Classic Food of China

"Yan-Kit So was a very clever, serious historian, and a sort of mentor to me when I first started writing about food. I actually ate at her house. I was very lucky to be invited to dinner. She was a brilliant cook, applying the same kind of academic rigour to her cooking as to her scholarship. She was a perfectionist. Her first book was a very clear, accessible introduction to Chinese cookery. In fact, before I even went to China I did my first Chinese cooking from that book. All her recipes work – she tested them thoroughly. It’s still in print, and there’s a really nice mix of dishes from different regions. “The Chinese word for pepper, jiao , originally referred to Sichuan pepper. Black pepper is known as hu jiao , meaning barbarian (imported) pepper” Classic Food of China was really her great work, though. I think it was the last book she produced before she died, some years ago. It’s one of the few really well-researched historical and cultural Chinese cookery books. It has the most fantastic introduction, which talks about the history of Chinese food culture and introduces some of the classic texts of Chinese cuisine – an overview of different culinary regions, the way people thought and wrote about food, and celebrated festivals. But it also includes a collection of recipes from all over China, many of them with introductions that explain the history and some of the background."