Those fishy flavours…
In October, I posted something on this blog about unsavoury flavours in Chinese cuisine (‘Stinky to sublime’, 17 October 2008). And last week a New York Times journalist who was researching an article about science and superstition in the kitchen emailed me to talk about them. This is the piece he wrote; it was published alongside one of the recipes from my Sichuanese cookery book. The recipe, for a whole fish braised in chilli bean sauce, has a particular resonance for me, because it is the first Sichuanese dish I ever attempted to cook! This was some time before I went to live in Chengdu, and I made it from a recipe in Yan-kit So’s Classic Chinese Cookbook. Little did I know how important this kind of cooking would become in my life…
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