Fuchsia Dunlop

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…

I spent yesterday experimenting in my kitchen with Zhang Xiaozhong, the head chef of Barshu restaurant, where I work as consultant. A few people have emailed me to ask which Chinese seasonings to use, and so while Chef Zhang was here, I asked him to give me his opinion of a few versions of chilli and broad bean paste (豆瓣酱）, which is one of the essential flavourings of the Sichuanese kitchen. When I first started writing about Sichuanese food, the only brand available in the West seemed to be Lee Kum Kee’s chilli bean sauce (toban djan), but a few others are now on sale in Chinatown in London. These are the ones we tasted, with some of Chef Zhang’s comments: Continue reading…

Camellia oil, hot off the press

There’s an article of mine in the Financial Times Weekend today, about the dilemmas facing China’s artisanal food producers.

The picture on the right was taken at the camellia oil press described in the article, just after I’d tasted the oil.

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

You can hear me on BBC Radio Four’s The Food Programme, talking about suckling pigs in Chinese culinary culture.  The programme went out yesterday, and will be broadcast again this afternoon, at 4pm UK time. It’s also available on the web.

Imagine my surprise to find that hairy crabs, that legendary Chinese delicacy of the autumn, eulogised by the seventeenth century Chinese playwright (and erotic novelist) Li Yu, are appearing in vast numbers in the Thames in London! Just look at this article in today’s Independent newspaper.

Hairy crabs from the Yangcheng Lake (photo taken in Suzhou)

I love the idea of being able to steam them, and eat them with Chinkiang vinegar, ginger and Shaoxing wine, at home in London.

If you haven’t tasted hairy crab, and wonder what all the fuss is about, here is what Li Yu had to say about them:

‘While my heart lusts after them and my mouth enjoys their delectable taste (and in my whole life there has not been a single day when I have forgotten them), I can’t even begin to describe or make clear why I love them, why I adore their sweet taste, and why I can never forget them… Dear crab, dear crab, you and I, are we to be lifelong companions?’

There is a chapter featuring hairy crabs in my Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper book. And if anyone is interested in Li Yu’s outrageous and hilarious erotic novel, The Carnal Prayer Mat, follow this link.

A new report says that many shark species are facing extinction, mainly because of overfishing. It’s not just the Chinese love of shark’s fin soup that is to blame:  they are also killed as ‘bycatch’ when caught accidentally in nets intended for tuna and swordfish. But the fin trade is an important factor.

Only last week I watched Rupert Murray’s chilling new film about overfishing, the End of the Line. (It’s based on Charles Clover’s investigative book of the same name.) This should be essential viewing for anyone who considers themselves concerned about the state of the environment, and indeed the world. Might it actually be a tipping point in persuading governments, particularly those of Japan and the European Union, to do something about the pillage of the world’s oceans?

The novice

Fresh bamboo shoots are one of life’s great pleasures - and one of which the tinned version gives you absolutely no possible inkling. I had some for dinner tonight in Hangzhou, cooked with a little fine stock and a speckling of Jinhua ham. They were sublime, crisp and juicy, with a sweet-savoury taste of indescribable loveliness. They gave me particular pleasure today because I went out digging for bamboo shoots in the rain earlier this week. This is quite a challenging task for the novice: you have to look for a crack in the earth which betrays the presence of a growing shoot, and then dig the shoot out without damaging its ivory flesh.

The expert

The shoots

Apparently the makers of Stilton, that delicious blue-veined English cheese, are to start exporting it to China! 

As is widely known, the Chinese traditionally have little taste for cheese. In the past, eating it was seen as a barbarian habit.  The American anthropogist E.N. Anderson mentions in his The Food of China that he once heard it described as ‘the mucous discharge of some old cow’s guts, allowed to putrefy’ - a quote I always like to repeat to Westerners expressing disgust at Chinese eating habits.

When I lived in Chengdu in the 1990s, it was impossible to buy any cheese except for small packages, exorbitantly priced, of some horrible processed stuff - and even this was available only at the city’s single backpackers’ cafe, the Flower Garden. This was why, when a British TV producer for whom I’d done a little translation work asked me if her crew could bring me anything from London, the first thing that came to my mind was cheese. A week later, a large piece of Stilton, perfectly ripe, was handed over to me in a hotel lobby - it was such a treat I threw a dinner party in its honour.  

I’ve had little success in introducing cheese to my own Chinese friends. Most of them find it pretty revolting, if they’re willing to taste it at all. I’m very curious as to how the Stilton venture will go, particularly as Stilton is towards the more extreme end of the cheese scale in terms of its smell and appearance. The European ex-pat community will be thrilled, no doubt, but will they be able to persuade the locals to give it a try?