Invitation to a Banquet: The Story of Chinese Food
Cutter & Squidge is the ultimate destination for modern and quirky afternoon tea in London. Here, they share their winning formula in over 65 recipes for playful, delicious treats.
When sisters Annabel and Emily were looking to make their mark on London’s pastry scene and developing recipes in their tiny kitchen, Annabel would cut the dough and Emily squidged it together—and that is how Cutter & Squidge was born! The sisters set out on a mission to create a baking business using only natural colours and flavourings and pioneering the creation of imaginative new treats. Customers now flock to their flagship store in London to sample their cool creations and indulge in their immersive afternoon tea experiences, with themes such as Hello Kitty, Genie's Cave, and The Potion Room. The recipes shared in this book include everything from fantasy-themed Clam-shell Pearl Biskies, Galaxy Juice and Genie’s Magic Carpet Cookies, to re-imagined classics like Strawberries and Cream Biskies, Smoked Cheese and Black Pepper Scones, Pineapple Chile and Lime Cake Bars, and Maple, Pecan and Carrot Dreamcake, all made achievable for the home cook. Readers can use the themed afternoon tea menus provided or mix and match the recipes to create their own Cutter & Squidge afternoon tea of dreams!
Author
Fuchsia Dunlop was the first Westerner to train as a chef at the Sichuan Higher Institute of Cuisine, and has been traveling around China, researching and cooking Chinese food, for thirty years. Her James Beard Award–winning and best-selling books include The Food of Sichuan, Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper, Every Grain of Rice, and Land of Fish and Rice, several of which are now published in translation in China. Based in London, she speaks, reads, and writes Chinese.
Review
"Fuchsia Dunlop’s masterly new book, Invitation to a Banquet . . . [is] a serious and intrepid work of culinary history . . . a thesaurus of the senses. If you don’t live within 100 miles of a real Chinese restaurant, or an H Mart, this book will not only entertain and instruct you―it might make you go mad with longing."
― Dwight Garner, New York Times Book Review
"Sweeping. . . . Chinese food has long been dismissed by outsiders as salty, unhealthy and made from creepy ingredients. In Invitation to a Banquet, Ms. Dunlop sets out to change those misguided views. The result is a joyously sensual, deeply researched and unabashedly chauvinistic read, a feast for anyone curious about how 1.4 billion people eat."
― Eugenia Bone, Wall Street Journal
"Fuchsia Dunlop’s rapturous Invitation to a Banquet . . . reveals a universe of delights, innovation and versatility so deep and broad it will subdue even readers who believe they know all about the cuisine."
― Howard Chua-Eoan, Bloomberg
"This book is an erudite joy that makes you yearn to taste the delights Dunlop describes. Her sensory writing is so vivid that I felt I was actually there with her in the food markets of China."
― Bee Wilson, Sunday Times (UK)
"Dunlop has written a 400-plus-page book about a cuisine that, by her own estimation, doesn’t much interest westerners. It’s a decision born of the same confidence and originality that has made her such a successful recipe writer (including for the FT). She’s also a brilliantly effective describer of things, conjuring the 'wet crunchiness' of a chicken’s foot and the 'skiddy' texture of duck intestines in this exciting, non-linear history."
― Harriet Fitch Little, Financial Times
"In 30 years of exploring and documenting the country, [Dunlop] has done for China what Elizabeth David did for Mediterranean food and Claudia Roden did for the Middle East. . . . Dunlop’s desire to educate and enlighten finds its fullest expression in Invitation to a Banquet."
― Tim Lewis, Observer
"[Dunlop's] latest is one of her most ambitious works to date. . . . While the book brims with descriptions of delectable feasts, this is more of a historical deep-dive than it is a travelog. Above all, Dunlop wants her readers to approach Chinese food on its own terms and to challenge common misconceptions about it. She explores a time before rice’s dominance, when emperors offered sacrifices to “Lord Millet”; why the roots of Japanese sushi lie in Chinese zha; and why the wet markets unfairly maligned in Western press in 2020 are essential to communities."
― Diana Hubbell, Gastro Obscura
"Dunlop makes a compelling case for the superiority of Chinese cuisine, but in a delighted and expansive rather than chauvinistic way. . . . She makes an equally compelling case that what Westerners think of as ‘Chinese food,’ meaning what most can find at their local takeaway, is neither inauthentic nor wrong. Instead, it is a diasporic offshoot that reflects local tastes but is about as representative of the cuisine’s diversity as a frozen pizza is of Italy’s. Immigration and adventurousness have made the real thing more accessible than ever outside China. Eaters should savour that."
― Economist
"For Dunlop, the banquet in question is not only the sensory aspects of Chinese dishes that she covers in detail, describing the cooking techniques, ingredients, smells, sounds and tastes, but also the conversations that this cuisine can inspire. . . . Dunlop has once again shown her work as an ambassador of Chinese cooking, looking to explore it in a way that showcases the people and dishes that have intrigued her since she moved to China, and in turn encourage readers to explore the cuisine as well."
― Korsha Wilson, Food & Wine
"This is not your traditional cookbook, but rather a series of stories that raises an interesting question―why is Chinese food among the world's favorites, yet one of the least understood? Well, in Dunlop's view, this is partly because there are few Chinese gastronomy critics who can both cook dishes and write prose. So in Invitation To A Banquet, Dunlop, who in the '90s became the first foreigner to study at the Sichuan Higher Institute of Cuisine, tries to take on that role. It is a personal journey filled with history of some of the best-known and occasionally exotic dishes, often toting lip-smacking detail. Even for me, a keen consumer of Chinese cuisine my entire life, it's an invitation hard to resist."
― Vincent Ni, NPR Weekend Edition