Getting Acquainted with China's Regional Cuisines
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[Ethnic Cuisines] Vol. 20 No. 6 June 2010 ww Getting Acquainted with China's Regional Cuisines By Kimberly J. Decker, Contributing Editor You‟ve got to hand it to the Chinese. In addition to inventing fireworks and the compass, they may have introduced Americans to the concept of regional ethnic cuisine, too. After all, who didn‟t grow up visiting their local Great Wall Mandarin or Jade Garden Sichuan/Hunan restaurant when the taste for something “exotic” struck? Yet such foods only hinted at a complexity in Chinese cuisine that mainstream Americans are only beginning to explore. “It always A Regional Rising Star starts out with the generic brand of Chinese cuisine,” says Philip Chiang, co-founder, P.F. Chang‟s China Bistro, Scottsdale, AZ, Immigrants, chefs, consumers: All conspire “but now, especially in the major cities on the coasts, restaurants to make not only Chinese, but Asian food in general, the rising star of the dining are serving many more specific kinds of dishes—like places that firmament. According to Chicago-based serve just northern-style noodles.” Practitioners of Chinese cuisine Mintel‟s “Ethnic Foods—U.S.” report from can raise their art to this next level because not only has Sept. 2009, Asian food shows the fastest immigration formed regional expat communities with a taste for growth among ethnic foods in new product home, but those expats have brought the ingredients and know- activity, landing more than 5,200 new products in Mintel‟s Global New Products how to make recreating those tastes possible. Database between Jan. 2005 and June 2009. The firm predicts the segment will “What I‟ve seen more of these days are people venturing into continue to grow by 27% from 2009 through these communities of immigrants for the great food,” says Robin 2014, ringing up $800 million in FDMx (food, drug and mass merchandiser, excluding Stotter, culinary R&D chef, P.F. Chang‟s. “Americans today have Wal-Mart) sales by the end of that period. an appetite for experiencing and understanding different styles of Chinese cooking. Chefs in America have a great interest in the The primacy of Chinese food in the Asian regionalization and differentiation of the cuisines of China. And you segment is well established. Fully 43% of also have Chinese-American chefs and chefs from China itself respondents to a Mintel survey claimed to have prepared Chinese meals at home in the doing some unbelievable food.” last month, and 54% had visited a Chinese restaurant. But those consumers are ready For manageability‟s sake, it makes sense to view China‟s culinary for Chinese cuisine 2.0. “Many patrons are traditions through the points of the compass: Canton in the south, reporting that they want more authentic Chinese cuisine in Chinese restaurants,” the Shanghai in the East, Beijing in the north, and Sichuan in the west. report says, “yet they believe they are not receiving the „real‟ dishes that would be Southern comfort served in China.” Guangzhou (the province formerly known as Canton) is the region whose cuisine first arrived in America with immigrant laborers. A strain of simplicity runs through their cuisine. As Chiang says: “You have to remember that the first Chinese were farmers and peasants. They weren‟t the high-class aristocrats from Canton, and so they ate more rustic, „poor-people‟ food.” But what was “poor” then would strike today‟s disciple of fresh-seasonal-local as a triumph of enlightened gastronomy. Cantonese cuisine could pass for California cuisine‟s Eastern cousin, a market-driven approach that eschews elaborate prep, seasonings and cooking methods for flavors and presentations that let ingredients speak for themselves. www.foodproductdesign.com Page 1 [Ethnic Cuisines] Vol. 20 No. 6 June 2010 The emphasis on minimal seasoning runs mainly to salt, white pepper, fresh ginger, garlic and green onion, and on uncompromising freshness. The Cantonese traditionally “don‟t use chiles or heavy spices,” Chiang says, nor do they use heavy prep methods. “The style of cooking is steaming, braising, roasting. You won‟t see the fiery woks that they use in the North.” Baby pea shoots tugged from the earth and stir-fried with a touch of garlic and fermented black bean epitomize the Cantonese knack for sublimity through simplicity. Other illustrative dishes include chicken with black mushrooms and snow peas, and steamed catfish with fresh ginger, a splash of sesame oil and garlic chives. Guangzhou is also where rice reigns, in both paddies and kitchens. It‟s present at every meal, either as steamed grains, as a restorative porridge call jook, or in soft, silken-textured noodles made from the flour. As with any other pasta, rice noodles range from fat to skinny, but a particularly Cantonese twist involves rolling wide, flat sheets into tubes, sometimes around fillings of vegetables, shrimp or churro-shaped Chinese fritters called you tiao, or sometimes just by themselves. Cantonese cuisine gives the lie to the notion that simple is plain. Guangzhou, after all, is the home of dim sum, that procession of cart-borne treats savored over relaxed talk and tea-sipping. Among the classics are intricately shaped pork and shrimp dumplings wrapped in translucent rice-paper skins, light-as-air taro root fritters and steamed buns filled with Cantonese barbecued pork, a sticky-sweet treat that‟s a stark contrast to the fluffy white dough enveloping it. As Chiang says, “Dim sum is simple, but boy is it labor-intensive.” That skill has earned Cantonese chefs high regard among Chinese-cuisine cognoscenti. An oft-repeated saying has it that the luckiest of all eat in Guangzhou, for nowhere else will you find such exquisite fare. “Traditionally, in China Cantonese was the food,” Chiang says. “And it still is, basically. If you want to eat well, you eat Cantonese. It‟s changed a lot, but it‟s the most-refined cuisine, partly because it‟s so simple.” Cosmopolitan cuisine On the opposite end of that simplicity spectrum—but just up China‟s eastern coast—is a region whose heart beats in Shanghai. Here, the clean lines of Guangzhou give way to foods notorious for their heady, full-bodied, some even say oily, flavors and textures. In cosmopolitan Shanghai, the richness on the table matches the wealth that fuels this most-populous, vibrant metropolis in China. As a recently established commercial hub incorporated only within the last two centuries, Shanghai has few traditional foods to call its own, functioning instead as a melting pot for regional influences, especially from nearby Jiangsu, Anhui and Zhejiang provinces. “Shanghai was the trade route,” Stotter explains. “It‟s the business center. You have all these different ingredients blowing through and mixing with the foundation cuisine, so you have a kind of fusion.” The Yangtze River waters the rice and blesses fisherman with a reliable source of income. Rivers, tributaries and ponds have earned Shanghai the nickname “Venice of the East” and, along with a productive aquaculture, keep woks filled with seafood of all sorts. “They‟re big on shrimp in Shanghai, and there‟s a lot of freshwater fish and crabs,” Chiang says. Shanghai diners also enjoy braised meats and poultry—braised anything, in fact. “There‟s a lot of braising,” Chiang says. “And they braise with this classic sauce that‟s made of soy sauce, Shao Hsing rice wine, sugar— rock sugar, usually—and vinegar. This is their „red-cooking sauce,‟ and it‟s very Shanghainese.” The deep, almost caramelized, flavors that develop during red-cooking, coupled with the aforementioned oiliness, are www.foodproductdesign.com Page 2 [Ethnic Cuisines] Vol. 20 No. 6 June 2010 signatures of Shanghai‟s style. “And they love vinegar,” adds Chiang, particularly Zhenjiang black rice vinegar, which can match balsamic for its mellow sweetness and depth. Regional Shanghai specialties that have achieved global renown include massive lion‟s head meatballs made of pork that are red-cooked or simmered in broth; Yangchow fried rice, the inspiration for countless confetti- colored implementations served at American Chinese restaurants; Westlake fish, another beneficiary of red- cooking; and xiao long bao, the famous Shanghai soup dumplings stuffed with pork, crab, mushrooms, vegetables and a nugget of gelatin that melts into “soup” as the dumpling steams. “They prepare their vegetables fairly simply in Shanghai, kind of like the Cantonese,” Chiang says. And as a city that works, Shanghai is also a city that eats on its feet, spawning a rich street-food scene. Day or night, you‟re never far from skewers of grilled duck gizzards, mini bowls of silken tofu and pidan, the “century eggs” preserved in a rub of clay, ash, salt, lime and rice hulls until grayish, gelatinous and sufficiently stinky. Courting contradictions The courtly cuisine of Beijing, China‟s capital, is a bundle of contradictions. “It is the seat of government, so there is a lot of fancy—what‟s known as imperial—cuisine,” says Chiang. Picture battalions of chefs tending bathtub-sized woks atop blazing stoves, churning out dozens of courses for high-ranking Mandarins at palace banquets. Perhaps no dish better exemplifies this style of cuisine than Peking duck, its crispy-glazed skin a sweet, scarlet foil to the succulent, savory meat beneath. Tucked into flaky Mandarin pancakes slicked with hoisin and a sprinkling of green onions, it‟s highfalutin‟ finger food. But the story behind this culinary icon reveals the paradox that, despite being China‟s imperial seat, Beijing lies in a geographically tough neighborhood. The northern plain is the kind of place that either wears you out or makes you stronger. Winter winds sweep down the Gobi from Siberia, depositing dust and freezing lake and land alike for half the year.