China in your hands

Nothing you see in Chinese restaurants in the West can prepare you for the diversity of its food. After travelling around China and researching Chinese cookery for more than ten years, when I’m there I still encounter new ingredients and dishes on a daily basis. It’s amazing. China is more of a continent than a country, with vast differences in climate, terrain and culture. It encompasses deserts and wheat-growing plains; snow-capped mountains and tropical rainforests; salt lakes and lush paddy fields. The Shanghainese and Sichuanese can’t understand one another if they speak in dialect, and they can’t stand one another’s food!

China is more of a continent than a country, with vast differences in climate and culture

So it’s no surprise that Chinese people cannot understand why so many Westerners think their cuisine is just sweet-and-sour-pork and prawn toasts. Funnily enough, though, many Chinese take a similar attitude towards what they think of as ‘Western food’. Lots of Chinese people have told me they don’t really like ‘Western food’ because they find it too bland and boring! They don’t realise that you might eat rather differently in Paris or Memphis, Helsinki or Rome.

The region closest to my heart is Sichuan, where I lived in the mid-1990s and learnt to cook. My first meal out in the Sichuanese capital, Chengdu, was mind-blowingly delicious: among other delights, we ate fish braised in chilli bean sauce, and fish-fragrant aubergines (so-called because the flavourings used are often found in fish dishes). The stereotype of Sichuanese food is that it’s fiendishly hot, but actually there are many gradations of chilli heat, and many dishes aren’t hot at all. Sichuanese cooks are masters of the art of what they call fu he wei: complex flavours, where sweet, sour and spicy tastes may be married in one dish. The prawn dish here is an example of this cooking style.

After I finished my Sichuanese cookbook, I went to live in Hunan province, where the food had a very different character. Flavours were more forthright and bold – as in the beef and cumin dish here – and cooks made great use of fermented soybeans and chillies.

The best known of China’s regional cuisines is Cantonese, due to the huge influence this region’s emigrants have had on restaurants abroad. The Cantonese prefer simple flavours, enhanced with small amounts of salt, sugar and soy sauce. They excel at stir-fries, soups and stews, and steamed seafood and fish, such as delicate sea bass with ginger – not to mention dim sum.

Almost every province has its own culinary tradition, and every city its speciality dishes

In the east, Shanghai is becoming known for its glamorous international restaurants, but in the past it was the ancient eastern cities of Hangzhou, Yangzhou, Suzhou and Shaoxing that were famous for their food. Eastern Chinese cuisine tends to be sweet, and uses local products such as Shaoxing wine, Chinkiang vinegar, and dry-cured Jinhua ham, as well as eel and freshwater crab.

Beijing was the centre of the Chinese empire for some 600 years, and the imperial chefs drew on the finest ingredients and kitchen skills from all over the country. The bedrock of imperial cuisine was the grand tradition of northeastern Shandong province, with its exotic dried seafood and rich soups.

But these are just the broad brushstrokes. Almost every province has its own culinary tradition, and every city its speciality dishes. Here, then, is a whistle-stop recipe tour of some of the regions. Except for the braised chicken, all the dishes here serve two with a steamed green vegetable and rice, or four, as part of a banquet with three other dishes.