Fuchsia Dunlop

Last year I gave you a few photographs of Chinese New Year in Hunan, 2004. This year, here are a couple of photographs of Chinese New Year meals in the far north of the country, in a remote part of Gansu Province in 1995. They were taken in the village that is the subject of the chapter ‘Hungry Ghosts’ in my book Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper. (Please forgive the poor quality of the images! I may try to scan them properly another time!)

On the right, you can see a pair of fish (fish are an almost obligatory part of New Year’s Eve dinners because nian nian you yu is a phrase that can mean both ‘fish every year’ and ‘plenty every year’: so the dish is an auspicious play on words.) Continue reading…

The Browser have just published an interview with me about five books on Chinese food.

My piece about inviting some chefs in Shaoxing (known for its stinky beancurd and other smelly fermented foods) to taste a selection of fairly whiffy Neal’s Yard cheeses appears in this weekend’s Financial Times magazine. It was fascinating to be able to witness some very accomplished Chinese chefs tasting cheese for the first time in their lives, and gave me a new perspective on one of my favourite types of food.

Sichuanese black garlic

“Hmm, this black garlic is delicious.”

“Actually it’s made from the single-cloved garlic of Sichuan.”

“Is that like the wild elephant garlic of Iran?”

Such is the conversation when you invite the cookery writer Anissa Helou over for a quiet Sunday night supper. I’d promised her something very casual, but ended up thinking about the  menu all weekend, of course. This is what we had:

A sweet, treacly black garlic clove each: these were a gift from the Sichuanese chef Yu Bo.

Smacked cucumber with a Sichuanese chilli-oil dressing.

Stir-fried venison slivers with yellow chives (made with superb venison from the Wild Game Company at Broadway Market in East London) Continue reading…

Photographs from Chinese New Year’s Eve in Hunan, 2004.

Food offerings for the ancestors

Writing Spring Festival couplets

A song before dinner

New Year’s Eve feast

Photo by Damian Brandon

Chinese President Hu Jintao was honoured with a state banquet at the White House last night. Apparently he and his entourage had requested a ‘quintessentially American’ menu, and this is what they were given:

D’Anjou pear salad with farmstead goat cheese, fennel, black walnuts and white balsamic

Poached Maine lobster with orange-glazed carrots and black trumpet mushrooms

Lemon sorbet

Dry-aged rib eye with buttermilk crisp onions, double stuffed potatoes and creamed spinach

Old-fashioned apple pie with vanilla ice cream. Continue reading…

At the conference today I received a Hunanese government award for contributions to the internationalisation of Hunan cuisine! It was worth getting up at what seemed like ungodly hour, after a jetlagged and somewhat sleepless night. The hall was packed with about 300 delegates, and I was the only Westerner – a weird throwback to my early days in China. Awards in the international category were also given to my friend and colleague, Bashan/Barshu owner Shao Wei;  Peng Tieh-cheng, son of Peng Chang-kuei; and Susur Lee. And there were also awards for local chefs and restaurants. Shao Wei and I spent the rest of the morning doing interviews with local media (I think we may be on TV tonight!), and then I had to give a brief talk after lunch. A bit nightmarish having to speak in Chinese before such a crowd, but it seemed to go OK, and I managed to entertain them with tales of persuading Westerners to love eating preserved duck eggs and rubbery things!

Continue reading…

The knife clinic, held last Thursday, was great fun. Delicious canapes by Daylesford Organic, great demos by Marianne Lumb and Corin Mellor. And I did a bit of Chinese chopping, including spring onion ‘fish-eyes’, ‘flowers’ and ‘horse ears’, ‘ox-tongue’ slices made from Asian radish, and ‘eyebrows’ and ‘phoenix tails’ cut from pig’s kidneys.

Illustration on left by Sebastian Wilkinson

The pleasures of cheese

You can read my piece about eating my way around Piedmont with Chinese restaurateur A Dai on the From Our Own Correspondent pages of the BBC’s website. Or you can listen to me reading it myself on their podcast for today, 13 November, on this webpage.

I’ll try to post a suitable photograph later!

For special banquets in the private rooms at Barshu restaurant, the kitchen can provide carved-vegetable centrepieces for the table. This carrot-bird ensemble is what one of the chefs came up with for a drinks party for Japanese visitors on Tuesday night!