Fuchsia Dunlop on Chinese Food, Culture, and Travel | Conversations with Tyler

hello welcome to this installment of conversations with Tyler sponsored by the Merc ADA Center we're here at Panda gourmet restaurant my favorite restaurant in Washington DC and we're eating with the group the star of the group is fuchsia Dunlop who in my opinion is the foremost exponent of Chinese cookery and the writer of the best Chinese cookbooks ever in the English language we have a very famous and well-known group of questioners including ezra klein editor-in-chief of vox mark miller who is just a a food person extraordinaire Megan McArdle of Bloomberg and one of the world's leading cookery experts and Ava from Shandong Province China if I think of how to present fuchsia there are two passages that spring immediately to mind one is from her 1999 notebook entry and I quote in the last three days I have eaten snails frogs snakes Sparrow gizzard duck tongues fish heads duck hearts tripe also half a duck most of a carp ducks blood at least five eggs smoked bacon and stewed aromatic beef so of course we had fuchsia to the ordering for our lunch as you might expect one of my readers wrote to me they summed up who she is and again I quote what a fantastic and exciting guest I agree wholeheartedly that fuchsia Dunlop is an absolute iconoclast and that her achievements in examining and teaching Chinese cookery cannot possibly be overstated I can say with all sincerity that my life has been absolutely enriched by her work her books are simply perfect models for others to follow fuchsia welcome everyone else welcome as well now I'll just start in on the questions while our guests eat and they will later on become the questioners themselves let me start with this idea of a food tour so food tours are more and more popular today people will go to Mexico the France Italy even Thailand but the China food tour is not always so popular with Americans or Westerners if you were to try to sell someone on a version to say a 12-day China tor what would your case for that sound like well China has the world's pre-eminent cuisine absolutely unparalleled in its diversity in its sophistication you can find practically everything you could possibly desire in terms of food in China from exquisite banquet cookery exciting street food bold spicy flavors you know honest farmhouse cooking delicate soups just everything apart perhaps from cheese although they do actually have a couple of kinds of genes in Yunnan Province and yeah and also because you know China is such a food orientated culture and it has been since the beginnings of history that if you want to understand China almost more than anywhere anywhere else like food is a really good window into the culture into the way people live into history everything ok so 12 days give us a quick itinerary where should you go well you could look at the sort of greatest hits say the four great cuisines you perhaps want to cover so you might go to Beijing to taste some sort of Imperial food Shandong cooking the wonderful wheat foods of the north so pastures dumplings breads this is the wheat eating part of Chinese cities named them Tree City 12 days I'm not going to give you 14 what are the three cities mmm Beijing Chengdu and Hangzhou okay now let's think through this idea of a food tour a little more analytically so let's say you've talked me into this food tour which actually you've done indirectly through your books and you've sent me to Shanghai your latest book lamb to fish and rice in fact focuses on Shanghai and the surrounding region which is quite diverse but here I am Tyler Cowen I'm in Shanghai I don't know Chinese and let's say I don't have Chinese friends and I'm simply lost how do I figure out where to actually eat in Shanghai what do i do what's the heuristic well you could look for recommendations of authentic restaurants articles by people perhaps who live in Shanghai or who understand the food so I'm just on the street I'm walking I don't have my iPad I'm away from Wi-Fi there's Shanghai there's me confronting the alley and how do I think about finding what's good use your nose use your eyes if you're interested in street food you'll find lots of little sort of stalls and shops where they're cooking in full view use your judgement and see what looks exciting I guess it's very difficult in a cosmopolitan city like Shanghai to perhaps know exactly what is local Shanghainese what is from other parts of China because it's a sort of always been a melting pot of different Chinese regional cuisines so and also if you want to taste the more sort of refined cooking then just going around the streets is not really going to help so I think you do need to do a little bit of research and perhaps have a few dishes you know have their names on your phone in Chinese that would help and three dishes wine absolutely has to try our wife in Shanghai Shanghai the city not the region I think you should have whole Shiro red braised pork real home cooking delicious combination of soy sauce rice wine and sugar and one of the favorite dishes I would recommend something perhaps some Shanghainese wontons in soup stuffed with shepherd's purse which is a wild variety of the brassicas and paul just to show you the lighter gentler side of Shanghainese cooking and then perhaps in Ojai and then perhaps if we're talking Shanghai you might want to have one of these dishes that so something about Shanghai as being a mixing pot of different cultures and there's a very nice crab meat and potato and tomato soup served in some of my favourite Shanghainese restaurants which seems a little bit of a fusion with some European influences the way they use potato and tomato in that suit with local seafood so as you know the Michelin Guide recently has covered Shanghai given some restaurants three to one star there's cheap places you can go conceptually do they understand food of shanghai and to the extent they don't what are they missing I think if you look at the restaurants they've selected there's a bit of a Cantonese bias and they do have some Cantonese restaurants they do have some Shanghainese restaurants but one thing that's very conspicuous there are some notable some of the best Shanghainese local restaurants which are missing from that list in my opinion and the reason is I think the methodology of Western food inspectors which is they tend to go as individuals or small groups and of course in many Chinese restaurants where you eat family-style to make the most of the restaurant you have to eat as we're doing now with a large group and a table full of dishes and these restaurants that I was surprised not to see on the list and you have to book a private room with a group and if you do you'll be able to taste some of the most wonderful renditions of Shanghainese who and food from the broader region with a sort of contemporary spirit but a real reverence for traditional technique but you can't do that really if you just go with one or two people so let me ask you a bit about this Cantonese bias I've even heard Chinese people say well the food of Shanghai it's maybe a little too sweet or some parts of it are too simple and there's a bit of a bias from some not all against the food of Shanghai and that the food of campin is more glorious as more vegetables uses refined seafood in a more complex way is delicate harder to pull off and therefore a higher point of Chinese cuisine do you agree yes no or what is that missing if you don't agree I think Cantonese is a superb and fantastic cuisine but I think its particular status in China is the product of historical circumstances the Cantonese south of China Hong Kong the special economic zones were the first places to get rich after the reform and opening-up particularly and so Cantonese became the prestige cuisine when I was a student in Chengdu in the 1990s if you wanted to go out for an expensive fancy meal you went to a Cantonese restaurant a net expensive seafood so I think it still has that kind of cachet and aura of sophistication and with Shanghainese food I mean Shanghai is in Chinese gastronomic terms kind of modern upstart city and it's better known perhaps for its street food and home cooking but it is that the sort of you know that the best-known part of an ancient region which really has what you can argue is the Chinese classical cuisine the food of the Jiang nan lower Yangtze region and this region is known historically for its extraordinary knife work delicate flavors and extreme reverence for ingredients you know eating the right foods from the right places in the in the right seasons and all the kind of values that we associate perhaps with Cantonese food and also with sort of modern you know shape and ease the sort of modern foodie movement they're all there historically in China and perhaps for historical reasons you know it's been underappreciated in you know in the last century or so I think you would agree Shanghai is one of the wealthier more modern parts of China as you see China developing you see traditional markets to some extent in some parts of China fading away supply chains become longer large companies play a bigger role the refrigerator the refrigerator plays a new role in the food supply chain so things can sit around for longer do you wonder that a lot of Chinese food will become bad in the way that American food has become bad and if that happens will it come to Shanghai first or are you more optimistic than that I think you can see all these things happening and it is very sad so for example you know restaurants that I knew I mean this is in Chengdu restaurants where they made all their dumplings from scratch like maybe 15 20 different kinds every day now we'll buy some of them in ready-prepared supermarkets stock sort of easy seasoning packets to make marbled awful you know this kind of thing so and then in the cities there's a huge loss of cooking skills young professionals often rely on their parents to cook for the children at home and they the middle generation and not learning traditional cookery they're not learning how to pickle and cure so there's all this being lost and people you know they lead more hectic lives and they are increasingly eating ready-prepared food so I I think you can see that China is going down the same sad path as the rest of us in some ways but the thing that gives me hope is that you know in China food is understood so deeply as the foundation of kind of health and happiness and it has been a culture that is so obsessed with food and they have this wonderful resource that I hope people will sort of I mean it some people are now getting to the point of kind of looking at Chinese food as a kind of cultural artifact and something valuable to be preserved you know let me now see if you can talk me out of one of my biases when I eat food in China there's nothing I've ever been served that I found disgusting ever which is saying something but at the same time it's rare that I will prefer to eat organs or awful or the various stranger items you might be served if I look around the world those items seem to be what economists would call an inferior good that is in virtually all societies when incomes go up at some point people stop eating those things my background is Irish in Ireland in the early 20th century it was very common to eat a lot of organs and awful today it's hardly to be found it's revived somewhat but as part of a regular diet its dwindled so are awful and organs actually just inferior Goods and when people earn higher incomes that it wanted anymore in their worse or are they parts of the Chinese culinary picture as good as anything else and they will persist even with rising income I think it's complicated so in in sort of peasant farming societies you have the kind of nose-to-tail eating you kill the pig and you eat every part of it for economic reasons as much as anything but also in China the thing that really sets it apart is this you know preoccupation with the delights of gastronomy and the pursuit of the exotic in particular the appreciation of texture and a lot of awful foods have very interesting textures like these fire exploded kidney flowers they have that kind of slightly brisk crispness with tenderness of you know a kidney that has been cut in this be ornate sort of crisscross pattern and then stir-fried very fast it's a textural pleasure and there are other things like in such one people love eating goose intestines which any Westerner would throw away if you're Western person it's pointless they're tasteless why would you eat a goose intestine but from a Chinese textual point of view they're slippery crisps snappy they have a delightful Corgan or mouthfeel and the other thing is that some bits of what Westerners would consider to be old awful and rubbish have a very different sort of is a very difficult concept in China for example a duck's tongue right from a Western point of view it's a small fiddly thing that's all bone and cartilage and like what's the point as my father would say it has a high grapple factor for very little reward yeah but in China one of the ways of looking at this is that you know you've got a whole dock the meat is very commonplace each dog has one tongue it has very particular textures it's you know if you've got the duck tongue you've got pride you've got the best bit you know the small precious morsel and in the past you know before refrigeration if you could afford to have a whole plate full of duck tongues the number of ducks it represented or a plate full of boned goose feet you know goose was a huge luxury but if you have 12 goose feed from six keys on your plate you have got the Clones oh you know all these ingredients I think that there's the sort of you know the appreciation of these these delicacies exists not only that sort of farm poor farmers but at the highest tables as well so let's say I want to learn how to enjoy sea cucumber which believe it or not I'm not currently able to do but I'm not against the idea I would like to learn this what's your actual advice for me other than try it I've tried it I still don't enjoy it I don't hate it what do I do next what you have to do is firstly go to a good place so you feel good you know it's a nice surrounding and then you have to put it into your mouth and set aside all your mental prejudices and just try to experience it in a sensory way try to feel it try to feel that slightly slithery gelatinous t-that little crispness in the bite it's like what I like to think of it sort of edible oxymoron you know this kind of softness and crispness with Chinese love these kind of contradictions sensory contradictions and what you have to do is just try to experience it and think about it and also think you know in China where people really understand gastronomy they really appreciate these things and also think to yourself if I can get my head around this if I can start appreciating these textural foods the pleasures of texture then a door will open onto this other you know whole aspect of Chinese gastronomy which is exciting you know it'll broaden you know broaden your pleasure in Chinese food now let me ask you about cookbooks you've written a memoir which is one of my favorite books but mostly you've written cookbooks you have a cookbook on Szechuan food Hunan food and all-purpose Chinese cookbook the new Shanghai region book what strikes me about those cookbooks is how conceptually you frame everything you present so coming at it as a social scientist to me what you write makes perfect sense in a way that Marc Miller's cookbooks do but a lot of cookbooks don't they seem to particularistic to me now if you were to tell us cookbooks in China written by Chinese in Chinese what are they like compared to Western cookbooks I mean at a conceptual level at an organizational level what's the main difference I think there's less of a practice of using a cookbook to explore a region or there has been until recently so this thing of weaving together stories and cultural information with recipes it's beginning to happen last few years particularly since the bite of China this smash-hit food TV series which has captured people's imaginations and led to a kind of boom in food publishing but until recently Chinese cookbooks were more functional I think less rigorous in recipe testing so kind of difficult to follow if you didn't already have some idea about what you were trying to do and sort of advice like saying a suitable amount of this seasoning you know but yeah I think those are the main differences now let's switch to Sichuan province which is one of my two favorites along with Yunnan Province why is it that so much of the good Chinese food that comes to the west to bar Shu in London which you have worked for for this restaurant here so many of these successes and exporting Chinese food are Sichuan successes why is that what is it about that cuisine well firstly it's thrillingly exciting and dramatic you know all that red color festive exciting flavors but I think more importantly because such Chinese food beyond the spicy stereotype is about the artful mixing of flavors so it's about foo whole way complex layered flavors so in such one you know such when these people would sum up the cuisine is saying eat I eager bite I by way which means each dish has its own style a hundred dishes has a hundred different flavors so the kind of heart and soul of such moenay's cooking lies in flavor combinations so for example this is an example of a Mylar dish numbing and hot dried chilies and such one pepper you can take that flavor combination and that's the essence of the dish so it doesn't really matter if the ingredient is as it is here chicken or frog or fish you're sort of preserving the the spirit of that dish and I think that and also because such when he's cooking is so much about flavor if you have a few base seasonings like Sichuan chili bean paste Dobin Jiang chili citron pepper you can take them abroad and you can make a very effective and pretty authentic version of such Wendy's food with your sort of basic cannon of seasonings and some cuisines are more difficult like that you know if you have very specific local ingredients you know and also because you know certain ease with the bold and exciting flavors I think that you can you can do a reasonable approximation of such what needs cooking without the most consummate cooking skills and if this still be fun and exciting and something like Cantonese for example is more difficult to do well now I'd like to for have you teach us all a lesson about Sichuan peppercorns before I came here I brought from my home my inferior virginia suburban peppercorns bought at a local Chinese market and you brought from Sichuan province your own version of Szechuan peppercorn good stop the good stuff and if you could try the two for us and you're all welcomed at the table to try along well I would like can you pass that around and everyone have a sniff or the inferior what you call inferior peppercorns and then keep the lid on between and take the lid off and get your nose in that box and have a good sniff and don't taste it until instructed yes yours are better well the first thing is as soon as you open that pot you get this overwhelming gorgeous slightly citrusy fragrance which is very distinctive right and so that tells you it's very fresh and lovely citron pepper then if you take one of the the ones I brought and put it in your mouth and what I would suggest is chew it very do Sulli at the front of your mouth about three times and then take it out because it's the delayed reaction amazing yeah yes so your tongue is beginning to sing and dance and tingle yeah yeah so that's that is what they call in Chinese ma it means some sort of tingling sensation the same word for pins and needles and anesthesia so if the situation is not that great you don't get the tingle so you get some aroma but this is simply overwhelming and that's why I said just put one in your mouth and take it out after a few seconds because if you put a handful in and you keep chewing it it will be overwhelming now in terms of the history of my Sichuan peppercorns in the history of yours these at least pretend they're from China correct is that that they're from the wrong place or they've been sitting around too long or you know the best source what's the underlying difference between behind the difference well in such one they would say that the best such when pepper comes from particular region han un in the in the west of such one so there's a real as you know I said a concern with provenance of things and also so I think there are different varieties which will be more fruity and less fruity and and the other thing is and I don't know I think most of the such one pepper that is exported has being exported and handled by Cantonese people and in parts of China apart from such one Citroen pepper is used differently so it's used in spice combinations it's used to take away the fishiness of meat and poultry ingredients that's a Chinese culinary concept but it's not used for this tingling mass sensation so unless you're such monies you're not going to be seeking out the really zingy such when pepper I think that's the problem really that you would need Citroen is exporters taking command and making sure we all get the tingly Sichuan pepper now let me ask you a deep philosophical question here just for some background someone once asked you what are your favorite parts of Chinese food and you gave a long answer too long for me to repeat and a lot of it I can't pronounce anyway but you listed seven and seven or eight different regions that all seem quite different and these Szechuan peppercorns and mala is not in general done in Shanghai as you well know what is the underlying unity that makes all of these Chinese food because you instinctively believe in that concept but what is that unity given the fantastic diversity well and there are some things you can pull out the use of chopsticks and its implications for the form of food which is that you have food that's generally cut into small pieces or it's tender enough to pull apart with chopsticks and that's one thing that Western observers through the centuries have remarked on about Chinese food is having these I mean for the early Western observers it was rather disturbing so you'd have a dish with everything cut fine you didn't know what it was you know maybe it was something really outlandish so the art of cutting and the cutting of food into small pieces the eating of shared dishes with a staple grain rice in the south wheat in the north that's the kind of structure of a meal you can also pull out some very important seasonings soy sauce and other fermented soy pastes you know the use of vinegar and soy sauce in combination ginger scallion and garlic in various combination so you can look at seasonings also cooking methods and I know stir frying is the most famous relatively recent historically but steaming also is a really important core Chinese cooking method so yeah I'm looking a combination of techniques but I think you always have to you know when you talk about Chinese cuisine you always have to take it with a pinch of salt and remember as I always do that Chinese people talk about something called Sheitan western food and make outrageous generalizations about it too and you know of course from a Chinese point of view it makes sense to talk about Western food as being different from Chinese but from a Western point of view you see all the distinctions so in one of your books you tell a story of taking some number a very renowned Sichuan chefs and you bring them in the United States to a restaurant called French Laundry one of the best and most famous American restaurants cooking at a very high level how did they react to that well total culture shock you see I was delighted I was so excited so I taken these wonderful chefs all of them extremely accomplished protect practitioners of such moniece cuisine and here I was going to got a table at the best restaurant held to be the best restaurant in North America for some of the finest the West had to offer and there were all kinds of things that they found very difficult the first was that we started eating our reservation was at 9:30 Chinese people like to eat at 6:00 or 6:30 so they were already in a bit of a bad mood by the time we started as I would be then it was a four hour tasting menu Chinese meal even very good ones tend to be rather fast by this expanded so for them it was a long tedious late-night thing to sit and have dish after dish of complicated food they weren't used to eating dairy products so anything creamy not particularly nice they were really disturbed and one of them actually refused to eat the most beautiful lamb because it was a little pink and bloody in the middle and of course in China traditionally only barbarians eat raw meat and you just don't eat raw meat they thought the olives tasted like Chinese medicine and they also found that you know in China a meal should always leave you feeling very sort of refreshed and relaxed and that's why you finish in many regions with a light refreshing palate cleansing soup or with fresh fruit at the French Laundry we ended like many classic Western tasting menus with a whole sequence of very heavy sweet dishes which was not very comfortable for them also known as dessert those dessert but the most interesting thing was you bore one of the chef's who's now very famous one of the best chefs I've ever met in China the most accomplished he was sitting in front of this beautiful plate of food and he said fuchsia this is all very interesting but I really cannot say whether it's good or bad now let's go from the sublime to the ridiculous I'm not sure how much time you've spent in the United States probably a lot of it is in places like New York Los Angeles where you can find quite good but not perfect Chinese food this place here panda gourmet is very good two-thirds of the items on the table are excellent the others are all at least good the cold noodles my favorite but today you're in middle America somewhere and there's a restaurant that calls itself Chinese but it's cooking only for Americans most or all of what's there would be unrecognizable to actual Chinese people and Ava has told me a story along these lines and you're to go into that restaurant and try to get the best meal possible what do you do what should we do we're stuck you're not in New York do you speak Chinese yeah then you are a bit stuck I mean you you need to communicate that you do not want to eat General Tso's chicken and beef with broccoli and those dishes that you really want to eat the food that they're going to have for dinner tonight themselves so but you should bear in mind that for example in China when I take people eating in China I order in fluent Mandarin you know well informed ordering of a meal and I'm often told oh no no no no you mustn't order that your guests won't eat it and I have to really insist quite forcefully that yes we do want to eat the tripe or whatever it is so you do face this barrier and it's not that people that they don't want to give you things you're not they're trying to keep them but it's just that they're worried that you might not like them and many Chinese waiters and restaurant eyes that I know in London have had the experience of Westerners ordering food and then complaining that there are Bo in it all that it's fatty meat all of which are good things in China and then complaining and making a scene and so I think people just it's easier they often have language issues so they want to give you something they know you're like now tips for shopping for Chinese ingredients in the West let's say this is either a London or the United States so if I ask myself what are the core ingredients I would pick I'd pick four things ginger in storable form the Szechuan sauce green onions and Sichuan peppercorns just my personal preference but those are my four you're allowed four things as advice not for yourself because you're cooking at a much higher level but to recommend to people such as ourselves for cooking eating enjoying Chinese food what are your four or five picks that you can get in the West I would get Chinese brown rice vinegar probably Jinjiang vinegar a really good soy sauce which means traditionally fermented and that would be a light soy sauce if it's a question of light or dark I would get a toasted sesame oil pure toasted sesame oil and I would get some such 1yz fermented chili and fava bean paste dough banjo yeah and I'm assuming that ginger garlic and scallions they would have anyway I was assuming soy sauce one had anyway those would be our two list yeah and maybe such one pepper as well yeah and with those items and a number of others one can cook most of what's in your cookbooks correct yeah you just need to make one trip to Chinatown stock up on a few basics and then you're really away now in all of the conversations with Tyler in the middle we have a section known as underrated versus overrated so I named something and you tell me whether you think it's underrated or overrated and you're free to pass in any case if you so feel like it bee larva to eat underrated why and because they are delicate and delicious they have a lovely crisp light texture and a sort of very subtle savory flavor and also it's just a lovely sort of idea eating insects eating it's almost like fairytale food can you find it yourself or not so easily haven't tried having tried milk underrated or overrated overrated was the one thing I don't like well I love cheese and butter but I didn't don't have a drink milk you just don't think it tastes good I haven't tasted it for years huh this is I know there's a long list here but the most underrated Chinese regional cuisine if you had to pick not the best the most underrated the cuisine of the region that I've written about Jang man which is like the you can argue it's the classical Chinese cuisine but people in the West really don't know anything about it and tell us just a little more how it's not only Shanghai expanded by that just a bit yeah well Shanghai is a kind of modern arts upstart city but this region has been prosperous and culturally vitally important for hundreds and hundreds of years so you've got great cultural centers like Hangzhou shashing which you know which have been written about by poets emperors fell in love with them over the centuries so it's it's been you know a center of Chinese culture and also gastronomic culture and it just has incredible thoughtful cooking writing about food beautiful ingredients and that's both fresh ingredients and sort of cured things like shouting wine Jinhua ham one of the great hands of the world here's a question one of my readers wrote into me he or she asked what about the luxury ingredients in Chinese cuisine meaning shark's fin bird's nest cordyceps the kind of fungus the person's view was they're all overrated that when you try them at least with the Western palate they don't seem that amazing I've had that reaction to sharks in myself maybe I've never had it at the right place but what I've enjoyed most in Chinese food has never been the luxury ingredients it's been say home cooking in Sichuan province or Yunnan or maybe Shanghai the luxury ingredients in Chinese cuisine underrated or overrated overrated so you agree with that reader yes I mean I think I think for a Western point of view of course they're overrated because something like sharks when is tasteless anyway so you have to you have to appreciate texture you also have to appreciate the history and cultural context enjoy these things but as the great 18th century gourmet and food writer you ma wrote there are many common foods which if cooked properly like tofu are far more satisfying than a really expensive bowl of sea cucumber so yeah the singer Leonard Cohen underrated or overrated underrated tell us oh he's my favorite singer okay straw denarian master of some writing what's your favorite Tom Lehrer song the mask is in tango okay we were talking about books before the session started and what you'd read recently and you mentioned a book by Ben Judah called this is London which you at least implied was underrated what's special about that book well it's a sort of contemporary version of George Orwell's down and out in Paris in London so this young British journalist decided to look the lives of immigrants recent immigrants to London and he did things like sleeping rough with Romanian vagrants at Hyde Park Corner he pretended to be and I think Eastern European builder and you know shared beds in das houses with people working there he talked to extremely rich Arabs who come to London for the summer and he just produces this vivid unflinching sometimes moving sometimes shocking portrait of the city that you know I live in and that many Londoners kind of don't really know exists so it's just an absolutely shatteringly interesting read here's a question one of your readers wrote to me by email maybe it's a bit intangible but I've had the same wonder given how much you love China love Chinese food work on projects that require your immersion in the food culture of China just being away from China for as long as you sometimes are how do you manage that intellectually emotionally otherwise that sense of otherness I mean do you have that Antonis when you're in London or Topeka Kansas and it's like my goodness I need to be in China now or how is that well I would say that the two sides of my life are much clipped more closely related so I do go to China very frequently now I cook a lot of Chinese at home my Chinese friends sometimes say that my London home is more Chinese than theirs because it's so full of things from China and also you know when I first came back from studying in China and I never heard Mandarin in Britain it was too expensive to call friends in China this was just before email now I'm constantly chatting with chefs on social media I can ask them questions about a dish that I'm making my Chinese friends sometimes come Chinatown in London and China towns generally have more and more Chinese food and Chinese restaurants so I would say there's there's much greater sort of integration of China in the West and my Chinese personal Chinese life in my Western Chinese life which I also like very much now you've written favorably about the 18th century Chinese novel dream of the red chamber most Americans haven't read that tell us why it's important because it's like a whole world of so into Chinese culture of the Ching dynasty it's the story of two grand families and they're rising and falling fortunes over a number of years and it's got amazing characters it's like a sort of soap opera of Chinese characters you will learn about Chinese rituals about Chinese food about cultural preoccupations so and it's just totally captivating I mean it's about it's the English translation I read it in the penguin version is about is five volumes it's about this big and it just took over my life for five months because I just wanted to see what happened to these people the plot is hard to follow there's many characters the names are not familiar to a Western audience what's the way to make it easy enough to read it so that one actually can read it firstly read the penguin translation which is the title the story of a stone by David Hawking's and John Minton which is absolutely inspired and lively and it just I mean it really does bring it to life you do need a little bit of patience with the Chinese names but in this book he does actually try both both men because they did some volumes each they translate some of the names like there's a serving girl who is called aroma so that's the translation whereas some of them are known like Lin Daiyu by the Chinese name which is a bit harder to remember but it's just I think if you you might find it heavy going at first if you're not really into China but once you've got into it I think it's so human and moving and gripping and just culturally fascinating that you'll want to finish it so as you probably know in Japan there are some of the finest trench and Italian trots in the world and mark could attest to that what's the best Western cuisine you can find inside of China I'm not the best person to ask because I'm always eating Chinese food in China really how about the best other Asian cuisine inside of China do you have any sense of that no not really I mean I'm really I really really do quite seriously try mainly to eat local yeah when I'm in China so just to go back to where we started before we move to the questions this idea of the food tour you were given 12 days to organize the food tour to begin with but now let's say a person has three weeks or four weeks and they want to do even more in China they get to learn some basics what's the further advice you would give them for how to make this you know experience of a lifetime how do you do a food tour in China when you have a little more time in resources the first thing I would say is go to a market see what the project what produce people are using and the markets are getting harder to find in the big cities that seek one out and the chances are you'll see not only the sort of very interesting produce but you'll also find snack stalls around the market which will also be interesting another piece of advice is to you know go to very popular flourishing restaurants with lots of people in them obviously and look at what other people are eating because if you you know Chinese menus are often not translated even if they are translated the translation is often very poor and some mint some menus now have pictures but I think it's a really good thing to go and look at what other people are eating and then asking Chinese people are generally very understanding you know and will usually be quite welcoming about this sort of thing and try to order a variety of dishes so one great mistake you can make is just order you know all dishes which are deep fried or red braised you always want to have some lighter dishes that might seem less exciting like simple stir-fried vegetables or a refreshing broth but that's part of the whole experience of the meal we now move to the question and answer segment of this meal and thank you very much for all of those points Ezra would you care to start I'd love to start what is the zyne outside of Asia that in its architecture and its structure is most similar to Chinese cuisine outside Asia I said Asia well I would say that if you're talking about farmhouse cooking and the cooking actually particularly this region I see a lot of affinities with Italian cooking so for example one of the principles of the cooking of a Jiang nan region Sen Tian Hui unity of fresh and salted the use of small amounts of sort of cured pork and intensely favored ingredients to bring life to vegetables and and more gently flavored ingredients so and also with Italian cooking you get some very interesting pastas you know with with Chinese as well so that's one but I mean not I wouldn't say that Italian cooking would is anything like a match for Chinese in the complexity and diversity I mean Italy's a tiny country you can put by comparison but there are some parallels that I see there I would ask Russia I have your books and yet I find I'm kind of afraid to cook for them because you know I grew up my mom's a caterer and and I grew up cooking a lot of really good American and French and so forth food but when you skip cuisines that far you feel like you go in and even though you're doing everything it says in the recipe you're not gonna you realize how much little skill is is required just to like make a recipe come out right is stuff that you don't even know you're doing because you know how it should be you know how this thing works and so what do people who are starting out with a completely new cuisine and for both Chinese and America and in Chinese on Western cooks going each way how do you bridge that like what's the well firstly I totally understand where you're coming from and I can remember before I went to China cooking from a Chinese cookbook and sort of already a keen cook in other traditions but thinking I just don't know the grammar of this cuisine I'm just following step by step and I don't know what it means or where it's going so I do understand that and I think of course it helps to have tasted some of the food you know to try to recreate recipes that you have maybe taste I started by the way I always worry that I'm not doing it same way you know well I suppose that might the book before this one every grain of wise was every grain of rice was specifically designed to address this which is to introduce sort of basic techniques and concepts and fairly straightforward recipes which can be the building blocks for a sort of understanding of what's going on in Chinese cooking so I would start with the basics trying to understand like you know simple stir fries the art of mixing flavors for a cold dish a little bit of cutting so just take it step by step and also I think also you just have to you have to make one leap which in terms of Chinese cooking we've already discussed you have to go with a list of things preferably in Chinese to go to a Chinese supermarket stock up on a few basics and then you know you're not going to have to do that every time you make a recipe you know I had everything on your list except the father being pierced which I want I by mark mark millar and good friends it's this long time in your books you use a lot of the language that gets reinterpreted into texture or flavor and I've been studying basically how we actually learn perceptional taste part of it is by memory of tasting something on the street and part of it is the structure of how we approach perception and how we frame it don't you think that you're the example of your chef who couldn't taste the food at the French Laundry what he didn't have was basically the framing of how to approach that perception so my question is one is within Chinese perceptional framing why can't they move over to for instance a you know a meal at French Laundry and why can't when they say nature just appreciate like a roast squab or roast chicken with nothing done none of the fishiness of the wildness taken out but just accept it as natural and then roasted well I mean I suppose that I don't think that their experience at the French Laundry is any different from a Western you could get some on a very accomplished Western eater who's eaten at many fine restaurants but who will not get sea cucumber the texture of sea cucumber Tilly alien but I only see cucumber in Spain with actually not they actually do a better job because they don't have that slimy part and they've actually perceptively you know changed it they called espadrilles in the southeast yes they taking that sea cucumber oh I like those so there's a cultural framing again yeah one culture doesn't accept it's not the ingredient but basically how we use our senses and frame that experience one part is food that's accepted to the body the other part these things are very strange I have no reference and I really don't like it but I don't think there's anything remarkable about it I don't know it's don't know but the Chinese have this problem with accepting like you said you cooked a meal of Western food to your Chinese friends and in your memoir then they said so boring and yet I think roast chicken no roast squab just by itself it was perfect roast game a roast yeah but from a Chinese point of view it is very boring and like but no but there are subtleties within aged beef rinses they're not getting really good no I think that you know trying to put more cosmopolitan Chinese eaters who are now traveling are getting very interested in steak actually in a theme and but I think that I'll give you an example like I'll spend most of my time in Japan then we have a really developed rice culture in Japan the Japanese person will pick up a bowl they'll smell it it's not fresh meeting that's more than milk more than a month ago they'll can tell you where it's from you know the chefs will talk about their mixtures of rice and sushi and in China never myself personally have seen that sort of connoisseurship about rice oh well I have about chilies for example chefs I know in touch one who can go on for hours about the Southall distinctions of chilies but I think you know what you're saying that lots of Chinese people it's absolutely hilarious I've lost count of the number of Chinese friends who said that she's how handy and out and dandy out which means Western food is very simple and very monotonous and but the point is I can understand why a roast chicken is a beautiful thing you know say you have a perfect roast chicken but a roast chicken is even better if you follow it with a light refreshing bra and a stir fried green and then you have the contrast of the sort of roasty skin is quite rich and heavy and the flesh and then this delicate stir fried vegetable and a refreshing soup and so Chinese food it's about the whole experience and that's why you have a whole variety of flavors even in a relatively simple meal and it stimulates the palate and it also leaves you feeling very shuffle you know Chinese people really understand the comfort of eating you don't go out and finish with seven courses of sugar and butter and cream MacOS you know you might have a great sensory experience but you know it's not going to leave you feeling sleeping very well that night hi I'm Amelia from China Shandong Province yeah and I know that you're fluent Chinese speaker so my first question for you I want to ask your question in Chinese yeah to mother died she don't show you part I see - don't look - if it is in the dye beer niaandandrew roots head to the traditional Thai there's just you know people often talk about in terms of eight great cuisines in Chinese cuisines one of which is the cuisine of Shandong Province known as Lou Thai and so I was just asking me in which dish so I can say the most representative of a little Thai of Shandong cooking and well one very representative - Oman which I adore is song shel hi shel which is a sea cucumber are you just trolling mark in Pilar because that would be good where she is representing a big sea cucumber sea cucumber braised in a sort of dark sauce with Jing Tong that kind of Chinese leak which is like a very very big and very mild kind of leaks galley and vegetable and that's a great classic and in terms of Shandong cooking it's sort of rather labor-intensive to prepare using a very expensive dried ingredient sort of banquet Shandong cooking luta is associated with sort of stately banquet cooking but you do have this gorgeous flavor the fragrance of the leek onion and and the lovely slippery Chris protects jealousy people are so you've emphasized in this discussion the balance of the meals in the way that often gets overlooked the way that American eaters will have a Chinese meal and think oh the bok choy is dull I'm gonna have more of the 700 chili chicken what are the other pieces of Chinese cuisine that Americans underrate their importance in the experience of the meal soup like almost every Chinese meal includes soup and even if you like if you go out to a very casual restaurant on your own and have fried noodles or fried rice like a one-dish meal almost always it will be served with a bowl full of broth maybe with just a couple of scallions or something and the idea is because you know if you have something fried it's a bit drying and it's very comfortable to sort of you know moisten the throat and refresh you with a soup and I think that you know the way Westerners order Chinese food often they wouldn't have soup almost every Chinese meal whether at home or in a restaurant you have soup we don't have a soup on the table here because there wasn't room for it I did order it an American eating problem and also I think with Chinese suits that you know the classic Chinese restaurant soups for Westerners are they like thick hot and sour soup or sweet corn and crab knees and that's really not a tongue that's one word for a broth like soup that's a gun which is a more substantial kind of stew soup I'm talking about these broth which again might be very very simple like lovely sort of sour Emami pickled vegetable and tofu just that and it's like a refreshing drink do you think that China will after it sort of goes through its flirting with this modernization and accepting Western brands whether it's Starbucks or rather come out with a brand new authentic modern Chinese food and the young chefs are going that way in China well I would say you can get very excellent you know contemporary Chinese food rooted in traditional techniques but the sad thing is that you know cheffing has become rather fashionable in the West you know young people want to do it it's kind glamorous and exciting that's not the case in China it's still a low status profession although people love food so parents don't really want their children to become chefs I know outstanding chefs in China who if they were in the West would have queues of people from all over the world wanting to come and do studies in their kitchen and they don't have apprentices so I always hear this complaint young people in China they're not willing to trickle eat bitterness to really apply themselves diligently to the craft of cookery so I think there is a problem this sort of disjunct between people you know people who obsessed with eating but not yet the idea that you know a young person might want to take over an artisanal soy sauce factory I think it may be coming because people you know there's a some people have this kind of you know idea of going back to a simpler life back to back to nature there is a kind of revival of interest in Chinese cuisine as culture Neil's yard when I mean when I went to London and I was a student in the 70s it was very hard to find a farmhouse regional British cheese and that Neal's Yard basically started the revolution again that's you know that's the that sparked that America we have this we now have over 10,000 beers made in the United States with four thousand jointed micro breweries and I grew up with probably 30 or 40 yeah that's a really good I really good thing and actually won one of the inspirations for my most recent book was the Dragon Well man a restaurant in Hangzhou which is an exceptional place where the owner died genuine otherwise known as I died is trying to sort of nourish the traditions of the region by supporting food artisans peasant producers and trying to give people an honest living for producing what urbanites now consider to be premium what we think of as organic products and what I fervently hope is that more Chinese people will see what he's doing is truly inspirational as a sort of you know yeah just a sort of a wonderful example of how to nourish Chinese traditional culture make it economically viable and kind of make it contemporary relevant to does he teach classes for Westerners No because that would be good and I just think I was just in Shanghai two weeks ago and I go into K 11 and what do I see it's like Chinese women taking classes on how to make birthday cakes for their kids and then I see the kids skull which is all about Western cooking and I'm thinking I looked at the whole directory for the next three months there wasn't one dish in Chinese them I mean one Chinese cooking class well I should remain taught there also in Hangzhou which you know has been a center of gastronomy for 800 years 800 years ago they had a restaurant scene with regional restaurants Buddhist vegetarian restaurants restaurants specializing in ice to dishes you know sea cucumber restaurants so in Hangzhou a few years ago they opened the Hangzhou cuisine Museum a single city has a huge museum with fantastic reconstructions like sushi models of all the classic dishes over 800 years literally and but they also have a teaching element they have a restaurant attached they have activities and classes so that's another example of sort of big local investment in sort of trying to promote local food culture to a new generation Chinese desserts to a westerner they seem kind of and you know is that I can come up with like multiple theories of that it like one is Chinese people just don't like dessert that much which you've actually kind of suggested one is that you know pastry cooking is fundamentally a weak activity if you were to in the rice half you don't get as much of it but but also you know the u.s. if you look at like the history of dessert right as like I mean as a major thing it actually starts in the US because we're closest to the sugar and then that sort of spreads so as sugar spreads into China does dessert get better or is it that they don't like what we what we like and I'm missing the magic of Chinese dessert well the first thing to point out is that Chinese don't have dessert as a course right so you finish with fruit usually and so sweet dishes tend to be either sort of incidental snacks between meals or you know something you have with tea or you might have a mingling of sweet and savory dishes like you can have some sweet dishes with quite a lot of sugar in them there are also some regions where they have a lot of sweet foods sue Jo and Russia in the Jiang nan region for example or the Chou Jo region of the Cantonese South there are a whole range of wonderful sweet pastries you know rice based in the south wheat based in the north but for me you know as a great advocate of Chinese cooking I do have to admit I think that the desserts and sweet things I think is possibly one at one aspect in which Western cuisines might have the edge and I think that's because of the the use of dairy product so you get the wonderful umami richness of butter and the textures of cream chocolate of course is not used traditionally in China so those things so if you take them out of Western desserts you're not left with very much in a way so in China a lot of the desserts also they're less sweet people have less sweet tooth apart from a few regions so you have things like sweet meats based on dried beans like mung beans or sweet potatoes and they're actually very delicious but they don't hit that extreme sweet spot that Westerners like for their dessert so could I ask a follow-up which is you know dairy obviously I know if you're lactose intolerant as many Asians are you're drinking milk is probably never going to happen I agree with you I don't drink milk either and my family are kind of dairy farmers so but but you know all of this dairy and Western cuisine and you see I look at just Eva I grew up in New York City and even so if I look at the kind of range of exotic ingredients that were available even to me shopping and what was then I think the best food city in the US and what is available now is just so much better and I think that's true all over the world I still remember eating Mexican food in London in the 90s and that was that was a bad bad bad experience um but now I'm till I I'm told I have British friends who swear that no really now it's different don't believe them I don't quite but I am willing to believe that's better I have a German cookbook with a recipe for guacamole in it now but you probably don't believe that recipe specifically I've never tried the recipe I have only but so as as more Chinese people come to the West on vacation to study etc I met a grad student in Wisconsin of all places who is like a Chinese grad students I love cheese I can't I can't I don't know what I'm gonna do when I go home and I was kind of shocked because he's the only Chinese person I've ever heard say this but as those as it does dari have a future in China is there is there going to be more of a spread absolutely and I think lots of lots of Chinese parents now feed their children milk because they think it'll make them grow big and strong I mean you know all this thing about baby milk being imported in large quantities and so on so yes milk specifically is a kind of nourishing thing for children and cheese is still a bit of a niche thing like you can buy it in supermarkets in cosmopolitan cities like Shanghai but yeah I mean you know Chinese Chinese China has a very dynamic open food culture and people are always into the next next best thing and chocolate also you know when I was a student in China in the 1990s I craved chocolate and the Chinese chocolate was awful staff and it wasn't shot at all and now you can get chocolate of some kind all over China so I think you know anything can happen okay this yeah containing teeth are short initial and waaah food culture so don't worry immediate are you sure you sure and why do one waa I don't know her then either Quenya don't know drunk water derbyshire ha ha Drago hard to take requests ok so you know in China and everywhere people often talk about food culture and wine culture so in China what's the relationship between so it was the last bit it sure usual wha-wha-what usually yeah yes um hi yeah Chinese culture so food culture and Chinese culture I just think you know food is and has always been really at the heart of Chinese culture and there are two very important reasons for this and one is the kind of ritual importance so food is not just and it hasn't always been just a social thing I think the sort of cement that binds families and friends together but food was the means by which you communicated with your ancestors and gods and many of the rituals of state were to do with agriculture and with food and so it's been a sort of serious business also because food has since the beginning of Chinese history been understood as the absolute foundation of good health there's no difference between food and medicine in China they say she eat all yin the food and medicine come from the same source so every food has its tonic properties if you're on well the first thing you do is address your diet so food is very important in that way you know and so and I think another argument that sometimes given is that you know often you know Chinese people haven't really been able to express themselves individually and they've often been considable constraints on freedom of expression through history and food has been a source of immense joy and fun and something kind of free of all that so it's also I think food in China particularly it's a place where you people it's a culture that express itself intellectually through food the lyrical names of dishes the stories associated with them you know talking about food and gastronomy as conversation and this culture so in all these respects it's just you know China is a Chinese food is culture in China so it's often observed sometimes a little smugly that a lot of what goes is Chinese food in America is not recognizable to the folks in China is there anything Americans have done with Chinese food either in the American Chinese space or in the more oh Momofuku Chinese fancy Chinese fusion space that is in your view an actual genuine advance something that would be valuable or valid in China yeah well I think in recent years the growth of regional cuisines regional restaurants like this one I mean here we've got some kind of authentic Cellini's dishes some dishes from Shanxi and northern China and so the opening up of sort of regional cuisines and regional street food is changing perception so unity you wouldn't have this in sure you would have this in China though yeah but what could have we done anything interesting here you should go backwards like is there anything interesting and say the Momofuku sort of efforts that is actually Americans contributing in some way to well I would say I mean at the level of individual dishes very interesting dishes but China has it all already you know amazing combinations you know it's just China is so diverse you know apart from dairy and and some sweet things and so on it's that you can you can one you know you can if you if you like hamburgers you know that's the she and Roger Moore it's a kind of sheer hamburger and that's one thing that they kind of got it already what I think that means know what is General Tso's chicken tastes like to a Chinese person well interestingly I did the whole research thing about this but it's supposed to be a Hunan ease dish right but I was very mystified when I went to Hunan to research my Hunan cookbook to find that nobody had ever heard of it really and and it turned out anyway to cut a long story short it was invented by a very famous who Nene chef in Taiwan and it went from him to New York when he opened a restaurant then near the United Nations and at one point this chef Poong Chang way did go back to his hometown Changsha in hoon at the capital of Hunan Province and he opened a restaurant there and one of the dishes he served was General Tso's chicken and I heard from people who remembered that restaurant that the food day was too sweet so that's a dish that in some ways you know it has uh some characteristics of who Deniz food the Swan la sour and hot use of vinegar and scorch chilies but for American tastes is the whole load of sugar which they don't really add to savory dishes much in Hunan when i'veeen dishes in Taipei but generally they earlier on that the food had Taipei was better than mainland China because they had access to better ingredients and the it was an educated elite class that left China and brought with them their culinary traditions with them and so they had access to the recipes the technique and so forth so does this Taipei you think a repository of some of the more it more difficult dishes or of the older style because a lot of that was interrupted its like in China yeah also Taipei is a little bit more concerned about Providence of ingredient I would say that I think in the early day so 1949 the defeated nationalists fled to Taiwan with as you're saying that you know the chefs and their food traditions and at that time you know the Nationalists all thought they would go back and they were all missing their home provinces and they wanted to eat the classic traditional food you know of the elites of these provinces and so the restaurants I think by all accounts sort of in the 50s and 60s were very very traditional authentic but what's happened since then is that you know there's been a lot of mixing up the younger generation of chefs are Taiwan born so they might work for a bit in a Hunan restaurant then go into a judge on restaurant so they're all very mixed up so you go to a regional restaurant in Taiwan and they're either very old-school and somehow not so good anymore or they tend to be a bit more fusion Lee in Chinese terms and also in Taiwan you have this whole Japanese influence from the colonial occupation so yeah and also a particular regional buyers for the foo journeys history over many of time at these people so I think sort of 60 years on from that and I don't there are some like there's a fantastic Suzhou bakery in this food street in Taiwan where they make really traditional and pseudo pastries but a lot of it is you know a sort of mixed art version of Chinese do not say there's not excellent I wants a fantastic place to eat but and in China sometimes it is difficult to find the real old-school cooking and that's why what the Dragon Well Manor do is well manner at restaurant doing is so important is like recruiting retired chefs to teach the younger generation the old the old skills what is the dish in your cookbooks that is a place you would tell beginners to start what is the dish that they will be capable of making and the results will hook them I think Gong Bao chicken is a really good introduction to stir frying because it's not complicated it doesn't have many stages and you can assemble all your ingredients in little bowls first and then they just go one by one into the walk and it's a kind of knockout flavor you know everyone likes chicken there's no bones in it a bit of spice lovely layering of flavors and that's one dish that I think people are surprised to find how straight for what it is and it's addictively tasty yeah yeah and we add when all you have been to tennis many times yeah so what's your next destination of China to and what's the most you want to discover I think I just feel like the more I find out about Chinese food the more there is to discover and yeah I mean I feel like I'll be learning my whole life so I would love to do more work on the northern pasta Art's I'm currently learning a lot about the food of Yunnan which is one of the most biodiverse regions on earth and as you'd expect has a rather extraordinary range of ingredients but I think I mean the thing about China is that it its cuisines have been so relatively unexplored by the english-speaking world and so there's so much to discover and write about all over the country tell us what tell us what's so unusual about you not because that to me was the big revelation every part of China I've been to Yunnan surprised me the most dishes I'd never even dreamt of and would not have thought of as Chinese so you'd have some bread dipped in honey or you'd have donkey in a red sauce almost in some ways like a curry sauce or mushrooms in ways you had not imagined but what makes you not special for you well it's always been a kind of marginal region with I think 20-something of China's 56 ethnic minorities so it's extraordinary diverse culturally it borders Burma Laos and Vietnam so if you go to the south and the southwest of Yunnan you're really getting into Southeast Asian flavors and cooking techniques and ingredients also mentioned this incredible diversity of ingredients insects flowers mushrooms Belaga bee larvae yes and also it's just so it's always been it's not really and you can't really understand it in terms of the classical schools of Chinese cooking it's a bit more adventurous and it's got thing like I mean like the fact that there are a couple of notable forms of local cheese in you nom which is just exceptional you know so I think it's that diversity in that sense of being sort of on the edge of empire and it was a region that was sometimes part of China and sometimes it was doing its own thing and you really feel that in the food too close for relatively quick questions one from each of us Ava your quick question for fuchsia so you know at just you have said you have introduced the gumball TD right so for the what's your most favorite Chinese station well one of my first loves and my best loves is use young kids ax is fish fragrant eggplant because that for me it's a really simple everyday such a nice dish but it's got knockout incredible flavor so it's eggplant with a classic fish fragrant combination of pickled chilies ginger garlic scallion a bit of sweet and sour and it's just that's for me an example about how you don't have to be rich you don't have to be sort of particularly accomplished in the kitchen and to eat just fantastically well in China the opposite of that question what is your favorite Western Shan restaurant and your favorite and your favorite dish at it well it's not exactly which though the chain restaurant I eat at most often is the Royal China chain of dim sum restaurants in London this is not a this is not I'm not accepting this answer okay chain restaurants I didn't really eat your chain restaurants there's nope no part of you that loves and McFlurry or print you go to print oh yeah I mean I I get sandwiches at pretend Monty which one's your favorite thing I can't really think um BLT so wizard Pratt all right mark um this beautiful picture in your new book are the hams what does he call it this the Jinhua ham can you judge I explain it taste of that I really I love hey I just yeah can you explain the difference is it which I'm going to be closest to and in my sort of it would have been Spanish Italian I wasn't cured and what's the flavor like oh it's um it's closest perhaps to Spanish hams and a lot of Chinese chefs in the in the West would use that would use Spanish ham as a substitute because you can't often import Chinese meats to Europe so it's very intense it's sort of fairly dense garnet colored meat and it's not eaten raw it's used as an umami flavoring in cooked dishes mostly polos it aged I'm not sure actually I mean I think a whole range better you Megan what is the last Western food that will become popular in China and what is the last Chinese food that will become popular in the West most Western food may be a really ripe edgy stinky Brie I have an experience of trying to feed everybody behind China and the other way around I think it would have to be something textural is not allowed well I could mention one very extreme textural delicacy that I've only ever come across once in China and probably most people in China wouldn't need it but such when he is love their rubbery crunchy awful and that is the upper pallets of pigs which they call 10-pound paradise and I found it is a late-night Street store covered in and the chili and such one pepper oil but I don't think that will be a big hit in New York or London a20 very last question goes to me to close what is your favorite Chinese film and why eat drink man woman so Taiwanese and it's it's a lovely story about food but what's extraordinary is the actual food you see in that film and actually by chance I've come across the book that the books the set of books that was clearly the source for that so there was an amazing series of cookery books produced around 1980 I think when they photographed the classical cuisine the classical dishes of four great cuisines China and they shot them beautifully in antique dishes and this is for me the sort of absolute pinnacle of classical Chinese cuisine and the people who researched the food for that film have done their homework and it is just ravishing I'm historically accurate Chinese food I thank the panel and most of all fuchsia thank you very much for a wonderful time and for the ordering thank you thank you you

Channel: Mercatus Center

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Length: 74min 11sec (4451 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 16 2016