Fuchsia Dunlop on Chinese banqueting and festive fare

If you’re remotely interested in China, especially Chinese cuisine, it’s been hard to avoid Fuchsia Dunlop’s new book, Invitation to a Banquet (Penguin) recently. It’s also hard to imagine that many CBBC members haven’t got at least one of Fuchsia’s cookbooks on their kitchen shelf.

But Invitation to a Banquet is a little different. Rather than recipes, it’s the epic tale of the world’s most sophisticated gastronomic culture, told through a banquet of thirty Chinese dishes. And Fuchsia knows what she’s 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, Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper, Every Grain of Rice and Land of Fish and Rice, several of which are now published in translation in China. Invitation to a Banquet has been brilliantly reviewed just about everywhere, and has already been featured in many Best of 2023 lists.

What’s the main thing we Brits just don’t understand about Chinese cuisine that we really should?

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’s 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’m sure many of your readers know, talk incessantly about food and health.

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’s diets – 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.

I have a confession to make. I’ve never really enjoyed a formal banquet in China, at least not the perhaps more “imperial” themed ones. What are the key dishes in the banquet you’re inviting us to with your book?

I don’t think many people really enjoy the kinds of banquets that are primarily about showing off or cultivating guanxi (connections) and where the point is the cost of the food and the endless toasting! I remember one banquet I attended in Hunan with dozens of tables and hundreds of guests, where people were so busy rushing around toasting all their friends and contacts that all the dishes grew cold. But I’ve been lucky enough to enjoy many banquets where friends gather to enjoy really good food, and that’s different: great fun and, of course, hugely exciting from a gastronomic point of view.

One of my key dishes at any banquet would be a really fine soup. Soup is far more important in Chinese dining culture than in the West and part of almost every meal, formal or informal. The best Chinese soups are often transparent broths made from excellent meat or poultry; to a Western eye, they might look insignificant, but they are imbued with all the flavour of the ingredients and can be sublimely delicious and refreshing. As to the other dishes, it’s hard to know where to start as there are so many possibilities, but perhaps the irresistible Dong Po pork and one dish made with fresh bamboo shoots!

You have some great chapters on vegetarian food – including meat alternatives and Buddhist veggie cuisine – but I’ve found in the past it was really quite tough for vegetarians (let alone vegans) to stick to their diet in China. Do you think this situation has eased in recent years? And could you give a recommendation or two for great vegetarian choices?

The funny thing about China is that there is an ancient tradition of meat-free cooking, but not so much of permanent, strict vegetarianism – unless you’re an actual Buddhist monk or nun. Many lay Chinese Buddhists only abstain from meat when they visit temples or on holy days. People tend to be more familiar with the practice of eating ‘vegetarian food’ (sushi) than with pure, ideological ‘vegetarian-ism’ (sushi zhuyi) with its total prohibition on eating meat.

Vegetarians (and generally vegans too) can confidently and happily eat in Buddhist temple restaurants, but, as you point out, still find it hard to get wholly vegetarian food in regular restaurants, where they may find they are offered vegetables that have been cooked in meat stock or even with morsels of meat. The situation is changing in more cosmopolitan cities, where you can now find trendy restaurants offering properly vegetarian food that may or may not have a Buddhist connection. Some of my favourite vegetarian places are the glamorous Wujie (which has several branches in Shanghai); the Michelin-starred Fu He Hui (also in Shanghai); and, for more traditional Buddhist vegetarian food, the restaurant in the Baoguang Temple in Xindu, on the outskirts of Chengdu, which I wrote about in the book.

We’re so used to celebrity chef culture in the UK. Does China have an equivalent world of celeb chefs, TV shows and recipe books? Who’s their Jamie, Nigella or Gordon?

Traditionally, China has a long and illustrious tradition of gastronomy, but the foodie celebrities tended to be scholarly gentlemen who were good at eating rather than the chefs who did the actual cooking. Strangely, given how much everyone seems to love eating, people traditionally look down on cooking as a profession. But I think this is beginning to change. The famous Beijing roast duck chef Da Dong is a bona fide celebrity. And social media is creating new cooking stars such as Li Ziqi and Dianxin Xiaoge. Interestingly, when I interviewed the founder of the acclaimed Chairman restaurant in Hong Kong, Danny Yip, he said that cheffing was becoming a more attractive profession for ambitious young people, partly because they could now communicate directly with the public and gain a following on social media. As to food TV, there is lots of it, especially since the success of the documentary series A Bite of China, which started in 2012. There are also vast quantities of recipe books, which seem to get more and more lavish and beautiful every year.

Christmas is coming, so it’s turkey time. Do you have any suggestions for what to do with the festive bird with Chinese characteristics?

I have sometimes filled the bird with a Chinese ‘eight-treasure’ stuffing: glutinous rice studded with morsels of cured pork, dried shrimp, shiitake mushroom, lotus seed, edamame beans, etc. But it’s after Christmas that my cooking takes a dramatically Chinese turn: I always make a spicy Sichuanese dressing for leftover turkey (sensational!), turkey congee (yum), turkey and pickled mustard sour-and-hot soup (fabulous on a cold day), and Christmas leftover fried rice. It all makes a nice change from turkey sandwiches!

Inevitably, after work lunches, family gatherings and Christmas Day, we’re all heartily sick of festive fare. What Chinese food items do you recommend we try after a couple of weeks of gut-busting Christmas dinners?

You could do what some Chinese people do after the excesses of the Chinese New Year and eat some vegetarian food. Perhaps a Shanghainese vegetarian ‘roast duck’ made by rolling up thin layers of tofu? Or Sichuanese silken tofu with chilli oil, Sichuan pepper, pickled mustard stem and crunchy bits? Vegetable soups or congees (made with turkey stock if you’re not completely off turkey by then; otherwise water)? Refreshing salady dishes like smacked cucumbers or wood ear mushrooms with chillies and vinegar? Whenever I’ve been through an excessively gluttonous period, which is rather often, I find myself craving simple Chinese home cooking: it’s always so soothing and refreshing and sorts me out pretty quickly!