Land of Plenty Cookbook Review by Ruth Paget
Fuchsia Dunlop’s cookbook Land of Plenty about the food of Sichuan, a southern interior province of China, introduced this region’s spicy and healthy food to diners more familiar with the food of Hong Kong and its surrounding Guangdong province in the early 2000s.
Notably, Dunlop introduces readers to the dry-roasting cooking technique of using very little oil in a wok to almost sear foods and concentrate their flavor that is used in Sichuan, especially to cook green beans and pork.
Dunlop also introduces readers to the seasonings often used in Sichuanese dishes – garlic, ginger, scallions, red Sichuan peppercorns, and sometimes sesame oil to finish a dish. Dunlop describes Sichuan red peppercorns as numbing, but notes the chile peppers are judiciously used for an overall pleasing effect by Sichuanese cooks. I certainly like these flavors and will sometimes use all of them when I stir-fry cabbage.
What I really like in Dunlop’s cookbook are the easy-to-follow, step-by-step recipes. If you cook enough of these recipes, you will eventually learn to set up a Chinese mise en place, so you can finish cooking most dishes in 15 minutes or less.
The energy savings from using a wok in cooking times should encourage many American cooks to adopt a Wok Wednesday Chinese dish to try cooking at home.
Home cooks might adopt a weekly dinner schedule like the following to include a wok dish:
Monday – pasta dinner
Tuesday – tacos
Wednesday – wok dinner
Thursday – pizza or delivery
Friday – fish
Young couples or young families might want to try the following two recipes for health, flavor, and money savings (use sweet red bell peppers if you think the Sichuan peppers might be too hot):
*Chicken with Chiles
The chicken in this dish is marinated in rice wine, light and dark soy sauce, and salt. The marinated chicken is then stir-fried and set aside. Next, dried red chile peppers are stir-fried with garlic and Sichuan peppers.
The chicken goes back in the pot with chopped scallions. The dish is finished with sesame oil and served.
*Dry-fried Green Beans
The cooking technique here uses very little oil so the green beans’ flavor concentrates and the skin almost blisters. The green beans are cooked and set aside.
Then, oil is added to the wok along with ginger, garlic, and scallions. The green beans are added back in and stirred till coasted with the seasonings and blazing hot.
If you add rice, these two dishes make a nice meal that is a fun multicultural activity for the family.
Wok Wednesday can feature dishes from many countries around Asia, but Fuchsia Dunlop’s Food of Plenty seems to have the easiest directions to follow so you can make a delicious dish on your first try.
Happy Cooking!
By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France and developer of the Novgorod and Bento War Games
