The Fish and Rice Food of Shanghai, China by Ruth Paget
Fuchsia Dunlop is known more as the popularize of the fiery hot food of Sichuan, China, which she wrote about in her cookbooks Land of Plenty and the Food of Sichuan.
She has written an equally great cookbook entitled Land of Fish and Rice about the mild food of Shanghai and “Jiangnan” region south of the Yangtze River in China.
I have visited two cities in this region when I went to China on a study tour in 1979 – Nanjing and Beijing. I discovered a Chinese dish on a commune outside Shanghai that I really liked, ma’po dofu, made with braised pork and firm bean curd sprinkled with chopped green onions. I thoughe the bean curd, tofu, would never catch on in the US despite my liking this dish.
That is a very positive memory I have of China. I looked through Land of Fish and Rice for recipes that could create a positive experience about Chinese food for a young family and put together a two-course meal that uses ingredients that are easily obtainable in the US.
The recipes I like for a Shanghai lunch or dinner follow:
*Stir-fried Cockles with Chinese Chives
Cockles are small clams. Chives are mild flavored, think onions that can chop with scissors.
In this dish, you stir-fry the chives first in oil until their fragrance rises. Then, you add in shelled and cooked cockle meat till steam rises. When everything is piping hot, add 2 tablespoons stock and bring to a boil before seasoning with salt.
*Shanghai Fried Rice with Salt Pork and Green Bok Choy
You can eat this side dish alone because it has so many good ingredients in it. To make this dish, you stir-fry rehydrated mushrooms, salt pork or pancetta, bok choy (Chinese cabbage), with onions and ginger.
When everything is piping hot, you add sesame oil as a seasoning just before serving. As you can see from these dishes, you do not use garlic. Fuchsia Dunlop notes that garlic is too strongly flavored for most of the dishes in Shanghai and its surrounding area. The cooks of Shanghai prefer ginger and green onions as their seasoning base Dunlop writes.
Fuchsia Dunlop’s cookbook Land of Fish and Rice contains much cultural information that young families can use to make a multicultural meal experience that could include:
-shopping for ingredients at the supermarket and/or the Marina Farmer’s Market (Sundays 10 am to 2 pm), which has some Asian ingredients on sale
-Preparing ingredients ahead of time to cook -practicing using chopsticks
–look up youtube videos for instructions -maybe do a video of dinner dishes and chopstick use for a tiktok or youtube video
Happy Cooking!
By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France and developer of the Novgorod and Bento War Games
