SHARING lunch with Fuchsia Dunlop, we savour smacked cucumbers doused in sesame sauce, thinly sliced pork wrapped around carrot shreds, a glossy bowl of fish-fragrant aubergine and dry fried beans from the wok, laced with pickled veg and minced pork.
When she wrote the original edition of her first cookbook, The Food of Sichuan, dishes like these were almost unknown in Britain and the US, let alone eaten in restaurants.
Almost 20 years on, the cuisine "has become wildly popular" says food writer Dunlop, who throughout the intervening years has continued travelling around the region, magpie-ing recipes and interviewing chefs – and as a way to "keep up the eating".
At 11, Dunlop – who grew up in Oxford – told a teacher she planned to be a chef and, after graduating from Cambridge University, became particularly interested in China through a BBC sub-editing job.
Signing up for evening classes in Chinese (she eventually learned to speak the language fluently), she later won a British Council scholarship for a year of postgraduate study in China.
"China 20-25 years ago was another world," she recalls. "I was supposed to be studying other stuff, but the food was just captivating, and the city was full of these small streets with little restaurants and snack sellers and markets. It was all just more exciting and varied, fresher, more delicious, than any Chinese food I'd ever had before."
She began recording everything in her diaries "without any plan" and then leapt, becoming the first westerner – and one of very few women – to train at the Sichuan Institute of Higher Cuisine in Chengdu.
Since then the country and cuisine have developed considerably, but then, "Sichuan food has always been very open-minded and incorporates lots of different influences," notes Dunlop.
"One of the most extraordinary things is okra – it was really unknown just a couple of years ago but now it's on every restaurant menu," she says, while there's also a craze for an 'ice plant' – "a sort of succulent, eaten raw. It has green leaves, but it looks like there's ice all over them, so when you eat it, it really crunches noisily in your mouth."
You can now get pizza and localised French patisserie too. "It's constantly evolving," says Dunlop, although in terms of architecture that's not always a good thing.
"When I lived in Chengdu there were whole neighbourhoods of houses made of wooden bamboo, traditional Chinese medicine shops with all the herbs in drawers, and it was a street life in some ways that hadn't changed for hundreds of years. [That] was very enchanting for a foreigner," she remembers. "This has all been demolished, I miss that most of all."
If Sichuan is entirely new to you though, Dunlop is the ideal guide, with the updated version of The Food of Sichuan reflecting how the region and its tastes have changed, as well as encompassing its core tenets.
"People [often] think Sichuanese cooking is all about fire and spice, chillies and lip-numbing Sichuan pepper, and actually it's not," she muses. "It's all about variety.
"Good Chinese and Sichuan food is all about balance, not about battering your palate with lots of heat and nothing else."
The worst misconception around Chinese food in the western world – largely based on lurid, deep-fried Friday night takeaways – she says, is that it's bad for you. "I think the Chinese know more about healthy eating than anyone else," she explains. "Food in China has always been intimately related to medicine, and people use food to treat illness and indisposition, and the way people eat in an everyday way at home is a lot healthier than the way many people eat in this country."
For instance, meat is used sparingly: One western portion of meat would be cut into slivers and stir fried with vegetables, then served with more vegetables and rice. "It's a really good model of healthy and sustainable eating, when it's done well."
The vegetable aspect is arguably what she loves most about Chinese cookery. "The Chinese are brilliant at making vegetables taste exciting," says Dunlop, pointing to the dish of smacked cucumbers. "Cucumber, on its own, not very interesting, but put it with a Chinese dressing and it's really interesting."
Chinese food has the power to redefine what it is you find delicious too. "Years of Chinese food has completely changed my palate," says Dunlop, explaining how the biggest barrier in getting to grips with the cuisine can be texture foods, "because in China, and particularly in Sichuan, people like eating a lot of ingredients that have rubbery, slithery, gristly, crunchy textures, that westerners, in general, actively dislike. Things like gristle in a chicken's leg, and jellyfish and goose intestines."
For a long time she says, she would politely eat these things, "but they didn't give me any pleasure," and then at some point she realised she'd begun to enjoy them. Learning to savour mouthfeel and texture "massively expands your appreciation of food in general" says Dunlop, because it opens up "a wider range of sensations".
"China is a really food-focused culture, go with a certain humility," she says. "There is a lot to learn from it."
:: The Food of Sichuan by Fuchsia Dunlop is published by Bloomsbury, priced £30. Photography Yuki Sugiura. Below are three recipes from the book for you to try.
COLD BUCKWHEAT NOODLES
(Serves 2)
200g dried buckwheat or buckwheat-and-wheat noodles
2 small handfuls of finely chopped celery (1-2 celery sticks)
4tbsp thinly sliced spring onion greens
0.5tsp toasted sesame seeds
For the seasonings:
0.25tsp salt
4tsp light soy sauce
2tbsp Chinkiang vinegar
0.5tsp caster sugar
2tbsp chilli oil, plus 1 tbsp sediment
0.25-0.5tsp ground roasted Sichuan pepper (optional)
Method:
Boil the noodles to your liking. Divide all the seasonings between two bowls. When the noodles are ready, tip them into a colander and quickly rinse under the cold tap, then drain well.
Divide the noodles between the bowls and mix well. Scatter over the remaining ingredients and serve.
FISH-FRAGRANT AUBERGINES
(Serves 4)
600g aubergines
Cooking oil, for deep-frying
1.5tbsp Sichuan chilli bean paste
1 .5tbsp finely chopped garlic
1tbsp finely chopped ginger
150ml hot stock or water
4tsp caster sugar
1tsp light soy sauce
0.75tsp potato starch, mixed with 1 tbsp cold water
1tbsp Chinkiang vinegar
6tbsp thinly sliced spring onion greens
Salt
Method:
Cut the aubergines into batons about 2cm thick and 7cm long. Sprinkle with salt, mix well and set aside for at least 30 minutes.
Rinse the aubergines, drain well and pat dry with kitchen paper. Heat the deep-frying oil to around 200C (hot enough to sizzle vigorously around a test piece of aubergine). Add the aubergines, in two or three batches, and deep-fry for about three minutes, until tender and a little golden. Drain well on kitchen paper and set aside.
Carefully pour off all but 3 tbsp oil from the wok and return to a medium flame. Add the chilli bean paste and stir-fry until the oil is red and fragrant: take care not to burn the paste (move the wok away from the burner if you think it might be overheating). Add the garlic and ginger and stir-fry until they smell delicious.
Tip in the stock or water, sugar and soy sauce. Bring to the boil, then add the aubergines, nudging them gently into the sauce so the pieces do not break apart. Simmer for a minute or so to allow the aubergines to absorb the flavours.
Give the potato starch mixture a stir and add it gradually, in about three stages, adding just enough to thicken the sauce to a luxurious gravy (you probably won't need it all). Tip in the vinegar and all but one tablespoon of the spring onion greens, then stir for a few seconds to fuse the flavours.
Turn out on to a serving dish, scatter over the remaining spring onion greens and serve.
'PHOENIX TAILS' IN SESAME SAUCE
2tsp sesame seeds
200g Indian lettuce (or use Cos or Romaine)
1.5tsp light soy sauce
0.75tsp caster sugar
2-3tbsp cold stock or water
40g sesame paste
1tsp sesame oil
1.5tbsp chilli oil (optional)
Salt
Method:
Toast the sesame seeds in a wok or frying pan over a gentle heat until golden, then set aside. Wash and dry the lettuce, cut into chopstickable pieces and pile up on a serving dish.
Place the soy sauce and sugar in a bowl with two tablespoons stock or water and stir to dissolve the sugar. Tip the sesame paste into another bowl with a little oil from the jar and smooth it with a spoon. Stir in the soy sauce mixture in a few stages, making sure each addition is emulsified into the sauce before adding more.
When you have a smooth sauce, stir in the sesame oil and chilli oil, if using, and then, if you need it, add another tablespoon or so of stock or water until you have a sleek liquid with the consistency of single cream: it's important that the sauce is thick enough to cling to the lettuce, but thin enough to pour. Add a little salt, to taste, but take care not to overdo it, because this dish is best enjoyed as a refreshing contrast to more strongly flavoured dishes.
Just before serving, pour the sauce over the lettuce, and garnish with the sesame seeds.
