15 ∆ cook&brew.pdf 1 28/2/18 2:47 PM CONTRIBUTORS VIVIAN PEI Vivian Pei is a cook, writer, stylist and instructor who authored the cookbook Awakening the Appetite. She has DESMOND LIM also worked with the Desmond Lim has been inimitable Anne Willan taking pictures of food MARK ANDREWS on the James Beard for the past four years, an Although Mark Andrews MARISSE REYES award-winning book occupation that has no considers himself a travel Based in Amsterdam and The Country Cooking doubt fuelled his already- writer, food and drink Ubud, Marisse explores of France. She has run large appetite. He shoots always feature heavily in the complexity of the her own restaurant and with every aspect of the his pieces. He believes that world through the pen. a catering business, lighting in mind, as well as part of getting to know Her food, travel, and apprenticed in Michelin- an eye for detail, so minimal a place is about sharing lifestyle writing has starred establishments, amounts of tweaking need the local way of life, and brought her to the and now sharpens her to be done on image- one of the easiest ways to far-flung mountains of pencils as well as her editing software. His keen do that is by breaking the China to explore ancient knives. She speaks five eye also comes in useful proverbial bread. Despite rice-growing practices, languages, has lived in when he’s spending his free being a fussy eater as to the Philippines’ most five countries, and has time on leatherworking—a a child, he now enjoys secluded and luxurious eaten her way through skill in which he is entirely nothing more than eating private islands, and countless others. self-taught. local specialities—the face-to-face with some Her interest in adult Keep up with his appetite on stranger the better. And of the most respected beverages led to a hard Instagram at @limminglong. there is no greater way to names in the culinary won CSW and she has spice up mild-mannered world. Whatever she’s now branched out into Britishness than with foods reporting on, Marisse the cocktail world… all of such as mouth-tingling always gets to the heart which go nicely with her Sichuan cuisine. of the matter. When she other love—travel! isn’t typing away, you Follow her food adventures on can find her travelling, Instagram at @viviliciousxo cooking up delicious organic meals, perusing local markets, or getting her zen on in nature. www.marissereyes.com 14 14 • MA18 - contributors.indd 14 8/3/18 3:02 PM Zhen San Guan’s Chongqing style hotpot is divided into nine blocks, each boasting a different temperature for cooking different ingredients. ON THE GLOBAL TABLE Sichuan’s Spice Of Life Exploring the nuances of Sichuan cuisine, from Upper River approaches in Chengdu to Lower River style of food enjoyed in Chongqing and beyond. TEXT MARK ANDREWS PHOTOS, MARK ANDREWS, QIUJU XIAOCHAO , SONG YUN ZE AND ZHEN SAU GUAN n our lives, certain cities and places resonate. named. It’s a city that values its work-life balance, For me, Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province with its inhabitants taking their food very seriously. in China, is one of them. In the 90s, staying at Regarded as one of the eight great cuisines of Ithe then-tourist central, Traffic Hotel, an American China, Sichuan cuisine is a product of its topography, introduced me to the delights of huajiao, Sichuan which varies from the fertile Sichuan basin to the wild peppercorns, on my nineteenth birthday at a shack of a mountainous areas that once made up parts of the restaurant near the bridge crossing the Jinjiang River. Kham and Amdo Tibetan kingdoms. The geography Returning a decade later, Chengdu had changed. of the place helps divide the food into the three The restaurant was gone, replaced by the imposing basic branches, with the Min River that vertically cuts façade of an Agricultural Bank of China much in the through the province being the main dividing line. same way that narrow winding streets of wooden Upper River style refers to food eaten in the west buildings had been ripped down to create a city being of the province in places like Chengdu and Meishan. pulled into the 21st Century. Still lingering on my lips, Lower River style refers to the food eaten to the east, though, was the taste of huajiao, but it would be some largely Chongqing, which until 1997 was part of the years yet before I learnt I wasn’t meant to eat them. province. Rounding out the triumvirate, Small River Sichuan peppercorns provide the ma (numbing) refers to the cuisine of places on the inner rivers in the part of mala—a taste that for many epitomises Sichuan south of Sichuan such as Zigong, Neijiang, and Yibin. cuisine. “Sichuan food is all about flavour. It’s known “The Lower River and Small River styles are as spicy and numbing, which is kind of true. But it’s a heavier and spicier, but Upper River, which represents lot more than that. There are thousands of different the very orthodox part of Sichuan Cuisine, is not combinations, made up by the flavours of salty, just heavy and spicy. There are 24 types of flavour in sweet, sour, spicy, numbing and bitter. I’d say the key Upper River style, and only seven among which are characteristic and taste of real Sichuan food is about heavy or spicy,” explains well-known Chengdu food the diversity of the flavour,” says Hu Ruixi, a Chengdu blogger Jimi He, who writes under the name 挑食的 native and founder of Lost Plate (www.lostplate.com) Jim (weibo.com/jimeats). Basic dish flavours include food tours, which takes tourists to small neighbourhood fish flavour (yu xiang wei, 鱼香味) mouth-watering Jeondeung restaurants that only the locals know about. (kou shui wei, 口水味 , strange flavour (guai wei, 怪味 , Temple in ) ) Incheon, Korea Chengdu received the accolade of UNESCO City garlic paste flavour (suan ni wei, 蒜泥味) along with, of Gastronomy in 2010, the first Asian city to be so of course, mala. 108 109 108-116 • MA18 - on the global table sichuan.indd 108 7/3/18 8:45 PM 108-116 • MA18 - on the global table sichuan.indd 109 7/3/18 8:45 PM Gu Fa Zheng Yan Tuan (古法蒸岩团), an exquisite Upper River TRUE CHENGDU FOOD Other hotel restaurants are pushing the style fish at Upper River style Sichuan cuisine was traditionally boundaries. Shangri-La Hotel Chengdu’s Shang Palace Song Yuan Ze centered round Chengdu; today, it is largely the preserve is helmed by executive chef Li Tok Fan. Although not a of high-end restaurants. “It’s known for being fresh and Sichuan native, he has lived in Chengdu for 10 years and mellow with a wide range of tastes. Some dishes are devoted himself to preparing Sichuan cuisine in new spicy but they are mild with a balance that doesn’t give and innovative ways. Dishes include pan-fried cod with excessive stimulation,” says Zhang Yuanfu, executive chef green Sichuan pepper sauce, and braised pork belly and and co-founder of Song Yun Ze, an Upper River style eggs in sweet and sour sauce. While these dishes are not restaurant. Zhang learnt to cook at the legendary Rong traditional, they hold true to the style with their balance. Le Yuan restaurant, an instituition founded in 1861 and “The key characteristics of Sichuan food are balance, which at one point had a New York branch. variety, and diversity,” says He. Famed dishes are often very complex and hardly known outside Chengdu. Gufazheng yantuan (古法蒸岩 DIVIDED BY HOTPOT 团) uses a type of fish native to the Yangtze River that When considering Sichuan food, it is important to is marinated and covered in multiple layers of pork oil remember that chilli peppers are not native to the area, before being steamed and seasoned, producing a dish and only first appeared in China around the end of the that appears to have been mummified. Another dish 16th Century. From historical records, they first came to largely unknown outside Sichuan is diced pork in a pot China via Guangdong or Guangxi, and it took another (坛子肉, tan zi rou) made with soup from five-year-old century and a half for a written record of chillies to Jiange (a county in Sichuan) ham, chicken, bamboo appear in Sichuan Province. shoots and mushrooms. Hind leg knuckle from black pigs, “There are three stories of origin when it comes to dried scallops, pigeon eggs and lion head meatballs are cooking ingredients in a chilli-laced soup,” says He. The then added and cooked in the soup for five hours. most told of these is that poor Chongqing dock workers Better known is shui zhu niu rou pian (水煮牛肉片): and boatmen around the early Qing Dynasty era invented beef slices cooked in a stock flavoured with chilli bean hotpot as a way of cooking. According to others, Zigong sauce, ginger and garlic before boiling red oil with dried is the true home as the city is rich in salt, Sichuan pepper chillies and Sichuan peppercorns are poured over. and beef, all things Chongqing wasn’t renowned for. The Restaurants in many of Chengdu’s five-star third version puts Luzhou as the source from where it hotels serve food of this style. At Li Xuan in The Ritz- spread to Chongqing initially as street hawker food—a Carlton, Chengdu, one of the best dishes is the Sichuan story He notes is more verifiable from records.