Inside London's Chinatown (360 video) - BBC News

I'm fuchsia Dunlop and I'm a cook and food writer specializing in Chinese food and I'm here today in the heart of London's Chinatown it's been the center of the Chinese community in London since about the late 1940s and became official Chinatown in 1984 and as you can see it's home with red lanterns this was the visit of the Chinese President to London and all around me there are Chinese lawyers acupuncturist massage and of course many Chinese restaurants and Chinatown's also the best place in London really to buy really excellent Chinese ingredients for cooking one of the amazing things about Chinatown over the last few years has been the ever-increasing array of fresh wonderful vegetables imported from China Thailand sometimes Europe one that I really love are these garlicky vegetables not just the Chinese garlic chives Chinese chives but also yellow hothouse chives dill Poong and these are grown in the dark and so they become very pale and delicate with this wonderful aroma that will just fill your shopping basket and your kitchen oh and here's something that you really don't see very often these are water caltrops like some weird kind of vampire bat which you can just boil and eat like a fruit a bit like a chestnut chef Jen very nice to meet you and this is chef Shen of the Oriental dragon restaurant and right in front of us here this is the kind of dish that everyone knows sweet-and-sour pork and this is real old style Chinatown it's originally a Cantonese dish and it's very sweet for Western tastes nice she wish you under attack so good okay yeah ma cool at all yeah cool ro is the Cantonese name and so but chef Chen is one of the new generation of Chinatown cooks you know they used to all be Cantonese but he's from Changsha the capital of Hunan Province and Hunan cooking is much spicier it's very different from from the Cantonese these here's a cha-cha at a okay he's giving typical Hunan dish which is smoked pork with dried radish so it's a real kind of bomb house supper dish and lots of chili Manitoba oh haha we'll get out Huna knees are famous for their smoked and cured winter meats absolutely delicious so that was all over smoked pork going into the into the wok getting some fresh red chili dried red chili sliced garlic and ginger this year and some shashing cooking wine all flaming up there so this ambassador ebrahim a Gallardo ha ha ha do you think he did the first stage which was to FRA fragrant the bacon to make it lovely and crisp now he's frying me the dried radish and a little bit of oyster sauce extra umami do some us some sense all a little bit of light soy sauce thank you and some more fresh red chili living up and some dried chilli ginger and garlic more chillies fresh red and green chillies myself sometimes they say in China that whoo Nana and pabu la kundunese people are afraid of food that's not hot as a very spicy reputation and then that lovely fried pork is going back into the wok and more chili to Cantonese and already known for their liking for spicy food so this new generation of chefs from places like Doonan and such one of bringing all these spicy flavors to London jungle yeah and some spring onions bitter frightened of color brighten it up at the end oh very colorful oh this here this is real like old Chinatown a new Chinatown here hope you wait Hema yeah so look at that deep fried pork in a bright orange sweet sour sauce this is like the Chinese food of my childhood and it's a typical Hunan dish so this is the dried radish with all that chili and the Baker [Music] wonderful Heat another nice crunch of the radish so that was just a little taste of how Chinese food is changing in London's Chinatown because you know Chinese food was one of the earliest immigrants cuisines to take root in this country and it started Chinese wrestle started opening at a time when British tastes were much more conservative but now people are more adventurous people are travelling more and also the makeup of Chinatown is changing so we've got chefs and residents here from Hunan Province Szechuan Fujian and the northeast of China now all bringing more authentic flavors and it seems that British people are really ready to welcome them and now you've got regional restaurants opening all over the place and even in the heart of Chinatown which used to be so Cantonese but restaurants like this one do it having a separate Hoonah knees and cetera and menu alongside the old Cantonese sweet and sour pork you

Channel: BBC News

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Keywords: the food chain, bbc, news, bbc news, china, chinese, food, chinese food, kitchen, recipe, youtube, 360 video, footage, bbc documentary, bbc documentaries, documentaries, documentary bbc, Food Chain, cook, cooking, London (City/Town/Village), Documentary, immersive, Chinese Food (Cuisine)

Id: aZn3JfqN1zw

Length: 6min 55sec (415 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 19 2015