The real Chinese cuisine
There’s more to the massive country’s food than sweet ‘n’ sour,
Sweet and sour pork plucked from the warmer and crammed into a polystyrene box like an overstuffed suitcase is not real Chinese food.
As the Year of the Dog begins on Friday, and the annual spring festival gears up, Chinese families are getting set to celebrate, and they’re doing it with their own regional foods.
China is as geographically huge as it is population wise, with several regions claiming their own cuisine and unique ingredients many Kiwis may not have heard of, whether it’s the wild and spicy west, stodgier north or sweet east.
There’s going to be many a hot pot had in communities across the country, and plenty of dumplings consumed. With the help of Chinese website SkyKiwi, we spoke to members of the New Zealand community about regional cuisines.
Canton and the south
Cantonese cuisine is an allencompassing term for most of South China’s cuisine. Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province, is considered home to the cuisine.
Auckland’s Guangzhou Hot Pot general manager Harry Cai says the cuisine highlights the flavours of the ingredients, with a focus on fish and steam cooking, rather than adulterating the ‘‘original flavour’’. Steamed pork, mince, fish and eggs are among the many meats typical of Cantonese cuisine. Hong Kong cuisine is very similar, based on all the same products, he says.
Thanks to a more temperate climate, the cultivation of rice is historically prevalent. The region claims many of China’s rice-based dishes, often served on the side. Char siu pork and roast duck (not to be confused with Peking duck) are also from the region, he says.
Canton typically enjoys healthier-style food, Cai says, so steamed vegetables and tofu are also popular. When it comes to special occasions, such as New Year, hot pot is the go-to although the dish is not limited to the south.
Cai says hot pot is China’s equivalent to Kiwi barbecue, where people gather around to cook for each other and eat the meal over a long period of time.
Canton is also home to dim sum: served on carts, it involves small dishes of dumplings, rolls and buns. This is also sometimes referred to as yum cha (which means ‘‘to drink tea’’ in Cantonese).
Daphnes Restaurant owner Daphne Kiriaev, originally from south-east Shanghai, serves both Cantonese and Szechuan cuisines in her Christchurch restaurant, but says the two cuisines are very different. There’s a medicinal quality to Cantonese cuisine, she says, which proves quite popular throughout the region.
Szechuan
The central region of Szechuan’s food is widely pronounced by its namesake peppercorn and hot chillies, which can be seen tasted in dishes such as chilli oil-spiked ma po tofu, twice-cooked pork (hue guo rou) or dandan noodles. Szechuan’s other exported dishes are found in gong bao chicken (typically known as kung pao).
Szechuan also has its own hot pot for celebrations, spiked with hot chilli oil. Kiriaev says the cuisine is all about the added flavour, instead of the main ingredients - the opposite of Canton - but it’s not all about lighting taste buds on fire.
There is a balance every cook from the region tries to achieve through different flavours and temperatures. Cold noodle dishes with incendiary flavours are common, some of which might turn uninitiated foreigners’ stomachs (ox tongue and tripe comes to mind). New Zealand’s Szechuan restaurants are rather prevalent too.
The cuisine makes the most of pickling, complex sauces such as yu xiang, and has its own riff on roast duck - smoked with tea leaves - so there is more to Szechuan than its spicy reputation.