Invitation to a Banquet

The world''s most sophisticated gastronomic culture brilliantly presented through a banquet of thirty Chinese dishes.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 listeners to join her on an unforgettable journey into Chinese food as it is cooked eaten and considered in its homeland.