Chinese regional cuisine: Hunan food, and where to find the spicy and sour fare in Hong Kong
- From Mao Zedong’s favourite braised pork belly to stinky mandarin fish, here are three restaurants in Hong Kong that specialise in the spicy cuisine
- Hunan cuisine, from central China, is famed for using the heat from chillies mixed with sourness from pickles to create the ultimate spice combination
While the spicy food of China’s Sichuan province is well known for its burning numbness, chefs from Hunan province have their own take on using chillies.
“Hunan’s version stresses fragrance with a mild sourness,” says Xie Tianjiao, owner of a Hunan diner Shu Xiang Men Di (known in English as Cafe Hunan), in Hong Kong.
Xie, who was born in Yongzhou, Hunan, is knowledgeable about the flavours of her home province in central China. “The tang of sourness stems from the fermentation process,” she explains.
Pickles are made from all types of vegetables and chillies, some of which are pickled just with salt. The ingredients are left in a sealed vat for one to two months, resulting in pickles that are wilted and salty with slightly sour notes.
Pickles have long played an important part in the diet of people from Hunan; they are added to meat dishes to balance the richness, served on their own as an appetiser, and are eaten with plain congee.
Eating sour spicy food in Hunan is believed to balance the humidity in body, or dispel “yin” in traditional Chinese medicine philosophy.
