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.

It would be fascinating to hear what President Hu actually made of the dinner. He grew up in Jiangsu, in the refined, rice-eating south of China, and has also lived in Gansu, Guizhou, Tibet and Beijing, though not, I think, abroad. I assume he’s had plenty of experience of foreign food on his international trips, and perhaps occasionally in Beijing, so perhaps he has cosmopolitan tastes. Many Chinese people, however, especially those of his generation, would be less than delighted with raw salad and goat’s cheese, and with the prospect of eating a whole slab of beef, even if the meat was well done (rare, pink-oozing meat is an atrocity in terms of Chinese gastronomy). The main complaint of Chinese gourmets when it comes to ‘Western food’, though, is that it’s simple and lacking in variety, as I’ve mentioned before. And, reading reports of the banquet, I couldn’t help remembering an article in the Guardian newspaper of former President Jiang Zemin’s visit to London in 1999, which mentioned that the personal belongings that had accompanied him to Buckingham Palace had included ‘boxes of Chinese food’. I had a sneaking suspicion that the poor man, subjected to days of unfamiliar food at unsufferable banquets, was expecting to have to resort to snacks of instant noodles every night before bed.

A Hunanese government banquet menu

By means of contrast, the menu on the right is from a provincial government banquet in Hunan that I attended in November, at the West Lake Pavilion restaurant in Changsha, the ‘biggest Chinese restaurant in the world’ (it can seat as many as 5000 in its various halls. I first wrote about this place in the Financial Times several years ago, and it was later the subject of a 3-part TV documentary). As you can see, the menu lists 24 dishes, if you include pickles and the final fruit platter: slivered bamboo shoots with preserved mustard greens, pickled sweet potato, radish skin, rustic mixed vegetables, peanuts in old wine, crisp ears with coriander, cold cooked beef, snake with chilli and ginger, secret-recipe turtle-meat, pig’s feet with pig’s stomach, West Lake head steamed in a bowl (can’t remember what this was!), large prawns with green chillies, ‘floating fragrance’

An operatic duet

aromatic duck, steamed Western Hunan smoked meats, mountain goat stewed with mung bean sheets, Hunan-style Dongpo pork, secret-recipe bighead carp, claypot Chinese yam, stir-fried smoked donkey, Liuyang mountain bamboo shoots in chicken stock, Liuyang yellow vegetable, blanched seasonal greens, West Lake steamed buns stuffed with meat, platter of cut fruit. The ingredients and the cooking methods are many and varied, and the menu showcases a number of famous local ingredients. It does, however, avoid the more extravagant Chinese delicacies, such as shark’s fin and sea cucumber, which might be seen as inappropriate at a feast held at public expense.

The ironic thing about grand Chinese banquets, though, is that it’s almost impossible to appreciate the food, as you might guess from my very sketchy account of the menu. Banquets in China are about so many things besides food, including, depending on the occasions, social relationships, business, face; hierarchy, sycophancy, bribery, festivity… Like President Hu’s state dinner at the White House, the Hunanese banquet was a formal occasion, and the guests had very little time actually to eat. The festivities commenced promptly as 6.30pm, and finished promptly at 8pm. In between, as the dishes came

Orangeade, red wine, baijiu and tea - all you need for toasting!

thick and fast from the kitchens, there were speeches, acrobatic performances, songs and dances performed on the grand stage at the front of the hall. For much of the time, the guests milled around the tables, toasting each other as individuals and in groups, with tiny cupfuls of bai jiu (strong grain spirits), red wine or (for the teetotallers) orangeade. The general manager of the restaurant, Qin Zhong, who was so kind to me when I lived in Changsha, took to the stage for a stunning operatic duet with a chef from Beijing (she used to be a professional singer). A Hunanese celebrity chef who lives in Japan gave a brilliant performance of a karaoke song on stage. I was press-ganged into making a very brief speech, but absolutely refused to sing a song! Meanwhile, about five hundred guests milled around, toasting, exchanging pleasantries, smoking cigarettes,

Cover girl

and trying to snatch mouthfuls of food from time to time.

For me, the funniest moment of the whole evening, and probably my entire trip, occurred during a conversation with the government official who was sitting next to me at that dinner. He had seen my photograph on the front page of the local Party Daily, Hunan Ribao, which had featured the food conference which we were all attending. ‘Ms Fu,’ he said, ‘I hope you realise that even senior leaders struggle to get their pictures on the front page of Hunan Ribao’. One thing I never thought I’d be was a cover girl for a communist newspaper.

As usual on such occasions, I left entertained but still hungry, and needed a midnight feast before I could sleep. I was reminded, as ever, of the Qing Dynasty gourmet and food writer Yuan Mei, who went home after a 40-course banquet and needed a bowlful of congee to fill his belly.

A midnight feast in my hotel: congee, buckwheat buns etc

My afternoon ended peacefully with a visit to the Hunan Provincial Museum, to see once again the incredible Mawangdui collection. This is a large group of

Ancient lacquerware from the Mawangdui trove

objects that was unearthed in three aristocratic tombs on the outskirts of Changsha in the 1970s: one of the richest archaeological sites in China. It is particularly interesting to me because the tombs, which date back to the Han Dynasty, about two thousand years ago, contained a treasure trove of foodstuffs and records (inscribed on bamboo slips) of the cooking of the time, along with beautiful red-and-black lacquerware, much of it used for storing and serving food. Apart from the food-related remains, there are models of singers, dancers, a make-up box, a chess set, models of musical instruments, and textiles in a remarkable state of preservation. If you’re interested in this sort of thing, it’s worth making a trip to Changsha just to see the museum.

Hong cai tai... oh yum...

I’m back in Changsha, where I lived for a few months while researching my Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook, for the first time in five years. It’s wonderful to see some old friends, including Peng Tieh-cheng, the son of legendary Hunanese chef Peng Chang-kuei (of General Tso’s chicken fame). He’s in Changsha for the same Hunan food conference as me, and I hadn’t seen him for about six years. Peng Tieh-cheng tells me his father, who is now 93, is in good health, and still popping into their main restaurant in Taipei every day.

I’ve had some rather lovely meals in the last 24 hours, and one of the highlights of all of them has been the simplest of dishes: stir-fried red rape shoots (hong cai tai 红菜苔), served at lunch with a little dried chilli, and at dinner with slivered ginger. Only the tenderest tips of the shoots are used, and the thicker parts may actually be peeled of their skin. Stir-fried, they have an exquisite flavour and mouthfeel, sweet and juicy, with a hint of dark sleek bitterness in the leaves. Hong cai tai have a similar appeal to asparagus, although I think they are even more delicious. When they are in season, they are served at almost every meal.

‘Seasonal greens’ are often served as an afterthought at Chinese meals, but I think they are one of the glories of Chinese cuisine. In Sichuan, I adore purple amaranth 苋菜 stir-fried with garlic, served in its bright pink juices, and water spinach 空心菜 wokked with chilli and Sichuan pepper; in Shanghai alfalfa sprouts stir-fried with strong grain spirits 草头; in Hangzhou tender young greens blanched and then served in a delicate stock; in Hong Kong Chinese broccoli 芥蓝 blanched and then sizzled with garlic and rice wine. Cooked well, with a little salt, oil and garlic or ginger, and perhaps a dash of wine and/or stock, they can have an almost buttery deliciousness. And of course they’re very healthy as well.

This is what they look like raw

I wonder if any of you are as addicted to leafy greens as me. In London, I often eat leafy green vegetables, Western or Chinese, and I really miss them if days go by without my fix. Sometimes I’ll cook them in a Western manner, but more often I’ll reach for my wok or steamer, and cook them in one of the many Chinese ways I’ve learnt, because they are so damn good, and also quick and easy.

Any of you like to share your thoughts and cooking tips for your favourite Chinese greens?

The new menu offers dishes that include the ever-popular steamed fish with chopped salted chillies, Chairman Mao’s favourite red-braised pork, the famous General Tso’s chicken (invented by a Hunanese exile chef in Taiwan), Bandit’s pork liver with green chillies, sizzling stir-fried lamb with hot peppers, and a number of rustic stir-fries made with the dried vegetables that are a favourite ingredient in the region. Other specialities include a sumptuous stew of beef with zongzi, the glutinous ricecakes that are traditionally eaten at the Dragon Boat Festival in the fifth lunar month, an irresistible platter of stir-fried  bamboo shoots with pork, and a gentle bowlful of silken beancurd seasoned with the yolks of salted duck eggs. Prices start at £4.90 for appetisers and £6.90 for main dishes, so it’s a bit cheaper than Barshu.

Our designer has created some special posters for the restaurant, in keeping with the new revolutionary atmosphere.

Yum yum.

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?

The other thing is that local officials have said that true hongshao rou can only be made with the meat of some rare breed of pig from Ningxiang County. This I found hilarious, because of all people, Mao Zedong, a notorious lover of coarse grains, wild vegetables and robust peasant food , seems unlikely to have been concerned with the precise sourcing of his ingredients. I’m sure he would have left that to the refined, bourgeois gourmets he so despised.

You can hear me talking about this story on the BBC World Service this afternoon, here – it’s the last item in the programme.