The Yangtze delta, its lakes and paddies

Jiangnan, the land south of the lower Yangtze, takes in the delta plain around Shanghai, the cities of Suzhou, Wuxi, Yangzhou, Zhenjiang and Nanjing, the shores of Lake Tai, and the Zhejiang country around Hangzhou and Shaoxing. It is a country of rivers, canals, lakes and flooded fields, and Fuchsia Dunlop takes its title, Land of Fish and Rice, from the two foods on which its table has long rested. The region's prosperity was built over many centuries on grain, silk and the canal traffic that carried them north, and the cooking that grew up in its towns and wealthy households followed that wealth.

Rice is the foundation. The delta's paddies grow japonica rice, Oryza sativa, a short and slightly sticky grain that is eaten plain, cooked into gruel, ground into flour for dumplings and cakes, and fermented into the sweet and the sour. Out of the grain come Shaoxing huangjiu, a protected name that belongs only to the wine made in that Zhejiang district, and Zhenjiang vinegar, the dark, mellow black vinegar of the Jiangsu city that is likewise registered as a Geographical Indication. Both stand behind the region's seasoning, which leans towards sweetness, softness and the savour of soy sauce, and which shows most plainly in the red-braising known as hongshao. Water supplies the second half of the title. The lakes, canals and ponds give freshwater fish, among them the grass carp Ctenopharyngodon idella, the mandarin fish Siniperca chuatsi and the silver carp, together with shrimps, eels, river snails and the Chinese mitten crab Eriocheir sinensis. Dunlop describes a cooking that is intent on keeping the freshness of such things, steaming a fish, poaching river shrimps or stir-frying them with little more than a splash of wine, so that the quality of the raw material speaks for itself. The lake and canal waters also yield plants for the table: the water shield, lotus Nelumbo nucifera in its root and seed, water chestnuts, the water-bamboo stem known as jiaobai, and the water caltrop. The fields add vegetables in a long succession through the year, among them the green pak choi called qingcai, the broad beans and bamboo shoots of spring, and the salted and pickled greens that carry the household through the winter. Preserved foods are as much a part of the delta as fresh ones: the smoked and cured pork of Zhejiang, with Jinhua ham among the famous examples, the fermented bean curds, the wine lees and the salted fish all belong to a cooking that has learnt to hold a season and spend it later. The cooking of the delta's cities differs by place, and Dunlop is careful to show how. Shanghai's home table is rich with oil and sugar in its braises, Suzhou and Wuxi are known for sweetness, Hangzhou for a lighter, more fragrant touch, and Yangzhou for refined knifework and the dim sum of its teahouses. Over all of it lies the long history of a gentry that valued the table, the world described in the eighteenth century by Yuan Mei in his Suiyuan Shidan, which asks for the right cut, the right heat and the plain flavour of the ingredient.

At table the Jiangnan meal is built on rice with a range of dishes of fish, vegetables and braised meat, and the seasoning leans towards a gentle sweetness balanced with soy sauce, wine and vinegar. In autumn the season belongs to the Chinese mitten crab, eaten steamed, with ginger and black Zhenjiang vinegar, at the table of the lakes that produce it. Chinese dietary tradition counts crab a cooling food, and serves it with ginger and warmed huangjiu for that reason.