ago that many Westerners thought of "Chinese food" as a single, homogenous cuisine. However, a country as large and as geographically and climatically varied as China naturally has a wide range of regional cuisines. There is an immense amount of debate, confusion and error about just how many regional cuisines there are. but most knowledgeable gourmets agree that at least four major Chinese regional styles exist: Cantonese, centered on southern Guangdong Province and Hong Kong; Sichuan, based on the cooking of this western province's two largest cities, Chengdu and Chongqing; Huaiyang, the cooking of eastern China—Jiangsu. Zhejiang and Shanghai—an area of lakes, rivers and seashore; and Beijing or "Northern" food, with its major inspiration from the coastal province of Shandong. Some would add a fifth cuisine from the southeastern coastal province of Fujian.
What distinguishes these regional styles is not only their recipes but also the particular types of soy sauce, garlic, fish, oil, pork or other basic ingredients used in preparing the signature dishes, as well as the proportions of the various ingredients. Timing and temperature are also critical factors. All regions use various forms of ginger, garlic, spring onions, soy sauce, vinegar, sugar, sesame oil and bean paste, but generally combine them in highly distinctive ways.
Inexpensive and delicious street food. such as these dumplings being tried in a Shanghai lane, is enjoyed at least once a day by most Chinese living in towns and cities.
Delicate Flavors of Cantonese Cooking
Guangdong Province has benefitted from its family ties with freewheeling Hong Kong. The province's fertile soils permit intensive agricultural production and its lengthy shoreline supports a vigorous fishing industry. In a longstanding rivalry with Shanghai. Guangzhou (the provincial capital, once better known to Westerners as Canton) cedes first place in fashion, but is the unchallenged leader when it comes to food.
The earliest Chinese cuisine to be introduced in the West. Cantonese cuisine is often disparagingly identified with egg rolls, chop suey, chow mein, sweet and sour pork and fortune cookies. With the exception of chop suey and fortune cookies, which were invented in the United States, the dishes mentioned above are orthodox Cantonese creations, and sweet and sour pork is just as popular among Chinese as foreigners. But Cantonese cooking has much more to offer than this, and indeed is considered to be the most refined of Chinese cooking styles. Cantonese food is characterized by its extraordinary range and freshness of ingredients, a light touch with sauces and the readiness of its cooks to incorporate "exotic" imported flavorings, such as lemon, curry, Worcestershire sauce and mayonnaise.
Cantonese chefs excel in preparing roast and barbecued meats (duck, goose, chicken and pork), which are never prepared at home (only restaurant kitchens have ovens) and are bought from special roast meat shops.
Cantonese chefs are also famous for dim sum. a cooking style in its own right. Dim sum refers to snacks taken with tea for either breakfast or lunch Dim sum, which can be sweet, salty, steamed, fried, baked, boiled or stewed, each served in their own individual bamboo steamer or on a plate.
In Cantonese, eating dim sum is referred to as yum cha, "drinking tea." In traditional yum cha establishments, restaurant staff walk about the room pushing a cart or carrying a tray strung around their neck and offer their goods. The mildly competitive shouting only adds to the atmosphere of hustle and bustle. In Hong Kong and Guangzhou, dim sum restaurants are important institutions where the locals go to discuss business, read newspapers, raise their children and socialize. At noon and on weekends, getting seats can be difficult as many of them are occupied by "regulars."
Mongolian Lamb Hotpot is popular in winter time and as a reunion dinner, with everyone sitting around in a cozy, warm circle, cooking their own portions of food in the bubbling pot.
One of China's most famous dishes. Peking Duck, is traditionally enjoyed three ways the crisp skin tucked into a pancake smeared with sauce, the meat stir-fried with vegetables, and the carcass made into soup.
Fiery Sichuan Cooking
Sichuan, the home of spicy food, is a landlocked province with remarkably fertile soil and a population of more than 100 million. But despite the province's incendiary reputation, many of the most famous dishes are not spicy at all. For example, the famous duck dish, Camphor and Tea-smoked Duck, is made by smoking a steamed duck over a mixture of tea and camphor leaves.
But it is the mouth-burners (all of them relying on chili peppers for their heat) that have made Sichuan's name known all over the world, dishes like Ma Po Tofu (see page 69), stewed tofu and minced meat in a hot sauce; Hui Guo Rou (see page 82). twice-cooked (boiled and stir-fried) pork with cabbage in a piquant bean sauce; Yu Xiang Qiezi (see page 60), eggplant in "fish flavor" sauce; and fish in hot bean sauce.
Chilies were a relatively late addition to the Sichuan palate, having been imported by Spanish traders in the late Ming or early Qing Dynasty (ca. 1600) from Mexico via the Philippines. The chili's journey on the Pacific Spice Route is a reminder of how plants, as well as ideas, can cross oceans and enrich the lives of the recipients. Sichuan's own taste-tingling spice. Sichuan pepper (the dried berry of an ash tree) still adds its distinctive flavor to many of the province's dishes.
The taste for piquant food is sometimes explained by Sichuan's climate. The fertile agricultural basin is covered with clouds much of the year and there is enough rain to permit two crops of rice in many places. Strong spices provide a pick-me-up in cold and humid weather and are a useful preservative for meat and fish.
When the Grand Canal was built in the Sui Dynasty (A.D. 581-618), it gave rise to several great commercial cities at its southern terminus, including Huaian and Yangzhou. after which this regional cuisine (Huaiyang) is named. The region's location on the lower reaches of the Yangtze River in China's "land of fish and rice" (synonymous with the Western "milk and honey") gave it a distinct advantage in terms of agricultural products, and it was renowned for aquatic delicacies such as fish, shrimp, eel and crab, which were shipped up the canal to the imperial court in Beijing. The cooking of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai generally falls into the category of Huaiyang cuisine, which was developed by the great families of the imperially appointed salt merchants living in Yangzhou.
Huaiyang cuisine is not well known outside of China, perhaps because it rejects all extremes and strives for the "Middle Way." Freshness (xian) is a key concept in the food of this region, but xian means more than just fresh. For example, for a dish of steamed fish to be xian, the fish must have been swimming in the tank one hour ago. it must exude its own natural flavor, and must be tender yet slightly chewy.
Xian also implies that the natural flavor of the original ingredients should take precedence over the sauce, and Huaiyang chefs achieve this by careful cutting and paying close attention to the heat of the wok. which is. after all. merely a thin and sensitive membrane of cast iron separating the ingredients from the flames of the stove. Chinese chefs, and Huaiyang chefs in particular, have an uncanny ability to control the flames of their stoves. Some of the best-known Huaiyang dishes are steamed or stewed and thus require less heat and a longer cooking time than most fried dishes; examples include chicken with chestnuts, pork steamed in lotus leaves, duck with an eight-ingredient stuffing, and "lion head" meatballs.
Beijing and the North
The cuisine of Beijing has perhaps been subjected to more outside influences than any other major cuisine in China First came the once-nomadic Mongols, who made Beijing their capital in the Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368). They brought with them a preference for mutton, the chief ingredient in Mongolian Lamb Hotpot (see page 85), one of Beijing's most popular dishes in the autumn and winter.
And then there were the Manchus, who, as the rulers of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), introduced numerous ways of cooking pork. As the capital of China for the last eight centuries, Beijing became the home of government