Browse Techniques

Spring bamboo shoots (chun sun, 春笋) are one of the most eagerly anticipated seasonal ingredients in Jiangnan and Zhejiang cooking — appearing briefly in March-April, they signal the end of winter and the beginning of the most vibrant season of the Jiangnan kitchen. In Hangzhou and Zhejiang, whole industries and restaurant menus are organised around the arrival of fresh bamboo shoots. They are eaten in every form: fresh young shoots eaten raw with salt; briefly blanched and dressed with sesame oil; braised in master stock with pork belly; stir-fried with minced pork and douchi; and preserved in multiple ways (dried, fermented, pickled) for year-round use.

Longjing xia ren (龙井虾仁, Dragon Well shrimp) is one of the most elegant dishes of Hangzhou cuisine — peeled freshwater shrimp briefly poached in water steeped with Longjing (Dragon Well) green tea, then tossed in a simple sauce with the tea leaves themselves. The dish is a study in the Jiangnan aesthetic: the freshest possible primary ingredient, a single defining secondary ingredient (tea), minimal intervention, and a flavour that is simultaneously delicate and complex. It is a springtime dish — Longjing tea is a pre-Qingming harvest tea (明前茶, ming qian cha, tea harvested before the Qingming festival in early April), and the freshwater shrimp season coincides with the new tea harvest.

Nanjing yan shui ya (南京盐水鸭, Nanjing salted duck) is one of the most distinctive cold preparations of Jiangsu province — a whole duck cured in a brine of salt, Sichuan peppercorns, and aromatics, then poached in a seasoned stock and served cold, sliced. It is a dish of unusual textural complexity — the duck has a specific quality described as 'fat but not greasy, fresh and fragrant' — the result of a careful combination of dry-curing, brining, and gentle poaching. The best version uses ducks specifically raised along the Qinhuai River in Nanjing, but the technique can be applied to any good-quality duck.

Sheng jian bao (生煎包, literally raw-fried bun) is the pan-fried bun of Shanghai street food — a yeasted dough bun filled with a pork and soup jelly filling, cooked in a flat pan with a small amount of oil and water in the same jian technique as guotie, producing a bun with a crispy, sesame-and-scallion-scattered base, soft steamed sides and top, and — most critically — a burst of hot soup inside. It is related to xiao long bao (both use a soup jelly filling) but uses a yeasted rather than hot-water dough wrapper, and is pan-fried rather than steamed. The experience of biting into a sheng jian bao — with its combination of crunchy base, yielding bun, and the soup burst — is one of Shanghai's great street food pleasures.

Xi hu cu yu (西湖醋鱼, West Lake vinegar fish) is the signature dish of Hangzhou and one of the most famous preparations in Zhejiang cuisine — a fresh grass carp (cao yu, 草鱼) poached in a light broth or water, then topped with a sweet-sour Chinkiang vinegar sauce. The legend behind the dish involves a widow and her fisherman brother-in-law who fell on hard times — the woman seasoned the fish with vinegar and sugar to cover the slightly musty taste of river fish. The dish is deliberately simple: the fish must be of impeccable freshness, and the sauce must balance the sweetness and sourness precisely.