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Fuchsia Dunlop in praise of the multifaceted, deliciously-diverse Chinese cuisine…

If you visit a Shaoxing wine factory, you may walk past a stack of crumbly bricks made of some rough, pale, porous material. You’ll probably assume it’s debris left behind by negligent builders. But these bricks, this stuff, so unprepossessing to the eye, is one of the most important Chinese ingredients. You won’t see it in your bowl; you won’t smell or taste it directly; yet it’s an invisible presence in almost every Chinese meal. It is not merely an ingredient, but a ​­pre-​­ingredient, the progenitor of some of the most vital components of Chinese edible culture. Like a genie, it brings Chinese food and drink to life.

The bricks are made of what is known as ​­qu—which sounds like “choo,” but with a lovely ​­softness—a sort of coral reef teeming with des­­iccated microorganisms, enzymes, moulds and yeasts that will spring into action in the presence of water, ready to unleash themselves on all kinds of foods, especially those that are starchy. The Japanese, who learned about qu from China, call it koji ; it’s sometimes translated into English as “ferment.” When awakened, all these microorganisms will magically transform cooked beans, rice and other cereals, unravelling their ​­tight-​­knit starches into simple sugars, then fermenting the sugars into alcohol, meanwhile spinning off a whole aurora of intriguing flavors. It is qu that converts soybeans into soy sauce and jiang. Qu is the catalyst for fermenting alcoholic drinks from rice, millet and other cereals, as well as grain vinegars. It’s no exaggeration to say that qu is one of the keys to what makes Chinese food Chinese…

More kitchen secrets in this excerpt from her new book, Invitation to a Banquet: The Story of Chinese Food “The Marvels of Qu: What Makes Chinese Food and Drink Unique,” in @lithub.

* Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

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As we investigate identity, we might send tasty birthday greetings to Edwin Traisman; he was born on this date in 1915. A food scientist, he developed the process for freezing McDonald’s french fries that allowed for their standardization, developed Cheez Whiz for Kraft Foods, and researched E. coli.

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