Fuchsia Dunlop’s book on Jiangnan, the area south of the Yangtze that includes Shanghai, just came out. The book is carefully researched, and a great read. There aren’t many English language books devoted to this region’s cooking, so Dunlop’s treatment is an important work in terms of background and recipes.
What have you tried? Some recipes are online.
Here are some stray observations before I start cooking:
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This is a must-buy for fans of Shanghainese food. Other than the eighty pages Carolyn Phillips book All Under Heaven devotes to the Yangtze River and its surrounds, the only two English language Shanghai cookbooks I know of are of Taiwanese origin— a crazy expensive out-of-print one by Wei Chuan, and Shanghainese Homestyle Cooking by Angela Cheng, daughter of Pei-Me Fu. I own the latter, and there’s a huge overlap between the dishes covered in Cheng and Dunlop’s books. Of the two, Dunlop’s book is a better learning tool— there’s more background information and the recipes have more verbose discussions of technique. The audiences are different too— Dunlop doesn’t pay much attention to offal and there’s nothing with fish heads, sea cucumber, eel, or cuttlefish. I’m guessing this is more a function of audience interest than ingredient availability.
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Building upon Jiangnan’s Buddhist vegetarian traditions, Land of Fish and Rice has a ton of vegan recipes, and many recipes suggest alternatives to make them vegan. She even has a recipe for vegetarian Wuxi Eel. Dunlop’s book Every Grain of Rice is also great for vegetarians (for my taste, I find her Revolutionary Chinese Cooking (Hunan) to be more vegetarian accessible than Land of Plenty (Sichuan)).
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There are some omissions from the book that Dunlop attributes to ingredient availability, and she treats these with explanation. For example, because packaged bamboo shoots are inferior, she only uses bamboo in dishes where it’s not the central ingredient. I can respect that. In other places, she’s found good alternatives and acknowledges the ingredient it’s based on. Kale is used to substitute shepherd’s purse, and fresh tong ho (garland chrysanthemum) is used in a salad similar to what SFBA restaurants make with frozen malantou (Indian aster). In one recipe she uses baby spinach instead of chicken feather vegetable. Incidentally, she points out that “chicken feather vegetable” are sprouts of Shanghai bok choy. That explains why some SFBA restaurants call it “baby bok choy” (I’ve never seen it for sale to the public).
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Seasonality aside, I think everything in the book can be made with ingredients I’ve seen in the Bay Area. On the other hand, Sichuan ingredients have been trickier to find.
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Hangzhou West Lake Fish uses pink Zhejiang vinegar rather than black Zhenjiang vinegar. Hangzhou is in Zhejiang province, so perhaps that makes sense. Any insights? My other books use black vinegar.
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The back of the book lists the Chinese names for ingredients. Armed with a cell phone photo of the item’s Chinese characters, this will be a lifesaver for communicating with employees at Chinese markets.
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Holy crap, she has a recipe for pan fried soup filled buns, Shengjian Mantou, adapted for a cast-iron skillet and the photo looks really good. These are the variety where the pleat-side gets fried.