In my last post, I reviewed Beyond the Great Wall: Recipes and Travels in the Other China, in which the authors (Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid) present a plethora of delightful dishes from all parts of China, all of them delicious-looking (and some of them–like the dumplings–fairly easy to make). I also mentioned how I was intrigued that the authors didn’t include some of the more (shall we say) “interesting” foods to be found in the Middle Kingdom–delicacies like fried scorpions, duck tongues, and pig lung soup. (I’ve had the pig lung soup–”Very good for you if you have chest congestion,” my Chinese friend Elizabeth assured me–and I’ve tried to eat a duck’s tongue–eeuuww, little tiny bones–but managed to avoid eating any scorpions, dead or alive.) Surely this book was written to be culinarily “correct” by focusing only on the ethnic dishes that would also be appealing to a western audience. Hmmm. I needed to find someone who would tell the whole truth about eating in China.
I found her. Her name is Fuchsia Dunlop (isn’t that a great name?), she’s British but speaks fluent Chinese, is an award-winning food writer, and has “vowed to eat everything she was offered, no matter how alien and bizarre it seemed.” This was the Chinese food reviewer I was looking for.
Her book is Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China, and in it she describes what she calls the Chinese “refined appreciation of food,” which includes the ability to distinguish between “the bouncy gelatinous quality of sea cucumbers, the more sticky, slimy gelatinousness of reconstituted dried squid, and the chewy gelatinousness of reconstituted pig’s tendons.” (Personally, I am no big fan of anything “gelatinous,” including jello.)
And if you’re not familiar with sea cucumbers, here’s what they look like:
And that’s not all. “Imagine, if you will,” Fuchsia exhorts us, “an entire banquet based on duck: wings, webbed feet, liver, gizzards, intestines, tongues, hearts, heads, skin and flesh, each part cooked according to its particular character! That combination of intellectual thrill with raw, sexy, sensual pleasure!” I’m not convinced. I love a crispy cooked duck as much as the next person, but only the breast or leg, please. Duck feet? No thanks.
And speaking of feet, I remember once when my former colleague Barrett Mandel and I were in a Beijing restaurant and decided to order chicken soup, as it was cold outside and we both had the snuffles. Soon the waitress brought us a large covered tureen, lifted off the lid, and revealed an entire chicken, happily soaking in a broth bath. Yes, there was Chicken Little, head still on, and feet still attached. And those feet–big, swollen, and rubbery! ‘Twas the stuff of nightmares. Then I find out from Fuchsia that another Chinese delicacy is “stewed bear’s paw,” for which she has provided an actual recipe! Step One: “Singe the bear’s paw in a naked flame, taking care not to damage its skin. Soak it in boiling water for one hour and then strip away the fur.”
And I’m wondering: What did they do with the rest of the bear?
Thankfully, Fuchsia goes on to assert that such dishes are the exception, not the norm, and that “the traditional diet of the Chinese masses could be a model for the entire human race . . . steamed rice or boiled noodles, served with plenty of seasonal vegetables, cooked simply; beancurd in many forms; very few sweetmeats; and small amounts of meat and fish that bring flavour and nourishment to the table.” Whew–nice to know that I can go back to Beijing (in November) and eat healthily and happily.




