The Elegant Sufficiency

Yunnan Province 3: A Connection to Home

Text messages from Yunnan Province to home:

Just touched down … picked up by my guide … not much English but very sweet … Beautiful flight over mountains …! Wow…! And so green …. Fresh air… Just passed a buffalo…! On way to hotel… Guide taking me to dinner

Now driving into mountains to start walk… Five hours walk to village ecolodge where we stay tonight… Snow capped mountains ahead…

18km hike today… Almost entirely up a mountain… Thought I was going to die… No one warned me about the mountain … And at altitude… Several thousand feet i think … 20km tomorrow but flat i think..  am at ecolodge on a lake now and may sleep now until tomorrow’s mountain … No soap or loo paper but an electric blanket thank heavens…

Am dead …. Dead I tell you. Just finished day two walk… Ache all over and need soap and coffee… Least no hills today… But 20km of rock paths… many with paschendale like mud… Bring on the five star hotel day after tomorrow.. Rest of today will be spent in village homestay.

Beautiful scenery of course but hard to enjoy when in such pain. Tomorrow just driving thank god… Naxi have discovered mobile phones but no soap… Dying for proper shower and a coffee…

Didn’t get chance at hk airport to buy gin for us… if you can be bothered getting a bottle …

All well and clean now… five-star suits me.

Ow! Expensive afternoon at antique shop!

Now in ugly city and average hotel and we’re a bit bad tempered…

Yeah … Six hours touring hk airport? Going crazy on duty free! Want anything? Perfume?

Yunnan Province 2: Kunming Airport

Kunming airport, September 20: Seats are in short supply. Only one I can find while I wait to check in is in an odd teashop, orange palm-tree cocktail swizzle stick in a tall glass with green tea. (The swizzle stick initially spears a solid ball of tea that later softens and drifts away, leaf by leaf.) What’s the etiquette when the tea leaves won’t settle and you end up with a mouthful? Later discover you’re to spit them out. Shouldn’t surprise me, given the amount of spitting and hawking that goes on here generally.
The airport is a bit of a treasure. The seventh largest in China, our guide later tells us. I don’t much like the toilets here — the first “squatters” without loo paper of my trip — but love the food stalls, like none I’ve seen in an airport before: Yunnan everything. Air-dried yak meat (like biltong: don’t ever feel the need to eat it again), almonds, candies, dried mushrooms, peanuts, sauces and condiments, honey, chocolate-covered lychees (tearing the plastic off the packet tonight, finally, decide they have very little to do with lychees), mooncakes, and fresh produce — custard apples, walnuts, finger limes, persimmons, mangoes, pomegranate, bananas, sweet potatoes, quince-like thingeys. Yunnan, apparently, contributes massively to China’s food supply. Have so much more to show and tell …

Yunnan Province 1: Yunnan Babies

Beautiful trip.
Beautiful babies. Have come back with an idea: a photographic book, "Beautiful Chinese Babies". Well? It would certainly be prettier than the hilarious photographic coffee-table book in the hotel lobby of our Kunming hotel — Chinese Pigs. Seriously.

Unconscionable Appetites

The most tragic, awful story I have read in a long time: According to The Guardian, 5,000 endangered animals including pangolins, Asian giant turtles and lizards were found "crushed inside crates on a rickety wooden vessel that had lost engine power off Qingzhou island in the southern province of Guangdong". The half-dead creatures were destined for the exotic-animal-loving restaurant tables of an increasingly affluent southern China.
"We keep them alive in cages until the customer makes an order," said a Guangdong chef quoted in the article. "Then we hammer them unconscious, cut their throats and drain the blood. It is a slow death. We then boil them to remove the scales. We cut the meat into small pieces and use it to make a number of dishes, including braised meat and soup. Usually the customers take the blood home with them afterwards."

100 Favourite Food Memories

I’m celebrating 100 posts on Elegant Sufficiency with a list of my 100 Favourite Food Memories. I don’t want to sound like a wanker here… I know I’ve been incredibly fortunate (and spent way too much money eating!). But what started as just a list has become a far more curious exercise, bringing back tastes and sensations and emotions and wonderful and difficult memories. (This list, which is in no particular order, would not have been possible without my crazily obsessive Virgo characteristic of filing systems and extensive notes.)
To mark this milestone (although my boss rather took the wind out of my sails when he told me that the author of one of the world’s most popular blogs about gadgets has written 6,500 posts), there’s something special at the end here that might interest you: If you’re yawning at my meandering memories, skip to the bottom.

Liqun roast duck restaurant

1. Peking duck at Beijing’s Liqun Roast Duck Restaurant – including a heaped plate of duck liver.
2. Crab-filled xiao long bao dumplings at Nanxiang steamed buns restaurant, Yu Yuan Gardens, Shanghai – to bypass the queues running out the door, on my visit here with my parents I had no option but to tell the waiters that my father was very unwell and needed to sit down urgently. Which, at the time, was a long way from the truth.
3. I can’t remember the details but Greg Malouf's AMAZING tongue salad at Mo Mo.
4. Pulled noodles at a streetside stall beside Yue Hu (Moon Lake), Ningbo China. OK to be honest, I was terrified of its hygiene levels, but I was with my plucky 60-year-old godmother who was teaching English in Ningbo at the time, and her enthusiasm for the noodles and the local beer was infectious.
5. The extraordinary vacherin with fine layers of meringue, Syrian apricot ice-cream and orange praline sorbet made by clever Alison Wall, the former pastry chef at Greg Malouf’s Mo Mo.
6. Loch Fyne oysters – eaten in a chill breeze blowing off the lake on the west coast of Scotland.
7. Mrs Wang’s zha jiang mian – the ubiquitous northern Chinese noodle dish. My godmother and I stayed with Mrs Wang and her family in their Beijing hutong courtyard house.
8. My first taste of green chicken curry in Bangkok with a man I loved – at a backstreet stall with kittens crawling over the tables.
9. Corned beef with parsley sauce: the first dinner Grandma would cook when we’d arrive at my grandparents’ place for holidays after the 12-hour drive from Queensland to Sydney when we were children. (Are we there yet?)
10. Sydney rock oysters at the miraculous Pier restaurant in Sydney; a teary, bonding meal with my brother.
11. Cold tofu cubes in the lightest wispy garlicky sauce, alongside the crisp deep-fried mutton at Shui Hu Ju restaurant (68 Peel Street, Hong Kong.)

Those buffalos and me, I mean, I

12. My first taste of Australian buffalo mozzarella in the Western districts of Victoria.
13. Wonton noodle soup on my exhausted, emotional, uncertain and lonely first night living in Hong Kong. (89 Hennessy Road, Wanchai.)
14. Crisp roast pork served the next night by the very kind Raymond Sinn at Hong Kong’s Tai Woo Restaurant. (27 Percival Street, Causeway Bay.)
15. Crème de Chou-Fleur, Truffes et Pain d’Epices Grillé – an intense cauliflower soup with slices of truffle and grilled spicy bread at Guy Savoy’s Les Bookinistes restaurant in the 6th – with Megan and Meaghan. How I miss them.
16. Tea-smoked duck at Bamboo House.
17. Sally Cuthbertson’s lasagna: layers of spinach, basil, tomato passata, provolone, ricotta, mozzarella, white sauce and pasta after a hard morning bottling tomato sauce under my ex-boss, her husband Slattery’s, exacting eye.
18. My 30th birthday meal at Mezzo in London – roast wild salmon with white beans and pistou, with Veuve Clicquot, my brother and his ex-wife, the self-centred Austrian sex kitten.
19. Spaghetti vongole on the terrace of an Amalfi restaurant with my mum and my brother.
20. Thai stuffed omelette with chilli fish sauce and jasmine rice at Meera Freeman's old Kin Kao in Prahran, Melbourne.
21. Paul Wilson’s poached egg, truffle and soft polenta – at Georges, at Radii and at the Botanical.

Spareribs, Silk Road style

22. The Silk Road flavours of the fried lamb spareribs with sliced chilli sauce at the crazy Old Beijing Zhajiang Noodle King restaurant.
23. Steve Szabo's “tarte tatin” of braised beef cheek + glazed root vegetables with parsley and truffle oil during his old Jimmy Watson’s days (I’m embarrassed to admit that I wrote “incredible orgasm” next to this on the menu I’ve just found from the night!).
24. Rudderfish in smoldering cedar bark at a special wine dinner for Mountadam Vineyards at the Grand Hyatt cooked by Kyoto chef Yoshihiro Murata.
25. Suckling pig in the town of Mealhada, Portugal.
26. Suckling pig at the Flower Drum for a Chinese New Year banquet: Gilbert Lau sliced the poor little piglet’s rouged skin into meticulous little squares and served them, if I recall correctly, with a little bun and some sweet sauce.
27. Jeremy Strode’s pig trotters – stuffed with sweetbreads and a wisp of ginger – at the now-defunct Pomme in Toorak, Melbourne.
28. Steamed black sesame paste dumplings in ginger soup in the back streets of Bangkok’s Chinatown.
29. David Thompson's red curry of minced Murray perch with shredded ginger green beans, Thai eggplants and basil – at a special dinner at the now-defunct Blakes restaurant in Melbourne.
30. Oeuf à la neige, crème anglaise et amandes at Le Petit Bofinger in Paris.
31. Caramel and meringue gelati at Massimo’s Gelati in Noosa. (I just asked my father to get in the car and drive 10 minutes’ up the road to check that I had this description right and, what would you know, he couldn’t be bothered! Ungrateful man!)

Purple-tipped water spinach in southern China

32. The purple-tipped water spinach stir-fried with garlic and mushrooms at a little restaurant in the Guangdong home town of Gilbert Lau during a trip with the former Flower Drum restaurateur back to his home village – his first trip there since he left in the late ‘50s. A wonderful story for another day.

The Shunde fish dish

33. Freshwater fish with Chinese olives and Yunnan ham in a restaurant in Shunde in the Pearl River Delta with Gilbert.
34. Fenouil confit, sorbet citron et basilic at Le Clos des Gourmets in the 7th arr. – intense sorbet with confit fennel.
35. Bresse chicken with foie gras sauce and truffles under the skin at Alain Ducasse in Paris (loved the stool beside my chair for our handbags).
36. Fried minced beef with onions and carrots cooked over a campfire during my Grade 10 school camp at Maroon Dam in Queensland.
37. Crème brulée at the Bibendum Oyster Bar at Michelin House, SW3.
38. Frites cooked in goose fat at Bistro Vue, Melbourne (pity about the completely naff design).
39. Tung Po pork at Liu Yuan Pavilion Shanghainese restaurant (54-62 Lockhart Road, Wanchai).
40. Tempura prawn soba noodles at a rickety stall near Tokyo’s Tsukiji Central Markets.
41. Spinach and mozzarella tramezzini sandwiches in Rome near Piazza Barberini.
42. My first taste of sushi in Japan – at Azuma restaurant in Asakusa, Tokyo.
43. Spaghetti alle cozze e pomodorini on Christmas night at the very local, very hidden Osteria Anice Stellato in Venice’s “Ghetto”; at the end of a misty walk through calles and over bridges following Veneto winemaker friends.

A hutong breakfast

44. An early-morning breakfast in a Beijing hutong – braised meat of an indeterminate variety, chopped minutely with coriander and green chilli, and served in a bun.
45. Life-threateningly spicy dan dan mian noodles at the hole-in-the wall Q Sichuanese restaurant in Wanchai.
46. An oyster omelette with tomato sauce in a Taipei street market. I was in a huff with a Chinese dissident poet.
47. Frank Camorra’s white gazpacho with grape granita at MoVida, Melbourne.
48. Bellinis at Harry's Bar in Venice. My diary recalls: “A woman pulls off a fine cream leather tan-trimmed glove and reveals a perfectly manicured hand and diamonds – immense”. Someone in my party stole an ashtray. We were much younger then.
49. Andrew McConnell’s smoked eel carpaccio, gewürztraminer jelly, dill and crème fraiche at Circa the Prince in Melbourne.
50. Mum’s lamb curry with sambals – most often cooked for Labor Party fundraisers when I was a child.
51. David Thompson’s miang som – pomelo and lobster on betel leaves.
52. Fresh sea urchin tossed through spaghetti at Cafe di Stasio in Melbourne.
53. Uni eaten out of a little wooden box with wasabi and soy with a dear old friend at her Hong Kong apartment.
54. Chu-toro, o-toro and uni sushi at Hong Kong’s Sushi Toki with that dear old friend. (Shop G1015, G/F., Yiu Sing Mansion, Phase 10, 14 Taikoo Shing Road, Taikoo Shing.)
55. That same dear old friend’s Danish open sandwiches with pickled and curried herring. How do you stop your heart breaking when, without explanation, that dear old friend stops returning your phone calls?
56. Kanom krok – coconut-milk-based street food snacks in Bangkok.
57. Juicy barbecued chicken with sticky rice served in a little basket and sweet chilli sauce at the Issan restaurant Krua Rommai. (16 Sukhumvit soi 36, Bangkok.)

Xiao long bao dumplings

58. Magical xiao long bao (“little dragon dumplings”) at Liu Yuan Pavilion Shanghainese restaurant – the original soup dumplings. (54-62 Lockhart Road, Wanchai.)
59. Raclette with boiled new potatoes at the home of Swiss friends in Bern.
60. Homemade bircher muesli with the same Swiss friends, including raspberries from their garden.
61. Sausages in white bread with tomato sauce outside the Prahran Market for a Country Fire Authority fundraiser.
62. With David Thompson, a stir-fry of catfish, curry paste and holy basil at Bangkok’s Tha Chang pier on the Chao Phraya River, dirty water sloshing up on the wooden boards underfoot.
63. Hoy tod – crisp mussel pancakes with bean sprouts – at Spice I Am in Sydney’s Surry Hills.
64. Unagi sushi at Kenzan, Melbourne.
65. The suckling pig my brother cooked in his father-in-law’s pizza oven, Christmas 2005. A niece-in-waiting.
66. River prawns with nahm pla prik at the riverside Phae Krung Kao restaurant in Ayutthaya with David Thompson (followed by a salad of deep-fried frog).
67. The oysters my brother shucks every Christmas.
68. Tony Tan's beef rendang.
69. Every Tony Tan dish that I’ve ever been lucky enough to eat.
70. My first taste of Jamón Ibérico, standing in the middle of a Valencia market. Swooning.
71. Kumamoto oysters from Oregon at Grand Central Station’s Oyster Bar.
72. Oyster omelette with chilli jam at the Flying Vegetable restaurant in Phitsanalok, Thailand.
73. Macaroni cheese at Bubby's Pie Co. in Tribeca with my friend Abby. It’s time I got in touch.
74. Mum’s pressed ox tongue. (Future post coming on this.)
75. McDonald;s Filet-O-Fish for the hangover after my 35th birthday.
76. Chilled lobster and corn chowder at Lever House at Park Ave. and 53rd.
77. Karen Martini's gorgonzola pannacotta with a salad of asparagus, radicchio, witlof, apple and aged balsamico.
78. Warm lamb’s tongue and potato salad with saffron potatoes and honey-lavender vinaigrette at Gary Danko in San Francisco.

Crab in Lockhart Road

79. Steamed crab with garlic at Yuet Wah Wui Crab, Lockhart Road, Causeway Bay.
80. Little gem lettuces with green goddess dressing and roasted beets at Chez Panisse downstairs.
81. Puree of summer pea soup, riesling, scallop carpaccio and peperoncino oil at L'Impero, New York.
82. Jeremy Strode’s free range eggs “sur la plat” with creamed mushrooms at the now-defunct Pomme.
83. Mum’s lambs brains in white sauce.
84. My friend Jane’s goats cheese salad, served at her old Paris apartment.
85. Crisp riesling, or fino sherry, at Ricky Ricardo's in Noosa as the sun goes down over the river, fried stuffed olives and aioli at the side.
86. Foie gras and cured pork on lentils at Jeanty at Jack's, San Francisco.
87. Robiola cheese with great tomato, bought at Peck food store in Milan, eaten at a truck stop with Mum and Dad after driving through a scary tunnel in northern Italy.
88. Cold Shanghai noodles served in a tumble in the middle of a platter, surrounded by little dishes holding condiments including chilli oil, vinegar, hoi sin-style sauce, pickled vegetables and ground peanuts at Kung Tak Lam Organic Shanghai Vegetarian Cuisine. Mix and match the toppings to create a personalised noodle dish. (31 Yee Wo Street, Causeway Bay, Hong Kong.)

Rut & Lek, Bangkok

89. Fried rice with crab and egg + Singha beer at the sidewalk Rut & Lek in Bangkok’s Chinatown (Yaowarat and Soi Texas): toilet paper rolls are on the table if you need a napkin.
90. Mum’s baked chicken with mayonnaise: a (bizarre) family favourite in the late ‘70s.
91. My first taste of a Parisian baguette – with unsalted French butter.

Bangkok street food: I need a name?

92. The Bangkok street food (above) that I can’t remember the name of: little sweet, soft, translucent pastry pockets with pork and I think peanuts in them. Can someone help?
93. The incendiary, chilli-oil-smothered pork dumplings at Man Jiang Sichuan restaurant. (1/F 482 Hennessy Road, Causeway Bay.)
94. The weisswurst or bratwurst from the deli-hall stall at Queen Victoria Market in Melbourne. No sauerkraut please.
95. My first taste of fresh horseradish – whipped through cream and served with roast beef and Yorkshire pudding: a meal I cooked while “studying” at Le Cordon Bleu in London.
96. The fresh fish served at a long-table, flame-lit, tropical-sultry dinner on the Fijian island of Vatulele.
97. A farmers-market and garden-generated meal at the Bay Area home of friends, cooking teacher Linda Hillel and her husband, Jon: okra, brushed with olive oil and sprinkled with kosher salt and barbecued; sautéed millet and bulgur wheat with red Russian kale, olive oil and garlic; tomatoes from the garden and basil; and Cypress Grove Humbolt Fog blue cheese.
98. Braised tripe at yum cha at Victoria Seafood restaurant, Wanchai, Hong Kong.
99. My first taste of rucola – after descending from the Roman ruins of Tiberius’s  "Damecuta" villa on Capri.
100. Strawberries from my late grandfather’s Sydney garden with icing sugar and cream at the big antique table with the lace cloth. It's now my Melbourne desk.

SOMETHING SPECIAL: OOH LA LA, A COMPETITION!

It’s your turn: I’d love to hear some of your Favourite Food Memories and, to encourage you to stop lurking and come out of the closet with them I’m running a little competition. Post a comment here with your Five Favourite Food Memories by Sunday, May 20, and I’ll send a prize to the person who writes what I judge to be the most fabulous. The prize (which I’ll post anywhere in the world) is a copy of the luscious and award-winning Saha: A Chef’s Journey Through Lebanon and Syria, by Greg and Lucy Malouf (Hardie Grant, 2005).

Rites of Passage

Ming Dynasty funerary ware: Models of typical dishes

Before I moved back to Melbourne from Hong Kong in 2004, I entertained the ambitious, possibly delusional, idea of quitting my newspaper job and moving to China to write a book about regional Chinese food. Delusional because I speak no Mandarin; delusional because it’s such a mighty subject. (It was no less delusional to move back to Melbourne for a love affair, but that’s another story.)  In preparation for my task, I started to collect anything and everything I could find about the subject; cluttering my study still are mountains of files about Chinese food … books of course, but also reams of newspaper and magazine clippings, brochures, booklets, and scrapbooks and photographs from my own fairly limited travels in China.
I was always especially interested in Chinese folklore and tradition related to food, which I had imagined I would effortlessly and compellingly weave into my narrative. Were I still to harbour my delusional idea (and I suppose there’s still a kernel of thought about it in the back of my mind), I would have been very quick to print-out and file an email sent to me by Jane Wong, Melbourne food lover and dedicated respondent to my posts. Jane started off by telling me a little more about the way the southern Chinese cook pippies then, as an aside, told me about her plans for the weekend – her grandmother’s funeral in Hong Kong. She has given me permission to publish her email, which explains eloquently a hugely significant Chinese tradition … I think Jane might find the illustration above an interesting accompaniment to her lovely words. It’s a photograph of models of food dishes from the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), funerary objects that were found in a tomb during an excavation in Jincheng, Shanxi province (noodle and black vinegar territory). I pulled it from a catalogue I picked up at an exhibition in Hong Kong called Fine Dining: Ancient Chinese Culinary Ware (presented in Hong Kong by the Leisure and Cultural Services Department and the National Museum of China).
Jane writes:

A Weekend in Hong Kong

Steamed pippies, stir-fried in a light sauce of Xiaoxing wine, garlic, ginger, spring onion, chilli, a dash of light soy sauce, a little rock sugar, mandarin peel and some fermented black beans, is a southern Chinese dish. My dad is of Hong Kong origin and he said the servants used to make it when he was a kid. I have vivid memories of tucking into it on (the Hong Kong island of) Cheung Chau, and also hunkered on a low stool over a big bowl of them at a “dai-pai dong” stall in the street near my old offices in Tai Koo Shing. Clams and pippies are said to be good luck foods in China, as they resemble coins. Further north they stir-fry them with yellow bean paste, ginger, spring onion and master stock.
We’re actually off to HK this weekend for my grandmother’s funeral. For my partner, Robin, it will be a culture shock, having led a sheltered Anglo-centric life in Hampton. To top things off he will witness the strange oriental funeral rituals that westerners rarely see, featuring astrological divination and some quite bizarre Taoist ceremonies. After a number of days of rituals, it all culminates with the cremation ceremony. I dare say that Robin will feel it is hocus-pocus but I find the spirituality and the sense of community that is involved quite comforting. As my grandmother was 93, it will be a happy ceremony, celebrating her long life.
The funeral banquet starts with dessert – typically a sweet soup – so that only the sweetest words will pass from your lips about the deceased. I’m sure it will also feature some of my grandmother’s favourite dishes like smoked duck braised with taro and delicate sweet vinegar pork ribs. I remember that she used to have a strong aesthetic ethic, which not only governed her sartorial splendour but also extended to “not eating anything ugly”! She also had a penchant for fish sauce as a seasoning, having spent part of her childhood in Vietnam, which fortunately allowed her to be spared from the agonies of foot binding. And, as my grandmother’s ghost told me, in the afterlife she is going to begin a happy new adventure, where the burdens of the past will be erased and the sense of joy cancels all pain.
As for me, I’m hanging out for Chinese roast goose. It’s been five years since I was in HK last – for another funeral – and my family tell me the dining scene has since been scarred by SARS, bird flu and a number of food substitution rackets emanating from mainland China. It will be interesting to see – HK’s always evolving, fads come and go, new buildings pop up quickly and the pollution just seems to get worse.

On Top of the World

I’ve had to go to my atlas to work out where it is and I think I’ve got it sorted: The 7556-metre-high Minyak Kongka (or Gongga Mountain) is a few hundred kilometres due west of Chengdu in China’s far-west Sichuan Province. In the south-eastern Tibet plateau, Kongka is known as the “king of the mountains”.
I’m riding a horse there in April.
OK, this is the story: one of my dearest friends from my Hong Kong days is a dazzlingly clever Australian bloke called Bruce Foreman – fluent Mandarin speaker, photographer, environmental scientist, writer and former Intrepid tour guide. Bruce is still a HK-resident, now with his own travel company – Funky Golden Dragon – and I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seethed with envy at his travels. Yanghsuo in Guangxi Province is his second home, and I’ll regularly get dispatches from the far reaches of the Silk Road, Beijing or Shanghai (a yawn for him), or Tibet’s mythical Mount Kailash. Drives me nuts. In Hong Kong, we would often saunter through the steamy, air-conditioning-dripped streets in search of good photographs, but frustratingly, I never travelled further than Kowloon with him.
I’ve decided to change that: in April (15 to 27) and May (12 to 24), Bruce and a bunch of Tibetan nomad guides will lead a horse trek to Gongga Mountain, one of the least touristy parts of Tibet and apparently the home of every deity of Tibetan Buddhism. And I’m determined to be on one of those horses. The trip starts in Chengdu, a modern Chinese city that I’ve long wanted to get to. It’s famous for its outrageously spicy food, traditional tea houses and Chinese opera, and its wandering ear-cleaners. Other highlights (please let me sound like a tourist brochure for a moment) include limestone lakes, village home stays, the Lagang monastery, cups of smoky pu er tea with the monks at the Kongka monastery, rhododendrons and a visit to Chengdu’s Panda Sanctuary. Did I mention the horseback riding? That may be optional – if you don’t ride, you have to walk – but Bruce tells me that the horses are a sleepy sort of breed, which I find a little comforting, given the rugged, cliff-speckled nature of this countryside. I think Bruce’s photographs above should give you an idea of just how extraordinary the area is – and just how sleepy the horses are.
There are still some places available on the trip, which is US$1499 ex Chengdu. For more information, take a look at the Funky Golden Dragon website.
With Sichuan and fleecy longjohns on my mind, tonight I pulled out what is arguably one of the finest books on Asian food to have emerged in the past few decades. Fuchsia Dunlop’s Land of Plenty (or Sichuan Cookery if you’re in the UK or Australia) is a masterful collection of stories, information, techniques and recipes from Sichuan Province. I had yum cha with Fuchsia when she came through Hong Kong in 2002 – she had written a couple of pieces on Chengdu for the newspaper section I edited – and I was just so impressed; she’s a brilliant Englishwoman who took herself and her polished Mandarin off to Chengdu and its Sichuan Institute of Higher Cuisine, becoming the first Westerner ever to graduate from the institute. I recall her sketching our dim sum in her journal as we ate and quizzing the waiters at every chance – one of those inspirational, multi-talented, nauseating people!
Last year, Fuchsia’s second book – on the cooking of Hunan Province (The Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook, Ebury Press) – came out and it has muscled its way to the top of my I-Want List.
But tonight, I had Dan Dan Mian on my mind. In Hong Kong, my colleagues and I would take off at lunch for a fix of this madly spicy noodle dish at a Wanchai hole-in-the-wall run by Sichuan migrants. The menu was in Chinese, the spice quota of the dishes designated by chilli icons. After my first visit with a Chinese-speaking colleague, a much-scribbled-on takeaway menu translating key dishes found a home in my wallet and was pulled out frequently over the next few years as I took one visitor to the city after another for a dose of this exhilarating pain.
The key ingredient of Dan Dan Mian – and other Sichuan dishes – is hua jiao, commonly known as Sichuan peppercorn. As Fuchsia describes hua jiao in Land of Plenty: “It has an extraordinary, heady aroma that carries hints of wood, citrus peel, and the languid scents of summer, and it produces a weird numbing effect on the lips and tongue. … One folk explanation for the widespread use of this pepper in Sichuanese cooking is, curiously, that its numbing effects allow people to consume more chillies than would otherwise be humanly be possible!” (Hua jiao are widely available at Asian food stores.)
According to Fuchsia, Dan Dan Mian are the most famous of Sichuan’s street snacks. She writes: “They were originally sold by men who wandered the alleys of the city, carrying their stoves, noodles, and secret-recipe sauces in baskets hanging from a bamboo shoulder pole (known as dan) in Chinese. … The noodles were served in small portions in tiny bowls, just enough to ease the hunger of scholars working late or mahjong players gambling into the night.”

Traditional Dan Dan Noodles
(Dan Dan Mian, from Land of Plenty, by Fuchsia Dunlop)

Serves 4 as a starter

340g (12oz) fresh egg noodles
Sauce:
1tbsp peanut oil
4tbsp Sichuanese ya cai or Tianjin preserved vegetable
3 scallions, green parts only
1 ½ tbsp light soy sauce
½ tbsp dark soy sauce
2-3 tbsp chilli oil, to taste
1 ½ tsp Chinkiang or black Chinese vinegar
½ - 1 tsp ground roasted Sichuan pepper*
Pork topping:
A little peanut oil
110g (4oz) minced pork
1 tsp Shaoxing rice wine or medium-dry sherry
2tsp light soy sauce
salt to taste

Heat 1 tablespoon of peanut oil in a wok over a high flame. Add the ya cai or Tianjin preserved vegetable and stir-fry for about 30 seconds, until it is fragrant. Set aside. Add another tablespoon of oil to the wok and reheat, then add the ground pork and stir-fry. As the meat separates, splash in the wine. Add the soy sauce and salt to taste, and continue to stir-fry until the meat is well cooked, but not too dry. Remove from the wok and set aside. Finely slice the scallions.
Put the fried vegetable and all the other sauce ingredients into a serving bowl and mix together.
Cook the nooldes according to the instructions on the package. Then drain them and add them to the sauce in the serving bowl. Sprinkle with the meat mixture and serve immediately.
When the bowl is on the table, give the noodles a good stir until the sauce and meat are evenly distributed.
* To prepare about 2 ½ tablespoons ground roasted Sichuan pepper, heat a dry wok over a low flame. Add 6 tablespoons Sichuan pepper and stir-fry for about five minutes until the pepper husks are richly fragrant. (Fuchsia warns that they’ll smoke slightly as you cook them.) Remove from the wok, cool, then grind the peppercorns to a powder in a spice grinder or a mortar and pestle. Sift the powder to remove stalks or unground pepper husks.