Invitation to a Banquet: The Story of Chinese Food - Hardcover

by Fuchsia Dunlop (Author)

Chinese was the earliest truly global cuisine. When the first Chinese laborers began to settle abroad, restaurants appeared in their wake. Yet Chinese has the curious distinction of being both one of the world's best-loved culinary traditions and one of the least understood. For more than a century, the overwhelming dominance of a simplified form of Cantonese cooking ensured that few foreigners experienced anything of its richness and sophistication--but today that is beginning to change.

In Invitation to a Banquet, award-winning cook and writer Fuchsia Dunlop explores the history, philosophy, and techniques of Chinese culinary culture. In each chapter, she examines a classic dish, from mapo tofu to Dongpo pork, knife-scraped noodles to braised pomelo pith, to reveal a distinctive aspect of Chinese gastronomy, whether it's the importance of the soybean, the lure of exotic ingredients, or the history of Buddhist vegetarian cuisine. Meeting food producers, chefs, gourmets, and home cooks as she tastes her way across the country, Fuchsia invites readers to join her on an unforgettable journey into Chinese food as it is cooked, eaten, and considered in its homeland.

Weaving together history, mouthwatering descriptions of food, and on-the-ground research conducted over the course of three decades, Invitation to a Banquet is a lively, landmark tribute to the pleasures and mysteries of Chinese cuisine.

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Praise for Fuchsia Dunlop

"[Fuchsia Dunlop] has done more to explain real Chinese cooking to non-Chinese cooks than anyone."
-- New York Times

"One of the world's experts in Chinese cooking."
-- Boston Globe

"When Fuchsia Dunlop writes about Chinese food, you pay attention."
-- Eater

"A world authority on Chinese cooking...Her approach is a happy mixture of scholarly and gluttonous."
-- Observer Food Monthly

"Fuchsia understands Chinese cuisine better than any other foreigner I know."
-- Chen Xiaoqing, director of the hit TV shows Flavorful Origins, A Bite of China, and Once Upon a Bite

"One of our very finest chroniclers of food cultures, I want to read everything Fuchsia Dunlop writes."
-- Caroline Eden, author of Red Sands