Famous dishes: a Chinese conversation with pinyin and English

Notes

• Beijing: Peking roast duck. A duck roasted until its skin is thin, dark and crisp, carved at the table and rolled into thin pancakes with sweet bean sauce, scallion and cucumber.
• Tianjin: Jianbing. A crepe of mung bean batter spread on a hot griddle, an egg cracked over it, then sauce, scallion, coriander and a crisp cracker or fried dough stick, folded into a parcel. Breakfast eaten walking.
• Hebei: Donkey meat flatbread. A crisp, flaky flatbread split open and stuffed with chopped, braised donkey meat. In Hebei they say: in heaven there is dragon meat, on earth there is donkey meat.
• Shanxi: Knife-cut noodles. Thick, ridged noodles shaved with a curved blade from a block of dough held over the pot. Eaten with a meat or tomato-and-egg topping, and a splash of Shanxi's dark mature vinegar.
• Inner Mongolia: Salty milk tea. Brick tea boiled with milk and a pinch of salt, drunk through the day with fried millet, dried curd and butter stirred in. Not sweet, and not the milk tea of the city cafes.
• Liaoning: Dumplings. Half-moon dumplings of pork and cabbage, or pork and chives, boiled and dipped in vinegar. In the north the whole family folds them on Lunar New Year's Eve.
• Jilin: Yanbian cold noodles. Chewy buckwheat noodles in an icy, tangy beef broth, topped with beef slices, half an egg, cucumber, pear and chilli. A Korean dish, eaten even in winter.
• Heilongjiang: Guobaorou. Thin slices of pork fried twice until they are glassy and crisp, then tossed in a sweet and sour sauce with shreds of carrot and coriander. Created in Harbin for Russian guests who liked their food sweet.
• Shanghai: Soup dumplings. Small pleated dumplings steamed in bamboo baskets. Jellied stock in the filling melts as they steam, so each one holds a mouthful of hot soup. Bite a small hole, sip the soup, then eat it with vinegar and ginger.
• Jiangsu: Squirrel-shaped mandarin fish. A mandarin fish boned and cut in a deep crosshatch, then fried so the flesh fans out like a squirrel's fur, and glazed with a bright sweet and sour sauce. The sauce is said to squeak as it is poured.
• Zhejiang: Dongpo pork. Squares of pork belly, tied with string, braised slowly in Shaoxing rice wine, soy and sugar until the fat is soft as custard. Named after the Song poet Su Dongpo, who governed Hangzhou.
• Anhui: Fermented mandarin fish. Mandarin fish salted and left to ferment for days, then braised. It smells strong and tastes rich and savoury. The story is that fish carried over the mountains to Huizhou arrived a little high.
• Fujian: Buddha Jumps Over the Wall. A soup of abalone, sea cucumber, scallop, fish maw, mushroom and more, simmered for hours in a sealed jar of rice wine. The name says the smell would make a monk leap the wall to taste it.
• Jiangxi: Nanchang mixed rice noodles. Round rice noodles tossed with soy, chilli, pickles, peanuts and scallion, eaten for breakfast all over Nanchang.
• Shandong: Sweet and sour Yellow River carp. A whole carp scored, fried until its head and tail curl up, and covered in a glossy sweet and sour sauce. A classic of Shandong cooking, often called the oldest of the eight cuisines.
• Henan: Henan braised noodles. Wide noodles stretched by hand and cooked in a rich mutton broth with kelp, tofu skin and coriander.
• Hubei: Hot dry noodles. Springy noodles, boiled, oiled and cooled, then tossed in sesame paste with pickled radish, scallion and chilli oil. Wuhan eats them for breakfast, often walking.
• Hunan: Fish head with chopped chillies. A big fish head split in two and steamed under a thick layer of salted, chopped red chillies. When the fish is eaten, noodles go into the sauce.
• Guangdong: Dim sum. Small dishes with tea, in baskets and plates: siu mai (open-topped pork dumplings with a dot of roe), har gow (translucent shrimp dumplings), char siu buns, rice noodle rolls and many more.
• Guangxi: Luosifen. Rice noodles in a broth of river snails, with sour pickled bamboo shoot, peanuts, fried tofu skin, wood ear and plenty of chilli oil. The fermented bamboo shoot gives it its famous smell.
• Hainan: Wenchang chicken. A free-range chicken poached until just cooked, served cold and sliced with rice cooked in its stock, and dips of ginger and chilli. The dish behind Hainanese chicken rice in Southeast Asia.
• Chongqing: Chongqing hotpot. A pot of broth kept bubbling at the table; each person cooks their own meat, tripe, tofu and greens in it. Chongqing's is made with beef tallow, chillies and Sichuan pepper, and a split pot keeps a mild broth beside the fiery one.
• Sichuan: Mapo tofu. Soft tofu simmered with minced beef in a sauce of fermented chilli bean paste, finished with ground Sichuan pepper. Said to be named after the pockmarked old woman who served it in Chengdu in the 1800s.
• Guizhou: Sour soup fish. Fish cooked in a red sour soup made with fermented tomatoes and wild chillies, a dish of the Miao people.
• Yunnan: Crossing-the-bridge rice noodles. A bowl of very hot chicken broth sealed under a layer of oil, brought with plates of raw sliced meat, quail egg, vegetables and rice noodles. You add them yourself and the broth cooks them.
• Tibet: Butter tea. Brick tea boiled for a long time, then churned with yak butter and salt in a tall wooden churn. Drunk many times a day on the cold, high plateau.
• Shaanxi: Roujiamo. Pork braised for hours with spices, chopped and stuffed into a crisp flatbread. A good bun has a ring on its edge and a pattern like a chrysanthemum at its centre.
• Gansu: Lanzhou beef noodles. Noodles pulled by hand to the thickness you order, in a clear beef broth. Lanzhou judges them by five colours: a clear broth, white radish, red chilli oil, green coriander and garlic shoots, and yellow noodles.
• Qinghai: Qinghai yoghurt. Thick set yoghurt sold in bowls, with a skin on top, eaten with a spoonful of white sugar.
• Ningxia: Hand-held mutton. Mutton on the bone boiled simply with salt, eaten with the hands and dipped in garlic and chilli.
• Xinjiang: Lamb skewers. Chunks of lamb with pieces of fat between them, grilled over charcoal and shaken with cumin, chilli and salt. Sold at night markets across China.

Dishes in the conversation