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Hello.
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Welcome to this installment of Conversations with Tyler, sponsored by the Mercada Center.
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We're here at Panda Gourmet Restaurant, my favorite restaurant in Washington DC.
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And we're eating with a group.
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The star of the group is Fuchsia Dunlop, who in my opinion is the foremost exponent of Chinese cookery and the writer of the best Chinese cookbooks ever in the English language.
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We have a very famous and well-known group of questioners including Ezra Klene, editor-inchief of Vox, Mark Miller, who is just a a food person extraordinaire, Megan McAdle of Bloomberg and one of the world's leading cookery experts, and Ava from Shandong Province, China.
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If I think of how to present Fuchsia, there are two passages that spring immediately to mind.
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One is from her 1999 notebook entry, and I quote, "In the last three days, I have eaten snails, frogs, snakes, sparrow gizzard, duck tongues, fish heads, duck hearts, tripe, also half a duck, most of a carp, duck's blood, at least five eggs, smoked bacon, and stewed aromatic beef."
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So, of course, we had Fuchsia do the ordering for our lunch.
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As you might expect, one of my readers wrote to me.
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They summed up who she is.
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And again, I quote, "What a fantastic and exciting guest.
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I agree wholeheartedly that Fuchsia Dunlop is an absolute iconic class and that her achievements in examining and teaching Chinese cookery cannot possibly be overstated.
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I can say with all sincerity that my life has been absolutely enriched by her work.
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Her books are simply perfect models for others to follow. Fuchsia, welcome.
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Everyone else, welcome as well.
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Now, I'll just start in on the questions while our guests eat and they will later on become the questioners themselves.
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Let me start with this idea of a food tour.
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So, food tours are more and more popular today.
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People will go to Mexico, to France, Italy, even Thailand.
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But the China food tour is not always so popular with Americans or Westerners.
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If you were to try to sell someone on a version of say a 12-day China food tour, what would your case for that sound like?
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Well, China has the world's preeminent cuisine absolutely unparalleled in its diversity and its sophistication.
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You can find practically everything you could possibly desire in terms of food in China.
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from exquisite banquet cookery, exciting street food, bold spicy flavors, you know, honest farmhouse cooking, delicate soups, just everything apart perhaps from cheese, although they do actually have a couple of kinds of cheese in Yunan Province.
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And um yeah and also because um you know China is such a food orientated culture and it has been since the beginnings of history that if you want to understand China almost more than anywhere anywhere else like food is a really good window into the culture into the way people live into history everything.
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Okay so 12 days give us a quick itinerary where should you go?
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Well, um you could look at the sort of greatest hits, say the four great cuisines you'd perhaps want to cover.
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So you might go to Beijing to taste some sort of um imperial food, Shandong cooking, the wonderful wheat foods of the north.
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So pastas, dumplings, breads.
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This is the wheat eating part of China. Three cities. Name them. Three cities. 12 days.
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I'm not going to give you 14. What are they? Three cities.
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Um um Beijing, Changdu, and Hjo. Okay.
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Now, let's think through this idea of a food tour a little more analytically.
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So, let's say you've talked me into this food tour, which actually you've done indirectly through your books, and you've sent me to Shanghai.
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Your latest book, Land of Fish and Rice, in fact, focuses on Shanghai and the surrounding region, which is quite diverse.
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But here I am, Tyler Cowan, I'm in Shanghai.
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I don't know Chinese and let's say I don't have Chinese friends and I'm simply lost.
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How do I figure out where to actually eat in Shanghai? What do I do? What's the heristic?
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Well, um, you could look for recommendations of authentic restaurants, articles by people perhaps who live in Shanghai or who understand the food.
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Say I'm just on the street. I'm walking. I don't have my iPad. I'm away from Wi-Fi. There's Shanghai.
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There's me confronting the alien.
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How do I think about finding what's good?
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Um, use your nose, use your eyes.
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Um, if you're interested in street food, you'll find lots of little sort of stalls and shops where they're cooking in full view.
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Um, use your judgment and see what looks exciting.
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Um I guess it's very difficult in a cosmopolitan city like Shanghai um to perhaps know exactly what is local Shanghai, what is from other parts of China because it's a a sort of always been a melting pot of different Chinese regional cuisines.
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So um and also if you want to taste the more sort of refined cooking then just going around the streets is not really going to help.
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So, I think you do need to do a little bit of research and perhaps have a few dishes, you know, have the names on your phone in Chinese. That would help.
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And three dishes one absolutely has to try or what? In Shanghai.
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In Shanghai, the city, not the region.
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Um, I think you should have um honed pork.
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Real home cooking, delicious combination of soy sauce, rice, wine, and sugar.
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and one of her favorite dishes.
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I would recommend um something perhaps some Shanghai wanttons in soup stuffed with shepherd's purse which is a wild variety of the brassacas and pork just to show you the lighter gentler side of Shanghai cooking.
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And then um perhaps um what would I have in Shanghai?
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Um and then perhaps if if we're talking Shanghai, you might want to have one of these dishes that says something about Shanghai as being a mixing pot of different cultures.
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And there's a very nice um crab meat and potato and tomato soup served in some of my favorite Shanghai restaurants which um seems a little bit of a fusion with some European influences the way they use potato and tomato in that soup with local seafood.
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So, as you know, the Michelin Guide recently has covered Shanghai, given some restaurants three, two, one star, there's cheap places you can go.
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Conceptually, do they understand the food of Shanghai?
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And and to the extent they don't, what are they missing?
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Um, I think if you look at the restaurants they've selected, um, there's a bit of a Cantonese bias.
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Um, and they do have some Cantonese restaurants.
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restaurants. They do have some Shanghai restaurants but one thing that's very conspicuous there are some notable some of the best Shanghai local restaurants which are missing from that list in my opinion and the reason is I think the methodology of Western food inspectors
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which is they tend to go as individuals or small groups and of course in many Chinese restaurants where you eat family style to make the most of the restaurant you have to eat as we're doing now with a large group and a table full of dishes and these these restaurants that I was surprised not to see on the list. Um,
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Um, you have to book a private room with a group.
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And if you do, you'll be able to taste some of the most wonderful renditions of Shanghai food and food from the broader region with a sort of contemporary spirit, but a real reverence for traditional technique.
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But you can't do that really if you just go with one or two people.
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So, let me ask you a bit about this Cantonese bias.
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I've even heard Chinese people say, "Well, the food of Shanghai, it's maybe a little too sweet or some parts of it are too simple."
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And there's a bit of a bias from some, not all, against the food of Shanghai, and that the food of Canton is more glorious, has more vegetables, uses refined seafood in a more complex way, is delicate, harder to pull off, and therefore a higher point of Chinese cuisine. Do you agree? Yes. No.
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Or what is that missing if you don't agree?
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I think Cantonese is a superb and fantastic cuisine, but I think its particular status in China is the product of historical circumstances.
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Um, the Cantonese south of China, Hong Kong, the special economic zones were the first places to get rich after the reform and opening up particularly.
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And so, Cantonese became the prestige cuisine.
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When I was a student in Changdu in the 1990s, if you wanted to go out for an expensive fancy meal, you went to a Cantonese restaurant and at expensive seafood.
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So I think it still has that kind of cache and aura of sophistication.
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And um with Shanghai food, I mean Shanghai is in Chinese gastronomic terms a kind of modern upstart city and it's better known perhaps for its street food and home cooking, but it is the the sort of um you know the the best known part of an ancient region which really has what you can argue is the Chinese classical cuisine, the food of the Djangan Lower Yang region.
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Djangan Lower Yang region. And um this region is known historically for its extraordinary knife work, delicate flavors, um extreme reverence for ingredients, you know, eating the right foods from the right places in the in the right seasons and um all the kind of values
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that we associate um perhaps with Cantonese food and also with sort of modern, you know, shapes, the sort of modern foodie movement, they're all there historically in China and perhaps for historical reasons, you know, It's been underappreciated in in you know in the last century or so. I think you
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I think you would agree Shanghai is one of the wealthier more modern parts of China.
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As you see China developing you see traditional markets to some extent in some parts of China fading away.
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Supply chains become longer.
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Large companies play a bigger role.
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The refriger the refrigerator plays a new role in the food supply chain so things can sit around for longer.
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uh do you wonder that a lot of Chinese food will become bad in the way that American food has become bad and if that happens will it come to Shanghai first or are you more optimistic than that?
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I I think you can see all these things happening and it is very sad.
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So um for example you know restaurants that I knew I mean this is in Changdu restaurants where they made all their dumplings from scratch like maybe 15 20 different kinds every day now will buy some of them in ready prepared.
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Um supermarkets stock sort of easy um seasoning packets to make mapfu you know this kind of thing.
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Um so and then in the cities there's a huge loss of cooking skills.
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Young professionals often rely on their parents to cook for the children at home and they the middle generation are not learning traditional cookery.
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They're not learning how to pickle and cure.
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So there's all this being lost.
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Um and people you know they they lead more hectic lives and they are increasingly eating ready prepared food.
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So um I I think you can see that China is going down the same sad path as the rest of us in some ways.
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But the thing that gives me hope is that you know in China food is understood so deeply as the foundation of kind of health and happiness and it has been a culture that is so obsessed with food and they have this wonderful resource that I hope people will sort of um I mean some people are now getting to the point of kind of looking at Chinese food as a kind of cultural artifact and something valuable to be preserved.
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You know let me now see if you can talk me out of one of my biases.
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Uh when I eat food in China, there's nothing I've ever been served that I found disgusting ever, which is saying something.
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But at the same time, it's rare that I will prefer to eat organs or awful or the various stranger items you might be served.
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If I look around the world, those items seem to be what economists would call an inferior good.
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That is, in virtually all societies, when incomes go up, at some point people stop eating those things. My background is Irish.
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In Ireland in the early 20th century, it was very common to eat a lot of organs and awful.
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Today, it's hardly to be found.
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It's revived somewhat, but it's part of a regular diet. It's dwindled.
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So, are awful and organs actually just inferior goods?
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And when people earn higher incomes, they don't want it anymore, and they're worse, or are they parts of the Chinese culinary picture as good as anything else, and they will persist even with rising income?
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I think it's complicated.
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So in in sort of peasant farming societies, you have the kind of nose-to-tail eating.
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You kill the pig and you eat every part of it for economic reasons as much as anything.
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But also in China, the thing that really sets it apart is this um you know preoccupation with the delights of gastronomy and the pursuit of the exotic.
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in particular um the appreciation of texture and a lot of awful foods have very interesting textures like these fire exploded kidney flowers.
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They have that kind of slightly um brisk crispness with tenderness of you know a kidney that has been cut in this beautiful ornate sort of crisscross pattern and then stir fried very fast.
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It's a textural pleasure.
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And there are other things like in Sichuan, people love eating goose intestines, which any westerner would throw away.
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If you're western person, it's pointless. They're tasteless.
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Why would you eat a goose intestine?
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But for from a Chinese textural point of view, they're slippery, crisp, snappy.
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They have a delightful kolan or mouth feel.
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Um and the other thing is that um some bits of what westerners would consider to be old, awful, and rubbish have a very different sort of um it's a very difficult concept in China.
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For example, a duck's tongue, right?
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From a western point of view, it's a small fiddly thing that's all bone and cartilage and like what's the point?
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As my father would say, it has a high grapple factor for very little reward. Yeah.
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But in China, one of the ways of looking at this is that um you know, you've got a whole duck.
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The meat is very common place.
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Each duck has one tongue.
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It has very particular textures.
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It's, you know, if you've got the duck tongue, you've got the prize. You've got the best bit.
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You know, the small precious morsel.
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And in the past, you know, before refrigeration, if you could afford to have a whole plate full of duck tongues, the number of ducks it represented or a plate full of boned goose feet, you know, a goose was a huge luxury, but if you have 12 goose feet from six geese on your plate, you have got the command of, you know, all these ingredients.
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So I think that there's the sort of um you know the the appreciation of these these delicacies exists not only the sort of farm poor farmers but at the highest tables as well.
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So let's say I want to learn how to enjoy C cucumber which believe it or not I am not currently able to do but I'm not against the idea.
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I would like to learn this.
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Uh what's your actual advice for me other than try it. I've tried it. I still don't enjoy it. I don't hate it. What do I do next?
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What you have to do is firstly go to a good place so you you feel good.
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You know it's a nice surroundings and then you have to put it into your mouth and set aside all your mental prejudices and just try to experience it in a sensory way. Try to feel it.
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Try to feel that slightly slithery gelatinous quality that little crispness in the bite.
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It's like what I what I like to think of as sort of edible oxymoron.
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sort of edible oxymoron. you know this kind of softness and crispness which Chinese love these kind of contradictions sensory contradictions and what you have to do is just try to experience it and think about it and also think you know in China where
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people really understand gastronomy they really appreciate these things and also think to yourself if I can get my head around this if I can start appreciating these textural foods the pleasures of texture then a door will open onto this other you know whole aspect effect of
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Chinese gastronomy which is exciting you know it it'll broaden you know broaden your pleasure in Chinese food now let me ask you about cookbooks you've written a memoir which is one of my favorite books but mostly you've written cookbooks you have a cookbook on Sichuan food hunan
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food an all-purpose Chinese cookbook the new Shanghai region book what strikes me about those cookbooks is how conceptually you frame everything you present so coming at it as a social scientist to me what you write makes perfect sense in a way that Mark Miller's cookbooks do, but a lot of cookbooks don't. They seem too
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They seem too particularistic to me.
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Now, if you were to tell us cookbooks in China, written by Chinese in Chinese, what are they like compared to Western cookbooks?
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I mean, at a conceptual level, at an organizational level, what's the main difference?
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I think there's less of a practice of using a cookbook to explore a region or there has been until recently.
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So this thing of weaving together stories and cultural information with recipes, it's beginning to happen last few years, particularly since the bite of China, this smash hit food TV series which has sort of captured people's imaginations and led to a kind of boom in food publishing.
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But um until recently, Chinese cookbooks were more functional um I think less rigorous in recipe testing.
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So kind of difficult to follow if you didn't already have some idea about what you were trying to do.
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about what you were trying to do. and sort of advice like saying a suitable amount of this seasoning you know um but um yeah I think those are the main differences okay now let's switch to Sichuan province which is one of my two
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favorites along with Eunan province why is it that so much of the good Chinese food that comes to the west to Baru in London which you have worked for for this restaurant here so many of these successes in exporting Chinese food are Sichuan successes is why is that? What is it about that cuisine? Um
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What is it about that cuisine?
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Um well firstly it's thrillingly exciting and dramatic.
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You know all that red color festive exciting flavors but I think more importantly because Sichuan food beyond the spicy stereotype is about the artful mixing of flavors.
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So it's about fu complex layered flavors.
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So in Sichuan, you know, Sichuan people would sum up the cuisine as saying, which means each dish has its own style.
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A 100 dishes has 100 different flavors.
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So the kind of heart and soul of Sichuan cooking lies in flavor combinations.
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So for example, this is an example of a mala dish, numbing and hot, dried chilies and Sichuan pepper.
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Um, you can take that flavor combination and that's the essence of the dish.
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So it doesn't really matter if the ingredient is as it is here chicken or frog or fish.
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You're sort of preserving the the the spirit of that dish.
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And I think that and also because Sichuan cooking is so much about flavor.
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If you have a few base seasonings like the Sichuan chili bean paste, doan jang, chili, sichuan pepper, um you can take them abroad and you can make a very effective and pretty authentic version of Sichuan food with your sort of basic cannon of seasonings.
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And some cuisines are more difficult like that, you know, if you have very specific local ingredients, you know, and also because, you know, Sichuan with the bold and exciting flavors, I think that you can you can do a reasonable approximation of Sichuan cooking without the most consumate cooking skills and it still be fun and exciting.
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And something like Cantonese, for example, is more difficult to do.
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Well, now I'd like to for have you teach us all a lesson about Sichuan peppercorns.
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Before I came here, I brought from my home uh my inferior Virginia suburban peppercorns bought at a local Chinese market.
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And you brought from Sichuan Province uh your own version of Sichuan peppercorns. The good stuff. The good stuff.
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And if you could try the two for us, and you're all welcomed at the table to try along.
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Well, I would like Can you pass that around and everyone have a sniff of These are the inferior what you call inferior peppercorns and then keep the lid on between and take the lid off and put your nose in that box and have a good sniff and don't taste it until instructed. Yes, yours are better.
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Well, the first thing is as soon as you open that pot, you get this overwhelming gorgeous slightly citrusy fragrance, which is very distinctive, right?
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Um, so that tells you it's very fresh and lovely citran pepper.
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Then if you take one of the the ones I brought and put it in your mouth and what I suggest is chew it very juicily at the front of your mouth about three times and then take it out because it's delayed reaction. Amazing. Yeah. Yes.
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So your tongue is beginning to sing and dance and tingle. Yeah. Yeah.
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So that's that is what they call in Chinese ma um it means um sort of tingling sensation.
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The same word for pins and needles and anesthesia.
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So if the citronan pepper is not that great, you don't get the tingle. So you get some aroma.
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But this is simply overwhelming.
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And that's why I said just put one in your mouth and take it out after a few seconds because if you put a handful in and you keep chewing it, it will be overwhelming.
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Now, in terms of the history of my Sichuan peppercorns in the history of yours, these at least pretend they're from China, correct?
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Is it that they're from the wrong place or they've been sitting around too long or you know the best source?
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What's the underlying difference between behind the difference?
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Well, in Sichuan, they would say that the best Sichuan pepper comes from particular region, Hanuen, in the in the west of Sichuan.
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So there's a real as you know I said a concern with provenence of things.
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Um also so I think there are different varieties which will be more fruity and less fruity.
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Um and the other thing is and I don't know I think most of the Sichuan pepper that is exported has been exported and handled by Cantonese people and in parts of China apart from Sichuan Sichuan pepper is used differently.
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So it's used in spice combinations.
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It's used to take away the fishiness of meat and poultry ingredients.
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That's a Chinese culinary concept, but it's not used for this tingling ma sensation.
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So unless you're Sichuan, you're not going to be seeking out the really zingy Sichuan pepper.
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I think that's the problem really that you you would need Sichuan exporters taking command and making sure we all get the tinky Sichuan pepper.
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Now, let me ask you a deep philosophical question here.
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Just for some background, someone once asked you, what are your favorite parts of Chinese food?
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And you gave a long answer too long for me to repeat and a lot of it I can't pronounce anyway but you listed seven or seven seven or eight different regions that all seem quite different and these Sichuan peppercorns and mala is not in general done in Shanghai as you well know.
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What is the underlying unity that makes all of these Chinese food?
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Because you instinctively believe in that concept but what what is that unity given the fantastic diversity?
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Well, um, there are some things you can pull out.
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The use of chopsticks and its implications for the form of food, which is that you have food that's generally cut into small pieces or it's tender enough to pull apart with chopsticks.
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And that's one thing that Western observers through the centuries have remarked on about Chinese food is having these I mean, for the early Western observers, it was rather disturbing.
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So, you'd have a dish with everything cut and you didn't know what it was.
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You know, maybe it was something really outlandish.
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So the art of cutting and the cutting of food into small pieces.
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Um the eating of um shared dishes with a staple grain.
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Rice in the south, wheat in the north.
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That's the kind of structure of a meal.
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You can also pull out um some very important seasonings.
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Soy sauce and um other fermented soy pastes, you know.
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um the use of vinegar and soy sauce in combination, ginger, scallion and garlic in various combinations.
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So you can look at seasonings also cooking methods and I know stir frying is the most famous relatively recent historically um but steaming also is a really important core Chinese cooking method.
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Um, so yeah, looking a combination of techniques, but I think you always have to um, you know, when you talk about Chinese cuisine, you always have to take it with a pinch of salt and remember, as I always do, that Chinese people talk about something called shitan, western food, and make outrageous generalizations about it too.
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And, you know, of course, from a Chinese point of view, it makes sense to talk about Western food as being different from Chinese, but from a Western point of view, you see all the distinctions.
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So in one of your books, you tell a story of taking some number of very renowned Sichuan chefs and you bring them in the United States to a restaurant called French Laundry, one of the best and most famous American restaurants cooking at a very high level.
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How did they react to that?
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Well, total culture shock.
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You see, I was delighted. I was so excited.
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So I'd taken these wonderful chefs, all of them extremely accomplished practitioners of Sichuan cuisine.
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And here I was going to, you know, I got a table at the best restaurant held to be the best restaurant in North America for some of the finest the West had to offer.
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And um there were all kinds of things that they found very difficult.
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The first was that we started eating.
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Our reservation was at 9:30.
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Chinese people like to eat at 6:00 or 6:30.
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So they were already in a bit of a bad mood by the time we started, as I would be.
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Then it was a 4-hour tasting menu.
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Chinese meals, even very good ones, tend to be rather fast by by this standard.
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Um, so for them it was a long tedious late night thing to sit and have dish after dish of complicated food.
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They weren't used to eating dairy products, so anything creamy, not particularly nice.
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Um, they were really disturbed and um, one of them actually refused to eat the most beautiful lamb because it was a little pink and bloody in the middle.
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And of course in China, traditionally only barbarians eat raw meat and you just don't eat raw meat.
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They thought um the olives tasted like Chinese medicine.
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Um and they also um found that you know in China um a meal should always leave you feeling very sort of refreshed and relaxed.
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And that's why you finish in many regions with a light refreshing palette cleansing soup or with fresh fruit.
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And at the French Laundry, we ended like at many classic western tasting menus with a whole sequence of very heavy sweet dishes, which was not very comfortable for them.
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Also known as dessert as dessert.
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But the most interesting thing was you bore one of the chefs who's now very famous, one of the best chefs I've ever met in China, the most accomplished.
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Um he he he was sitting in front of this beautiful plate of food and he said, "Fuchia, this is all very interesting, but I really cannot say whether it's good or bad.
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Now, let's go from the sublime to the ridiculous.
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I'm not sure how much time you've spent in the United States.
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Probably a lot of it is in places like New York, Los Angeles, where you can find quite good, but not perfect Chinese food.
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This place here, Panda Gourmet, is very good.
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Twothirds of the items on the table are excellent.
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The others are all at least good.
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The cold noodles, my favorite.
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But say you're in middle America somewhere, and there's a restaurant that calls itself Chinese, but it's cooking only for Americans.
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most or all of what's there would be unrecognizable to actual Chinese people.
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And Ava has told me a story along these lines.
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And you're to go into that restaurant and try to get the best meal possible. What do you do? What should we do? We're stuck. You're not in New York. Do you speak Chinese? No.
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Then you are a bit stuck.
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I mean, you you need to communicate that you do not want to eat um General So's chicken and um beef with broccoli and those dishes that you really want to eat the food that they're going to have for dinner tonight themselves.
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Um so, but you should bear in mind that for example in China when I take people eating in China, I order in fluent Mandarin, you know, well-informed ordering of a meal and I'm often told, "Oh, no, no, no, no. You mustn't order that.
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your guests won't eat it and I have to really insist quite forcefully that yes we do want to eat the the tripe or whatever it is.
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So you do face this barrier and it's not that people that they don't want to give you things.
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You're not they're trying to keep them, but it's just that they're worried that you might not like them.
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And many Chinese waiters and restaurant that I know in London have had the experience of Westerners ordering food and then complaining that there are bones in it or that it's fatty meat.
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All of which are good things in China.
28:55
And then complaining and making a scene.
28:57
And so I think people just it's easier.
28:59
They often have language issues.
29:01
So they want to give you something they know you'll like.
29:05
Now tips for shopping for Chinese ingredients in the West.
29:08
Let's say this is either London or the United States.
29:13
So if I ask myself what are the core ingredients I would pick? I'd pick four things.
29:17
Ginger in storeable form, a Sichuan sauce, green onions, and Sichuan peppercorns.
29:26
Just my personal preference, but th those are my four.
29:30
You're allowed four things as advice, not for yourself because you're cooking at a much higher level, but to recommend to people such as ourselves for cooking, eating, enjoying Chinese food.
29:38
What are your four or five picks that you can get in the West?
29:42
Um, I would get Chinese brown rice vinegar, probably ging jang vinegar, a really good soy sauce, which means traditionally fermented.
29:49
Um, and that would be a light soy sauce.
29:51
So, if it's a question of light or dark, um I would get um a toasted sesame oil, pure toasted sesame oil.
29:58
And I would get some um Sichuan fermented chili and fava bean paste, dough bananj. Yes.
30:04
And um I'm assuming that ginger, garlic, and scallions they would have anyway.
30:09
I was assuming soy sauce one had anyway.
30:11
But yeah, those would be our two list. Yeah.
30:14
And maybe Sichuan pepper as well. Yeah.
30:17
And with those items and a number of others, one can cook most of what's in your cookbooks, correct? Yeah.
30:20
You just need to make one trip to Chinatown, stock up on a few basics, and then you're really away.
30:26
Now, in all of the conversations with Tyler, in the middle, we have a section known as underrated versus overrated.
30:31
So, I name something, and you tell me whether you think it's underrated or overrated, and you're free to pass in any case if you so feel like it. Bee larvae to eat. Underrated. Why?
30:46
Um because they are um delicate and delicious.
30:50
They have a lovely crisp, light texture and a a sort of very um subtle savory flavor and also it's just a lovely sort of idea eating insects eating.
31:01
It's almost like fairy tale food.
31:03
Can you farm it yourself or not so easily? I haven't tried. Haven't tried milk. Underrated or overrated? Overrated.
31:10
That's the one thing I don't like.
31:12
I love cheese and butter, but I don't don't ever drink milk.
31:15
You just don't think it tastes good.
31:16
I haven't tasted it for years.
31:21
This is I know there's a long list here, but the most underrated Chinese regional cuisine if you had to pick, not the best, the most underrated, the cuisine of the region that I've written about, Jang Nan, which is like the you can argue it's the classical Chinese cuisine, but people in the west really don't know anything about it and tell us just a little more how it's not only Shanghai.
31:43
Expand on that just a bit. Yeah.
31:45
Well, Shanghai is a kind of modern art upstart city, but this region has been prosperous and culturally vitally important for hundreds and hundreds of years.
31:53
So, you've got great cultural centers like Hjo, Shiaoing, um which uh you know, which have been written about by poets, emperors fell in love with them over the centuries.
32:03
Um, so it's um it's been, you know, a center of Chinese culture and also gastronomic culture and it just has um incredible thoughtful cooking, writing about food, beautiful ingredients, and that's both fresh ingredients and sort of cured things like shaing wine, ginua ham, one of the great hams of the world.
32:25
Here's a question one of my readers wrote into me.
32:30
He or she asked, "What about the luxury ingredients in Chinese cuisine?"
32:35
Meaning sharks fin, bird's nest, cordicps. It's a kind of fungus.
32:38
Uh the person's view was they're all overrated that when you try them, at least with the western pallet, they don't seem that amazing.
32:47
I've had that reaction to sharks fin myself.
32:49
Maybe I've never had it at the right place.
32:51
But what I've enjoyed most in Chinese food has never been the luxury ingredients.
32:55
It's been say home cooking in Sichuan province or Yunan or maybe Shanghai.
32:58
The luxury ingredients in Chinese cuisine underrated or overrated? Overrated.
33:03
So you agree with that reader? Yes.
33:06
I mean I think I think from a western point of view, of course they're overrated because something like Shanksin is tasteless anyway.
33:12
So you have to you have to appreciate texture.
33:15
You also have to appreciate the history and cultural context to enjoy these things.
33:20
Um but as the great 18th century gourmet and food writer Yme wrote um there are many common foods which if cooked properly like tofu are far more satisfying than a really expensive bowl of cuc sea cucumber.
33:34
So yeah the singer Leonard Cohen underrated or overrated? Underrated. Tell us.
33:40
Oh he's my favorite singer. Okay.
33:43
Extraordinary master of songwriting.
33:45
What's your favorite Tom Ler song?
33:49
Um, the mask is in tango. Okay.
33:49
We were talking about books before the session started and what you'd read recently and you mentioned a book by Ben Judah called This is London, which you at least implied was underrated.
34:01
What's special about that book?
34:03
Um, well, it's a sort of um contemporary version of George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris in London.
34:11
So this young British journalist decided to look at the lives of immigrants, recent immigrants to London.
34:18
And he did things like sleeping rough with um Romanian vagrants at Hide Park Corner.
34:22
He pretended to be an I think Eastern European builder and you know shared beds in doss houses with people working there.
34:30
He um talked to extremely rich Arabs who come to London for the summer and he just produces this vivid, unflinching um sometimes moving, sometimes shocking portrait of the city that you know I live in and that many Londoners kind of don't really know exists.
34:49
So, it's just an absolutely shatteringly interesting read.
34:54
Here's a question one of your readers wrote to me by email.
34:57
Maybe it's a bit intangible, but I've had the same wonder given how much you love China, love Chinese food, work on projects that require your immersion in the food culture of China, just being away from China for as long as you sometimes are.
35:13
How do you manage that intellectually, emotionally, otherwise, that sense of otherness?
35:18
I mean, do you have that antsiness when you're in London or Topeka, Kansas, and it's like, my goodness, I need to be in China now. Or how is that?
35:26
Well, I would say that um the two sides of my life are much cloely related.
35:32
So, I do go to China very frequently now.
35:34
I cook a lot of Chinese at home.
35:36
My Chinese friends sometimes say that my London home is more Chinese than theirs because it's so full of things from China.
35:41
Um and also, you know, when I first came back from studying in China, um I never heard Mandarin in Britain.
35:48
It was too expensive to call friends in China.
35:50
This was just before email.
35:52
Now I'm constantly chatting with chefs on social media.
35:57
I can ask them questions about a dish that I'm making.
35:59
Um, my Chinese friends sometimes come here.
36:02
Chinatown in London and Chinatowns generally have more and more Chinese food and Chinese restaurants.
36:08
So I would say there's there's much greater sort of integration of China in the west and my Chinese personal Chinese life in my western Chinese life which I also like very much.
36:18
Now, you've written favorably about the 18th century Chinese novel Dream of the Red Chamber.
36:24
Most Americans haven't read that.
36:26
Tell us why it's important.
36:26
Um because it's like a whole world um of sort of into Chinese culture of theQing dynasty.
36:37
It's the story of two grand families and their rising and falling fortunes over a number of years.
36:42
And it's got um amazing characters.
36:44
It's like a sort of soap opera of Chinese characters.
36:49
Um, you will learn about Chinese rituals, about Chinese food, about um cultural preoccupations.
36:56
So, and it's just totally captivating.
36:59
I mean, it's about it's um the English translation I read it in the Penguin version is about is five volumes. It's about this big.
37:05
And it just took over my life for five months because I just wanted to see what happened to these people.
37:10
The plot is hard to follow. There's many characters.
37:14
The names are not familiar to a western audience.
37:16
What's the way to make it easy enough to read it so that one actually can read it?
37:20
Um, firstly read the penguin translation which is the title the story of the stone by David Hawings and John Mintton which is absolutely inspired and lively and it just I mean it really does bring it to life.
37:31
it really does bring it to life. um you do need a little bit of patience with the Chinese names, but in this book he does actually tr both both men because they did some volumes each they translate some of the names like there's a serving girl who is called aroma so that's the translation whereas some of
37:50
them are known like Linda by the Chinese name which is a bit harder to to remember but it's just I think if you you might find it heavy going at first if you're not really into China but once you you've got into it I think It's so um human and moving and gripping and just culturally fascinating that you'll want to finish it. So, as you probably
38:10
So, as you probably know, in Japan, there are some of the finest French and Italian restaurants in the world, and Mark could attest to that.
38:18
What's the best Western cuisine you can find inside of China?
38:20
I'm not the best person to ask because I'm always eating Chinese food in China. Really?
38:26
How about the best other Asian cuisine inside of China?
38:29
Do you have any sense of that? Um, no, not really.
38:30
I mean, I'm really I really really do quite seriously try mainly to eat local. Yeah. When I'm in China.
38:38
So, just to go back to where we started before we moved to the questions.
38:43
This idea of the food tour, you were given 12 days to organize the food tour to begin with, but now let's say a person has three weeks or four weeks and they want to do even more in China.
38:55
They they get to learn some basics.
38:57
uh what's the further advice you would give them for how to make this you know experience of a lifetime?
39:02
How do you do a food tour in China when you have a little more time and resources?
39:07
Um the first thing I would say is go to a market, see what the produ what produce people are using.
39:11
Um and the the markets are getting harder to find in the big cities, but seek one out and the chances are you'll see not only um the sort of very interesting produce, but you'll also find snack stalls around the market, which will also be interesting.
39:26
Um, another piece of advice is to, you know, go to very popular, flourishing restaurants with lots of people in them, obviously, and look at what other people are eating because if you, you know, Chinese menus are often not translated, even if they are translated, the translation is often very poor.
39:41
Um, and some men, some menus now have pictures, but I think it's a really good thing to go and look at what other people are eating and then ask.
39:50
And Chinese people are generally very understanding, you know, and will usually be quite welcoming about this sort of thing.
39:55
And try to order a variety of dishes.
39:57
So, um, one great mistake you can make is just order, you know, all dishes which are deep fried or red brazed.
40:06
You always want to have some lighter dishes that might seem less exciting like simple stir-fried vegetables or a refreshing broth, but that's part of the whole experience of the meal.
40:19
We now move to the question and answer segment of this meal.
40:21
And thank you very much for all of those points.
40:24
Ezra, would you care to start? I'd love to start.
40:27
What is the cuisine outside of Asia that in its architecture and its structure is most similar to Chinese cuisine? Outside Asia. Outside Asia.
40:36
Well, I would say that if you're talking about farmhouse cooking and the cooking actually particularly of this region, I see a lot of affinities with Italian cooking.
40:46
So for example, one of the principles of the cooking of the Jangnan region, unity of fresh and salted, the use of small amounts of sort of cured pork and intensely flavored ingredients to bring life to vegetables and and more more gently flavored ingredients.
41:03
Um so and also with Italian cooking, you get some very interesting pastas, you know, with with Chinese as well.
41:10
So, um, that's one, but I mean, not I wouldn't say that Italian cooking would is anything like a match for Chinese in the complexity and diversity.
41:18
I mean, Italy is a tiny country comp by comparison, but there are some parallels that I see there.
41:25
I want to ask a question.
41:25
there. I want to ask a question. I have your books and yet I find I'm kind of afraid to cook for them because I, you know, I grew up, my mom's a caterer and and um I grew up cooking a lot of really good American and French and so forth food, but when you skip cuisines that
41:42
far, you feel like you go in and even though you're doing everything it says on the recipe, you're not going to you realize how much little skill is is um required just to like make a recipe come out right is stuff that you don't even know you're doing um because you know how it should be. You know how this
41:58
You know how this thing works.
41:59
And so what do people who are starting out with a completely new cuisine and for both Chinese and America, you know, Chinese and Western cooks going each way? How do you bridge that?
42:11
Like what's the Well, firstly, I totally understand where you're coming from and I can remember before I went to China cooking from a Chinese cookbook and sort of already a keen cook in other traditions, but thinking I just don't know the grammar of this cuisine.
42:22
I'm just following step by step and I don't know what it means or where it's going. So I do understand that.
42:27
Um I think um of course it helps to have tasted some of the food, you know, so try to recreate recipes that you have maybe tasted as a starting point books by the way.
42:37
I just I I always worry that I'm not doing it right in some way, you know.
42:42
Um well I suppose that my the book before this one every grain of rice was every grain of rice was specifically designed to address this which is to introduce sort of basic techniques and concepts and fairly straightforward recipes which can be the building blocks for a sort of understanding of what's going on in Chinese cooking.
42:59
So I would start with the basics trying to understand like you know simple stir fries the art of mixing flavors for a cold dish a little bit of cutting.
43:08
So just take it step by step and also I think also you just have to you have to make one leap which in the in terms of Chinese cooking we've already discussed you have to go with a list of things preferably in Chinese to go to a Chinese supermarket stock up on a few basics and then you know you're not going to have to do that every time you make a recipe you know I had everything on your list except the fava bean paste which I won there.
43:36
Mark Mark Miller and good friend of yours long time.
43:39
Um, in your books you use a lot of the language that gets reinterpreted into texture or flavor.
43:48
And I've been studying basically how we actually learn perceptional taste.
43:51
Part of it is by memory of tasting something on the street.
43:55
And part of it is the structure of how we approach perception and how we frame it.
43:59
And don't you think that your the example of your chef who couldn't taste the food at the French Laundry, what he didn't have was basically the framing of how to approach that perception.
44:10
So my question is one is within Chinese perceptional framing.
44:17
Why can't they move over to for instance, you know, a meal at French Laundry?
44:21
And why can't when they say nature just appreciate like a roast squab or roast chicken with nothing done, none of the fishiness or the wildness taken out, but just accepted as natural and then roasted.
44:35
Well, I mean, I suppose that I I don't think that their experience at the French Laundry is any different from a western.
44:42
You could get someone a very accomplished western eater who's eaten at many fine restaurants but who will not get sea cucumber the texture of sea cucumber. It's totally alien.
44:51
But I only eat sea cucumber in Spain with actually know they actually do a better job because they don't have that slimy part and they've actually perceptively you know changed it.
45:02
They're called espadrills in the south of Spain and they take cucumber. Oh, I like those.
45:10
See, so it's a cultural framing again that one culture doesn't accept and it's not the ingredient, but basically how we use our senses and frame that experience.
45:20
One part is food that's accepted to the body.
45:22
The other part these things are very strange.
45:24
I have no reference and I really don't like it. Right.
45:27
But but I don't think there's anything remarkable about this.
45:29
anything remarkable about this. No, no, it's still, but the Chinese have this problem with accepting like you said you cooked a meal of western food for your Chinese friends in in your memoir and they said so boring and yet I think roast chicken or roast squab just by itself you know is perfect roast game
45:45
roast beef yeah but from a Chinese point of view it is very boring and like you know but there but there are subtleties within age beef for instance they're not getting a really good well no I think that you know ch more cosmopolitan Chinese eaters who are now traveling are getting very interested in steak actually and aged beef. Um but I think
46:02
Um but I think that um I'll give you a great example like I spent most of my time in Japan and we have a really developed rice culture in Japan.
46:10
The Japanese person will pick up a bowl they'll smell it.
46:14
It's not fresh meaning it's more than mil more than a month ago.
46:16
They can tell you where it's from.
46:18
You know the chefs will talk about their mixtures of rice and sushi.
46:21
And in China I've never myself personally had seen that sort of connoisseurship about rice.
46:26
Oh, well I have about chilies for example, chefs I know in Sichuan who can go on for hours about the subtle distinctions of chilies.
46:33
But I think you know what you're saying that lots of Chinese people and it's absolutely hilarious.
46:37
I've lost count of the number of Chinese friends who said that which means western food is very simple and very monotonous and um but the point is I can understand why a roast chicken is a beautiful thing.
46:49
You know, say you have a perfect roast chicken, but a roast chicken is even better if you follow it with a light refreshing broth and a stir- fried green and then you have the contrast of the sort of roasty skin which is quite rich and heavy and the flesh and then this delicate stir-fried vegetable and a refreshing soup.
47:10
And so Chinese food, it's about the whole experience.
47:13
And that's why you have a whole variety of flavors even in a relatively simple meal.
47:18
And it stimulates the pallet and it also leaves you feeling very shu.
47:21
You know, Chinese people really understand the comfort of eating.
47:24
You don't go out and finish with seven courses of sugar and butter and cream like that because, you know, you might have a great sensory experience, but you know, it's not going to leave you feeling sleeping very well that night. Hi.
47:40
Um, I'm Eva from China, Shandong Province. Yeah.
47:43
And I know that you are a fluent Chinese speaker.
47:46
So my first question for you, I want to ask you a question in Chinese. Yeah.
48:07
It's just that um you know people often talk about in terms of eight great cuisines um in Chinese cuisines, one of which is the cuisine of Shandong province known as Lu Thai.
48:15
And so Ev is just asking me you know which dish do I consider most representative of of Lu Thai of Shandong cooking.
48:21
Um well one very representative dishom which I adore is shaen which is um cucumber.
48:34
Are you are you just trolling Mark and Tyler? Cuz that would be good.
48:36
Or she is representing a sea cucumber. Big sea cucumber. No.
48:42
So it's sea cucumber braised in a sort of dark sauce with jingong, the kind of Chinese leak, which is like a very um very big and very mild kind of leak scallion vegetable.
48:55
And and that's a great classic.
48:57
And it in in terms of Shandon cooking, it's sort of rather labor intensive to prepare using a very expensive dried ingredient sort of banquet.
49:06
Shandon cooking luai is associated with sort of stately banquet cooking.
49:10
Um but you do have this gorgeous flavor, the fragrance of the the leak, onion, and then the lovely slippery crisp texture of the sea cucumber.
49:20
So you've emphasized uh in this discussion the balance of the meals and the way that often gets overlooked.
49:27
The way that American eaters will have a Chinese meal and think, "Oh, the bok choy is dull.
49:31
I'm going to have more of the 700 chili chicken."
49:33
What are the other pieces of Chinese cuisine that Americans underrate their importance and the experience of the meal? Soup.
49:42
Like almost every Chinese meal includes soup.
49:49
And and even if you like if you go out to a very casual restaurant on your own and have fried noodles or fried rice, like a one dish meal, almost always it will be served with a bowl full of broth, maybe with just a couple of scallions or something.
50:02
And the idea is because, you know, if you have something fried, it's a bit drying and it's very comfortable to sort of, you know, moisten the throat and refresh you with a soup.
50:13
And I think that um you know the way westerners order Chinese food often they wouldn't have soup.
50:18
Almost every Chinese meal whether at home or in a restaurant you have soup.
50:22
We don't have a soup on the table here because there wasn't room for it but I did order it.
50:27
An American eating problem. Yeah.
50:27
And and also I think with Chinese soups that you know the classic Chinese restaurant soups for Westerners are those like thick hot and sour soup or sweet corn and crab meat.
50:38
And that's really not a tongue.
50:41
That's one word for a brothlike soup.
50:43
That's a gung, which is a more substantial kind of stew soup.
50:45
I'm talking about these broths, which again might be very very simple like um lovely um sort of sour, umami, pickled vegetable and tofu.
50:55
Just that and it's like a refreshing drink.
50:58
Do you think that China will after it sort of goes through its flirting with this modernization and accepting western brands whether it's Starbucks or other come out with a brand new authentic modern Chinese food and the young chefs are going that way in China?
51:13
Well, I would say you can get very excellent, you know, contemporary Chinese food rooted in traditional techniques.
51:20
Um, but the sad thing is that um, you know, chefing has become rather fashionable in the west.
51:28
you know, young people want to do it.
51:29
It's kind of glamorous and exciting.
51:31
That's not the case in China.
51:33
It's still a low status profession, although people love food.
51:35
So, parents don't really want their children to become chefs.
51:38
I know outstanding chefs in China who if they were in the west would have cues of people from all over the world wanting to come and do stages in their kitchen and they don't have apprentices.
51:49
So I always hear this complaint, young people in China, they're not willing to chu eat bitterness to really apply themselves diligently to the craft of cookery.
51:58
So um I think there is a problem this sort of disjunct between you know people who obsessed with eating but not yet the idea that you know a young person might want to take over an artisal soy sauce factory.
52:15
factory. I think it may be coming because people you know there's a some people have this kind of you know idea of going back to a simpler life back to back to nature there is a kind of revival of interest in Chinese cuisine as culture at Neil's Yard when I I mean when I went to London when I was at a
52:33
student in the 70s it was very hard to find a farmhouse regional British cheese and then Neil's Yard basically started the revolution again that you know that that that sparked that in America we have this we now have over 10,000 beers made in the United States with 4,200 micro breweries and I grew up with probably 30 or 40. Yeah, that's a really
52:50
Yeah, that's a really good idea. Really good thing.
52:52
And actually one one of the inspirations for my most recent book was the Dragon Well mana restaurant in Hjo which is an exceptional place where the the owner Daen Jun otherwise known as Adai is trying to sort of nourish the traditions of the region by supporting food artisans, peasant producers, um trying to give people an honest living for producing what urbanites now consider to be premium what we think of as organic products.
53:21
And what I fervently hope is that more Chinese people will see what he's doing as truly inspirational as a sort of, you know, yeah, just a sort of um wonderful example of how to nourish Chinese traditional culture, make it economically viable and kind of make it contemporary relevant, too.
53:37
Does he teach classes for Westerners? No. No.
53:42
Because that would be good. No, no.
53:44
I just think I was just in in Shanghai two weeks ago and and I go into K1 and what do I see?
53:48
It's like Chinese women taking classes on how to make birthday cakes for for their kids.
53:55
And then I see the kids school which is all about western cooking.
53:57
And I'm thinking I looked at the whole directory for the next three months.
54:00
There wasn't one dish in Chinese that I mean one Chinese cooking class being taught there.
54:05
Also in Hjo which you know has been a center of gastronomy for 800 years.
54:10
800 years ago they had a restaurant scene with regional restaurants, Buddhist vegetarian restaurants, restaurants specializing in iced dishes.
54:16
You know see cucumber restaurants.
54:21
So in Hjo a few years ago they opened the Hjo Cuisine Museum.
54:24
A single city has a huge museum with fantastic reconstructions like sushi models of all the classic dishes over 800 years literally.
54:35
Um but they also have a teaching element.
54:37
They have a restaurant attached.
54:39
They have activities and classes.
54:41
So that's another example of sort of big local investment in sort of trying to promote local food culture to a new generation.
54:50
Um Chinese desserts to a westerner they seem kind of meh.
54:54
Um and you know is that I can come up with like multiple theories of that.
55:02
Like one is Chinese people just don't like dessert that much.
55:04
Um which you've actually kind of suggested.
55:06
one is that um you know pastry cooking is fundamentally a wheat activity.
55:12
If you're in a in the rice half, you don't get as much of it.
55:16
But um but also, you know, the US, if you look at like the history of dessert, right, as like a as a major thing, it actually starts in the US because we're closest to the sugar and then that sort of spreads.
55:26
So as sugar spreads into China, um does dessert get better or is it that they don't like what we what we like?
55:33
And I'm I'm missing the magic of Chinese dessert.
55:38
Well, the the first thing to point out is that Chinese don't have dessert as a course, right?
55:42
So you finish with fruit usually.
55:44
Um so sweet dishes tend to be either sort of incidental snacks between meals or you know something you have with tea or you might have um a mingling of sweet and savory dishes like you can have some sweet dishes with quite a lot of sugar in them.
55:58
There are also some regions where they have a lot of sweet foods.
56:02
Sujo and Wooi in the Jangan region for example or the Chowojo region of the Cantonese south.
56:06
Um there are a whole range of wonderful sweet pastries.
56:09
Um you know rice based in the south, wheat based in the north.
56:14
Um but for me um you know as a great advocate of Chinese cooking, I do have to admit I think that that the the sort of desserts and sweet things I think is possibly one one aspect in which western cuisines might have the edge.
56:30
And I think that's because um of the the use of dairy products.
56:34
So you get the wonderful umami richness of butter.
56:37
Um the textures of cream, chocolate of course is not used traditionally in China.
56:42
So those things so if you take them out of western desserts um you're not left with very much in a way.
56:48
So in China um a lot of the desserts also they're less sweet.
56:54
People have less sweet tooth apart from a few regions.
56:56
So you have things like sweet meats based on dried beans like mung beans or sweet potatoes and they're actually very delicious but they don't hit that extreme sweet spot that westerners like for their dessert.
57:09
So could I ask a follow-up which is um you know dairy obviously I know if you're lactose intolerant as many Asians are you're drinking milk is probably never going to have and I agree with you.
57:21
I don't drink milk either and my family are kind of dairy farmers.
57:24
So, uh but um but you know all of this dairy and and western cuisine and you see I look at just even I grew up in New York City and even so if I look at the kind of range of exotic ingredients that were available even to me shopping in what was then I think the best food city in in the US.
57:43
Um and what is available now is just so much better.
57:46
Um and I think that's true all over the world.
57:49
I I still remember eating Mexican food in London in the 90s and that was that was a bad bad bad experience.
57:54
Um but now I'm to I I am to I have British friends who swear that no really now it's different. Don't believe them.
58:05
I don't quite but I I I am willing to believe it's better.
58:07
Um I have a German cookbook with a recipe for guacamole in it now.
58:11
Um but you probably shouldn't believe that recipe specifically. No, no, no.
58:15
I I've never tried the recipe.
58:15
I am only but so as as more Chinese people come to the west on vacation to study etc.
58:23
Uh I met a a grad student in Wisconsin of all places who was like I love Chinese grad students. I love cheese.
58:29
I can't I can't I don't know what I'm going to do when I go home.
58:31
And I was kind of shocked because he's the only Chinese person I've ever heard say this.
58:35
But as those as does dairy have a future in China?
58:38
Is there is there going to be more of a spread for Absolutely.
58:41
And I think lots of um lots of Chinese parents now feed their children milk because they think it'll make them grow big and strong.
58:47
I mean, you know, all this thing about baby milk being imported in in large quantities and so on.
58:51
So, um yes, milk specifically is a kind of nourishing thing for children.
58:56
Um and cheese is still a bit of a niche thing like you can buy it in supermarkets in cosmopolitan cities like Shanghai.
59:03
But yeah, I mean you know Chinese Chinese China has a very dynamic open food culture and people are always into the next next best thing and chocolate also you know when I was a student in China in the 1990s I crave chocolate and the Chinese chocolate was awful stuff you know it wasn't chocolate at all and now you can get chocolate of some kind all over China so I think you know anything can happen Okay. Food. Okay.
59:41
So, you know, in China and everywhere, people often talk about food culture and wine culture.
59:45
So, in China, what's the relationship between?
59:47
So, what was the last bit? Yeah. Chinese culture.
59:53
So food culture and Chinese culture.
59:55
I just think you know food is and has always been really at the heart of Chinese culture and there are two very important reasons for this and one is the kind of ritual importance.
1:00:08
So food is not just and hasn't always been just a social thing.
1:00:13
The the sort of cement that bi binds families and friends together, but food was the means by which you communicated with your ancestors and gods and many of the rituals of state were to do with agriculture and with food.
1:00:22
Um so it's been a sort of serious business.
1:00:25
Um also because food has since the beginning of Chinese history been understood as the absolute foundation of good health.
1:00:35
There's no difference between food and medicine in China.
1:00:37
they say the food and medicine come from the same source.
1:00:41
Um so every food has its tonic properties.
1:00:44
If you're unwell the first thing you do is address your diet.
1:00:48
So food is very important in that way you know and so and I think another argument that's sometimes given is that you know often um you know Chinese people haven't really been able to express themselves individually and they've often been cons political
1:01:02
constraints on freedom of expression through history and food has been a source of immense joy and fun and something kind of free of all that so it's also um I think food in China particularly it's a place where you people. It's a culture that express
1:01:17
It's a culture that express itself intellectually through food.
1:01:19
The lyrical names of dishes, the stories associated with them, you know, talking about food and gastronomy is conversation and as culture.
1:01:28
So in all these respects, it's just, you know, China is a chi food is culture in China.
1:01:36
So it's often observed sometimes a little smuggly that a lot of what goes as Chinese food in America is not recognizable to to folks in China.
1:01:43
Is there anything Americans have done with Chinese food either in the American Chinese space or in the more oat mafuku Chinese fancy Chinese fusion space that is in your view an actual genuine advance something that would be valuable or valid in China? Yeah.
1:02:03
Well, I think in recent years the growth of regional cuisines, regional restaurants like this one.
1:02:09
I mean, here we've got some kind of authentic Sichuan dishes, some dishes from Shanchshi in northern China and um so the opening up of of sort of regional cuisines and regional street food is changing perceptions.
1:02:20
You wouldn't have this in ch you would have this in China though. Yeah.
1:02:24
But what could have we done anything interesting here that should go backwards?
1:02:27
should go backwards? Like is there anything interesting in say the mafuku sort of efforts that is actually Americans contributing in some way to well I would say I mean at the level of individual dishes very interesting dishes but China has it all already you know amazing combinations you know it's
1:02:46
just China is so diverse you know apart from dairy and and some sweet things and so on it's you can you can find you know you can if you if you like hamburgers you know that's the rojamo it's a kind of the Shian hamburger and and that's one thing that they've kind of got it all already. What what I think that
1:03:03
What what I think that means no.
1:03:07
What does General says chicken taste like to a Chinese person?
1:03:09
Well, interestingly, I did a whole research thing about this, but um it's supposed to be a Hunanese dish, right?
1:03:16
Um but I was very mystified when I went to Hunan to research my Hunan cookbook to find that nobody had ever heard of it really.
1:03:24
Um, and it turned out, anyway, to cut a long story short, it was invented by a very famous Hunanese chef in Taiwan, and it went from him to New York when he opened a restaurant there near the United Nations.
1:03:34
Um, and at one point, this chef, Pong Chang, did go back to his hometown, Chiang Sha, in Hun, the capital of Hunan Province, and he opened a restaurant there, and one of the dishes he served was general s chicken.
1:03:48
And I heard from people who remembered that restaurant that the food there was too too sweet.
1:03:55
So that's a dish that in some ways, you know, it has some characteristics of Hunanese food, the swan lla, sour and hot, use of vinegar and scorched chilies, but for American tastes, there's a whole load of sugar which they don't really add to savory dishes much in Hunan.
1:04:10
When I've eaten dishes in uh Taipei, generally they earlier on that the food had in Taipei was better than mainland China because they had access to better ingredients and the it was an educated elite class that left China and brought with them their culinary traditions with them and so they had access to the recipes, the technique and so forth.
1:04:29
So, uh, does does Taipei, you think, uh, a repository of some of the more difficult dishes or of the older style because a lot of that was interrupted, it seems like in China. Yeah.
1:04:44
And also, Taipei is a little bit more concerned about providence of ingredient.
1:04:50
I would say that I think in the early days, so 1949, the defeated nationalists fled to Taiwan with, as you're saying, you know, the chefs and their food traditions.
1:04:57
And at that time, you know, the nationalists all thought they would go back and they were all missing their home provinces and they wanted to eat the classic traditional food of, you know, of the elites of these provinces.
1:05:09
And so the restaurants, I think, by all accounts, sort of in the 50s and 60s were very, very traditional and authentic.
1:05:14
But what's happened since then is that um, you know, there's been a lot of mixing up.
1:05:19
The younger generation of chefs are Taiwan born.
1:05:20
So they might work for a bit in a Hunan restaurant, then go into a Jang restaurant.
1:05:26
So they're all very mixed up.
1:05:28
So you go to a regional restaurant in Taiwan and they're either very old school and somehow not so good anymore or they tend to be a bit more fusiony in Chinese terms.
1:05:38
And also in Taiwan you have this whole Japanese influence from the colonial occupation. Yeah.
1:05:43
And also a particular regional bias for the Fujian history of many of the Taiwanese people.
1:05:51
So I think sort of 60 years on from that um I don't there are some like there's a fantastic sujo bakery in this food street in Taiwan where they make really traditional um sujo pastries but a lot of it is um you know a sort of mixed up version of Chinese food.
1:06:08
Not to say that it's not excellent.
1:06:09
Taiwan's a fantastic place to eat.
1:06:11
Um but um and in China sometimes it is difficult to find the real old school cooking and that's why what the dragon well manner do is well man restaurant doing is so important is like recruiting retired chefs to teach the younger generation the old the old skills.
1:06:27
What is the dish in your cookbooks that is a place you would tell beginners to start?
1:06:35
What is a dish that they will be capable of making and the results will hook them?
1:06:42
I think gongba chicken is a really good introduction to stir frying because it's not complicated.
1:06:47
It doesn't have many stages.
1:06:49
Um you can assemble all your ingredients in little bowls first and then they just go one by one into the walk and it's a kind of knockout flavor.
1:06:58
You know, everyone likes chicken. There's no bones in it. Um bit of spice.
1:07:02
Lovely layering of flavors.
1:07:02
And that's one dish that I think people are surprised to find how straightforward it is and it's addictively tasty for sure. Yeah.
1:07:11
We as well know you have been to China so many times. Yes.
1:07:14
So what's your next destination of China too?
1:07:16
And what's the most you want to discover?
1:07:23
I think I I just feel like the more I find out about Chinese food, the more there is to discover.
1:07:28
And um yeah, I mean I feel like I'll be learning my whole life.
1:07:33
So I would love to do more work on the northern pasta arts.
1:07:35
I'm currently learning a lot about the food of Yunan, which is one of the most biodiverse regions on Earth and as you'd expect has a rather extraordinary range of ingredients.
1:07:46
Um, but I think I mean the thing about China is that it its cuisines have been so relatively unexplored by the English-speaking world.
1:07:54
And so there's so much to discover and write about all over the country.
1:07:59
Tell us what tell us what's so unusual about Eunan because that to me was the big revelation.
1:08:03
Every part of China I've been to, Eunan surprised me the most.
1:08:08
Dishes I'd never even dreamt of and would not have thought of as Chinese.
1:08:11
So you'd have some bread dipped in honey or you'd have donkey in a red sauce almost in some ways like a curry sauce or mushrooms in ways you had not imagined.
1:08:21
But what makes Yunan special for you?
1:08:23
Well, it's always been a kind of marginal region with I think 20s something of China's 56 ethnic minorities.
1:08:31
So it's extraordinary diverse culturally.
1:08:33
It borders Burma, Laos, and Vietnam.
1:08:36
So if you go to the south and the southwest of Yunan, you're really getting into Southeast Asian flavors and cooking techniques um and ingredients.
1:08:46
Also mentioned this incredible diversity of ingredients, insects, flowers, mushrooms, bee larva. Bee larva. Yes.
1:08:53
Um and also it's just so it's always been it's not really um you you can't really understand it in terms of the classical schools of Chinese cooking.
1:09:04
It's a bit more adventurous and it's got things like I mean like the fact that there are a couple of notable forms of local cheese in Yunan which is just exceptional you know um so I I think it's that diversity in that sense of being sort of on the edge of empire and it was a region that was sometimes part of China and sometimes it was doing its own thing and you really feel that in the food.
1:09:28
To close four relatively quick questions one from each of us.
1:09:31
Uh Ava your quick question for future.
1:09:34
Uh so your just you have said you have introduced the right.
1:09:43
So for the um what's your most favorite Chinese dish?
1:09:49
Well one of my first loves and my best love is is fish fragrant eggplant.
1:09:53
Um because that for me it's a really simple everyday Sichuan dish but it's got knockout incredible flavors.
1:10:00
So, it's eggplant with the classic fish fragrant combination of pickled chilies, ginger, garlic, scallion, a bit of sweet and sour.
1:10:08
And it's just that's for me an example about how you don't have to be rich.
1:10:12
You don't have to be sort of particularly accomplished in the kitchen um to eat just fantastically well in China.
1:10:21
Is there the opposite of that question?
1:10:23
What is your favorite western chain restaurant and your favorite and your favorite dish at it?
1:10:30
Um, well, it's not exactly Western.
1:10:30
The chain restaurant I eat at most often is the Royal China chain of dim sum restaurants in London.
1:10:37
This is not a This is not I'm not accepting this answer. Okay. Chain restaurants.
1:10:40
I don't really eat at chain restaurants.
1:10:43
You There's no no part of you that loves a McFlurry or Pratt. Do you go to Pratt? Oh, yeah.
1:10:49
I mean, I I get sandwiches at Pret.
1:10:51
Which one is your favorite thing? Um um egg. I I can't really think.
1:11:00
Um bacon, you know, BLT sandwich at Pratt. All right, Mark.
1:11:06
Um this beautiful picture in your new book are the hams.
1:11:09
This what does it call it?
1:11:11
The Gininoa ham from Explain the taste of that. I I really I love ham. I just Yeah.
1:11:16
Can you explain the difference?
1:11:18
Is it which ham would it be closest to in in in my sort of it would be Spanish Italian or how is it cured and and what's the flavor like?
1:11:26
Oh, it's um it's closest perhaps to Spanish hams and a lot of Chinese chefs in the in the west would use that um would use Spanish ham as a substitute because you can't often import Chinese meats to Europe. So, it's very intense.
1:11:40
It's sort of fairly dense garnet colored meat. Um it's not eaten raw.
1:11:42
It's used as an umami flavoring in cooked dishes mostly. How long is it aged? Uh, not sure actually.
1:11:51
I mean, I think a whole range, but Thank you, Megan.
1:11:53
What is the last Western food that will become popular in China?
1:11:57
And what is the last Chinese food that will become popular in the West?
1:12:03
Um the last western food um maybe a really ripe heady stinky bree.
1:12:14
I have an experience of trying to feed it to people in China and the other way around um I think it would have to be something textural.
1:12:21
See cucumber aside from cucumber is not allowed as an answer.
1:12:27
Well, I could mention one very extreme textural delicacy that I've only ever come across once in China, and probably most people in China wouldn't eat it, but Sichuan love their rubbery, crunchy, awful, and that is the upper pallets of pigs, which they call tiang paradise.
1:12:44
And I I found it as a late night street stall covered in um chili and sichuan pepper oil, but I don't think that will be a big hit in New York or London anytime soon.
1:12:51
Very last question goes to me to close.
1:12:54
What is your favorite Chinese film and why?
1:13:00
Um, Eat, Drink, Man, Woman, so Taiwanese.
1:13:04
Um, and it's is it's a lovely story about food, but what's extraordinary is the actual food you see in that film.
1:13:14
And actually, by chance, I've come across the book, the books, the set of books that was clearly the source for that.
1:13:20
So there was an amazing series of cookery books produced um around 1980 I think when they photographed the classical cuisine, the classical dishes of four great cuisines of China and they shot them beautifully in antique dishes.
1:13:36
And this is for me the sort of absolute pinnacle of classical Chinese cuisine.
1:13:41
and they the people who researched the food for that film have done their homework and it is just ravishing um historically accurate Chinese food.
1:13:53
I thank the panel and most of all Fuchsia, thank you very much for a wonderful time and for the ordering. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.