真香！英国姑娘20年吃遍中国，写了5本中国食谱，中西读者都叫好

British gourmet Fuchsia Dunlop's posts on WeChat or Instagram, serve up a diet of humor. Most of the posts are about her experience with food from around the world. But since the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in London last February, cooking has become a way for her to cope with the "endless lockdown". She says she cooks in a very relaxed way, going to the farmers' market at the weekend to buy seasonal products for everyday cooking — a mixture of Jiangnan, Hunan, Guangdong, and Sichuan dishes.

英国美食家扶霞·邓洛普的微信朋友圈和Ins都非常有趣，大多都在分享自己在世界各地品尝的美食。去年二月新冠疫情在伦敦暴发后，做饭就成了扶霞度过“难挨的封锁”的一种方式。她会在周末去菜市场买一些时令食材，然后每天做饭，这对她来说是一种非常放松的方式。她会做各种菜系，江南菜、湘菜、粤菜、川菜都手到擒来。

"For me, there are so many wonderful things about Chinese food. The thing that I find is greatest about it is that you can eat food that is both really delicious and incredibly healthy," Dunlop says. "The Chinese are experts at cooking vegetables, so it's very easy for me to eat Chinese food almost every day."

扶霞感慨道：“对我来说，中国食物太让人惊叹了！最妙的就是中国食物真正实现了健康和美味的统一。中国人都是烹饪专家！所以我几乎每天都能吃到地道的中国菜。”

Growing up in a household in Oxford, Dunlop dreamed of becoming a cook when she was little. However, her dream did not start to materialize until she came to Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province, as a university student in 1994. That was when she began learning local cooking skills at the Sichuan Higher Institute of Cuisine.

扶霞在牛津长大，从小就梦想成为一名厨师。1994年，她来到成都留学，这一梦想才逐渐开始实现。也是在这个期间，她开始在四川烹饪高等专科学校学习川菜烹饪方法。

Always keeping a notebook on hand wherever she went, she wrote down the recipes of the dishes she tasted. Based on her knowledge of Sichuan cuisine, Dunlop published her first book, Sichuan Cookery, in 2001, which was hailed by the Observer Food Monthly as "one of the top 10 cookbooks of all time".

扶霞到哪儿都会拿着笔记本，每次吃到好吃的菜，都会把菜谱记下来。基于对川菜的了解，2001年，她出版了自己的第一本书《川菜》，夺得英国著名饮食杂志《Observer Food Monthly》大奖，被评为”史上最佳十大烹饪书籍“。

扶霞的川菜笔记

图源：上海译文出版社

Since then, she has published four books about Sichuan cuisine, and one in 2016 about recipes from Jiangnan, called Land of Fish and Rice.

后来，扶霞陆续出版了四本烹饪书，都是关于川菜。而出版于2016年的《鱼米之乡》则主要介绍江南菜。

Now, a Chinese version of Land of Fish and Rice, translated by He Yujia, is available. In the book, Dunlop displays her profound understanding of the food culture that runs deep in the blood of Chinese people.

《鱼米之乡》已经由何雨珈译为中文版。在书中，扶霞分享了她对深淌在中国人血液中的饮食文化的深刻理解。

《鱼米之乡》中文版封面

Having studied Chinese food culture for nearly two decades, she regards the Jiangnan region as the heartland of the nation's gastronomy.

经过对中国饮食文化近二十年的研究，扶霞把江南地区看作中国烹饪的“心脏”。

"Although you have really interesting and delicious food all over China, in this region, particularly, people wrote about it and discussed it. Many of the old classic food books came from this region, for example. So, if you talk about gastronomy, and not just about good food, then Jiangnan is a really important region," she says.

扶霞表示：“尽管全中国都有有趣、美味的食物，但在江南地区，人们会把食物记录下来，不断地讨论。很多历史悠久又经典的食物著书就是这个地方出来的。所以，真正谈到烹饪，而非美食的话，江南地区就很重要了。”

Dunlop spent 10 years researching the book.

扶霞花了十年时间观察探索江南饮食文化，才著成此书。

The decisive moment was in 2008 when she went to Longjing Caotang, or the DragonWell Manor, a restaurant in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, where the whole approach to ingredients, seasoning, cooking and tradition was so moving and impressive that, at that moment, she decided to write a book about the region, she says.

2008年，当扶霞走进浙江杭州的一家餐馆”龙井草堂“之时，她的心中萌生了写一本江南食谱的想法。这家餐馆对食材的讲究、对料汁的精心搭配，独到的烹饪方法和烹饪师傅对传统的坚守都让扶霞心向往之。

By then, she had published three books about Sichuan and Hunan cuisine, both of which are famous for being stimulatingly spicy. But in Hangzhou and Yangzhou, she encountered food that was calm, peaceful, soothing and delicate.

在那之前，她已经出版了三本川菜和湘菜的烹饪书。这两种菜系都以辣闻名，非常刺激味蕾。但在杭州和扬州，扶霞邂逅了另一种美味，清远收敛、柔和淡然、抚慰人心、精巧雅致。

To better understand the context of the food in Jiangnan, Dunlop started reading Chinese classics like The Dream of the Red Chamber which contained detailed descriptions of dishes eaten by literati and aristocratic families in ancient China.

为了更好理解江南食物的文化内涵，扶霞开始阅读中国典籍，比如《红楼梦》，里面细致刻画了古代中国文人学士、达官贵族所吃的菜肴，琳琅满目。

"Jiangnan food is connected with Chinese literature. Lots of dishes have quite literary names or stories behind them," she says.

扶霞说：“江南食物和中国文学密不可分。很多菜肴的名字都很有文化韵味，背后也有其起源故事。”

As a result, when introducing food in the book, besides tracing the history of the dishes, she also tells stories like how Su Dongpo, a great poet during the Song Dynasty (960-1279), invented Dongpo Pork in the 11th century, or quotes his poem that praises delicious sea bass.

因此，在扶霞的书中，除江南菜小史，其背后的美食掌故读者亦能窥见几许。书中有中国宋代诗人苏东坡发明东坡肉的故事，也有苏东坡赞誉鲈鱼美的传世诗句。

After collecting all the recipes, Dunlop tested them at her home in London to make sure they worked for people in the West.

收集完所有菜谱后，扶霞会在伦敦的家中做“试验”，以确保菜品符合西方人的口味。

"What I want to do is to try to describe the recipes accurately. If I make a change, I explain it," she says.

“我想用一种精确的方式诠释这些菜谱。如果我要对菜品做出一些调整，我会有所解释。”

In total, there are more than 160 recipes that cover the typical food and dishes that people in Jiangnan eat, either at a banquet or at home every day.

书中共囊括了江南人日常或宴会时经常吃的160多道菜品。

However, because Jiangnan is a large region, it was not easy for her to decide which dishes should be presented in the limited number of pages.

但是，对扶霞来说，这是丰饶多样的江南，在有限的篇章里选出可以代表它的菜品不是件容易事儿。

"In the end, it's just a matter of personal choice and judgment," she says, adding that she wanted to include as many as possible of the really essential famous dishes like Dongpo Pork, Westlake vinegar fish, and lion-head meatballs, "the really classic dishes".

扶霞说：“其实，就是个人的选择和判断。我想要尽可能囊括那些真正值得留下来的著名菜肴，比如说东坡肉、西湖醋鱼、狮子头等等，那些真正经典的菜品。”

"But I also like to include dishes that I've enjoyed, or that have a particular meaning for me, like maybe a simple dish that someone cooked for me that I thought was lovely and that I want to cook at home.

“我还想把那些我喜欢吃的或对我有特别意义的菜放到书里。可能就是别人特地为我做的一道简简单单的鱼，但我认为非常好吃，或者说我也想在家自己做。”

"It's like trying to paint a picture of the region and show its many different sides, from the banquet to the street food," she says.

“写这本书就像是给江南临摹一幅画，多方位地展示它，既集结珍馐佳肴，也收录街头小吃。”

编辑：陈月华 周婵 商桢

记者：杨阳

录音：Stephanie Stone

实习生：申乐 舒好 李蕤 陈励澄