[.ca] Land Of Plenty (ISBN 0393051773)

From Amazon.com:
Elizabeth David had it easy. All she had to do was eat her way through France and Italy and translate the essence of the encountered cuisines for a ravenous, literate, English-speaking public. Fuschia Dunlop, on the other hand, went to Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan in China, where she ended up the first foreign student enrolled at the Sichuan Institute of Higher Cuisine. That was nearly 10 years ago. After annual return visits and endless research she has produced, in English, a magnificent introduction to the food and foodways of Sichuan. She is in every way the dharma inheritor of Elizabeth David. You too may start to salivate halfway through the introduction to Dunlop's magnificent Land of Plenty: A Treasury of Authentic Sichuan Cooking. Perhaps it begins when she explains xian, "one of the most beautiful words in the Chinese culinary language." It describes an entire range of flavor and sensation, "the indefinable, delicious taste of fresh meat, poultry, and seafood, the scrumptious flavors of a pure chicken soup..." Before you know it you are running headlong into a world of 23 distinct flavors and 56 cooking methods (they are all listed at the end of the book). Sichuan is the place where "barbarian peppers" met up with a natural cornucopia and a literary cooking tradition stretching back to the fifth century A.D. Innovation with cooking technique and new and challenging ingredients remains a hallmark of Sichuan. After describing basic cutting skills and cooking techniques, Dunlop presents her recipes in chapters that include "Noodles, Dumplings, and Other Street Treats"; "Appetizers"; "Meat"; "Poultry"; "Fish"; "Vegetables and Bean Curd"; "Stocks and Soup"; "Sweet Dishes"; and "Hotpot." Yes, you will find Gong Bao (Kung Pao) Chicken with Peanuts--Gong Bao Ji Ding. It's named after a late 19th-century governor of Sichuan, Ding Baozhen, which brought on the wrath of the Cultural Revolution for its imperial associations. Until rehabilitation, the dish was called "fast-fried chicken cubes" or "chicken cubes with seared chilies." Land of Plenty is literary food writing at its best, as well as a marvelous invitation to new skills and flavors for the home cook. Read it. Cook it. Eat it. And take pleasure in the emerging career of Fuschia Dunlop, a big new voice in the world of food. --Schuyler Ingle

In Search of Xian:
Fuchia Dunlap's first book on Sichuan cooking is a very strong entry into the world of works on regional cuisines. I heartily agree with blurbs by such notables as John Thorne and Alan Davidson that the work puts Dunlap in the company of Diana Kennedy and Paula Wolfert. One can hope that future works validate this initial judgement. We can use a lot more books like this. I believe it is common knowledge among foodies that there is a big difference between Sechuan and Cantonese cuisine, and that the former is characterized by very spicy foods. Viewing a few episodes with the Iron Chef Chinese will fill you on this. What this book covers is to characterize with great clarity and thoroughness what Sichuan cooking is all about. The first impression I get is that Sichuan cooking is very highly codified, almost on the same level as French cuisine. This immediately reveals to the reader that, for example, there are easily a half dozen different types of stir fry cooking within Sichuan cuisine alone. It also means that the Sichuan doctrines on taste match or exceed Western culinary tradition. They have, for example, the concept of 'xian' which describes the 'indefinable, delicious taste of fresh meat, poultry, and seafood'. This is in addition to the real magic the cuisine does with the more familiar sweet, sour, salty, and bitter. The author effectively captures and communicates the importance of these tastes in Sichuan cuisine to the reader, including experiments so one can experience these tastes first hand. The second impression I get is that chilis, that is, plants of the genus capsicum from the new world, had as big an impact on Sichuan cuisine as the tomato had on Italian cuisine, at roughly the same time in history. Before new world chilis arrived, the heat in this cuisine came primarily from a local red pepper, a berry similar to our familiar black pepper. In the seventeenth century, the genus capsicum really took over. Yet, the cuisine is not as fiery hot as one may find in Mexico or the Caribbean. The peppers most commonly used are just moderately hot and the author constantly warns against substituting Thai chili peppers for the Sichuan peppers, as the result would be painful. Following Ms. Wolfert and Ms. Kennedy, the author has successfully translated the Chinese techniques for English speaking readers. However, one would not be able to fully appreciate or execute these recipes without some basic ingredients and equipment. I really believe that one would loose something in these recipes if one did not have a round bottom wok and it's tools. Fortunately, even very good Chinese woks are very inexpensive, especially at restaurant supply stores. For those with electric ranges, a flat bottomed wok may be a reasonable approximation. I would also recommend that one make the effort to get the authentic canned and bottled ingredients. Substitutions, even from other Asian cuisines may give very misleading results. For the non-foodie recipe hunter, I recommend the chicken recipes and the vegetable recipes. The Kung Pao recipe is worth the price of admission and one always needs a way to make veggies more interesting. (I was surprised when the grean bean recipes used the French haricort vert and not the long Asian grean bean.) If Ms. Dunlap is not presenting authentic recipes, she has done a very good job of fooling me. She has also succeeded in keeping me thoroughly entertained with her headnotes and stories about how she came across the various dishes. The only heads up I would give you, dear reader, about the recipes is that sometimes important information about the recipe is given in the headnote, which people in a hurry may not read. Otherwise, this is a first class job of recipe writing. The photographs are gathered in color sections and are of reasonable, but not extraordinary quality. The introductory background on Sichuan cuisine and appendices are superb.

An absolute must for the serious Asian 'foodie':
I have a huge collection of cookbooks... This is one of my best. So many Szechuan cookbooks simply contain a collection of chinese recipes spiced up with chili paste.This one does interesting things with a wide range of spices (cardamom, sand ginger etc) that I really didn't realize were popular in some chinese cusines until I read this book. A must read!

A real Chinese cookbook:
I'm an Asiaphile, and have been for a long time. And as a result, I'm only too aware of how hard it is to find really good Chinese cookbooks in English. This is one of them. Dunlop shares the recipes she learned at Sichuan's highest-profile cooking school, and puts them in context - not only do you learn how to cook the dish, you learn how to taste it as well. If you're the kind of cook who'd rather eat after hours with the kitchen staff at your local Chinese restaurant than order the Americanised stuff on the menu, this book is for you. Enjoy!

A Great Coobook, but with one very SERIOUS caveat:
This is a wonderful treatise on Sichuan cooking, but be advised that this book was originally written for the UK market and has only recently been adapted for US readers. Unfortunately, one of the most key ingredients in Sichuan cooking, the Sichuan Pepper or "fagara" which is used in at least half of the key recipes on this book, has been BANNED in the USA by the US Department of Agriculture because it carries a devastating canker virus that kills citrus plants. The US is not expected to lift this ban anytime soon, it may be decades before they consider the spice to be safe for import. The two mail-order sources listed in the appendix in the book for Sichuan Peppercorn turn out to be duds, as they themselves have had their inventories seized. So the aspiring home chef looking to replicate these dishes at home will have to find the Sichuan Peppercorn via illicit means. Check out egullet.com for more information on this.

A peppering of photos enhances the presentation:
Fuchsia Dunlop's Land Of Plenty is an impressive gathering of authentic Sichuan recipes personally gathered by Dunlop in the Chinese province of Sichuan provides dishes both available in other cookbooks and unique to this culinary guide. Access to a well-stocked Chinese market will aid in the appreciation of a guide which includes such regional specialties as Pork Steamed in Lotus Leaves and Braised Chicken with Chestnuts. A peppering of photos enhances the presentation but the 'meat' lies in its unusual dishes.