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

by Fuchsia Dunlop, Bee Wilson (Foreword by)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393357752
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	10/15/2019
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
File size:	8 MB

About the Author

Fuchsia Dunlop was the first Westerner to train as a chef at the Sichuan Higher Institute of Cuisine, and has been traveling around China, researching and cooking Chinese food, for thirty years. Her James Beard Award–winning and best-selling books include The Food of Sichuan, Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper, Every Grain of Rice, and Land of Fish and Rice, several of which are now published in translation in China. Based in London, she speaks, reads, and writes Chinese.
Bee Wilson is a home cook, journalist, and author of seven food-related books, including The Secret of Cooking. The cofounder of TastEd, she writes for a wide range of publications, including the Guardian, the London Review of Books, and New York Times. She lives in Cambridge, England.

Table of Contents

Foreword Bee Wilson 6

Prologue: The Chinese Eat Everything 8

1 Mouths That Love Eating 15

2 Dan Dan Noodles! 34

3 First Kill Your Fish 47

4 Only Barbarians Eat Salad 60

5 The Cutting Edge 76

6 The Root of Tastes 93

7 The Hungry Dead 114

8 The Rubber Factor 133

9 Sickness Enters Through the Mouth 150

10 Revolution Is Not a Dinner Party 173

11 Chanel and Chickens' Feet 185

12 Feeding the Emperor 199

13 Guilt and Pepper 217

14 Journey to the West 236

15 Of Paw and Bone 255

16 Scary Crabs 273

17 A Dream of Red Mansions 291

Epilogue: The Caterpillar 309

List of the Main Chinese Dynasties 313

Acknowledgements 315

Permissions 317

Index 319

Editorial Reviews

Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper is both an insightful, entertaining, scrupulously reported exploration of China's foodways and a swashbuckling memoir studded with recipes (not converted, alas, from metric measurements) . But what makes it a distinguished contribution to the literature of gastronomy is its demonstration, through one person's intense experience, that food is not a mere reflection of culture but a potent shaper of cultural identity.
—The New York Times

Dawn Drzal

Freelance scribe, almost-professional chef, restaurant consultant and ardent Sinophile Dunlop ensures that you'll never again look at General Tso or his chicken in the same way. In this, her first non-cookbook, she examines the entire spectrum of Chinese food culture, from the mystery of MSG to the melding of food and politics to Chinese culinary schools. As was the case with Trevor Corson's terrific Japanese food treatise The Zen of Fish: The Story of Sushi, From Samurai to Supermarket (2007), Dunlop successfully inserts herself into the narrative, discussing her methodology, her feelings and theories about China and, periodically, her love life. She's so slick about it that the technique enhances rather than detracts from her episodic story line. In a clever gimmick, each chapter concludes with a recipe, a menu, a glossary or some other sort of culinary tidbit; the recipe for Mu gua dun ji, chicken and papaya soup, looks particularly tasty. It's become trendy, if not tired, for a food writer or television personality to eat a seemingly repulsive dish, then rave about how shocked they were at its yumminess. Dunlop periodically takes this approach-for example, her encounters with caterpillar and with snake stir-fry-and while she doesn't add anything new to the formula, her enthusiasm and linguistic dexterity keep it engaging. That's the case throughout this charming, informative textbook/memoir/travelogue, one of the more noteworthy recent food studies. Readers definitely won't be hungry an hour after finishing this satisfying history from a witty Chinese food authority.

Kirkus Reviews