Food to raise the dead

Press, 19 April 1986, Page 20

Food to raise the dead

At the Chinese Table. By T. C. Lai. Oxford University Press, 1985. 52 pp. $14.95. (Reviewed by Lorna Buchanan)

More than 2000 years ago, in the Songs of Chu, a Chinese poet listed the delights of the table in an attempt to lure back to earth the souls of the dead. Among the promises were, “Geese cooked in sour sauce, casseroled duck, fried flesh of the great crane; braised chicken, seethed tortoise, high-seasoned, but not to spoil the taste.”

Outside China especially, Chinese food still continues on its delectable way. In China itself the standard of local cooking is improving again after the bleak, tasteless days of Chairman Mao. In Shanghai and Canton, especially, Western visitors will find some of the best Chinese cooking in the world. T. C. Lai has written not a cook book, but a celebration of Chinese

food, attractively illustrated, and rich in the lore of Chinese kitchens. Here are accounts of the five categories of taste, the sensuous response to food. There are discussions on. visual harmony and respect for texture in food, and on methods of cooking. To take two extremes, stewed, dried abalone takes hours of simmering; stir fried sliced kidneys need a few seconds in a wok over a very hot flame.

Not all the dishes are rare or exotic, although bears’ paws with carp tongues, and gorillas’ lips find a place. But there is a word, too, for humble rice. The advice is that rice should be cooked in an earthenware pot over a carefully regulated fire. Add a small spoonful of freshly heated peanut oil and a few drops of oyster or dark soy sauce. The result makes “the queen of cereals the most desirable dish at table.” In all, a delicious little book.