A taste of Jiangnan

Yang Yang

British gourmet（美食家）Fuchsia Dunlop has become a cook that's better at Chinese dishes than European ones,and cooking has become a way for her to deal with the“endless lockdown”.She says she cooks in a very relaxed way,going to the farmers' market at the weekend to buy seasonal products for everyday cooking—a mixture of Jiangnan（the region south of the Yangtze River）,Hunan,Guangdong,and Sichuan dishes.

“For me,there are so many wonderful things about Chinese food.The thing that I find is greatest about it is that you can eat food that is both really delicious and incredibly healthy,”Dunlop says.“The Chinese are experts at cooking vegetables,so it's very comfortable,easy and natural for me to eat Chinese food a lot.Almost every day.”

Growing up in a household in Oxford always filled with exotic flavors,Dunlop dreamed of becoming a cook when she was little.However,her dream did not start tomaterialize until she came to Chengdu,as a university student in 1994.That was when she began learning local cooking skills,while looking for delicious food in the city and nearby areas.

Based on her knowledge of different Chinese cuisines,she wrote and published many books.In one of her books named Land of Fish and Rice,Dunlop displays her profound understanding of the food culture that runs deep in the blood of Chinese culture.

Having studied Chinese food culture for nearly two decades,she regards the Jiangnan region as the heartland of the nation's gastronomy.

“Although you have really interesting and delicious food all over China,in this region,particularly,people wrote about it and discussed it.Many of the old classic food books came from this region,for example.So if you talk about gastronomy,and not just about good food,then Jiangnan is a really important region,”she says.