Invitation To A Banquet The Story Of Chinese Food

The world’s most sophisticated gastronomic culture, brilliantly presented through a banquet of thirty Chinese dishes. Chinese was the earliest truly global cuisine. When the first Chinese laborers began to settle abroad, restaurants appeared in their wake. Yet Chinese has the curious distinction of being both one of the world’s best-loved culinary traditions and one of the least understood. For more than a century, the overwhelming dominance of a simplified form of Cantonese cooking ensured that few foreigners experienced anything of its richness and sophistication—but today that is beginning to change. In Invitation to a Banquet, award-winning cook and writer Fuchsia Dunlop explores the history, philosophy, and techniques of Chinese culinary culture. In each chapter, she examines a classic dish, from mapo tofu to Dongpo pork, knife-scraped noodles to braised pomelo pith, to reveal a distinctive aspect of Chinese gastronomy, whether it’s the importance of the soybean, the lure of exotic ingredients, or the history of Buddhist vegetarian cuisine. Meeting food producers, chefs, gourmets, and home cooks as she tastes her way across the country, Fuchsia invites readers to join her on an unforgettable journey into Chinese food as it is cooked, eaten, and considered in its homeland. Weaving together history, mouthwatering descriptions of food, and on-the-ground research conducted over the course of three decades, Invitation to a Banquet is a lively, landmark tribute to the pleasures and mysteries of Chinese cuisine.

Winner of the Fortnum & Mason Cookery Book Award 2020 Shortlisted for the Guild of Food Writers Award 2020 Shortlisted for the James Beard Award 2020 'Cookbook of the year' Allan Jenkins, OFM 'No one explains the intricacies of Sichuan food like Fuchsia Dunlop. This book remains my bible for the subject' Jay Rayner A fully revised and updated edition of Fuchsia Dunlop's landmark book on Sichuan cookery. Almost twenty years after the publication of Sichuan Cookery, voted by the OFM as one of the greatest cookbooks of all time, Fuchsia Dunlop revisits the region where her own culinary journey began, adding more than 50 new recipes to the original repertoire and accompanying them with her incomparable knowledge of the dazzling tastes, textures and sensations of Sichuanese cookery. At home, guided by Fuchsia's clear instructions, and using just a few key Sichuanese storecupboard ingredients, you will be able to recreate Sichuanese classics such as Mapo tofu, Twice-cooked pork and Gong Bao chicken, or try your hand at a traditional spread of cold dishes comprising Bang bang chicken, Numbing-and-hot dried beef, Spiced cucumber salad and Green beans in ginger sauce. With spellbinding writing on the culinary and cultural history of Sichuan and accompanied by gorgeous travel and food photography, The Food of Sichuan is a captivating insight into one of the world's greatest cuisines. 'This book offers an unmissable opportunity to utilise the wok and cleaver, brave the fiery Mapo tofu and expand your technique with pot-stickers and steamed buns' Yotam Ottolenghi

'Fuchsia Dunlop, our great writer and expert on Chinese gastronomy, has fallen in love with this region and its cuisine – and her book makes us fall in love too' Claudia Roden 'Fuchsia Dunlop's erudite writing infuses each page and her delicious recipes will inspire any serious cook to take up their wok' Ken Hom The Lower Yangtze region or Jiangnan, with its modern capital Shanghai, has been known since ancient times as a 'Land of Fish and Rice'. For centuries, local cooks have been using the plentiful produce of its lakes, rivers, fields and mountains, combined with delicious seasonings and flavours such as rice vinegar, rich soy sauce, spring onion and ginger, to create a cuisine that is renowned in China for its delicacy and beauty. Drawing on years of study and exploration, Fuchsia Dunlop explains basic cooking techniques, typical cooking methods and the principal ingredients of the Jiangnan larder. Her recipes are a mixture of simple rustic cooking and rich delicacies – some are famous, some unsung. You'll be inspired to try classic dishes such as Beggar's chicken and sumptuous Dongpo pork. Most of the recipes contain readily available ingredients and with Fuchsia's clear guidance, you will soon see how simple it is to create some of the most beautiful and delicious dishes you'll ever taste. With evocative writing and mouth-watering photography, this is an important new work about one of China's most fascinating culinary regions.

Fuchsia Dunlop trained as a chef at China's leading cooking school and is internationally renowned for her delicious recipes and brilliant writing about Chinese food. Every Grain of Rice is inspired by the healthy and vibrant home cooking of southern China, in which meat and fish are enjoyed in moderation, but vegetables play the starring role. Try your hand at blanched choy sum with sizzling oil, Hangzhou broad beans with ham, pock-marked old woman's beancurd or steamed chicken with shiitake mushrooms, or, if you've ever in need of a quick fix, Fuchsia's emergency late-night noodles. Many of the recipes require few ingredients and are startlingly easy to make. The book includes a comprehensive introduction to the key seasonings and techniques of the Chinese kitchen, as well as the 'magic ingredients' that can transform modest vegetarian ingredients into wonderful delicacies. With stunning photography and clear instructions, this is an essential volume for beginners and connoisseurs alike.

From Haifa, Israel to Cape Town, South Africa, Chinese entrepreneurs and restaurateurs have brought delicious Chinese food to cities across the globe. Unravelling the complex history of cultural migration and world politics, Cheuk Kwan narrates a fascinating story of culture and place, ultimately revealing how an excellent meal always tells an even better story. Dotting even the most remote landscapes, family-run Chinese restaurants are global icons of immigration, community and delicious food. The cultural outposts of diasporic peoples, bringers of dim sum, fortune cookies and creative culinary hybrids like the Madagascar classic, hot soupe chinoise, Chinese restaurants are a microcosm of greater social forces—an insight into time, history and place. From Africa to South America, the Jade Gardens and Golden Dragons of Chinatowns and beyond reveal the intricate tangles of social schisms and political movements, offering insight into global changes and diasporic histories, as the world has moved into the 20th and 21st centuries. Author and documentarian Cheuk Kwan, a self-described “card-carrying member of the Chinese diaspora,” weaves an unexplored global narrative by linking the myriad personal stories of chefs, entrepreneurs, labourers and dreamers who populate Chinese kitchens world wide. Behind these kitchen doors lies an intriguing paradox which characterizes many diasporic communities—how Chinese immigrants have resisted—or often been prevented from—complete assimilation into the social fabric of their new homes, maintaining strong senses of cultural identity, while the engine of their economic survival—the Chinese restaurant and its food—has become seamlessly woven into cities all around the world. An intrepid travelogue of grand vistas, adventure and serendipity, Have You Eaten Yet? charts a living atlas of the Chinese diaspora, revealing the synergies of politics, culture and family.

"Not just a smart memoir about cross-cultural eating but one of the most engaging books of any kind I've read in years." —Celia Barbour, O, The Oprah Magazine After fifteen years spent exploring China and its food, Fuchsia Dunlop finds herself in an English kitchen, deciding whether to eat a caterpillar she has accidentally cooked in some home-grown vegetables. How can something she has eaten readily in China seem grotesque in England? The question lingers over this “autobiographical food-and-travel classic” (Publishers Weekly).

Translation of: Schlafender Lotos, trunkenes Huhn.