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Fuchsia Dunlop

lines on the record: 87
first: 2023-12-13
most recent: 2023-12-13
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Um, poor Well, that's hard to say. I mean, I suppose that all soy products is the influence of China, right? Because China domesticated the soybean very early on and soy foods have been incredibly important. Also, they came to Japan from China, right, making tofu and soy sauce”
2023-12-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Fuchsia Dunlop on the Story of Chinese Food · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, you need someone who reads Chinese to go on social media and find what is being talked about. I think that would help.”
2023-12-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Fuchsia Dunlop on the Story of Chinese Food · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Chinese is all soupy noodles and fried noodles are much less common really so perhaps this is why and also just in China until very recently and still in most cases Chinese people don't have ovens at home They do not roast or bake so everything was done on a stovetop, a design that really hadn't changed much for 2,000 years that you can still see in farmhouses in China these stoves with two openings for walks or steamers and that's how you cook and so bread in China traditionally is usually steamed and sometimes cooked on a kind of griddle maybe with a lid like Xiaobing. Yeah the absence of ovens as a common kitchen implement and the love of hot liquid.”
2023-12-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Fuchsia Dunlop on the Story of Chinese Food · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Chopsticks, which are very suited for eating that kind of dish. It seems like some early forms of pasta appear to have been bits of dough dropped into hot liquid. And that would have fitted into a way of eating that was already becoming a bit distinctively Chinese, you could say. And I think that's still the case. Wouldn't you say Lydia, that Chinese people really like liquids in their food more than Westerners? So a classic Chinese, you know, in England we say meat and two veg is like a basic standard meal. In Chinese it's four dishes and a soup. And when I was living in Sichuan, you know, you never have a meal without soup. It might be really, really basic, but it's just going to be a light broth to cleanse the palate and sort of, you know, refresh you after the other dishes. So I think perhaps, you know, and in modern China, Westerners much prefer Chao Main stir-fried noodles.”
2023-12-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Fuchsia Dunlop on the Story of Chinese Food · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, as we sort of alluded to earlier, there's this regional divide in China where in the north wheat has sort of primarily grown rather than rice, which is obviously much the same as Europe. So what is the kind of expatory factor that means that in China people tend to make noodles rather than bread, obviously bread in Europe rather than noodles? Is there a kind of factor or single factor that explains that? There's a very interesting book, a cultural history of chopsticks by Edward Q Wang, who looks a bit at this, but it seems that the Chinese very early on, apart from eating food that was cut into small pieces, they really liked eating food that was plucked out of hot liquid, right? And so the classic ancient Chinese dish long before stir fries and the more sort of famous modern Chinese dishes was the gung, which was a sort of soupy stew made from lots of ingredients that were cut into small pieces floating around together in liquid. This sort of evolved with the use of”
2023-12-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Fuchsia Dunlop on the Story of Chinese Food · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, but I mean, if you're Chinese, that's no problem because, you know, people in China eat camels' feet and pig's feet and they cook them to make the most of these gristly and gelatinous textures. So the fact that it's highly grappleless and not appealing to a Western palate is no problem at all.”
2023-12-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Fuchsia Dunlop on the Story of Chinese Food · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You don't have Bear's Paw really served these days. It appears in cookbooks right until the 1980s, you know, even of state banquets, but now something. But you have lots of bears in America, don't you?”
2023-12-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Fuchsia Dunlop on the Story of Chinese Food · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, because it's popular and ubiquitous, pork is the celebratory food for anyone traditionally. But in China, if you want to get to the really highest echelons of gastronomy, you need rare and exotic and particular and sought after foods. So things like deer tendons, these are imperial delicacies, camel's hump, you know, Hashma, the ovarian fat of the snow frog, all these unusual delicacies and bird's nest wear and fabulously expensive. So these things are more prestigious in China because they're scarce and expensive and extreme luxuries.”
2023-12-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Fuchsia Dunlop on the Story of Chinese Food · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At a very low heat, that it turns to a kind of fudge, a bit like Dolce de Lece, but solid. So there are traces of Manchu food in Chinese cooking, particularly in the north.”
2023-12-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Fuchsia Dunlop on the Story of Chinese Food · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Whole roast meats, particularly in northern cuisine, may have been a legacy of this Manchu production for meat. And there's a scholar Isaac Huer, who I cited in the book, who looked at an 18th century Chinese banquet menu. And there were whole servings of what were clearly Chinese dishes with food cut up very fine and served in soups and stews. And then these whole services of real sort of charred and roasted and boiled meats, which were Manchu. And then also actually in Beijing cuisine, there is some legacy of the Manchus in dairy foods. So like other nomads, they ate dairy foods. And so you have very fascinating something in Beijing imperial cuisine called Nail Lao, junket, which is like a steamed custody dessert made from milk. And also another very interesting dish when Niel Gan, when it's cooked.”
2023-12-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Fuchsia Dunlop on the Story of Chinese Food · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I mean, there's a bit in the book about this idea, I mean, one of the distinctive things about Chinese cooking going back about 2,000 years is the habit of cutting food into small pieces and eating it with chopsticks. And yet there are some dishes which are presented whole, like a Cantonese ceremonial suckling pig or peeking duck. And of course, they're cut up before they're served because you don't have knives at the Chinese dinner table. The Manchus were sort of rugged northern nomads who liked eating huge chunks of sheep meat, which they would then cut apart with their own personal knives. And this was something that was still part of high-level society in the Qing dynasty when China was ruled by Manchus. And you can see these little eating sets that people slung onto their belts or tucked into their boots where you have a pair of chopsticks and a knife so that people could eat both Chinese and Manchu food.”
2023-12-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Fuchsia Dunlop on the Story of Chinese Food · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I suppose, I mean, China was a whole civilization that grew around the staple grain, which was originally millet, and all the rituals of the state, the ancient Chinese state, were about offering food to gods and ancestors, so wheat and alcohol and millet and alcohol and so on and roasted meats. Yeah, I mean, I suppose what's interesting about that is that Millet went on being the sacred grain right up until the end of the Chinese imperial period in about 1911, but it had actually disappeared from people's daily diets. So people in North China went on to eat and wheat and noodles and breads, but Millet remained the staple grain. So I guess there's a gulf between what people are actually eating and ideas about ritual and so on.”
2023-12-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Fuchsia Dunlop on the Story of Chinese Food · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And this is a classic Sichuan banquet dish, which goes back at least 100 years. It's sort of written about in a very famous text early 20th century. And it's just a reminder that Sichuan food is not all spicy, you know, like any other Chinese cuisine. It's about balance. So if you have very intensely flavored and hot dishes and oily dishes, you always have refreshing things like this lovely broth.”
2023-12-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Fuchsia Dunlop on the Story of Chinese Food · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think perhaps when you don't mind a little noise and you're not shy of the physicality, then you can have things that are slithery and crunchy and require a bit of engagement when you eat them.”
2023-12-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Fuchsia Dunlop on the Story of Chinese Food · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, speculation again. But I think the thing about Chanty, there was this ancient philosopher Gadza who said human nature. And there's this unabashed pleasure in the physicality of eating. Like English people traditionally are a bit sort of buttoned up and it's impolite to make noises when you eat and it's not very proper to show too much exuberant delight in food. But in China you see this absolute joy in eating, in ancient poetry, in the way people eat today. And I think part of that is feeling uninhibited about it as something physical. So like when you eat in China, you can make little noises, you can put something like a duck's tongue that's grappleous and a bit bony and complicated to your lips and you can enjoy the game with your teeth and tongue. And that's all perfectly acceptable. And enjoy.”
2023-12-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Fuchsia Dunlop on the Story of Chinese Food · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Often tasteless foods that have interesting textures. And there are certain textures. So, for example, one of my sort of old favorite Sichuanese dish, fire exploded kidney flowers. So that's made with pork kidneys which are cut into little frilly pieces and stir-fried very fast. And you actually have to cook them fast to keep them none and a little bit sort of crisp, right? So I think perhaps when people have this obsession with texture, there are certain ingredients that require fast cooking. Also vegetables, right? So you don't have everything very soft, but you have this briskness, liveniness, crispness in the bite.”
2023-12-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Fuchsia Dunlop on the Story of Chinese Food · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But actually, another thing is the emphasis on texture. And I don't really know about the history of this, but one of the really distinctive things about Chinese gastronomy is that the Chinese totally appreciate and understand texture to a degree that is unheard of anywhere else, really. And that's why they enjoy eating so many slithery rubbery and also”
2023-12-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Fuchsia Dunlop on the Story of Chinese Food · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Another idea that I was thinking of was that also, and again, I don't know about India, but China very early on, like in the Song Dynasty from about 12th century, had a really lively and developed and diverse restaurant scene. With restaurants at different levels, and so eating out was a real thing. And I should imagine with eating out that, and there were restaurants with menus where you would order your dishes, you know, not just fixed menus and so on. And so in those conditions, you do want dishes that can be made quickly to order. So maybe that would encourage the development of fast cooking methods as well as home cooking and slow the pot on the stove in the home kitchen.”
2023-12-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Fuchsia Dunlop on the Story of Chinese Food · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Diversity that Chinese does. But in terms of cooking methods, it's hard to say, and again, I don't know about Indian food, but the thing about China is that there's been this intense thoughtfulness about food really for a very long time. I mean, you know, you see it in descriptions of food from 2,000 years ago and more. And then in the Song dynasty, this incredible restaurant industry in places like”
2023-12-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Fuchsia Dunlop on the Story of Chinese Food · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a really interesting question. It's hard to answer because I don't really know anything about Indian food. I did have a really interesting conversation with an Indian who came on my tour to Yunnan earlier this year because I was kind of speculating that one of the reasons that Chinese food is so diverse is that the Chinese are really open-minded with very few taboos. So apart from Muslims eating halal food and some Buddhists not eating meat, there's a kind of great adventurous open-mindedness to eating. Whereas in India, you have lots of taboos and sort of religious and ritual restrictions. And that's one reason that you would think it would be a constraint on the creativity of Indian food. But this Indian I was talking to who's a food specialist, he reckoned that the restrictions actually forced people to be more creative. So he was arguing that Indian food was had all the conditions.”
2023-12-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Fuchsia Dunlop on the Story of Chinese Food · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Got stuck public perceptions of Chinese food have got stuck there. But now things are changing and there are so many immigrants, students, visitors from other parts of China living in cities like this and all over the place who want to eat proper Chinese food. They want to eat the food they eat at home, whether it's from their hometowns or it's trendy cuisines like Setuanese. So it's now possible for Chinese restaurants in the West. You know, they don't have to tailor to Western taste. They can just start off doing food for a Chinese clientele. So then it's more faithful. But I think one should also say that some of the, I mean, like your Yunnan cuisine, for example, the marvelous thing about Yunnan cuisine is all this local produce. There are so many ingredients that you simply can't find anywhere else in China, let alone abroad. And so it's harder to, I mean, you can't really reproduce.”
2023-12-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Fuchsia Dunlop on the Story of Chinese Food · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so the first thing is that China is absolutely vast and it has a very stunning diversity of different terrains and climates with all the implications for produce. So there are so many ingredients from different places. So you're only ever going to see small snapshots of this great richness of Chinese cuisine abroad. So even though now we're beginning to see Sichuanese food and different regional cuisines, there is so much more. I mean, I've been researching this for about 30 years and I'm still discovering entire new styles, you know, local traditions. Practically every time I go to China. And in terms of fidelity, I think Chinese food, I said in the book, it's a kind of victim of its own success. And it's all about timing. Chinese was one of the earliest immigrants' cuisines at a time when Western palates were probably more conservative. And it was more difficult to try and faithfully reproduce Chinese food abroad.”
2023-12-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Fuchsia Dunlop on the Story of Chinese Food · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I mean, it's like wine, isn't it? It's exactly the same. So I think that, you know, to an extent, probably there is, you know, that the exact, the soil and the weather in a particular place will influence an ingredient. But clearly there's also a sort of cultural and imaginative aspect. And so there's a lot of fakery as well. So people pretending that they're supplying Long Jing tea from the Longjing Hills around Hangzhou when it's not actually that. But probably people who drink it still feel that it's fine advice of the label.”
2023-12-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Fuchsia Dunlop on the Story of Chinese Food · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I think my feeling is that if Chinese cuisine in the future in contemporary times manages to unite the exceptional culinary skills of Chinese chefs with the old obsession with ingredients, they're just going to blow everyone else away.”
2023-12-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Fuchsia Dunlop on the Story of Chinese Food · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A vitally important part of it is sourcing seasonal, fresh quality ingredients. So it would be nice to recognize that. And this is clearly happening here. We've got all these Amish farm ingredients, right?”
2023-12-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Fuchsia Dunlop on the Story of Chinese Food · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're quoting you and they the great 18th century Chinese gourmet. Well, that's another thing that's really interesting because I think Chinese food in the West is not associated with premium ingredients. So if you go to a sort of fancy Spanish restaurant, they'll be trumpeting their American ham, so on and so on. If you go to a new Californian restaurant, they'll be talking about which farm they got the produce from. But Chinese restaurants generally don't say much about the ingredients. And that's just because they've been kind of stuck in this bracket where people don't go to Chinese restaurants for fine ingredients, which is completely mad. And, you know, in this book, there's a whole chapter about this, really, that the Chinese practically invented the concept of terroi, you know, the obsession with seasons, with provenance, you know, exactly which land your vegetables are produced on and so on. Yeah, I think that in traditional Chinese cookery certainly...”
2023-12-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Fuchsia Dunlop on the Story of Chinese Food · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's certainly delicious. And it's lovely to have some vegetable dishes. And that's one of the things that Chinese food in the West with the sort of concentration on shrimp and chicken and, you know, beef and fried foods and so on. But actually the glory of Chinese cooking is that there are so many vegetables. It's healthy and balanced and refreshing. So you might have a rich intense dish like this mala beef, numbing and hot beef, very delicious and rich and meaty. But also we've got this lovely tofu skin with a sort of very light dressing and a bit of crab meat and some very refreshing shit.”
2023-12-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Fuchsia Dunlop on the Story of Chinese Food · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“making Sichuanese dishes with okra, which was not around when I was a student there in the 90s. So I think that there's always this tension between, you know, we all feel nostalgic and we love tradition and there's something worthwhile about trying to document classics and traditions. But at the same time, you have to recognize that a cuisine is a very vital living form of culture, which is recreated in every kitchen every day. So the difference between practice and theory is quite, you know, quite deep.”
2023-12-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Fuchsia Dunlop on the Story of Chinese Food · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, yes, as you said, there's been a sort of bid to standardize and categorize classic dishes. So the local government, also in Chongqing, they've produced publications which say this is Mapodofu and this is the ingredients, like having a sort of appellation control for wine or something. But I think the point is that it's an interesting and noble endeavor, but people cook in a much more free ad hoc, creative way. So there are many different ways to actually make a map or fuel, maybe some key characteristics, but you don't have every chef measuring to the gram the amount of minced beef or the amount of citron pepper. So I think, I would say they're not having that much influence. And also because Sichuanese cuisine, one of the great things about it is that it's so dynamic. I mean, people in Sichuan love eating and they're creative and they're always doing things like...”
2023-12-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Fuchsia Dunlop on the Story of Chinese Food · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, the frustrating thing is that there are some, there's an amazing source, well, actually, of sort of, when is it, 12th, 13th century Hangzhou describing all the food served in city restaurants. And it is dizzying. You know, there were all different kinds of restaurants, regional, Buddhist, vegetarian restaurants, restaurants for students, and snack shops of different kinds. And the author lists all these delicacies, but there are no recipes or descriptions. So there's tantalizingly not very complete information. But you could, you know, I know chefs, I know a chef in Hangzhou actually who has created banquets of Song Dynasty food as far as possible from the texts. So I think we have to partly use imagination, but some, you know, there are some continuities in ingredients and techniques.”
2023-12-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Fuchsia Dunlop on the Story of Chinese Food · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ingredients that they were used to, and they were often cooking for people who had no acquaintance with Chinese food. So you have this simplified, very appealing, fantastically popular and successful, but not really a good representation of this amazing culinary nation throughout the 20th century war revolution, cultural revolution. And so China was just not part of international culinary exchanges. And I think also prestige food is often about money. You know, Japan got rich first, Japanese food is very prestigious. People will spend loads of money on Japanese sushi, but not so much on Chinese food. So I think that, yeah, Faranagia is right that Chinese food doesn't have the recognition, the acknowledgement that it really should have, I think now it's possible, really, to have a fresh look.”
2023-12-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Fuchsia Dunlop on the Story of Chinese Food · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think it's, I mean, one of the reasons that I wrote this book is that it seems to me extraordinary that China has this exceptional cuisine, which is so diverse and sophisticated, and also which resonates with so many contemporary concerns. And, you know, there are parallels in China going back to the 10th century of people making imitation meats from plant foods. You have this tremendously creative transformational cuisine which echoes the avant-garde cooking of modernist chefs in the West. All this stuff, and yet China has been a sort of terror incognita for many people in the food world. And this is, I think it's purely historical reasons. The Chinese food that most people in the West know stems from American Chinese food, which was created by immigrants from one particular region, the Cantonese South, who were working in very different difficult circumstances. You know, they were facing racial prejudice. They probably didn't have access to all the...”
2023-12-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Fuchsia Dunlop on the Story of Chinese Food · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think it's very noticeable that restaurants in cities, there are more restaurants with small tables designed for couples and smaller groups. But I mean, you still have the kind of round table big gang, but also alternatives.”
2023-12-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Fuchsia Dunlop on the Story of Chinese Food · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, so going back, the first thing that was really striking there were many fewer foreigners. So, you know, when I was there in the 90s, there weren't many foreigners at all, and I felt very conspicuous. And then there's been a period with loads of expats and visitors and tourists. And sort of in the wake of the pandemic, again, I was feeling like I was the only foreigner around. And food-wise, well, one thing that I found hilarious and surprising was having takeouts delivered to a hotel room by robots. So that's never happened to me here. So technological advances. And then also everyone I met was talking about Yu Ju Tzai, like semi-prepared dishes. And so it's been a real trend in China that restaurants are having central kitchens that are supplying dishes that are either fully made and just need reheating or partially made to be finished in a restaurant. And it seems to be a really hot topic of conversation. And of course, all these concerns about”
2023-12-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Fuchsia Dunlop on the Story of Chinese Food · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I suppose the striking thing about Chinese culinary history is that there are these extraordinary continuities going back thousands of years in some cases, like steaming, for example, since the Neolithic Age or making fermented soybean products going back more than 2,000 years, but that it has also always been so multicultural and so sort of innovative, like the Han Dynasty about 2,000 years ago was a period when lots of new ingredients and technology actually critically for milling flour from wheat, which brought noodles and so on to China, but came in. And I think while researching this book, it was just a real reminder of how receptive Chinese food has been to other influences and how it's a kind of composite of many different places and ideas.”
2023-12-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Fuchsia Dunlop on the Story of Chinese Food · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, Fujian is supposed to be best for artisanal soy sauce, but I suppose there's an amazing, really traditional soy sauce factory in Hejang in southern Sichuan. And it's this magical place on the banks of the river with all these clay pots, Tanza, with straw hats covering them when it rains, laid out with sort of traditional buildings, and they do traditional old-fashioned modern innovation soy sauce and a combination of the flavor and the place is just exceptional.”
2023-12-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Fuchsia Dunlop on the Story of Chinese Food · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I guess naturally fermented artisanal soy sauce has a kind of tang to it and a richness which would be much more impressive than your average sort of mass manufactured soy sauce. If you're lucky enough to get some.”
2023-12-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Fuchsia Dunlop on the Story of Chinese Food · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source