Fuchsia Dunlop

A blog reader called Tom emailed me recently to say that he was enjoying cooking from my books, but:

I am trying to figure out whether there is any way to reduce sodium in these
recipes, though. Like many Americans, I have high blood pressure and am trying
to manage it through diet modification. That means really watching salt intake.
I see that my soy sauce has nearly 1600 mg of sodium per tablespoon. It tastes
fantastic, but wow! That's a huge number. And that's hardly the only source of
sodium in Sichuan and Hunan cuisine. Continue reading...

I’ve just written a guest post for the Guardian’s Word of Mouth blog, which you can read here.

A blog reader called Graham wrote to me to ask advice about how to get a decent high-powered flame for cooking Chinese food in a UK kitchen.

This is part of what he said:

“I am staying in a modern flat in Beijing over the summer and one of the great things is being able to cook on a high-powered burner. I can actually get some smoking happening quickly, and attempt to flash-fry things.

“I’m sure this is nothing  compared to restaurant kitchen stoves, but it would be great to cook like this back in England, and it makes me realise how puny my UK cooker is. I guess it might be possible to buy Chinese stoves in England, but even then is out domestic gas supply suited to them?

“I know Chinese restaurants in the UK must be able to do it, and I saw the guys from Yang Sing in Manchester do a cooking demo last year, and instead of using the outdoor kitchen provided, they rolled in their own can of propane with a wok-holder attachment fitted to the top! Great, but I’m guessing this isn’t very wise (or probably legal) in the UK to have indoors.”

Continue reading…

Last week Barshu (the Sichuanese restaurant where I work as consultant) ran a team-building awayday for some corporate clients in the beautiful private room on the second floor.  The programme? A demonstration by two of the chefs, Xiao Wei and Xiao Hua, followed by a Chinese wine-tasting and a fabulous banquet. Xiao Wei and Xiao Hua showed the guests how to wrap various kinds of jiaozi dumplings, glutinous rice balls (tang yuan), and leaf-wrapped glutinous rice zongzi – the latter particularly appropriate as the event took place on the Dragon Boat Festival 端午节, when they are traditionally eaten. Some of the guests had a go themselves. And then they tasted a few Chinese wines and some sake, and then sat down to feast…

The pictures show Xiao Wei wrapping zongzi (top), Xiao Hua making tangyuan (right), and one of the guests trying his hand at wrapping jiaozi (below left).

So this is what Chinese astronauts eat in space, according to an article by Malcolm Moore in the Daily Telegraph, citing an astronaut’s autobiography:

There’s a piece by me in the Financial Times today, about the way Chinese and Asian food has been localised in Sydney…

There’s an interesting, and at times hilarious, thread on Chinese cooking tradition on Chowhound – lwong’s dryly witty comment had me laughing out loud:

‘We see that the posters here on the “Home Cooking” Forum are a very tough bunch. Especially when 1400 years for the technique of “stir fry cooking in a wok” is not considered a sufficient time to have passed the “long test of time” in terms being considered a classic cooking technique, nor the introduction of the New World foods, which would only be in the neighborhood of a mere 700 years.’

It reminded me of the fact that many of the professional Chinese cooking manuals I have encountered in my work begin their introductions with an account of the discovery of fire, the moment when human beings ceased being savages who 茹毛饮血 (literally ‘ate feathers and drank blood, i.e. ate birds and animals raw), and embarked on the path of civilisation by cooking their food. It also reminded me of the late Chinese premier Zhou Enlai who, when asked for his assessment of the 1789 French Revolution, supposedly replied that it was ‘too early to say’. Continue reading…

The Party Secretarys Wifes version

According to a report in the Daily Telegraph, a local government in Hunan is issuing precise instructions for making Mao’s favourite dish, Red-Braised Pork (hong shao rou 红烧肉), in an attempt to stem the flood of imitations. They are also attempting to standardise recipes for other dishes enjoyed by Mao, including stir-fried pork with peppers (nong jia chao rou 农家炒肉) and steamed fishhead with chillies (duojiao zheng yutou 剁椒蒸鱼头).

I was particularly amused by this because in the course of research for my Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook I was shown two different versions of this in Mao’s home village Shaoshan alone: one, made by the wife of the local Communist Party Secretary, was a simple dish of braised pork belly, cooked in lard with dark soy sauce to give colour, a dash of vinegar and a little sugar; the other, made in the kitchens of the Shaoshan Guesthouse, where I’d just had lunch with Mao’s nephew, was a more sophisticated dish, coloured with caramelised sugar (糖色), spiced with dried red

The Shaoshan Guesthouse version

chillies, star anise and ginger, and enhanced by some juices of fermented beancurd. Who can say which is truer to Mao’s own tastes? Continue reading…

One of the great things about having Chinese friends is that they really know how to look after you when you’re ill! I dropped into the restaurant for which I work as a consultant, Barshu, earlier this week with a rotten cold, and the manager, Juanzi, told me I should be eating 粥 (congee). She persuaded me to stay for half an hour while the chefs whipped some up in a pressure cooker – and so I left with a wonderful potful of sleek congee laced with slivered ginger, sliced 皮蛋 (preserved duck eggs, a.k.a. ‘Thousand-year-old eggs’), and pork ribs so tender they were falling off the bone. Oh, and two little packages of pickled vegetables to eat with the congee, and another potful of stewed Chinese honey dates 蜜棗 with crystal sugar. Yum yum.

Have any of you blog readers had similar experiences? What are your favourite Chinese comfort foods?

Francis Lam has written an interesting piece on the history of General Tso’s chicken for Salon.com. And I think it may clear up one of the niggling little questions that has been perplexing me since I gave a paper on the subject last month, at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. In the discussion that followed my talk, I realised that I didn’t have any idea how to explain the fact that, although the Taiwan-Hunanese chef Peng Chang-Kuei seems clearly to be the originator of the dish, and although the Chinese name of the dish on the menu of his restaurant in Taipei is Zuo Zongtang’s chicken (左宗棠土雞 － Zuo Zongtang is the full name of General Tso), he translates it as ‘Chicken a la Viceroy’. It didn’t occur to me to ask when and how the English name was changed from ‘Chicken a la Viceroy’ to ‘General Tso’s Chicken’ – and I’d resolved to ask Chef Peng and his son about this detail next time I talk to them. Continue reading…