Fuchsia Dunlop

Chef and food writer Fuchsia Dunlop draws on 30 years of travelling around China and cooking and writing about the food to tell the story of the country’s cuisine.

Dunlop says Chinese food is one of the world’s best known culinary traditions but also one of the least understood. The dominance of a simplified form of Cantonese cooking means few people outside China have experienced the richness and sophistication of the cuisine. Dunlop looks at a series of classic dishes, from Mapo tofu to Dongpo pork, knife-scraped noodles and braised pomelo pith, and reveals key characteristics of Chinese cuisine.

Dunlop was the first Westerner to train as a chef at the Sichuan Higher Institute of Cuisine. Her award-winning books include The Food of Sichuan, Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper, Every Grain of Rice and Land of Fish and Rice, some of which have been published in translation in China.