66 LISTENER NOVEMBER 5 2016
C
ornish scamp Rick Stein
has been everywhere,
from Land’s End and
Vietnam to Mumbai
and La Mancha and, in his
most recent series, From Venice
to Istanbul. Now he turns to
China in Rick Stein’s Taste
of Shanghai (Prime, Sunday,- 3 0 p m ).
It’s a quick trip, to be sure,
and it’s apparently in aid of
his magpie quest for recipes
that can be turned into a new
cookbook back home. Never-
theless, the trip encompasses
everything from street food to
fine dining in a city that was
once known to Westerners as
“the Paris of the East”, even if
the Easterners knew it as “the
whore of the Orient”.
Stein sees a little of that
past glamour when he visits
the famous art deco Peace
Hotel, where once the likes of
Noël Coward, George Bernard
Shaw and Marlene Dietrich
caroused. He explains the
difference between Devon
and Cornish cream teas –
something about where thecream goes – but an afternoon
spent listening to an average
jazz band and eating scones
seems absurd when there’s a
teeming metropolis of 120,000
restaurants outside the door
that cater for every variant of
Shanghainese cuisine.
The city has come a long
way in a short time. During
the Cultural Revolution, there
were no restaurants, even if
Chairman Mao’s favourite
dish was red braised pork, an
exemplar of the Shanghainese
sweet style that features cubesof pork so fatty they should be
illegal. Stein samples this at a
new fusion restaurant.
Another lardy treat is Mr
Wu’s famous scallion pan-
cakes, for which locals will
queue for hours. His 10-step
process has been perfected
over 34 years, and he stuffs
them with spring onions and
pork. “I love the taste of the
lard, it takes me back to my
childhood,” says Stein in a
Proustian moment.
There are delicious Chinese
soup dumplings that take aA Cornishman abroad
Chairman Mao’s favourite red braised pork is on the menu on
Rick Stein’s trip to the “Paris of the East”. by entertainment editor FIONA RAE
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