Joanna James
Chinese cuisine has been borrowing richness and flavour from centuries of fishing, farming and preserving along with epicurean type royal dining styles. There are eight major cuisines in China, and each brings its own flavour to the table.
Chinese people love crayfish stewed in a spicy, umami broth of ginger, garlic dashes of pepper and loads of other spices. It is a dish they eat from spring into early autumn. You can order crayfish by the potful and devour them using your hands. There is no need to use chopsticks. Cities such as Dongguan have made crayfish a local specialty given the ready access to rivers and the sea. A large number of places to stay Dongguan such as the Citadines Songshan Lake Dongguan provide easy access to street vendors and restaurants selling spicy crayfish.
Called Jiaozi, Chinese dumplings are stuffed with pork, beef, chicken, prawns and fish, along with chopped vegetables. The white piece of delicately shaped dough often wraps a combination of pork and Chinese cabbage or lamb with spring onions and sometimes even leeks and eggs. You can get boiled or steamed dumplings.
You don't necessarily have to go to a Michelin Star restaurant in China to enjoy delicious, authentic Chinese fare. Stroll along a street and pick a few kebabs and dip to try as you go. You can get mutton kebab sprinkled with cumin, roast chicken wings piping hot on a grill, cooked squid or oysters in a spicy sauce. Fill up a plate with different kebabs and take tasty bites as you stroll along the street listening to the cacophony of vendors, buyers and sizzling meat and seafood on iron plates.
Sichuan hotpots evoke pictures of cold winter evenings, when families huddle together over a hotpot, around a table laden with meat, broth condiments and vegetables to wrap the meat. Lamb hotpot is the most common type of hotpot in northern China on a winter evening. The broth is heated in a copper pot with steam rising from the coals. You can add all sorts of meat, fish and vegetables to the pot, dip them in sauce and savour the wholesome textures and tastes. But the best pieces are those thinly sliced mutton.
The origins of this mouth-watering dish are up for a debate that can never be settled. But the best fish that pairs well with Sichuan pickles is grass carp. The acidic taste in the pickles enhances the fish flavour, making it a taste bud teasing experience to eat fish with pickles.
Fried pickled pepper lends this dish the mark of fresh fish, even though there is no fish in it. That is why Chinese people call it – yuxiang meaning the 'smell of good fish.' Long ago, they used to add small fish to the pickling pepper so that the pickles actually smelled of fish. But today this succulent dish is bathed in scallion, ginger, garlic and spices. The result is a combination of sweet, sour and spicy.
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