Ken Hom - Exploring China: A Culinary Adventure: 100 Recipes from Our Journey

Introduction

It was wonderful being in China again, visiting familiar and unfamiliar places and tasting some wonderful food. Travelling the length and breadth of the country with Ken and the film crew, I realised just how vast China is; it could swallow Europe, and some of its cities boast as many inhabitants as a single European country. Although there are shared threads, there really is no such thing as Chinese cuisine: the cooking styles of Chinas regions influenced variously by geography, climate and history are as different as those of countries in northern and southern Europe.

Food has such a central role in Chinese culture that, country-wide, one of the most common greetings translates as: Have you eaten yet? I like that! Formally, there are eight distinctive regional cuisines (Shandong, Sichuan, Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Hunan and Anhui). Many commentators, however, divide the country into gastronomic quarters: Beijing and the north, Shanghai and the east, Sichuan and the west, Guangzhou (Canton) and the south. But even these simpler divisions do not take into account further variations: Chinese Muslims and Buddhists have their individual styles of cooking, as do the minority ethnic groups some 56 of them that co-exist with the majority Han Chinese. But cooking and eating with the Dai minority and the Bulang tea-pickers was a delight for me in Yunnan, and experiencing Muslim food with the Uighurs in Kashgar, in the far north, was an eye-opener as were the hats!

Whichever region they come from, Han Chinese all comply with the principle of balance denoted by yin and yang. In a culinary sense, yin means cool and yang hot, and there are cooking techniques and ingredients that belong in each of the two camps. By cooking and eating in this balanced way, the Chinese believe an essential equilibrium is maintained, which ensures good health. Some restaurants cook with these principles in mind, and shops sell herbs that can be added to food. Some foods themselves are meant to be good for certain parts of the body: snake, for instance, is believed to be an aphrodisiac. Food as medicine wasnt a new concept to me, but I got valuable further insights through many of the people we talked to. And although theyre said to be warming for the blood and good for the skin, I dont think Ill be eating fried scorpions any time soon although Ken seemed to take a liking to them at a street-food stall in Wangfujing in Beijing

Other shared threads of Chinese cooking are the balancing of the characteristics of a Chinese meal. Dishes should have fragrance, taste (sour, sweet, salty, bitter, piquant), shape, colour and mouth-feel: the latter subdivides into textural tenderness, crunchiness, crispiness, smoothness and softness (and explains why the Chinese have such a love for things like chicken feet). Another facet of Chinese eating is the love of snacks: from the xiao chi (small eats) of Sichuan to the dim sum of Hong Kong. Now, of course, with China having opened up to Western ideas and Western foods, some of these snacks might just be hamburgers, cheese or pizzas, which is worrying. The Chinese are already starting to suffer from Western health problems such as obesity, and if this continues, their historical reverence for food, its traditions and its role in Chinese culture might be eroding. This would be such a pity for, even though I am Taiwanese, I am full of admiration for my mainland neighbours supposed opponents/adversaries for their fortitude, for their culinary creativity, and for the history that we share.