CHINESE CUISINES:
According to the historian Alan Davidson, China has four great cooking styles that correspond to the four cardinal coordinates: the northern style is centred on Beijing and the Yellow River valley stretching to the east up to Shandong; the central and western style that is concentrated around Sichuan but also includes Ghuizhou, Yunnan, Hunan,and Hubei; the southeastern style which includes Shanghai, Zhejiang,and Anhui; and finally the southern style, from Canton, Guangdong, and Fujian to the east.
He tells us that a Chinese meal is usually made up of a starchy food( the essential dish called zhushi, ‘principal food’), and one or more accompanying dishes based on animal or vegetable products(called fushi or ‘secondary food’).
Link: http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780192806819.001.0001/acref-9780192806819
According to the historian Alan Davidson, China has four great cooking styles that correspond to the four cardinal coordinates: the northern style is centred on Beijing and the Yellow River valley stretching to the east up to Shandong; the central and western style that is concentrated around Sichuan but also includes Ghuizhou, Yunnan, Hunan,and Hubei; the southeastern style which includes Shanghai, Zhejiang,and Anhui; and finally the southern style, from Canton, Guangdong, and Fujian to the east.
He tells us that a Chinese meal is usually made up of a starchy food( the essential dish called zhushi, ‘principal food’), and one or more accompanying dishes based on animal or vegetable products(called fushi or ‘secondary food’).
Link: http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780192806819.001.0001/acref-9780192806819
SPICY ‘HEAT IN CHINA : SICHUAN AND HUNAN FOOD ( Tina Wang & Li Xin)
Sichuan is considered to be a land of aromatics and spices, particularly hot pungent ones, such as chilli peppers and sichuan pepper (hua jiao). All the dishes are flavoured with fermented bean paste (dou ban jiang), or sesame oil and sesame puree, which produce harmonious flavours that are given interesting names such as ‘strange taste’ (guai wei), ‘familiar taste’ ( jia chang wei ), ‘peppery-scented’ ( xiangla we), etc.
In Hunan, chef and culinary scholar Fuchsia Dunlop jokingly tells us that people are terrified of food that isn’t hot, they cannot eat a single meal without spice and heat. Chairman Mao famously said you cannot be a revolutionary if you don’t eat chiles. His words were in tune with the ancient Chinese belief that you are what you eat, and that the environment, diet, and human character are all intimately related. As her cookbooks show, Hunan cuisine lays stress on the use of oil, dense color, and techniques that produce crispness, softness and tenderness as well as the savory flavors and spices. Stewed fins, fried fresh cabbage with chestnuts, Dong Anzi chicken, immortal chicken with five elements, are of the highest reputation.
Fuchsia Dunlop books: http://www.fuchsiadunlop.com/books/
Where to find her Hunan recipes in Toronto:
http://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/search.jsp?Ntt=Revolutionary+Chinese+Cookbook
Sichuan is considered to be a land of aromatics and spices, particularly hot pungent ones, such as chilli peppers and sichuan pepper (hua jiao). All the dishes are flavoured with fermented bean paste (dou ban jiang), or sesame oil and sesame puree, which produce harmonious flavours that are given interesting names such as ‘strange taste’ (guai wei), ‘familiar taste’ ( jia chang wei ), ‘peppery-scented’ ( xiangla we), etc.
In Hunan, chef and culinary scholar Fuchsia Dunlop jokingly tells us that people are terrified of food that isn’t hot, they cannot eat a single meal without spice and heat. Chairman Mao famously said you cannot be a revolutionary if you don’t eat chiles. His words were in tune with the ancient Chinese belief that you are what you eat, and that the environment, diet, and human character are all intimately related. As her cookbooks show, Hunan cuisine lays stress on the use of oil, dense color, and techniques that produce crispness, softness and tenderness as well as the savory flavors and spices. Stewed fins, fried fresh cabbage with chestnuts, Dong Anzi chicken, immortal chicken with five elements, are of the highest reputation.
Fuchsia Dunlop books: http://www.fuchsiadunlop.com/books/
Where to find her Hunan recipes in Toronto:
http://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/search.jsp?Ntt=Revolutionary+Chinese+Cookbook
CANTONESE FOOD (Jason Zhang)
Cantonese food became the first global Chinese cuisine from the nineteenth century, especially in North America and Australia, where Chinese restaurants served dishes based on Cantonese cuisine (or Yule cai, a short form for Guangdong dishes). This became a peasant style variation brought in by Chinese labourers who predominately migrated from four counties (Siyi ( in Mandarin, or See Yap in Cantonese, or Su Yup in their vernacular) of Guangdong province. They invented the 'chop sucy' dishes, which dominated food styles of Chinese restaurant in North America until about the 1970s. From the 1960s to 1970s, the second wave of Chinese immigrants brought new cuisines from other Chinese regions in central and north China.
Sidney Cheung, David Y. H. Wu Book:
http://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/search.jsp?Ntt=Globalization+of+Chinese+Food