Fuchsia Dunlop

I’m quite chuffed to read this thread on a Chinese web discussion board about Gong Bao chicken (apologies to those of you who can’t read Chinese). The poster said she’d tried more than ten different recipes without any success - until she tried mine from Land of Plenty/Sichuan Cookery, which she said produced as good as dish as one in a good Sichuanese restaurant!

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…

One thing I never thought I’d be is an agony aunt for people struggling to cook ox penises!

My old friend Volker, who readers of ‘Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper’ may remember as my original partner-in-crime at the Sichuan cooking school, came to stay at the weekend. I hadn’t seen him for over three years, mainly because until two weeks ago, he was on a Tibetan Buddhist retreat at the Lerab Ling Temple in the South of France, which lasted, in traditional Tibetan fashion, for three years, three months and three days. As you can imagine, we spent the weekend spinning a lovely web of memories of Chengdu, discussing Buddhist philosophy, and eating. Continue reading…

On Saturday, to my amazement, I actually shot my first pheasant. A friend had invited me to go on a shoot in the Essex countryside, something I’d longed to do ever since, as a teenager, I persuaded my mother to buy me a brace of pheasants to pluck, draw and cook. Rain had been forecast, but it turned out to be a glorious day: bright, cold and blue-skied. So we spent the day tramping around the countryside, through ploughed fields and meadows, and a small wood, and then standing around with our guns, waiting for the birds to fly up out of the bushes. I hadn’t been near a gun since I messed around with an air rifle in my parents’ garden, many years ago, and was a bit nervous. But it was exciting, and difficult. Somehow, towards the end of the day, when the clouds were smudgy and the trees spidery against the declining light, I managed to hit one, and it fell. Continue reading…

I’m finally back in London after a crazy month’s travelling: first to Sydney for its International Food Festival, then to Singapore for a food and wine conference, then to Hong Kong and, at the end, Barcelona!

The Sydney food festival was a gathering of chefs and food-writers from all over Australia, Asia, and further afield, including Tetsuya Wakuda, Peter Gordon, David Thomson, Kylie Kwong, Neil Perry and Alvin Leung. The photograph on the left, taken at the opening night of the World Chef’s Showcase, was taken by Marco del Grande of the Sydney Morning Herald. Continue reading…

On the Scottish island, a friend and I picked our way across slippery seaweed-strewn beaches, through bogs and heather bushes, and finally down a rocky cliff, to gather wild mussels, kilos and kilos of them. Back at the cottage, we cooked some of them marinieres, and used the rest in a kind of Italian pasta sauce (onion, tomatoes, herbs) which we ate with spaghetti. The orange mussels themselves were delicious, but many of them had tiny, tiny pearls embedded in their outer layers, which made them somewhat perilous to eat. I crunched one quite badly, and it ended up firmly embedded in one of my back teeth! It was horribly uncomfortable at first, but then settled down. The following day some of it came out, grittily, in some chewing gum, but I had to visit the dentist to make sure that it was completely clear. My London colleagues laughed at me for having such a ridiculous ailment (’Doctor, Doctor, I have a pearl stuck in my tooth!).

Funnily enough, within the week, something similar nearly happened, but with a piece of shot in a wild duck - and for a moment I dreaded the embarrassing prospect of a return visit to the dentist.

Has anyone else had amusing eating-related mishaps? Live octopus tentacles stuck to their cheeks in Korea？Bones through their cheeks during enthusiastic chewing?

When I was a small child, I once swallowed a small, painted metal ‘gollywog’ pendant that I had been sent after saving up the tokens on pots of Robertsons jam. My parents took me to the hospital in Oxford, where I was X-rayed, and the X-rays showed a perfect little gollywog shape suspended somewhere in my abdomen! (I’ve always regretted that we didn’t keep a copy of the image.)

The island holiday in Scotland turned into a wonderful adventure, and I caught my first mackerel! Two of them, in fact. (I was pretty impressed until I noticed that one of my friends, simultaneously, had pulled in SEVEN on a single line!) Between us, we  caught eleven, and I quickly remembered my old Sichuan cooking school lessons and gutted them all on the boat, with my Swiss army knife. Back at the cottage, we rustled up a mackerel feast: sashimi with soy sauce and mustard (no wasabi around); grilled mackerel, eaten with lemon; mackerel baked with mustard and white wine (a French recipe that used to make as a teenager, dimly remembered); and finally the mackerel fillets marinated in soy sauce, wine, ginger and stuff and then pan-fried. Has fish ever tasted so good?

Below are a few more pics of the fish.

Colours

Wild creature

Non-Chinese cooks often consider Chinese food as a complete world apart from other styles of food, but I find that Chinese cold dishes mix well with dishes from other traditions. I often rustle up some kind of Sichuanese chicken salad, dressed in a mixture of soy sauce, sugar, chilli oil, Sichuan pepper and perhaps a little Chinese vinegar, for a party, and it always seems to go down a storm. The spicy cucumber salad from my Sichuan book is another favourite – incredibly easy to make in advance, unusual and delicious.

Supper at my friend Anissa Helou’s place last week turned out to be a polyglot feast, with Gujarati snacks she commissioned from the mother of her newsagent, a magnificent Lebanese tabbuleh, a Sichuanese chicken dish and fish-fragrant aubergines, served cool. We all thought they went together rather nicely.

Altogether, it’s been an incredibly varied fortnight, foodwise: my first visit to the River Cafe in London for a close friend’s birthday (fabulous langoustines with marjoram), a Sichuanese supper at my place for my ‘kitchen sister’ Lipika, a glorious home-made bouillabaisse at another friend’s house, hog roast in a West London garden, extended family picnic in Waterlow Park (with another Sichuanese salad as my contribution), cocktails at Loungelover and dinner at my favourite Vietnamese place, Song Que, with Anissa and visiting food-writer Anya Von Bremzen! Anyway, enough of all that, tonight I’m off to a deserted Scottish island to make bread and attempt to catch fish.

General Tsos Chicken (a poor picture, sorry!)

I had some friends for dinner on Saturday and, for the first time in ages, cooked General Tso’s chicken. This, as some of you may know (especially any Americans), is the most famous “Hunanese” dish in America…. but is virtually unknown in Hunan itself. Exploring its origins was one of the unintended highlights of my research for Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook, and the piece I wrote about it was excerpted in the New York Times.

Although it’s not the most traditional dish, it is incredibly delicious when done properly, with good chicken. On Saturday I used the Taiwan version of the recipe, which I was taught in the kitchens of the man who invented it, Peng Chang-Kuei, in Taipei.  I’d forgotten quite how good it was, but after the reception it got from my friends the other night, I suspect I’m going to be making it regularly!

The full menu on Saturday was Sichuanese cucumber salad, smoked beancurd with chilli oil, General Tso’s chicken, Red-braised beef with Asian radish, Pock-Marked Woman’s Beancurd (mapo doufu), stir-fried mixed mushrooms with garlic, stir-fried water spinach with chillies and Sichuan pepper, and stewed peaches with crystal sugar. With steamed rice, of course. And raspberry pavlova for pudding, thanks to my friend Penny!

The picture to the left was taken in Taipei in 2004. It was an incredible honour to meet Chef Peng, who is one of the most celebrated chefs of his generation, and used to be in charge of state banquets in Taiwan.

P.S. the recipe is at the bottom of the New York Times article.