Cookbooks We Love: Shanghai and its Jiangnan region shine in 'Land of Fish and Rice'
Land of Fish and Rice: Recipes from the Culinary Heart of China, by Fuchsia Dunlop, photographs by Yuki Sugiura, 2016, W.W. Norton & Company, $35
Backgrounder: The British, Cambridge-educated cookbook author Fuchsia Dunlop was the first Westerner to train as a chef at the Sichuan Institute of Higher Cuisine in Central China; she has four James Beard Awards. Land of Fish and Rice — which won the Andre Simon Food Book of the Year Award — is her fifth book; in 2019 she published a sixth, The Food of Sichuan. Land of Fish and Rice explores China’s Lower Yangtze (Jiangnan) region, of which Shanghai is the gateway. It’s a region “known for delicacy and balance,” Dunlop writes in the introduction. This is the book we look in first when we happen upon beautiful bunches of tong hao – chrysanthemum leaves – or giant bunches of flowering chives in a Chinese supermarket and wonder how to show them to their best advantage.
Why We Love It: There’s an easy elegance to Dunlop’s writing and cooking, an aesthetic we find super-appealing; Yuki Sugiura’s lovely photos capture it all perfectly. We happen to love the quiet charms of the cooking of Shanghai and the Jiangnan region, and Dunlop is a trustworthy guide who tells engaging stories of her experiences in the region along the way. Her recipes are easy to follow, they work, they showcase great ingredients and Dunlop has a wonderful way of teaching a bit of useful technique in each recipe. Cook a few, and you can’t help but feel you’re just that much farther along in learning. And you’ll certainly have eaten very well.
Slivered Pork with Flowering Chives from Fuchsia Dunlop’s Land of Fish and Rice
You’ve Gotta Try This: Dunlop’s recipe for Slivered Pork with Flowering Chives is simple and homey, somehow almost poetic. It uses very little meat — just four ounces. After prepping, which is minimal, it comes together in about five minutes; with rice it’s perfect for a light, laid-back supper.
Stir-Fried Shrimp with Dragon Well Tea is the thing to make when you find yourself with fabulous fresh shrimp. You cloak them very lightly in a mixture of potato starch, water and Shaoxing wine, then pre-fry them at a not-sizzling-hot temperature so they come out tender and silky, and then they’re cooked briefly with the tea and its leaves. Though the particular tea, Dragon Well (Long Jing), is one of the most prized in China, you can actually purchase it easily from from my favorite tea outfit, Upton Tea Imports. But any Chinese green tea will do.
Looking for cocktail nibbles? If you love radishes as much as we do, you’ll enjoy these sweet-and-sour babies — which get smashed and salted as if they were cucumbers, then bathed in Chinkiang vinegar with a little superfine sugar and sesame oil. They are delightful with cocktails.
Still wanna cook: So many things! Clear-simmered lion’s head meatballs. Hangzhou spiced soy-sauce duck. Scalded tofu slivers — an essential dish of the Yangzhou tea breakfast — with dried shrimp, ginger and Sichuan preserved vegetable. Shanghai fried rice with salt pork and green bok choy. Yangzhou slivered radish buns, plump with pork belly and spring onions.
Social perk: Dunlop’s Instagram feed — @fuchsiadunlop — mixes Eastern and Western bites. It’s one of our faves.