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Fuchsia Charlotte DunlopCambridge University List of Members, Cambridge University Press, 1998, p. 225 is an English writer and cook who specialises in Chinese cuisine, especially Sichuan cuisine. She is the author of seven books, including the autobiographical Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper (2008). According to Julia Moskin in The New York Times, Dunlop "has done more to explain real Chinese cooking to non-Chinese cooks than anyone".
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> British writer explores texture of Chinese food" in Daily Telegraph: China Watch (12 December 2018)
For her next book, Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook, she looked eastwards. Hunan province is "revolutionary" as the birthplace of Mao Zedong, but Hunan cuisine, unlike that of its neighbour Sichuan, was scarcely known outside China: "Both are fertile, subtropical areas with rugged, wild terrain and rich cropland fed by major rivers, and they share robust folk cooking, big flavors and blazing hot chilies. Yet she argues persuasively for Hunan as a separate culinary presence", Anne Mendelson wrote in a review in The New York Times.Anne Mendelson, " Eat Drink Make Revolution: The Cuisine of Hunan Province" in New York Times (14 March 2007)" Revolutionary Recipes from China's Hunan Province" on All Things Considered at NPR (28 February 2007) Continuing an exploration of regional Chinese food, in "Garden of Contentment" (in The New Yorker, 2008) Dunlop profiled the Dragon Well Manor,Fuchsia Dunlop, " Letter from China: Garden of Contentment" in The New Yorker vol. 84 no. 38 (16 November 2008) pp. 54–61 a restaurant that is "committed to offering its guests a kind of prelapsarian Chinese cuisine" in Hangzhou, a centre of the ancient region of Jiangnan.Leo Carey, " The Exchange: Fuchsia Dunlop" in The New Yorker vol. 84 no. 38 (20 November 2008) The cookery of this same region, modern Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces, is covered in her third regional cookbook, Land of Fish and Rice (2016). In China, she explains, this cuisine "is known historically for its extraordinary knife work, delicate flavors and extreme reverence for ingredients,"Tyler Cowen, " Fuchsia Dunlop on Chinese Food, Culture, and Travel" (2016) as encapsulated in the nostalgic phrase chún lú zhī sī "thinking of perch and Brasenia", two ancient local specialities.Rachel Cooke, " China’s best-kept food secret, revealed by Fuchsia Dunlop" in The Guardian (17 July 2016)
Meanwhile with Every Grain of Rice: Simple Chinese Home Cooking (2012)Kate Williams, " Cook the Book: 'Every Grain of Rice'" at Serious Eats (19 February 2013)Fuchsia Dunlop, " To Form "Water Caltrop" Wontons" at Epicurious (February 2013) Dunlop gained her fourth James Beard Award. Her journalism includes frequent articles on cooking and restaurants in China for publications including the Financial Times, Saveur, The Observer, 1843 and the now-defunct Lucky Peach and Gourmet. Her cookbooks are praised for explaining "real Chinese cooking" to cooks from elsewhere, and for identifying and highlighting local ingredients such as the bridal veil mushroom of Sichuan's "jade web soup", the fermented soy and broad bean sauce of Hunan, Zhejiang's aquatic vegetables like water bamboo and Euryale ferox, and the "intensely flavored Jinhua ham from Jinhua". "Extra-culinary insights" have also been noted: she captures "fading memories of the many violent 20th-century transformations" of the Chinese provinces (quotes by Anne Mendelson). Her autobiographical memoir, Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper (2008), won the IACP Jane Grigson Award and the Guild of Food Writers Kate Whiteman. Paul Levy, in a review in The Observer, noted a "distinctive voice that marks out the very best travel writing". The focus is on her long and deep experience of Chinese cuisine, an early landmark being her visit to Qingping Market in Guangzhou in 1992, encountering "cages of , cats and Malayan tapir that are testimony to the willingness of the southern Chinese to regard most forms of life as potential food".Paul Levy, " Anyone for caterpillars?" in The Observer (24 February 2008) There have been moments of doubt, as quoted in a New York Times review, "as if my gastronomic libido is slipping away ... I’ve seen the sewer-like rivers, the suppurating sores of lakes. I’ve ... breathed the toxic air and drunk the dirty water. And I’ve eaten far too much meat from endangered species". But at length, learning to think like a Chinese person and to "dispense with her own cultural taboos about eating", as Levy says, she has recognized in her own life the progression "from ‘eating to fill your belly’ ( chi bao), through ‘eating plenty of rich food’ ( chi hao) to ‘eating skillfully’ ( chi qiao)"." My Life on a Plate" in The Independent (15 March 2008)
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