Lies, Damn Lies and Fish Sauce

Although I was born in the northwest of England, my culinary upbringing was strictly Chinese. I didn't really have much choice. In common with many immigrants, my folks fought off homesickness through rustling up the dishes they grew up with. The food they cooked was typical of their hometown of Canton (now known as Guangzhou) as well as Hong Kong, where they lived before coming to the UK.

In particular, Sunday lunch was always a very special meal. My mum would get up at an ungodly hour to put a slow-cooked soup, made with pork bones and mysterious dried herbs, on the boil. My dad was in charge of the roast. Not beef or lamb, but a slab of pork belly or maybe a whole duck roasted in the traditional Cantonese way. Sometimes, there would be a steamed fish, other times, some stir-fried seafood. And then there were vegetables, which my mum would ALWAYS make me eat. I didn't properly appreciate it when I was younger, but I am forever grateful to my parents for instilling in me a deep love of my native cuisine.

So you can imagine my shock and horror when I discovered my folks have never ever used fish sauce when cooking. This revelation got me thinking what other liberties they were taking in the kitchen? After all, according to no less an authority than Gok Wan, fish sauce is a Chinese store cupboard staple. And it must be true because this rather special TV chef would liberally slap shedloads of crappy Squid Brand fish sauce into most of the dishes he rustled up on his comedy cookery show, Gok Cooks Chinese.

I am, of course, taking the piss. Don't get me wrong, I like fish sauce. Without it, Thai and Vietnamese food wouldn't be the same. However, when it comes to Chinese food, fish sauce isn't really that common. In fact, it is traditionally only used and manufactured in a small corner of southeast China by the local Chiu Chow (Teochew) and Hokkien communities. Even then I'm not so sure how common it is as a Chinese condiment, as the shelves of the shops I visited in London's Chinatown were full of fish sauce from Thailand or Vietnam with nary a bottle of Chinese-branded fish sauce to be seen.

So why is Gok Wan perpetuating the lie that fish sauce is essential for Chinese cooking? My theory is that fish sauce is being used as a shortcut to gain that elusive xian (鮮) or umami taste. The alternatives would be either to do it the old fashioned way, or to use the much-maligned MSG. (I don't really want to go into the MSG debate right now, but scientific evidence debunks the mass of hypocritical borderline-racist bullshit written about this subject.)

Just to be clear, I'm not saying fish sauce shouldn't be used in Chinese food outside of those traditional Chiu Chow/Hokkien dishes in which it already features. What I resent is that, along with a load of other misconceptions, fish sauce is portrayed as a traditional Chinese staple on Gok Cooks Chinese. It would have been more honest if Gok said that he was using fish sauce to give the recipe a twist, or as a bit of cheat. But no, he gave birth to a lie. It's one I want to stamp out.

A Bite of China 舌尖上的中国

When I was in China recently, my Beijing colleagues were raving about a TV series called A Bite of China (舌尖上的中国). It turns out that this show is causing quite a stir in China, and when I returned to the UK, I tracked it down on YouTube.



As my Mandarin is distinctly ropey (OK, non existent), I was relieved to find some episodes had been subtitled, and so far I've watched the first two. They've both been brilliant, with production values and cinematography more reminiscent of a David Attenborough documentary as opposed to bog-standard food television. And the fact that there's no swaggering egotistical presenter (yes, I do mean you, Mr Ramsay, sorry, Chef Ramsay) means that this narrated show allows the food to take centre stage.

The episode featured in this post is about staple foods, and there's some stunning footage showing how different kinds of bread, dumplings and noodles are made. But A Bite of China isn't just about the food; it's also about the stories of the people and the traditions behind the food. Guys like Mr Wang, who makes beautiful steamed yellow buns the old fashioned way, then cycles for an hour and a half from his home in rural Shanxi to the nearest city to sell them.

Compared to some of the vacuous crap that passes for food programming on British television, this profound Chinese documentary is in a different class. Even if you don't understand a word of Mandarin and just watch the pictures, you will learn more about Chinese food in a single episode of A Bite of China than an entire series of Gok Cooks Chinese.

A Bite of China deserves a wider audience, and wouldn't it be great if a British TV channel had the imagination to acquire this series and adapt it with an English narration?

Ramsay's Best Restaurant

Love him or loathe him, Gordon Ramsay is never far from our TV screens. His most recent series of The F Word was based around his quest to find Britain's best local restaurant. You may remember Birmingham's Lasan overcoming Cambridgeshire's The Pheasant in the final.

This strand of the show was so successful, Channel 4 are spinning off a whole new series, Ramsay's Best Restaurant to find the best independent restaurant in Britain. That's where we come in, as those peeps on Channel 4 need our nominations.

I'm in two minds whether to nominate my favourites as part of me wants to keep them under the radar. That said, it'd be great to see some of them on TV just as long as old craggy face doesn't give them too much too grief.

Anyway the choice is yours so if you do want to nominate your favourite restaurant, click here. You can nominate as many restaurants as you want but remember it has to be independent so sorry guys, you can't vote for KFC or Burger King.