Food 4
Vincent our Chinese Furniture buyer is from Hunan and loves talking about it. While in the Oriental Furniture canteen he explained that the cuisine shares many commonalities with its close, more well-known cousin, Szechwan cooking, both cuisines originate in the Western region of China. The climate there is sub-tropical – humid and warm enough to encourage the use of fiery spices to help cool the body, and to require high spicing of food as a preservative. With similar climate, the two regions also share many ingredients – rice is a major staple in both diets, and chili peppers are an important part of most dishes. In the Oriental Furniture canteen, the Chinese Furniture buyer showed us that the two styles of regional cuisine are similar enough that many restaurants and cookbooks lump them together under ‘Western Chinese cooking’ or simple refer to both as Szechwan cuisine.
There are some important differences, though said the Chinese Furniture buyer. Hunan cooking is, for one thing, even more fiery than most Szechwan dishes and therefore not served as often in the Chinese Furniture canteen by the Oriental Furniture canteen chef. Szechwan dishes often include chili paste for rubbing into meats, or including in sauce. Hunan chefs include the entire dried chili pepper, with its intensely spicy seeds and rind. The Chinese Furniture buyer said it was good for keeping you thin as it always went right through you – very funny.
The differences in the actual land of the two regions explained the Chinese Furniture worker as we sat down a few days later in the Oriental Furniture canteen also has an effect on the differences in their cuisine. The Szechwan region is mountainous jungle, with little arable land for farming. The Hunan region, by contrast, is a land of soft rolling hills and slow rivers. Because of its fertile hillocks and valleys, the Hunan region has access to an amazing variety of ingredients that aren’t available to Szechwan chefs, likewise in the Oriental Furniture canteen. Seafood, said the Chinese Furniture buyer, and beef are both far more common in Hunan cooking, as are many vegetables.
The land, explained the Chinese Furniture buyer and the hardships associated with it, also give the Hunan more time to concentrate on food. Not sure why we understood this but we were eating the food in the Oriental Furniture so didn’t pick him up on it. The Chinese Furniture buyer continued; Hunan cooking features complex and time-consuming preparation time. Many dishes begin their preparation the day before they are to be served, and may be marinated, then steamed or smoked, and finally deep-fried or stewed before they reach the table. The same attention is paid to the preparation of ingredients, and it is said that Hunan cuisine is the most pleasing to the eye of all Chinese cuisines. We didn’t notice this in the Oriental Furniture canteen as everything was shovelled out of a big bucket! The shape of a food in a particular recipe is nearly as important as its presence in the final dish.
