Vintage cookbook collects recipes from 1970s China, tells you how to judge a good Chinese chef
- ‘Five Treasures of Chinese Cuisine’ assembles recipes from Guangzhou, Fujian, Beijing, Shanghai and Sichuan
- Written by friends Flora Chang and Gaynell Fuchs, it includes recipes for sweet and sour pork and Peking duck
How can you not love a book that has a section called “How to Choose a Cook”? In Five Treasures of Chinese Cuisine (1977), authors Flora Chang, from Fuzhou, Fujian province, and her friend Gaynell Fuchs, from Windsor, Connecticut, are being a little tongue-in-cheek when they write, “While it is doubtful if many of our readers will be in a position to hire a Chinese cook, some suggestions on how to judge a cook may come in handy when appraising one’s own efforts […]
“In China the cook would be given a food allowance and part of the job would be to select the food as well as to prepare and cook it. The employer would take all these tasks into account when making the decision.”
The authors suggest testing the skills of the cook (whether hired or yourself) with three dishes: egg flower soup, steamed pork hash and stir-fried beef.
Chang and Fuchs, who became friends in Hawaii, explain that eating well was taken seriously in China by those who could afford it. “However, the art of preparing food has been left to the unlettered chef. Confucius claimed that ‘gentlemen should get away from the kitchen’.
The kitchen was the domain of the chef. While the emperor or philosopher may have enjoyed creating a recipe or philosophising about subtle blends of ingredients, they would rarely if ever have anything to do with the actual preparation of the food.
