Fuchsia Dunlop Author Talk • Five Tastes: Delicious Recipes for Chinese Flavors

This event is part of Litquake, San Francisco's Literary Festival, taking place October 8–24 throughout the Bay Area. For the full Litquake schedule, visit litquake.org.

Fuchsia Dunlop was the first Westerner to train as a chef at the Sichuan Higher Institute of Cuisine, and has been travelling around China, researching and cooking Chinese food, for some 30 years. Her award-winning and bestselling books include The Food of Sichuan, Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper, Every Grain of Rice and Land of Fish and Rice, several of which are now published in translation in China. Based in London, she speaks, reads and writes Chinese.

Five Tastes: Delicious Recipes for Chinese Flavors- Over thousands of years, Chinese chefs have mastered how to combine the five tastes―sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and pungent―harmoniously in a dish. In her latest cookbook, Fuchsia Dunlop shares with home cooks 120 easy recipes inspired by culinary traditions across China. She includes both old-fashioned favorites and invented dishes that combine Chinese flavors with produce found in any Western market or supermarket.

Try the delectable green beans with “strange-flavor” sauce or a cool fish-fragrant eggplant salad; impress your guests with a ravishing braised tofu or a steamed fish that sings with citrus notes. Cook your way through a host of scintillating vegetable recipes, rustle up a quick bowlful of spicy peanut butter noodles, or hit the sweet spot with Shanghainese seaweed cookies. Centered on vegetables but including some meat and fish dishes, The Five Tastes is a cookbook to be read and savored.

Author photo by Kristin Perers.