Food for Thought: The Food of Sichuan by Fuchsia Dunlop

Food of Sichuan: Fuchsia Dunlop with her fish-fragrant eggplant. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)

We received The Food of Sichuan for Christmas and discovered that, rather than an entirely new book, it is “a new updated version of the classic Land of Plenty”.  If you didn’t get the older book on our recommendation, you should almost certainly purchase the new one instead. It has excellent pictures of almost every dish, and the author says there are 70 new recipes plus 12 reworks of old recipes. (That’s according to the Fuchsia Dunlop page on Facebook, which is well worth following.)

We were heartened by the change to fu qi fei pian/man-and-wife meat slices (p 178 in the old book, 97 in the new one). Flank steak has been replaced by a beef shank/tripe combo (two meats in harmony, echoing the relationship of the partners who came up with the original version in Chengdu) which is a huge upgrade and makes us realize this is the basis of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, a similar dish at one of our favorite local Sichuan places. Hopefully there are similar improvements throughout.

However, we did find tweaks that we’re not sure we agree with and Dunlop does not include all of them in her short list of reworks. Si chuan pao cai/pickled vegetables (p 71 in the old book, 420 in the new one) has lost its star anise and “strong rice wine or vodka” has given way to “strong Chinese baiju grain liquor” which may be difficult to find stateside. There are likely other variations like this and it would be nearly impossible to identify all of them because the organization of the books is completely different and the index for Food of Sichuan is very non-intuitive. (There is no table of contents.)

If you have taken a deep dive into Land of Plenty and fallen in love with the flavor profiles, then you are one of the few who maybe shouldn’t upgrade. Otherwise, get the new book. It’s a better value with more recipes plus the photos, and the revised recipes are almost certain to be delicious. Check it out.