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Invitation to a Banquet
- Author
- Fuchsia Dunlop
- Narrator
- Fuchsia Dunlop
- Publisher
- Penguin Books Ltd
- Publish Date
- 31 August 2023
- Run Time
- 17 hours 22 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
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What to expect
Brought to you by Penguin.
The epic tale of the world's most sophisticated gastronomic culture, brilliantly told through thirty dishes at a Chinese banquet
Chinese was the first truly global cuisine. When the first Chinese labourers began to sojourn and settle abroad, restaurants appeared in their wake. Yet Chinese has the curious distinction of being both one of the world's best-loved food cultures and one of the least understood. For more than a century, the overwhelming dominance of a simplified form of Cantonese cooking has ensured that few foreigners experienced anything of the richness or sophistication of China's local food traditions - but today that is beginning to change.
In Invitation to a Banquet, award-winning cook and writer Fuchsia Dunlop explores the culture, history and philosophy informing real Chinese cookery. Taking the form of a banquet menu, each chapter embarks on a deep dive into a particular dish that expresses a singular aspect of Chinese gastronomy, before finishing with a recipe. Starting with sweet-and-sour pork, that classic of British Chinese takeaway cooking, Dunlop examines the ways in which Chinese food has been understood and misunderstood in the West since its earliest days as an immigrant cuisine. Then the real feast begins: a journey into Chinese food as it is made, cooked, eaten and considered in China itself, through a diverse series of dishes including Mapo Tofu, Dongbo Pork, Knife-scraped Noodles and Pomelo Pith with Shrimp Eggs.
Weaving together history, mouthwatering descriptions of food and on-the-ground research conducted over the course of twenty-five years, Invitation to a Banquet is a lively tribute to the pleasures and mysteries of Chinese cuisine.
©2023 Fuchsia Dunlop (P)2023 Penguin Audio
Critics Review
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A brilliant, passionate and spellbinding tour de force
Claudia Roden
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Fuchsia Dunlop is one of the world's best writers on Chinese food. This book is ample proof of that. Each chapter becomes a course, written in her usual erudite manner but entertaining and informative at the same time. I found the book irresistible, addicting and mouth-watering. If you love Chinese food then you must accept the invitation to her banquet!
Ken Hom CBE, author of CHINESE COOKERY
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Fuchsia Dunlop is such a gifted writer that the reader cannot help being swept along by her masterful, yet intimate, account of a cuisine that is unmatched not only in its refinement and diversity, but also in the richness of its history of nutritional experimentation and speculation. Invitation to a Banquet is destined to become a classic of travel literature and ethnography as well as food writing
Amitav Ghosh, author of SMOKE AND ASHES
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A brilliantly informative appreciation of Chinese food past and present, told through a series of essential ingredients and dishes… Her sensory writing is so vivid that I felt I was actually there with her in the food markets of China
Sunday Times
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Dunlop's erudite historical account tells the story of China’s multifarious cuisine in lip-smacking detail... A compelling blend of scholarship and passion
Financial Times
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Dunlop travels from the wheat-eating north to the rice-loving south, dishing up meaty nuggets of history, morsels of politics and, above all, lip-smacking descriptions of food… A paean to Chinese gastronomy as refreshing as a bowl of grandma’s bitter melon and pork rib soup
Spectator
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In 30 years of exploring and documenting the country, Fuchsia Dunlop has done for China what Elizabeth David did for Mediterranean food and Claudia Roden did for the Middle East
Observer
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An authoritative new book… Dunlop makes a compelling case for the superiority of Chinese cuisine, but in a delighted and expansive rather than a chauvinistic way
Economist
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A vivid account of China’s food culture, going back to its mythical past to trace the diversity of flavours, textures and techniques that blossomed in the millennia that followed
TLS
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Hailed as one of the finest food writers, Dunlop understands that to simply describe food is stagnant. Her style is wickedly erotic… While one is lulled by her words, it is easy to forget how clever her construction. Like a fugue, her motifs echo and dance us to the end
Irish Times
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Details
- Author
- Fuchsia Dunlop
- Narrator
- Fuchsia Dunlop
- Duration
- 17 hours 22 minutes
- Release Date
- 31 August 2023
- ISBN
- 9781802063424
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Penguin Books Ltd
- Genre
- Cultural studies: food and society, Social and cultural anthropology, National and regional cuisine
Synopsis
Brought to you by Penguin.The epic tale of the world's most sophisticated gastronomic culture, brilliantly told through thirty dishes at a Chinese banquetChinese was the first truly global cuisine. When the first Chinese labourers began to sojourn and settle abroad, restaurants appeared in their wake. Yet Chinese has the curious distinction of being both one of the world's best-loved food cultures and one of the least understood. For more than a century, the overwhelming dominance of a simplified form of Cantonese cooking has ensured that few foreigners experienced anything of the richness or sophistication of China's local food traditions - but today that is beginning to change.In Invitation to a Banquet, award-winning cook and writer Fuchsia Dunlop explores the culture, history and philosophy informing real Chinese cookery. Taking the form of a banquet menu, each chapter embarks on a deep dive into a particular dish that expresses a singular aspect of Chinese gastronomy, before finishing with a recipe. Starting with sweet-and-sour pork, that classic of British Chinese takeaway cooking, Dunlop examines the ways in which Chinese food has been understood and misunderstood in the West since its earliest days as an immigrant cuisine. Then the real feast begins: a journey into Chinese food as it is made, cooked, eaten and considered in China itself, through a diverse series of dishes including Mapo Tofu, Dongbo Pork, Knife-scraped Noodles and Pomelo Pith with Shrimp Eggs.Weaving together history, mouthwatering descriptions of food and on-the-ground research conducted over the course of twenty-five years, Invitation to a Banquet is a lively tribute to the pleasures and mysteries of Chinese cuisine.©2023 Fuchsia Dunlop (P)2023 Penguin Audio
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