Sitting with this photo-album-travel-journal cum cookbook butterflied open on your lap, you may get contentedly lost in the stories, maps, and photographs on your way to cooking dinner. But if Jeffrey's account of serendipitously bumping into renowned travel writer Ella Maillart and sharing a bowl of chile-hot tree fungus in Lhasa distracts you from choosing something for dinner, it's a welcome distraction.
Husband and wife team Jeffrey and Naomi, have authored a collection of cookbooks (several of which have won major awards) that feature culture as a primary ingredient in any recipe. In Beyond the Great Wall, Naomi and Jeffrey gather their writings and recipe collections (Cheese Momos, Pea Tendril Salad, Dai Grilled Fish, for a taste) from their past thirty years of travel in China's rural regions. Prefacing the recipes are short chapters on the land, people, and the food —a necessary primer for their style of cooking which honours local culinary customs. Three hundred plus pages are divided into soups, pork, fish, breads, noodles and dumplings, and more. As many of the vivid, voyeuristic photographs are devoted to the people as to the food, serving to remind you that every time we prepare a recipe from another place we should respect the people who have brought us their cuisine.
You can find Beyond the Great Wall at Plenty, Barbara Jo's Books for Cooks, and online via the authors' website. Learn more about the authors, their other travels and cookbooks here.
