Fuchsia Dunlop

Award-winning food writer Fuchsia Dunlop went to live in China in 1994, and from the very beginning vowed to eat everything she was offered, no matter how alien and bizarre it seemed to her as a Westerner. In this extraordinary memoir, Fuchsia recalls her evolving relationship with China and its food, from her first rapturous encounter with the delicious cuisine of Sichuan Province, to brushes with corruption, environmental degradation and greed. In the course of this fascinating journey, Fuchsia undergoes an apprenticeship at the Sichuan cooking school, where she is the only foreign student in a class of nearly fifty young Chinese men; she attempts, hilariously, to persuade Chinese people that 'Western food' is neither 'simple' nor 'bland'; and samples a multitude of exotic ingredients, including dogmeat, civet cats, scorpions, rabbit heads and the ovarian fat of the snow frog. But is it possible for a Westerner to become a true convert to the Chinese way of eating? In an encounter with a caterpillar in an Oxfordshire kitchen, Fuchsia is forced to put this to the test. From the vibrant markets of Sichuan to the bleached landscape of northern Gansu Province, from the desert oases of Xinjiang to the enchanting old city of Yangzhou, this is a unique and evocative account of a culture and cuisine that is a world away from most Westerners' experiences.

A Sweet-sour Memoir of Eating in China

Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper

A culinary reference features southern Chinese recipes, shares a comprehensive introduction to key seasonings and techniques, and offers such options as smoky eggplant with garlic, twice-cooked pork, and emergency midnight noodles.

Every Grain of Rice: Simple Chinese Home Cooking

An essential update of Fuchsia Dunlop's landmark book on Sichuan cuisine, with 200 recipes and stunning photographs.

The Food of Sichuan

A History of Chinese Food

Invitation to a Banquet

A collection of traditional Sichuanese recipes, drawn from the author's two-year experience with regional chefs and complemented by detailed cooking methods, features a range of dishes and includes an ingredient glossary and a listing of twenty-three key Chinese flavors. 20,000 first printing.

A Treasury of Authentic Sichuan Cooking

Land of Plenty

The modern classic that redefined the travel food memoir, with a new foreword from Bee Wilson. Fuchsia Dunlop, the first Westerner to train at the prestigious Sichuan Institute of Higher Cuisine, “has done more to explain real Chinese cooking to non-Chinese cooks than anyone” (Julia Moskin, New York Times). In Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper, Dunlop recalls her rapturous encounters with China’s culinary riches, alongside her brushes with corruption, environmental degradation, and greed. The resulting memoir is a vibrant portrait of Chinese culinary culture, from the remote Gansu countryside to the enchanting old city of Yangzhou. The most talked-about travel narrative when it was published a decade ago, this reissue of Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper remains a thrilling adventure that you won’t be able to put down.

Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China (Second Edition)

The lower Yangtze region, or Jiangnan, with its modern capital Shanghai, has been known since ancient times as a "land of fish and rice." For centuries, local cooks have harvested the bounty of its lakes, rivers, fields, and mountains to create a cuisine renowned for its delicacy and beauty. In Land of Fish and Rice, Fuchsia Dunlop draws on years of study and exploration to present the recipes, techniques, and ingredients of the Jiangnan kitchen. You will be inspired to try classic dishes such as Beggar's Chicken and sumptuous Dongpo Pork, as well as fresh, simple recipes such as Clear-Steamed Sea Bass and Fresh Soybeans with Pickled Greens. Evocatively written and featuring stunning recipe photography, this is an important new work celebrating one of China's most fascinating culinary regions.

Recipes from the Culinary Heart of China

Land of Fish and Rice

Finalist for the 2024 IACP Award for Literary or Historical Food Writing An NPR 2023 "Books We Love" Pick • A Food & Wine Best Food Book of 2023 • A Financial Times Best Food and Drink Book of 2023 • One of Smithsonian's Ten Best Books About Food of 2023 The world’s most sophisticated gastronomic culture, brilliantly presented through a banquet of thirty Chinese dishes. Chinese was the earliest truly global cuisine. When the first Chinese laborers began to settle abroad, restaurants appeared in their wake. Yet Chinese has the curious distinction of being both one of the world’s best-loved culinary traditions and one of the least understood. For more than a century, the overwhelming dominance of a simplified form of Cantonese cooking ensured that few foreigners experienced anything of its richness and sophistication—but today that is beginning to change. In Invitation to a Banquet, award-winning cook and writer Fuchsia Dunlop explores the history, philosophy, and techniques of Chinese culinary culture. In each chapter, she examines a classic dish, from mapo tofu to Dongpo pork, knife-scraped noodles to braised pomelo pith, to reveal a distinctive aspect of Chinese gastronomy, whether it’s the importance of the soybean, the lure of exotic ingredients, or the history of Buddhist vegetarian cuisine. Meeting food producers, chefs, gourmets, and home cooks as she tastes her way across the country, Fuchsia invites readers to join her on an unforgettable journey into Chinese food as it is cooked, eaten, and considered in its homeland. Weaving together history, mouthwatering descriptions of food, and on-the-ground research conducted over the course of three decades, Invitation to a Banquet is a lively, landmark tribute to the pleasures and mysteries of Chinese cuisine.

The Story of Chinese Food

Traditional Chinese edition of Invitation to a Banquet: The Story of Chinese Food

Invitation to a Banquet: The Story of Chinese Food

An NPR 2023 "Books We Love" Pick - A Food & Wine Best Food of 2023 - A Financial Times Best Food and Drink Book of 2023 - One of Smithsonian's Ten Best Books About Food of 2023 The world's most sophisticated gastronomic culture, brilliantly presented through a banquet of thirty Chinese dishes.

'A brilliant, passionate and spellbinding tour de force' Claudia Roden 'Fuchsia Dunlop is one of the world's best writers on Chinese food' Ken Hom CBE The epic tale of the world's most sophisticated gastronomic culture, told through a banquet of thirty Chinese dishes Chinese was the earliest truly global cuisine. When the first Chinese labourers began to sojourn and settle abroad, restaurants appeared in their wake. Yet Chinese food has the curious distinction of being both one of the world's best-loved culinary traditions and one of the least understood. For more than a century, the overwhelming dominance of a simplified form of Cantonese cooking ensured that few foreigners experienced anything of its richness and sophistication - but today that is beginning to change. In this book, the James Beard Award-winning cook and writer Fuchsia Dunlop explores the history, philosophy and techniques of China's rich and ancient culinary culture. Each chapter examines a classic dish, from mapo tofu to Dongpo pork, knife-scraped noodles to braised pomelo pith, to reveal a singular aspect of Chinese gastronomy, whether it's the importance of the soybean, the lure of exotic ingredients or the history of Buddhist vegetarian cuisine. Meeting local food producers, chefs, gourmets and home cooks as she tastes her way across the country, Fuchsia invites readers to join her on an unforgettable journey into Chinese food as it is made, cooked, eaten and considered in its homeland. Weaving together historical scholarship, mouth-watering descriptions of food and on-the-ground research conducted over the course of three decades, Invitation to a Banquet is a lively, landmark tribute to the pleasures and mysteries of Chinese cuisine.

When award-winning food writer Dunlop lived in China, she vowed to eat everything she was offered, no matter how alien and bizarre. From the vibrant markets of Sichuan to the bleached landscape of the Gansu Province, this work presents a unique and evocative account of Chinese culinary culture.

A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China

Named one of the most anticipated cookbooks of Fall 2019 by Bon Appétit, Eater, Epicurious, and Literary Hub. An essential update of Fuchsia Dunlop’s landmark book on Sichuan cuisine, with 200 recipes and stunning photographs. Almost twenty years after the publication of Land of Plenty, considered by many to be one of the greatest cookbooks of all time, Fuchsia Dunlop revisits the region where her own culinary journey began, adding more than 70 new recipes to the original repertoire and accompanying them with mouthwatering descriptions of the dazzling flavors and textures of Sichuanese cooking. Food of Sichuan shows home cooks how to re- create classics such as Mapo Tofu, Twice-Cooked Pork and Gong Bao Chicken, or a traditional spread of cold dishes, including Bang Bang Chicken, Numbing-and-Hot Dried Beef, Spiced Cucumber Salad and Green Beans in Ginger Sauce. With gorgeous food and travel photography and enhanced by a culinary and cultural history of the region, The Food of Sichuan is a captivating insight into one of the world’s greatest cuisines.

Fuchsia Dunlop is the author of the much-loved and critically acclaimed Sichuan Cookery, which won the British Guild of Food Writers' Jeremy Round Award for best first book and prompted John Lanchester of the Daily Telegraph to call her 'as exciting as Elizabeth David'. Now, with The Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook, she introduces us to the delicious tastes of Hunan, Chairman Mao's home province. The southern Chinese province of Hunan is renowned for its beautiful scenery, its hearty peasant cooking, and the revolutionary spirit of its people. It is a region of bold spicy tastes where the chilli reigns supreme, but also of soothing tonic stews and delicate steamed dishes. In this selection of classic recipes interwoven with a wealth of history, legend and anecdote, Fuchsia brings to life this vibrant culinary region. Look out for late imperial dishes like numbing-and-hot chicken, Chairman Mao's favourite red-braised pork, steamed fish with brilliant red chillies, and a myriad of colourful vegetable stir-fries. With food photographs by the award-winning photographer Georgia Glynn Smith, and pictures from Fuchsia's own travels around Hunan, this book will revolutionise your understanding of Chinese regional cookery.

Recipes from Hunan Province

The Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook

"Not just a smart memoir about cross-cultural eating but one of the most engaging books of any kind I've read in years." —Celia Barbour, O, The Oprah Magazine After fifteen years spent exploring China and its food, Fuchsia Dunlop finds herself in an English kitchen, deciding whether to eat a caterpillar she has accidentally cooked in some home-grown vegetables. How can something she has eaten readily in China seem grotesque in England? The question lingers over this “autobiographical food-and-travel classic” (Publishers Weekly).

Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China (First edition)

One of the great cuisines of the world, the cooking of the Sichuan (Szechwan) region of south-west China is legendary for its sophistication and diversity, but is known in the West for just a few dishes. Real Sichuanese food is unlike any other. Famously spicy and exciting (thanks to the liberal use of red chillies and Suchuan pepper), its twenty-three distinct combinations of flavour, applied to a wide variety of ingredients, create an extraordinary range of foods - including many cooler dishes. With Fuchsia Dunlop's fascinating, practical and comprehensive book you can now create authentic Sichaun dishes at home. Twice-cooked Pork, Pock-marked Mother Chen's Beancurd, Sichuanese hotpot, spicy 'Zhong' Dumplings - these are just a few of the delicious recipes to be found in this definitive guide to an often overlooked cuisine.

Sichuan Cookery

Representing the finest in cuisine from the Hunan Province of China, introduces a series of recipes--including numbing-and-hot chicken, Chairman Mao's red-braised pork, and a variety of vegetable stir-fries--along with culinary history, lore, and anecdotes.

Fuchsia Dunlop

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