A writer of good taste

A writer of good taste

British gourmet Fuchsia Dunlop's posts on social media networks, WeChat or Instagram, are fun to read. You could say they serve up a diet of humor. Most of the posts are about her experience with food from around the world. But since the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in London last February, she has posted more about her cooking, especially Chinese dishes she made in her kitchen.

Growing up in a household in Oxford always filled with exotic flavors from Japan, Turkey, Spain, India and Austria, Dunlop dreamed of becoming a cook when she was little. However, her dream did not start to materialize until she came to Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province, as a university student in 1994. That was when she began learning local cooking skills at the Sichuan Higher Institute of Cuisine, while looking for delicious food in the city and nearby areas.

Since then, she has published four books about Sichuan cuisine. She has also written one on recipes from Hunan province, and Land of Fish and Rice in 2016 about recipes from Jiangnan, which includes Shanghai, and provinces of Zhejiang, Jiangsu and southern Anhui - the region that is " blessed with a warm and nurturing climate, fertile land, and lakes, rivers and coastal waters that teem with fish and seafood" .

Having studied Chinese food culture for nearly two decades, she regards the Jiangnan region as the heartland of the nation's gastronomy.

" Although you have really interesting and delicious food all over China, in this region, particularly, people wrote about it and discussed it. Many of the old classic food books came from this region. So if you talk about gastronomy, and not just about good food, then Jiangnan is a really important region, " she says.