Explore Journeys > Geography & Arts > Flower Pepper Duck

FLOWER PEPPER DUCK

Although most foreigners are more familiar with Cantonese food (most Chinese restaurants outside China are Cantonese restaurants) and a few other classics (such as roasted duck, a Beijing speciality), it’s Sichuan food that stands out most eminently within China. Sichuan cuisine can even make a larger worldwide claim: it is among the top crop of the world’s best cuisines, perhaps reaching Thai and French cuisines in terms of verve and distinctiveness. And in terms of ingredients, Sichuan cuisine may be the most varied in the world, a variety that’s the result of geography – Sichuan’s mountains with their stratified habitats and different climes and moist conditions hold the largest concentration of temperate species on earth, and such species variety has obviously made into the pot. It’s for this reason that we bring you a culinary adventure in Sichuan – and we can assure you that forever afterwards you will be singing the praises of Sichuan cuisine (as we do).

Our endeavour is to take you on an exotic food tour that will provide you with a working knowledge of Sichuan cuisine, and will make you a connoisseur of Sichuan’s twenty flavours – Sichuan dishes are famously concocted from the twenty different flavours. In our culinary adventure we set out to create a tango between food and travel: to make the experience of food as part of the travel adventure, and to choose destinations for their brilliance as attractions and doubly for their association or celebration of particular foodstuffs.

It is a tour that engrosses travellers as much as it grabs special-interest groups (such as chefs or cooks, TV documentary crews, culinary associations, and so on). Our extensive knowledge of destinations in Sichuan coupled with intimate knowledge of cuisine lets us create eclectic and winner itineraries in the matching of food and travel. We know places that have particular food specialities, and even excellent restaurants where some of practical illustrative instruction or food-tasting can take part.

Browse the brief descriptions below about some of the places where we can take you, and some examples of dishes or categories of dishes you can taste and/or learn to do. 

Cookery illustrations in restaurants

There are two creative and modern restaurants that we collaborate with – one of them does tasty traditional Sichuan dishes, while the other specialises in more modern interpretations and dishes that fuse Sichuanese and Cantonese fares – and both of them employ great chefs. Depending on your interest, we can organise lessons – or food-creation-and-tasting – at any of these restaurants. The idea would be to introduce you to concept or subgenre dishes that illustrate specific courses in a Sichuanese meal (where meals start with cold dishes, followed by hot dishes, then a soup or more than one, and finally steamed rice with pungent delicacies). (If we create a culinary tour for your group, bear in mind that the level of instruction and depth would be up to the group: you can learn to do the dishes or you can simply watch and taste.)

Here are some examples below of these concept subgenres we are referring to: 

• Cold dishes. These include cold cuts of meat (normally chicken or beef) with chilli oil and sesame seeds, salad with thick noodles made from the flour of peas or sweet potato (called liang fen), salad with shredded vegetables, and cured meats.
• Hot dishes. Memorable dishes include mapo doufu (tofu in minced pork, black bean sauce, chilli oil, and ground Sichuan pepper), tudou sai paiguo (ribs cooked in stew with chopped potatoes and other ingredients), bamboo beef stew (a stew of beef and bamboo), fen zhen rou (beef with split rice steamed in pungent herbs), and many more.
• Soups. Soups are flavoured by berries and roots and seeds and herbs; and favourite soups include a version with dried prawns, seaweed, butter beans, and pork ribs; soup of duck or chicken or freshwater fish; and soup with meat balls and mushrooms. 
• Tofu varieties. Tofu in Sichuan is like cheese in south Europe – it comes in a variety of forms, colours, and textures. At the restaurants we can introduce the wonderful variety of tofu and learn how to do things such as soya milk, fresh tofu, and even fermented tofu.

Speciality restaurants:

We can take you to restaurants or cottage outfits that specialise in a particular foodstuff. There you can learn to do and eat – or simply watch the creation of – speciality dishes or foodstuffs. Some of these foodstuffs are delicacies. Below are some examples:

• Noodle house. Here the cook makes fresh noodles by hand (which is a great photo opportunity), and cooks up cauldrons with various sauces that are ladled over the fresh boiled noodles. 
• Dumpling eatery. Of the two types of dumplings in China, it’s the one that is boiled in water like ravioli that stands out in Sichuan. We can take you to a restaurant that specialises in making these dumplings – you can see how the dough and different fillings are made, and then you can begin to do dumplings at home if you wish.
• Shifang duck. The town of Shifang has bequeathed Sichuan with the excellent ‘Shifang duck.’ The duck is marinated in rice whiskey, then smoked and dried; then later, just before serving, it is boiled in herbs and water and served in chops. We can take you to a household that specialise in making Shifang duck – it has been a family business for generations – and there you can see the preparation, the cooking, and eventually eat some duck yourself.
• Rugged country dishes. Rural restaurants specialise in hearty rustic dishes served in authentic farmhouse settings, and you can choose from two excellent restaurants that we work with – one cooks up fish wildly caught from rivers, and the other specialises in rabbit dishes. Once again, you can either learn how to do the dishes, or you can simply enjoy the ritual and great taste that these restaurants concoct.

Rural heartiness and slow food:

Rural villages in the mountains of Sichuan are an embodiment of rural idyll, consisting of clusters of farmhouses set among wide and fertile valleys where the peasants grow a large variety of organic crops. At any of the villages you can optionally lodge with a host family, and then join the people in the fields to gather the fresh vegetables, and chase one of the free-range chickens or ducks and slaughter the animal, then let the hosts do some tasty and hearty country dishes. It’s an operation as pure as slow food can get – although the farmers have never heard of slow food as a concept. But the motions are a relish: in the morning you would have to decide on the day’s dishes, depending on what is seasonally available, then set out to gather the vegetables and slaughter the animals or fowl (or let the hosts do the work), and then take much of the day preparing and cooking the dishes. Even tofu is freshly milled in traditional stone mills, and the farmers create all kind of chilli sauces and smoked meats and pickled things that are used to add pungent flavour. And, as in other places, the level of immersion is your choice: you can get involved and learn how to do the dishes, or you can simply enjoy the surroundings or go sightseeing nearby and then return to the farmhouse for dinner. Accommodation is usually in the farmhouses with our hosts or, in some cases, you can opt to stay in comfier rooms in nearby hotels. There are three villages that we particularly recommend, which are the following:

• One of our favourites is a an old village nestling in subtropical mountains – it is constituted of handsome wooden houses set among alleys and meandering canals, and surrounded by fields. The houses are decorated with folk prints and old Chinese recitations as well as figures of deities that ward evil and bestow good luck. Groves of bamboo are grown around the farmhouses, planted for the utilitarian value in making furniture and household implements, and also for its totemic value. The people here have their own speciality food – the foodstuff we like best is dou hua, which is light-consistency tofu made in traditional stone mills and served for breakfast. Corn is also widely used, and here we will learn how to make corn bread and corn dumplings.
• A completely different village is farmhouses built in the style of the Ming Dynasty – their exteriors are covered in white stucco, and doors and windows have wooden screens of squarish geometric designs. These large farmhouses are fronted by large courtyards and surrounded by fields where the farmers grow fruit trees and mixed plots of vegetables. The cooking is rustic Sichuan dishes: what we like best are the various dishes that are done by fresh green soya beans.
• In another village you can get immersed into the culture of tea. The village is situated in steep mountains that are often shrouded in atmospheric fog where virtually all the farmers cultivate green tea as a cash-crop. The village is attractive in its own right, the local characters are outlandish, the walks in the forest are exciting, but the primary reason for the visit is the tea. Here you can get acquainted with old art of making tea in China. You can even join – or watch – the locals are they harvest the tea and then dry the leaves or buds in a specially-built furnace.

Practical Info:

All culinary adventures start and finish in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province. These are what we categorise as Special Interest Private Tours: if you like to create your own food tour, you can decide the duration of the travels, the level of immersion in the experience of food (you want to learn to cook the food, or simply learn some background and enjoy excellent food as an expression of cultural geography?), and the activities involved (would you like to focus only on the experience of food, or see or do other things, such as hiking?). You can also determine the type of accommodation, whether lodging in farmhouses or comfier hotel rooms.