Breakfast recipes from hidden China open ‘new world’ in British-Chinese author’s cookbook
- In Zao Fan: Breakfast of China, Michael Zee’s recipes take home chefs on a journey and put Chinese morning meals on the map
![Hongyou chaoshou – red oil dumplings – is a popular breakfast dish in Sichuan province. The recipe features in Michael Zee’s cookbook Zao Fan: Breakfast of China, among others for little-known breakfast dishes from across China. Photo: Bloomsbury Publishing](https://cdn.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/styles/1020x680/public/d8/images/canvas/2024/08/21/d143cdaa-9f6c-4edd-abff-a93f748d9b94_a3942570.jpg?itok=ZFdI5Xxr&v=1724228016)
It was a moment of serendipity that allowed Michael Zee, the British-Chinese food writer behind the social media sensation SymmetryBreakfast, to find some of the most treasured recipes featured in his new cookbook, Zao Fan: Breakfast of China.
Towards the end of 2022, he had finished recording a recipe for baba – a puffy, delicately fried breakfast bread served daily as part of the staff meals at Miao Lu vineyard in China’s Yunnan province – and was on his way to Chongqing by train.
He decided to stop in a village in Guizhou province to take a photograph of meat pies stuffed with fish mint (a plant with an astringent fish flavour) he had come across a couple of years earlier.
The restaurant that sold them turned out to be closed, so he booked into a hotel for the night and early the next morning returned to get the shot.
![Michael Zee, author of Zao Fan: Breakfast of China. Photo: Michael Zee Michael Zee, author of Zao Fan: Breakfast of China. Photo: Michael Zee](https://img.i-scmp.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=contain,width=1024,format=auto/sites/default/files/d8/images/canvas/2024/08/21/1b4c3b78-40eb-4d8e-be13-be922796af46_26ec9e4c.jpg)
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