Fuchsia Dunlop is a British author and chef specialising in Chinese cuisine, particularly Sichuanese food. She has written seven popular books and is arguably the Western world’s most knowledgeable person about the diverse food cultures and cooking techniques of China’s various regions. In this interview, Dunlop talks about the comparisons that are often made between Chinese and Western cuisines, as well as her passion for China’s food culture and views on how it is changing.
What are your thoughts on mooncakes? Do you have a favourite flavour?
I enjoy the ritual of giving and sharing mooncakes around the Mid-Autumn Festival, especially when I’m at home in London, because it feels like another connection with China. I like the rich Cantonese mooncakes in small doses: a slice of a lotus seed paste mooncake with some green tea, for example. But my favourites are the savoury minced pork mooncakes made in Shanghai, and various Yunnan mooncakes. One classic Yunnan version is made with flaky pastry and stuffed with chopped Yunnan ham and sugar. I also love the Weishan mooncakes, which are larger and more like a regular cake, made with flour and eggs and sugar, with beautiful stuffings that might include red bean paste or rose petal jam.
How did your interest and research in Chinese cuisine begin, and has your enthusiasm changed over the years?
I went to China in 1994 as a British Council student. I attended Sichuan University as a postgraduate student in the history department.
But I had loved cooking more than anything since childhood. Finding myself in Chengdu, where the food was so exciting and so fresh and so different from any Chinese food I’d had before, I started learning to cook.
I persuaded the owners of little local restaurants near the university to let me study in their kitchens. And then this famous cooking school, the Sichuan Higher Institute of Cuisine, agreed to give me and a German friend some private cooking classes.
