A Second Cooking Tour, North to South

In this lesson, we return once again to the breadth of China and its regional preparations, with emphasis on dishes for feasts, and again we begin in Beijing. With its long history as the seat of imperial China, it is known for its feast dishes, elaborate preparations that were created to please emperors and empresses but have since filtered down the social ladder and are now regional hallmarks. Over the years, this palace cuisine, which demanded long hours and laborious work by the imperial chefs, acquired the name Mandarin cooking, an often misunderstood appellation that is typically described as a regional cuisine. It is not; it is merely a definition of style.