{"id":13428,"date":"2023-12-18T06:30:01","date_gmt":"2023-12-18T06:30:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/focus.cbbc.org\/?p=13428"},"modified":"2025-04-23T09:04:18","modified_gmt":"2025-04-23T09:04:18","slug":"fuchsia-dunlop-on-chinese-banqueting-and-festive-fare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focus.cbbc.org\/fuchsia-dunlop-on-chinese-banqueting-and-festive-fare\/","title":{"rendered":"Fuchsia Dunlop on Chinese banqueting and festive fare"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019re remotely interested in China, especially Chinese cuisine, it\u2019s been hard to avoid Fuchsia Dunlop\u2019s new book, Invitation to a Banquet<\/em> (Penguin) recently. It\u2019s also hard to imagine that many CBBC members haven\u2019t got at least one of Fuchsia\u2019s cookbooks on their kitchen shelf.<\/p>\n

But Invitation to a Banquet<\/em> is a little different. Rather than recipes, it\u2019s the epic tale of the world\u2019s most sophisticated gastronomic culture, told through a banquet of thirty Chinese dishes. And Fuchsia knows what she\u2019s talking about. She was the first Westerner to train as a chef at the Sichuan Higher Institute of Cuisine, and has been travelling around China, researching and cooking Chinese food, for nearly 30 years. Her award-winning and bestselling books include The Food of Sichuan<\/em>, Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper<\/em>, Every Grain of Rice<\/em> and Land of Fish and Rice<\/em>, several of which are now published in translation in China. Invitation to a Banquet <\/em>has been brilliantly reviewed just about everywhere, and has already been featured in many Best of 2023 <\/em>lists.<\/p>\n

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What\u2019s the main thing we Brits just don\u2019t understand about Chinese cuisine that we really should?<\/h4>\n

That Chinese food can be simultaneously healthy and utterly delicious. Most people in most places seem to enjoy eating Chinese food, but for historical reasons, it\u2019s been saddled with the reputation of being tasty but a bit junky, with a lot of fried and deep-fried foods, heavy seasoning and few vegetables. Actually, Chinese is one of the most health-focused food cultures there is. Food and medicine have been viewed as inseparable for more than 2,000 years; the earliest Chinese recipes were prescriptions for tonic dishes. A well-constructed Chinese meal is always balanced, with vegetables as well as meat, soups and steamed dishes, and fried foods. And Chinese people, as I\u2019m sure many of your readers know, talk incessantly about food and health.<\/p>\n

One of the things that most impressed me about Sichuanese food when I first lived in Chengdu in the 1990s was how important vegetables were in people\u2019s diets \u2013 and usually cooked so deliciously that one ate them for pleasure rather than out of duty. I love the way that Chinese culinary principles make it possible to eat both for health and great sensory delight.<\/p>\n