CityLife

MIF FEAST: Fuchsia Dunlop brings a taste of Sichuan to Albert Square

Fuchsia Dunlop - Chines food expert

THE ovarian fat of the Chinese forest frog and dried orang-utan lips are definitely NOT on the menu for the Manchester International Festival’s closing event – Feast.
 

That’s a relief. Instead the 2,000 folk who have signed up for a free five-courser in the Festival Pavilion on Sunday will feast on chilled Andalucian almond soup, chicken curry, jerk chicken, summer pudding and Zhong shui jiao (delicate crescent-shaped pork dumplings from China’s Sichuan region).
 

Each course has been devised by a celebrated cookery expert and prepared in appropriate Manchester restaurant kitchens.
I only mentioned the above barely obtainable Chinese delicacies because one of Feast’s famous five, Fuchsia Dunlop,writes about them in her amazing eating-in-China memoir, Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper (Ebury, £16.99).
 

Street snack

She never managed to eat those particular delicacies, but managed most other things placed before her as she trained as a chef in the Sichuan region and travelled to other regions.
 

Sichuan’s capital Chengdu provided her with the Zhong shui jiao. It is a street snack devised by a legendary vendor called Zhong Xiesen, who inspirationally bathed his dumplings in spiced, sweetened soy sauce and chilli oil, finished off with garlic paste.
 

Looking at the rest of the savoury Feast dishes – from Indian cookbook guru Camellia Panjabi, Reggae, Reggae Sauce’s Levi Roots and Middle Eastern cookery doyenne Claudia Roden – the Pavilion punters won’t be fun to kiss after!
 

Profiles of these four plus our own Paul Heathcote (summer pudding) can be found at www.citylife.co.uk/manchester_international_festival/.

Sichuanese cooking is available at Red Chilli in Manchester, but this fiery contribution to what Fuchsia calls ‘the world’s greatest cuisine’ is overshadowed up here and else by Cantonese and Beijing fare.
 

Lavish ingredients

“Chinese restaurants give people what they have come to expect. They rarely reflect the wonderful range of home cooking,” Fucshia tells me.

“In China itself restaurant cooking is about being hospitable, the blow-out to impress others with lavish ingredients. In fact, Chinese food is among the healthiest, most sustainable on the planet, rich in veg and grain.”
 

Fuchsia, who is fluent in Mandarin, works for the BBC World Service and acts as adviser to London’s Bar Shiu Sichuanese restaurants. She was recruited for MIF by food and culture critic Paul Levy, who is officially credited with inventing the term ‘foodie’.
 

Are you a foodie, Fuchsia? She demurs. “It suggests somebody a bit pretentious. I’m just seriously interested in food, one of life’s great pleasures.

''But I am also aware of our ecological responsibilities. Shark’s fin, which the Chinese esteem so highly, you should not eat. Just as you shouldn’t eat bluefin tuna. We should all eat less meat and fish.”
 

Cultural crossovers

Fuchsia was scheduled to visit Sichuan when the terrible earthquake devastated it and she had to cancel. She has been back. Cheng Du was spared the worst, but whole communities she knew nearby were decimated.

A tragic time, but disaster did make the world more aware of a distinctive culture overshadowed by big brother China
 

Our own MIF is about creating cultural crossovers. Feast should be an amazing culinary journey

Festival Pavilion, Albert Square. Sunday, July 19, noon, 2pm, 4pm and 6pm sittings. Free, all tickets allocated, limited number available before each sitting. Ring 0844 8154960, mif.co.uk. For profiles of all the chefs and dishes visit link right