by Christopher Impiglia
Before my third visit to China it did not occur to me that Yunnan province, bordering Tibet, Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam, would be my most spectacular culinary find. I come from a long tradition of good eating. I was brought up in an Italian family, my father and mother both being born in Rome but moved to New York City in the ‘70s. We speak Italian at home, watch Italian soccer with vehement passion, visit our relatives in Italy every summer and most importantly, eat real Italian food with an abundance of handmade bread, cheese and pasta. I have travelled across the globe since I was very young, sampling an infinite array of dishes and strange delicacies, and have always sought to find my perfect bite outside the home. I hope my background makes me worthy to shed light on a cuisine that is only beginning to emerge in the West. Italian cuisine has, naturally, always remained closest to my heart, and is the base of my palate by which I compare everything else I have eaten. This is something which one must keep in mind when I exalt certain flavors and textures over others. This is also perhaps what caused me to truly enjoy the food of Yunnan.
Having studied Mandarin for five years (please don’t test me), it was only natural that I would eventually visit China. Luckily, I had the opportunity to do so on four such occasions, offering me a chance to delve into the Chinese culture and of course sample the delicious variety of foods. Along the way I had the opportunity to compare the vast culinary differences between regions, from the spicier Szechuan to the sweeter Shanghainese and the heartier, more savory Shaanxi. Eventually I landed in Yunnan, visiting ancient cities such as Lijiang and Dali as well as the modern capital of Kunming, and there had an unexpected taste-bud revelation.
It all boils down to one incredible dish I ate on a warm summer night in Dali, a town you might expect to see in a Zhang Yimou film. It was a dish that personified my ideals of true perfection in food. After having sampled some flavors and textures in other parts of China which I found difficult to stomach (I find it hard to appreciate the crunch of cartilage or the mush of turtle paw), I sat with revelation at what lay before me on that night: thick-cut roasted yak meat with a dark red hue in small strips laying on similarly shaped strips of rice cakes. It all sat in a light sauce of oil and salt and little else. The yak meat was not dissimilar to Italian prosciutto or Spanish jamón, roasted instead of cured, but similarly salted. Its almost dry texture fit perfectly with the softer, chewier rice cakes below it. The sauce seemed not an addition, but the residue of the roasted meat and water from the steamed cakes. The only thing I would have added is perhaps a drizzle of balsamic vinegar. It was as if an Italian chef had found himself in Yunnan and made a dish with what was available to remind him of home, a visual parallel to insalata caprese. For me, it demonstrated the ability to attain that perfect balance of taste and texture that all dishes seek to attain, doing so with utter simplicity, the tenet of real Italian cuisine and similarly what I learned about the food of Yunnan.
Do not follow Jamie Oliver’s take on Italian food. It is always far too complicated and involving far too many ingredients, and he always finds a way to add chili peppers to the concoction. Too many ingredients involves too many flavors, thus muddling the overall taste. Italian food is simple, where the flavor of each ingredient is of prime importance. Such was also the case in Yunnan. The highland vegetables only growing on mountains which surround Erhai lake were quickly steamed with garlic and ginger, no soy sauce; river vegetables were served in a light soup of chicken broth; fish soup was made with a whole fish, some salt, a little milk and water; meats were roasted whole and did not drip with oil like we see in Chinatown windows; even cheese was abundant. For China, this was especially unique, and something I indulged in even when my fellow Chinese travelers from the east did not; dairy products not a favorite in most parts of China. The more complex dishes I ate included a whole fish lightly fried and covered in a sauce thick with chopped garlic, chili peppers, scallions, ginger and wild corn as well as chopped black wild chicken with garlic, green beans and onions. The street food was also particularly delicious, except for the very large roasted grubs: the ever-present roasted yak meat on skewers or diced in noodle soup, “frog cakes” containing no frogs, instead involving marinated bean sprouts and pork sandwiched between rice bread and flattened rice buns stuffed with sweetened chestnut paste. All dishes arrived with a small plate of sunflower seeds accompanied by a myriad of teas of varying color, sweetness and bitterness, some coming in very bizarre forms reminiscent of floating ocean specimens in bottles of formaldehyde.
With every bite I could taste the flavor of each ingredient contained within a dish, and with it the region as a whole. There was no gap between the consumer and the consumed. For a place of stunning natural beauty, where the vegetables are picked by hand in the foggy peaks of low mountains, where fish swim in clear rivers fed by glacial melt from the Himalayas and the yak and chicken roam the lush green countryside wet with frequent rain, this is all one could ask for. No gimmicks, no elaborate creamy sauces or overwhelming spices, no intricately carved carrots or liquid nitrogen volcanos.
Throughout my stay I became increasingly aware of the culinary connection between the Italian food I grew up with and the cuisine of this far-off province. Both cultures have the ability to create, within the boundaries of the plate, a microcosm of a geographical location with all of its flavor and color while still upholding the tradition where simplicity is perfection. Obviously this was more profound than I had ever expected, and certainly stretched beyond the standard argument of who invented noodles. No, Marco Polo did not bring noodles back to Italy on his return from China. This is simply ridiculous, and one could even argue that Marco Polo never even made it past the Crimea. But enough of that. For although historically Italy and China had only limited contact with each other, my culinary journey to Yunnan truly revealed a greater sense of global interconnectedness stretching beyond natural borders at the base of which lays the primordial human search for delicious food.
Christopher Impiglia is a current graduate student in The New School MFA program for fiction. He completed his
undergraduate degree in Medieval History and Archaeology at the University of St Andrews, in Scotland. He is the author of The Song of the Fall, which takes the form of an epic poem detailing the siege of Constantinople in 1453.
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