Fuchsia Dunlop's Blog, page 3

Thanks to Lambda Li for sending me this video of a suckling pig being sliced at the Kimberley Hotel in Hong Kong! The whole point of this, as you will appreciate if you turn the sound up HIGH, is the amazing crisp, crunching sound of the skin being cut. Slurp.

(I was unable to video this myself because my iphone was too full of food photos at the critical moment!)

Sichuan hotpot: the aftermath

While I was in Chengdu in March, I found myself staying in the same hotel as Michelle Obama for a couple of nights. Despite our proximity, I didn’t catch the slightest glimpse of her, although the hotel restaurant was swarming with White House people during her stay, and I was penned in at the side of the road outside the hotel one evening while her imposing motorcade swept past. As you can imagine, the question at the top of my mind was: of all the possibilities, where are they going to take the First Lady to eat?!

In the end, according to newspaper reports, the organisers settled on two restaurants: a Tibetan restaurant, and a hotpot restaurant. And while I fully understand the reasons for choosing a Tibetan restaurant, and love the riotous fun of eating hotpot from time to time, I’m sorry that Mrs Obama didn’t also have the chance to enjoy a more typical Sichuanese meal. Hotpot, after all, despite being a fun experience and an example of the mala (numbing-and-hot) exuberance of Sichuanese cooking, is hardly a showcase for the broader cuisine in all its dazzling variety.

Chicken testicles

For those of you who don’t know Sichuan hotpot, it’s a simmering potful of oily broth seething with whole chillies and Sichuan pepper, in which diners can blanch or boil their own raw ingredients. Often, and usually when foreigners are present, the pot itself is divided into two, with one half spicy and one half filled with a mild, chilli-free soup, so that diners can alternate between the two or avoid the fiery heat altogether. As to the dipping ingredients, although you can dip virtually anything into a hotpot, the highlights for local people are slithery, rubbery, and bouncy delicacies such as tripe, goose intestines, rabbit kidneys and even chicken testicles – none of which are likely to be top of the list of likes for an American party on their first trip to China.

Anyway, my own mild disappointment at the gastronomic itinerary was nothing compared to the consternation provoked by the menu served to members of the Obama household at one of their dinners in Beijing, if this report on the Economic Observer website is to be believed. American officials in Beijing wanted to arrange a private dinner for the Obama party and their friends, according to the article, and, naturally enough, selected the wondrous Da Dong restaurant, which specialises in Peking Duck, braised sea cucumber and a flamboyant cocktail of traditional and modernist Beijing cooking. You cannot, after all, go to Beijing without eating Peking Duck at least once, can you?

Da Dong's famous braised sea cucumber

According to the article, when the restaurant manager told the eponymous head chef, Da Dong, one of the most famous and esteemed chefs in China, that the Obama party was intending to visit, Da Dong asked him to recommend some of their finest dishes to the US Embassy officials in charge of the dinner. The US officials, however, tactfully declined the offer of assistance in designing a menu, and insisted on going their own way, saying they knew the restaurant well and just wanted to order a few ‘comfortable’ dishes. Da Dong, the article explains, was exasperated at the obtuseness of the officials, whom he said might have had the chance to taste his famous sea cucumber and turtle dishes themselves, but were intending to deny Mrs Obama the pleasure. ‘At least add some sea cucumber to the menu, please!’ he groaned.

A few days later, the Embassy’s chosen menu was sent over – it was, as the Economic Observer helpfully explains, one that any ordinary Chinese person would view as weird and conservative. Apart from the roast duck, there were two beef dishes (stir-fried beef with white leek and chopped beef with black beans and chilli), two Gong Bao-flavoured dishes (chicken and shrimp), and two dishes that included bamboo shoot as an ingredient – which is far too much repetition by Chinese menu-planning standards. ‘The other dishes were just a bunch of vegetables such as beanthread noodles, eggplants and broccoli,’ the report says. And in Chengdu, it goes on, the chosen hotpot menu was equally circumspect, omitting any goose intestines, pig’s blood or ox throat cartilage [!]. Instead, the Obamas just ate meatballs with cilantro, Australian beef and another bunch of vegetables.

The author of the report doesn’t seem exactly to disapprove of these choices – he goes on to explain that they were in keeping with the known preferences of Mrs Obama, with her White House vegetable garden and her overhaul of White House menus to favour fruits and vegetables over doughnuts and the like. But one can sense the exasperation that local chefs felt at being denied the chance to show Mrs Obama what they considered to be the finest dishes they could offer.

On the other hand, would Mrs Obama actually have enjoyed Da Dong’s signature Braised sea cucumber with white leek (葱烧海参)? Possibly not. I have had a high degree of success at persuading participants in my China food tours to try sea cucumber and enjoy it, and I adore this dish myself – it’s magnificent. If you’re going to try sea cucumber in China, I tell my innocent victims (!), Da Dong really is the place to do it. But I do accept that appreciating such textural delicacies can be a challenge for the uninitiated.

This whole story reminded me of a newspaper report I read during former Chinese president Jiang Zemin’s state visit to London in 1999, which mentioned in passing that the president had arrived at Buckingham Palace with a boxful of instant noodles and other emergency Chinese food supplies! One can only imagine the poor man, after an evening politely eating pink roast lamb, roast potatoes, Stilton and that sort of thing, retreating to his room for some proper Chinese food, eaten out of a disposable plastic bowl with disposable chopsticks. As the English saying goes, ‘one man’s meat is another man’s poison’….

Back to the Obama party’s dinner at Da Dong: the Economic Observer seems to have the whole inside story. Apparently the Americans loved the black bean beef so much they ordered another serving. But Da Dong, whose braised sea cucumber really is one of the restaurant’s crowning glories, and who is so proud of it he has made it the logo of his restaurant, was in the end unable to restrain himself – he acted like the finest host and sent out a sea cucumber to every guest at the table. We will perhaps never know what the Americans made of them. The only sad thing is that, according to the report, Mrs Obama herself was so fatigued by her punishing tour schedule that she didn’t join the other members of her family for the Da Dong dinner. Perhaps she was having a caesar salad in her hotel instead.

Still can’t quite believe that on Friday night I won two more James Beard Awards – Every Grain of Rice: Simple Chinese Home Cooking took the prize for Best International Cookbook, and my Dick Soup article for Lucky Peach won in the Personal Essay category! I wasn’t able to make it to New York for the ceremony this year, so I found out on Twitter the following morning. Thanks, as always to my editors, Maria Guarnaschelli at W.W.Norton, Richard Atkinson and Natalie Bellos at Bloomsbury, and the team at Lucky Peach, Peter Meehan, Chris Ying, David Chang and Rachel Khong, as well as Chris Terry and Sophie Gerrard for their wonderful photographs.

You can read the Dick Soup piece here.

…or at least the most ancient kind. You can read my piece about fresh, unfried spring rolls in today’s Financial Times Weekend magazine – it includes recipes based on those from Every Grain of Rice. As I mention, it takes a little experimenting to get the knack of making the pancakes. The dough needs to be the right consistency, and the hotplate the right temperature – not too hot or too cool. Here’s a video of a professional doing it, a street vendor in Chengdu. Isn’t she wonderful?!

File picture of Chinese banquet

Over the last year, high-end restaurants in China have been struck as if by lightning by President Xi Jinping’s ‘anti-corruption campaign’ and ban on dining out at government expense. ‘People in China are used to such political campaigns,’ one friend of mine told me, ‘But normally they drop off after a while. No one expected the ban on expense-account feasting to last this long.’

Officials in China are paranoid about being caught breaking the rules: these days, all it takes to ruin a reputation, and perhaps a career, is a meddlesome citizen with a smartphone camera, hovering outside the restaurant as you sneak out after eating your shark’s fin soup.

One expat friend of mine in Beijing said he’d been having a perfectly innocent dinner with some high-ranking officials to celebrate a charitable venture, and they had to stay inside the restaurant for half an hour after the meal while some lackeys scoured the streets for curious bystanders – only when they were satisfied that the coast was clear were the VIPs willing to make a dash from the expensive restaurant to their official cars. He also said one company he knew had opened its own club – in effect, a bar and restaurant with a chef and kitchen staff, in an upper floor of a normal-looking office building, so they could wine and dine officials without anyone noticing. Another friend who works in a smart hotel says there is a special lift from the carpark to the private dining rooms, so that VIP guests do not have to pass through the lobby on their way to dinner.

In such a climate, it’s not surprising that fancy restaurants are feeling the pinch. But even so, a chef friend of mine was incredulous to hear that the Chinese Commerce Minister had denied that extravagant dining had ever been part of Chinese culture! Extravagant dining was practically invented in China. This is a country, after all, in which ancient sages could explain their philosophy in terms of the impossibility of having both fish and bear’s paw. And look at this invocation, written two and a half thousand years ago, which aimed to lure back the souls of the dead through its mouthwatering descriptions of exotic delicacies:

Stewed turtle and roast kid, served up with yam sauce;

Geese cooked in sour sauce, casseroled duck, fried flesh of the great crane;

Braised chicken, seethed tortoise, high-seasoned, but not to spoil the taste;

Fried honey-cakes of rice flour and malt-sugar sweetmeats…

(Qu Yuan, in The Songs of the South – Penguin Classics)

Anyway, the Commerce Minister was clearly wiping such seditious ideas from his mind when he answered questions from reporters earlier this month. The following is my translation of a report from the Legal Evening News, sent to me by the incredulous chef (Chinese version below):

2014-03-07 Legal Evening News

At nine o’clock this morning, Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng answered questions from Chinese and foreign reporters about ‘Commercial Development and Opening Up to the Outside World’. At the end of the news conference, Minister Gao Hucheng turned around just before leaving, and answered this newspaper’s question about the fall in high-end food and drink consumption. He said that the fall in high-end food and drink consumption was a good thing, and said that high-end food and drink consumption had never been part of Chinese culture!

You can see from the exclamation mark at the end of the report that the journalist found Mr Gao’s comment as staggering and ridiculous as my friend. And this blatant official denial of history makes one understand why some people say the current anti-corruption campaign has some  disturbing resonances with the Cultural Revolution.

[2014两会快讯:商务部长回应本报高端餐饮消费

发布：2014-03-07 10:28:31作者：法制晚报

#2014两会快讯#【商务部长回应本报高端餐饮消费】上午9点,商务部部长高虎城就"商务发展与对外开放"的相关问题回答中外记者的提问。发布会近尾声,高虎城临走前转身留步,回应本报记者关于高端餐饮消费下降问题.他表示,高端餐饮消费下降是件好事,高端餐饮消费在中国从来不是一种文化!(记者王南陈斯 白冰)]

I’m thrilled and amazed to be nominated in two categories this year! Every Grain of Rice: Simple Chinese Home Cooking is on the shortlist for international cookbooks, and my Lucky Peach article ‘Dick Soup’ (one of the pieces I’ve enjoyed writing most!) is shortlisted in the ‘Personal Essay’ section, alongside pieces by two fantastic writers, Elizabeth Gilbert and Gabrielle Hamilton. You can read the full shortlist here.

With all good wishes for the Year of the Horse, here’s a picture of New Year’s Day feasting in rural Hunan, 2004. A table of plenty, all cooked either on an old-fashioned wood-fired stove, or in a blackened cooking pot hanging over the open fire on the kitchen floor. We were sitting around that table in an old mud-brick cottage in a beautiful valley. Happy memories.

And here’s another pic of my lovely friend Fan Qun’s father on a horse, for the Year of the Horse.

Have any of you blog visitors been cooking anything special for the Chinese New Year?

新年快乐！马年吉祥！马到成功！

You can read my piece about the incredible Hangzhou Cuisine Museum (中国杭帮菜博物馆) on the BBC website here, or listen to me talking about it on From Our Own Correspondent here. Slurp!

Dinner in Changsha, Hunan

You can read my article on the new Chinese regional restaurants in the Guardian here. I thought I’d use my blog to offer a bit more information.

So here are a few of the most interesting regional Chinese restaurants in London:

HUNAN: Local Friends (hu nan ren湖南人)

Chef Ren Jianjun, a native of Yueyang in northern Hunan Province used to work at the Shangri-La Hunan restaurant in Oriental City, Colindale. Ignore the entire front section of the menu and turn to the back, which is conspicuously RED because of all the chillies. Here you’ll find a wonderful selection of hearty Hunanese dishes which are among the most authentic in London.

Local Friends, 28 North End Road, Golders Green, NW11 7PT, 020 8455 9258

Local Friends, 132 Bethnal Green Rd, London E2 6DG, United Kingdom

020 7729 9954

LIAONING (DONGBEI): ‘Top Taste’ (liao wei feng 辽味丰)

This miniscule restaurant  on Roman Road seems a little confused about what its English name actually is: the sign outside merely says ‘Chinese restaurant and takeaway’, but the menu is emblazoned with ‘Top Taste’. Anyway, ignore the dishes you already know on the menu, and try to order the Liaoning dishes, which are marked with red stars on the menu: my top tip would be to look at what Chinese guests are eating and order some of those dishes. Apart from the dishes mentioned in the Guardian piece, we enjoyed the anise-scented ‘pork with vermicelli’, and the superb ‘pan-fried garlic chive pancake pockets’. Thanks to Kai Wang for telling me about this place!

‘Chinese Restaurant and Takeaway’ aka Top Taste (liao wei feng)

129 Roman Road, London, E2 0QN, 020 8980 2037

SHANGHAI: Bright Courtyard Club (huang ting 皇庭), Red Sun

Bright Courtyard Club has an excellent eclectic, pan-Chinese menu, as well as lunchtime Cantonese dim sum, but I go there for the Shanghainese food, which sadly is no longer listed separately, so you may have to ask for help. I recommend the magnificent ‘braised pork belly slices with preserved vegetable’, an inky stew of pork with umami-rich dried mustard and bamboo shoots; the Shanghai wontons served in a delectable broth; and ‘Shanghai tofu with mushrooms’ – a fermented gluten appetiser you’re unlikely to find on any other London menu. Red Sun has fewer interesting dishes, but I really love their stir-fry of green soybeans with pickled greens and slivered pork (‘shreds pork with chinese pickle soya bean’). Ask them for Shanghainese dishes.

Bright Courtyard Club, 43-45 Baker Street, London, W1U 8EW, 020 7486 6998

Red Sun, 2A New Quebec St, London W1H 7RD, 020 7723 5350

FUJIAN: Fuzhou (fu zhou 抚州)

Frustratingly, they don’t translate the Chinese names of many of their specialities here, but Joe, a young Fujianese waiter, speaks good English and has promised me that he’ll help curious diners navigate the menu. Ask him for the gorgeous fish balls (yu wan 鱼丸)– springy, cloudlike spheres of conger eel stuffed with minced pork and served in a light broth; glassy sweet potato noodles with mixed seafood (hai xian shu fen mian 海鲜薯粉面); cabbage and clam soup with slippery rice pasta (hai xian guo bian 海鲜锅边); or so-called ‘oyster fritters’ (hai li bing): traditionally made with a little oyster, here they are stuffed with a mix of pork, cabbage, beansprouts and celery. The sweet potato balls (fan shu wan 番薯丸) are also highly recommended.

Fuzhou, 34 Lisle St, London, WC2H 7BD, 020 3214 0088

GUIZHOU: Maotai Kitchen (nong jia da yuan农家大院): Many interesting Guizhou dishes from which to choose.

Maotai Kitchen, 12 Macclesfield Street W1D 5BP, 020 7437 8785

SICHUAN: Sichuan folk (ba shu ren jia巴蜀人家)

Sichuan Folk is not mentioned in my article, but it’s one of the best new Sichuan restaurants. You can read Jay Rayner’s review of it here.

Sichuan Folk, 32 Hanbury St, London E1 6QR, 020 7247 4735

As always, cooking mainly ‘Western food’ for Chinese friends was an interesting experience. For a start, I faced unusual competition for the best bits of the chicken. Whenever I cook roast chicken for my family or Western friends, chances are that someone will want the breast meat, which suits me fine – but anyone Chinese knows that the most delicious parts of the bird are the legs and wings, as do I. My friend chose to have wing ‘so I can fly high!’. She added that when she was a child, her parents wouldn’t let her eat chicken’s feet because they thought eating them would make her calligraphy as ugly as chicken’s footprints! (Probably her parents just wanted to eat the feet themselves.) And she said many Chinese parents in the past deliberately gave their children – or most likely, their sons – the cockscomb, because this resembles an imperial official’s cap, and might help them to enter the civil service.

When she tried my lovely beetroot salad, my friend said the vegetable, which she had never previously encountered, reminded her of a root vegetable she’d come across in Tibetan regions.

‘Oh, really!’, I said, ‘What do they do with it there?’

‘They feed it to their pigs.’ She replied.

She did, however, have a second helping.

The other interesting thing is that while most Western guests would have polished off the chicken, my Chinese friends ate more modest quantities of meat, but finished up most of the vegetables. This, I think was a reflection of the healthy bias towards vegetables in the traditional Chinese diet – but I should add that one of the reasons that the young daughter loved our English roast supper was that it reminded her of her beloved KFC!