Hunan | Sybaritica

2007 W.W. Norton & Co. ISBN-13: 978-0393062229

Fuschia Dunlop has become widely recognized as something of an authority on Sichuan cuisine since the publication of her ‘Land of Plenty’ some years ago. In this book, she tackles the cuisine of Sichuan’s neighboring Hunan Province and gives it the same excellent treatment. The title might initially suggest that Ms. Dunlop is going to provide a new ‘take’ on Chinese cookery but it was actually chosen to reflect the underlying theme. Chairman Mao Zedong originally came from Hunan and, not only does Ms. Dunlop introduce us to his favorite dish, she examines Hunan and its cuisine in terms of the larger context of the communist revolution, scattering the text with many relevant pictures. Some critics have taken umbrage at this, complaining that she ‘glorifies’ Mao Zedong, but such silly pseudo-political quibbles deserve to be ignored, as this is truly an excellent culinary work… Read more

1981 Sterling Publishing Co. ISBN 13: 978-0847313310

I frequently scan Amazon for cookery books that are interesting or out of the ordinary. I do not limit myself to those just carried by Amazon but also will occasionally purchase from third-party vendors who advertise there, as it is sometimes possible to come up with the odd real gem. Sadly, though, this book, while it looked promising, just did not fall into that category.

The first edition of the book was actually published in 1976 by Drake publishing, so it has some limited ‘historical’ interest given that Sichuan cookery books were far less common then than now. Beyond that, though, there is little in this book to make it worth the money… Read more

This morning, while surfing, I came across a really nice blog entitled ‘mmm-Yoso‘ written by a fellow by the name of Kirk.K out of San Diego, a place nearly diagonally across the entire continent from me. Kirk is lucky enough to live in a place where he can easily lay his hands on actual smoked pork from Hunan, a product I am currently forced to substitute for, as in my Hunan-style Smoked Ham Hock experiment posted a few days ago.

This is the commercially packaged product Kirk used:

Reproduced with kind permission of Kirk. K

Anyway …. Kirk featured this product in a delicious looking recipe you can link to here:

HUNAN SMOKED PORK AND SHISHITO PEPPERS

I am going to be going to be travelling to our Nation’s capital in the next month or so and I will do my best to see if I can find this product or something similar. If I will, I will certainly try Kirk’s recipe and feature the results of my experiment here. Now I can only hope I can lay my hands on some Shishito peppers as well!

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Few North Americans would associate smoked meats with China but, in fact, the smoking of various foodstuffs is not at all uncommon. Tea-smoked duck is a well-known favorite in Sichuan cuisine and Jinhua-ham from Zhejiang Province is used in a variety of preparations across the country. Other foodstuffs, like shrimp, tofu, and chicken are often also smoked in various ways before being used as ingredients in more complex dishes.

Hunan Province is also reputed to produce smoked pork products that rival the best equivalents in the west like Prosciutto, Smithfield, and Westphalian Ham. I can’t recall actually ever coming across anything identified as being Hunan smoked ham in any stores I have visited but I did once buy something identified as ‘Chinese Ham’ which could, I suppose, have been Hunanese in origin. Read more

ISBN 10: 0517533251 / 0-517-53325-1 ISBN 13: 9780517533253 Publisher: Harmony Books Publication Date: 1978

I picked a copy of this book up at a second hand bookstore in Ottawa and when I opened it I was pleasantly surprised to see that it is autographed by the author himself. The autograph, accompanied by the author’s personal Chinese seal, is prefaced with wishes of ‘Happy eating’ to a person named ‘Greg Lowder’. The signature is dated 1985 (7 years later than the publication date) so it doesn’t look like this book was a copy purchased at a ‘book-signing’ promotion. I can’t help speculating about who this Mr. Lowder might be, or how this signed edition ended up in a second hand bookstore … an estate-sale, maybe? Read more