Acclaimed Chinese cooking writer Fuchsia Dunlop has turned her attention to the hot and spicy flavours of the Hunan province for the Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook. She shares a tastebud-tingling recipe and Chinese cooking tips. If your experience of Chinese cuisine is limited to the gloopy sweet and sour pork or greasy fried rice dishes served up in late-night takeaway bars, it's time for a culinary revolution. Foodwriter and broadcaster Fuchsia Dunlop is widely acclaimed as an expert on Chinese food and her first book, Sichuan Cookery, won the Guild of Food Writers' Award for Best First Cookery Book.
Now, in the Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook, Fuchsia explores the culinary traditions and flavours of the Hunan province in central Southern China.Hunan's most famous son was Chairman Mao Zedong, who insisted on eating Hunanese food, especially its hot and spicy stews, wherever he lived in China.
"Chairman Mao famously said that you can't be a revolutionary if you don't eat chillies," Fuchsia explains. "His words were in tune with the ancient Chinese belief that you are what you eat, and that environment, diet and human character are all intimately related."
"Chinese cookery is about a way of approaching food as much as any specialist equipment or ingredient, and you don't really need any special tools to do it," Fuchsia says. "Stir-frying can be done, at a pinch, in a flat-bottomed pan, you can cut your ingredients with a Western knife, and a steamer can be improvised from a saucepan and trivet. The basic equipment of the Chinese kitchen, however, is extremely simple to use, cheap to buy and wonderfully versatile."
She recommends adding a carbon steel cleaver and a traditional cast iron or carbon steel wok to your kitchen cupboards, both of which are inexpensive and easily found in Chinese supermarkets in the UK. Here Fuchsia shares a recipe for Red-braised Pork, which in Hunan is closely tied to the memory of Chairman Mao, who ate it frequently. In his home village of Shaoshan, which has become a shrine to the Cultural Revolution, locals practically consider it a health food. "It's a robust concoction, best eaten with plain steamed rice and simple stir-fried vegetables, but the treacly, aromatic chunks of meat are irresistible and it's always a favourite at my London dinner parties," she says.
Chairman Mao's Red Braised Pork
(Serves two people, with one or two other dishes and rice, or four people with three or four other dishes and rice)
500g/1lb 2oz belly pork (skin optional) - 2tbsp groundnut oil - 2tbsp white sugar - 1tbsp Shaoxing wine, 20g/3/4 oz fresh ginger, skin left on and sliced - 1 star anise - 2 dried red chillies - A small piece cassia bark or cinnamon stick light soy sauce, salt and sugar a few lengths spring onion greens.
Plunge the belly pork into a pan of boiling water and simmer for 3-4 minutes until partially cooked. Remove and, when cool enough to handle, cut into bite-sized chunks.
Heat the oil and sugar in a wok over a gentle flame until the sugar melts, then raise the heat and stir until the melted sugar turns a rich caramel brown. Add the
pork and splash in the Shaoxing wine.
Add enough water to just cover the pork, along with the ginger, star anise, chillies and cassia. Bring to the boil, then turn down the heat and simmer for 40-50 minutes.
Towards the end of the cooking time, turn up the heat to reduce the sauce and season with soy sauce, salt and a little sugar to taste. Add the spring onion greens just before serving.
