Fuchsia Dunlop: belief

Transcript context

…And? Well, he was very diplomatic and said that he thought it was quite a healthy and cheap meal. [laughter] A mixture of meat and vegetables and rice and so on. But definitely light-years away from his own style of cooking. So there are certain dishes that are really popular in America, in particular on the East Coast: General Tso’s chicken, which doesn’t really exist in England at all. Our traditional Chinese dishes were — when I was growing up, we had sweet and sour pork balls, a nugget of pork meat dipped in a very thick batter, deep-fried, and served with a bright, lurid red sauce, and this is what I adored as a child. Then more recently, every Chinese restaurant, really — certainly in London, but I think nationwide — has crispy duck. It’s the easy way to do a Peking duck. Peking duck is very complicated. You need to wind-dry it. You use a special oven. But crispy duck — the duck is marinated and steamed and then deep-fried in pieces, so you can just order a quarter of a duck. But it’s served Peking duck–style with the very thin pancakes and the sweet fermented sauce and scallion and cucumber. It all sounded like a variety of fish and chips. [laughter]…

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