people are gathered around a big round table, a waitress will often display the whole box, and then remove the compartments and distribute them around the  edges of the ‘lazy susan’ in the centre so that everyone can reach them.

Today’s menu was: spicy Sichuanese chicken (凉拌鸡), green soybeans with pickled ‘snow’ vegetable (雪菜毛豆), spicy cucumber salad (炝黄瓜), Shanghainese ‘smoked’ fish (熏鱼), kohlrabi salad (香油苤蓝), garland chrysanthemum leaves with firm tofu (豆干蒿菜), fish-fragrant aubergines (鱼香茄子) and pressed pig’s ear (顺风耳). I have my friend Jason’s mother to thank for the fish dish, as she taught me the recipe (see my blog post A Shanghainese dream). Fish-fragrant aubergines are normally served hot, but I think they are glorious served as a cold dish, like a Sichuanese reply to the Turkish imam bayildi.

After the Sichuanese phase of the culinary symphony, we had a scrumptious Moroccan lamb tagine with prunes, almonds and honey. The lamb was meltingly tender, the honey floral and aromatic, and the toasted nuts a fabulous textural contrast to the rest. (I have some leftovers to eat tomorrow – hooray!). We ate it with home-made semolina bread. (Should you wish to make this divine stew yourself, the recipe is now on FT.com). And then some of Anissa’s pistachio ice-cream with rosewater – mmmm. Anyway, as Anissa explains on her blog, we reckoned it didn’t really work perfectly to have entire courses of each nationality, so next time we’re going to try to serve dishes from the different traditions together, as part of the same spread. Can’t wait!

Chef Zhang in the CIA kitchens

Recently I went with the head chef of Barshu, Zhang Xiaozhong, to give some presentations at the Worlds of Flavour conference at the Culinary Institute of America (generally known, amusingly, as the CIA). As we were driving back to San Francisco after the event, I asked Chef Zhang about his plans for the Chinese New Year, and he replied with this wistful little poem about the life of the chef, slaving away over a hot stove while everyone else celebrates with their families:

他人家中聚   Other people gather in their homes

我望锅中油   I gaze at the oil in the wok

妙手烹万物   Using my subtle hands to cook ten thousand

ingredients

厨房度春秋   Working in the kitchen as the seasons pass

Anyway, Francis’ article does suggest an explanation, which is that two other chefs in New York, David Keh and T.T.Wang, who had trained in Chef Peng’s Taipei restaurant and adopted many of his recipes, started calling the dish ‘General Tso’s chicken’, two years BEFORE Chef Peng opened his own restaurant in New York. Did Chef Peng adopt their translation for his own NYC menu?

Does this make sense, Francis, Ed Schoenfeld, Jennifer 8. Lee, my fellow General Tso sleuths?

(The photo on the left is of Chef Peng clinking glasses with Henry Kissinger in his New York Restaurant)

A rubbery sea cucumber

I promised to write a little more on this story, and ended up doing a piece for the Financial Times, which you can read here. It was an interesting subject to research – and I had a very robust discussion on the phone with the director of Michelin guides, Jean-Luc Naret. I pushed him quite hard on the subject of rubbery things, which I honestly don’t believe most Europeans can appreciate (it took me years). His argument was that Michelin inspectors, as professionals, are duty-bound to understand the cuisines they assess – including alien aspects such as texture foods. Which conjures up a rather amusing picture of Michelin inspectors munching their way through piles of fish maw, sea cucumber and bird’s nest, trying to grasp the finer points of slitheriness…

I had lunch at the restaurant in May, and briefly met the chef himself. As this was at the tail end of an exhausting gastronomic tour of China, I wasn’t capable of embarking on a full tasting menu, but enjoyed some of his delicate dim sum.

I’ll be writing more about this later, but wanted to flag up an interview I did for the BBC last night – not sure how long it will remain on their website, but you might just catch it!

Below are some of the photographs I took while researching the piece;

This is one of the private rooms at the Dragon Well Manor restaurant

The owner, A Dai (a.k.a. Dai Jianjun), with me on a fishing boat 

 One of the restaurant’s many small-scale suppliers

 Another supplier, with some aubergines (eggplants)

Bao Laichun, on the way back from a foraging trip to gather wild kiwi fruits

This is me, with some fishermen on a VERY unstable fishing boat, just before the deluge… still scribbling away in my notebook, which was getting damper by the minute… 

 A delivery of chickens

A few hours later…

Stir-fried freshwater shrimp (yum yum)

Qian Lu in the garden

Here are some pics of Mr Li in action.