30 DAYS OPEN PURCHASELand of Fish and Rice is about Jiangnan, the region south of the Yangtze River around Hangzhou, Suzhou, Shanghai and Ningbo. The title is a direct translation of the expression the Chinese themselves use for the region.
This is the part of China that the country regards as its most refined. Historically, it was the richest region, home to the scholar official class, the classical gardens and poetry, and the food developed accordingly. Yet it is almost unknown in the West, because Chinese food first arrived there through Canton and later through Sichuan.
In terms of flavour, it is the opposite of what most people expect. No heat at all. Instead there is delicacy, a pronounced sweetness even in savoury dishes, and an obsession with the freshness of ingredients that is closer to Japanese than Sichuanese thinking. Sweet and salty red braised pork, freshwater fish and river prawns, bamboo shoots, lotus root and water chestnuts, and Shaoxing wine both as a drink and as an ingredient, because this is where it comes from.
Fuchsia Dunlop was the first Westerner to train at the culinary school in Chengdu and has since spent decades documenting China's regional cuisines from within. Here she works in a region about as far from Sichuan as you can get within the same country.
The dishes include Dongpo pork, named after the Song dynasty poet Su Dongpo, West Lake fish in vinegar sauce from Hangzhou and prawns fried with Dragon Well tea leaves. The fundamental technique is red braising, slow cooking in soy sauce, sugar and Shaoxing wine, and that alone changes the way you think about Chinese cooking.
This is not an introductory book. It assumes that you have already cooked Chinese food and want to go further, and it rewards you for it.
Format: Hardback
Publisher: Bloomsbury
ISBN: 9781408802519
Language: English
First published: 2016
