I invited a group of ten friends to have a big Chinese Sichuan Sunday lunch for my birthday this past summer, as a result one of my friends who had heard of this book got it as a gift for the occasion. I absolutely loved it; one of my favourite reads in a while. This is just to preface that I'm completely biased: if the title sounds even remotely interesting, you can stop now and just go buy it. Suffice to say I highly recommend reading it
Invitation to a Banquet by Fuchsia Dunlop is an expertly and lovingly cooked non-fiction book blending the author's personal experiences of eating and cooking Chinese food, with a sweeping cultural and historical account of food in China.
I've been enchanted with the structure of the book, organised in four sections titled hearth, farm, kitchen, and table. Every chapter is like zooming in a kaleidoscope called "Chinese food," representing an essential ingredient or component to explore for the reader. Every chapter is also like a snowflake, uniquely different yet broadly following the same structure: a personal story, a time and place, a dish to illustrate the aspect being examined (may it be about rice, roasting with fire, or a mind-boggling extensive vocabulary of cooking techniques), along with historical and cultural references.
Fuchsia Dunlop's writing is as delightful as it is mouth-watering. I've had the chance of traveling in mainland China twice (and Hong Kong a couple more times) but it was already a long time ago now. Reading, I was fondly reminded of some of my best food and travel memories. I want to learn to cook more of these dishes now, and I'd love to go back, see more of China, and eat at the Dragon Well Manor restaurant one day.
The academic and professional cooking references and stories are compelling. The chapter titled "The Power of Steam" opens with the author mentioning "the Banpo village near Xi'an, one of China's most important Neolithic archeological sites." A little further she adds: "More than six thousand years ago, at the very dawn of the Chinese civilisation, people here were already using steamers to cook their food." A page later, she references a paragraph from a writer who travelled to Beijing in 1793 and who didn't seem too happy with steamed bread. I added several other books from the same author, and from the bibliography, to my reading list.
I believe, and it is pretty much stated, that the intention is to give readers an appreciation of the richness and sophistication of Chinese food culture in all its possible forms over time. As a result, I went out to order and eat several of the dishes I was reading about, classics I love like Sichuan Mapo Tofu or Yuxiang "fish fragrant" aubergines. I prepared a quick and simple broth for lunch before writing this. I stopped at the Asian grocery shop on the way back from the gym, to add ready-made pork dumplings, pak choi (bok choy) that I quickly cut and blanched, some carrots slices I had in the fridge, topped it all with chopped scallion and a dash of sesame oil. Bon appétit!
