Why the wok is mightier than the sword

Invitation To A Banquet: The Story Of Chinese Food Fuchsia Dunlop

Particular Books £25

Growing up in Britain in the 1980s, sweet-and-sour pork balls from the local Chinese takeaway were a novelty greedily devoured by Fuchsia Dunlop and her sister. It wasn’t until she was in her early 20s and a scholarship took her to Sichuan University for a year that she realised how distant those battered spheres and their accompanying polystyrene cup of bright red syrup were from authentic Chinese cuisine.

In the decades since, Dunlop has devoted herself to learning about a culinary tradition that ranks among the world’s most sophisticated yet remains one of its least understood – thanks in part to dishes like those pork balls, designed for the Western palate. Training with top chefs (she was the first Westerner at the prestigious Sichuan Higher Institute of Cuisine), mastering Mandarin and travelling extensively, she’s shared her enthusiasm and expertise in cookbooks and a memoir.

Now comes Invitation To A Banquet, her landmark love letter to Chinese food. Each of its 30 chapters focuses on a classic dish, chosen to illuminate an aspect of the cuisine: from its range of ingredients and techniques to the philosophy underpinning it. ‘Chongqing chicken in a pile of chillies’ highlights pungent regionality, while ‘stir-fried “jade” shrimps’ showcase the wok, a tool ‘as powerful and subtle as a martial artist’s sword’.

Food has always been a serious business in China and many a Western phenomenon – such as fake meat, molecular gastronomy and seasonal dining – has Chinese precursors from long ago. Given a time machine, what foodie wouldn’t want to check out 12th Century Kaifeng’s thriving restaurant scene?

It’s hard to think of a diet that matches

China’s for sheer adventurousness. Dunlop proves a fearless eater and is well rewarded, shivering with pleasure while consuming the flesh and ovaries of (now banned) drunken crabs – ‘ice-cold and vividly slimy, with a scintillating kick of liquor’ – and finding the ‘thrilling, fair-foul aroma’ that stinky tofu exudes every bit as seductive as the scent of a ripe Camembert. Turtle, duck tongues and stag pizzle soup – all are consumed with gusto.

She does acknowledge the challenges some dishes pose to the uninitiated. It helps to understand that the taste buds aren’t always central in Chinese cooking. Textural excitement, she points out, is reason enough to eat rubbery, slithery, gristly things such as goose intestines. Food and medicine are intricately bound, too, which explains the array of knobbly roots bobbing around in certain soups.

Dunlop’s immersion in all things Chinese isn’t without drawbacks. Yes, this is a food book, but less appetising aspects of the broader culture, such as the plight of the Uyghurs, may as well not exist.

Her case for there being much we can learn from this cuisine remains a powerful one, however. While an ancient love of ‘culinary exotica’ is at odds with the global ecological crisis, its sparing use of meat and fish can help us combat our own unsustainable habits. Also inspiring is the attention that goes into balancing health and happiness on each plate. As international tensions simmer, food serves as an edible entryway to understanding this enduringly mysterious superpower.

What you won’t find is much by way of pudding. Even a 40-dish banquet will end with no more than fresh fruit, the idea being that a meal should be an intensely stimulating, sensory experience that nonetheless leaves you feeling ‘shufu’ (well and comfortable) rather than stuffed. Dunlop’s book is just such a feast.