A professional guide to the herbs of Yunnan province

A prominent chef completes the first chapter of an encyclopedic labor of love: a professional guide to the herbs of Yunnan province

First, the bad news: This story contains no gossip about what government officials eat. After a three-hour interview and a cooking studio tour with Xu Long, the Western chef at the Great Hall of the People, we didn't gain any juicy tidbits about the international leaders he's served.

What does President Xi Jinping like to eat? Is Vladimir Putin picky about his food? Does Angela Merkel really like spicy Sichuan dishes?

We're not going to find out any of that from Xu, whose primary responsibility is state banquets and other official functions at the hall. He just smiles and shakes his head at such questions.

What does get him talking, however, is herbs - the fragrant and flavorful plants that add zip to all manners of foods. His new book, Fragrance, is about those plants and was presented at this year's Beijing International Book Fair in August.

"When I first began working at the Great Hall of the People 32 years ago, 'Western food' meant Russian cuisine," Xu says. That quickly changed with China's reform and opening-up, and he suddenly had a mandate to explore the breadth of European cooking.

"I remember going to the Peninsula Hotel in Beijing in 1990 and being thrilled to see fresh herbs like rosemary, thyme and basil. Before that, I'd only seen and used the dried forms, which were different in flavor and smell."

The hotel manager at the time had brought herb seeds back from Europe in a suitcase, which the kitchen staff used to plant in their own garden, he says.

"I began to realize that herbs have an important role in cooking. Herbs do more than just make food taste better - they help people connect with food.

"Some herbs have stories that go back to Greek and Roman mythology, and others have stories that come from religions and cultural traditions."

A good chef needs to embrace the whole picture of food culture, Xu says, adding: "It's the emotion in cooking."

The idea of writing a book on herbs soon began to take shape - a book for chefs that would allow Xu to share his knowledge and enthusiasm with Chinese peers.

His pursuit of the stories behind various herbs has taken him to 13 countries - "I like to find their origins" - yet his travels have inspired a fresh enthusiasm for plants closer to home.

"The herbs used in Western cuisines are well-documented in many languages. But many people, especially Western readers and food lovers, don't have much of an idea about Chinese herbs."

Thanks to China's vast temperate zone area, more plants are indigenous here than in any other country, according to Flora of China, authored by Wu Zhengyi and Peter Raven.

Yunnan, the southernmost province, is the richest of all in vegetative variety, and the region's geographic advantage quickly captured Xu's imagination. He was determined that his book needed to reflect his firsthand experiences, rather than compile the work of others.

"I didn't expect Yunnan herbs to have so many roles, so many smells," he says.

They also have a legacy of stories as rich as Western herbs do. "One of the ethnic communities in Yunnan believes that tea is literally their ancestor," Xu told one audience at the book fair in Beijing. Another uses leaves as serving bowls and plates, and they eat with their hands - "a very eco-friendly approach", he adds.

He abandoned the immense scope of trying to write a Chinese compendium of the world's herbs and instead focused on Yunnan for what he sees as the first volume in a series. He frowns as he utters the title in English, and a lively exchange ensues with the translator.

Fragrance, it seems, is far too simple a word for the spirit of the book. "In Chinese, the name is more poetic," he says with a sigh.

When Xu hasn't been overseeing banquets for state leaders, he's been going back and forth to Yunnan - a photo-shooting trip in May was his seventh trip to the province for research on his book and his column in Global Gourmet magazine.

In all, he's covered thousands of kilometers and visited cooks from 17 ethnic groups to gather data on 70 kinds of herbs. He narrowed down his plant list to 47 for the book, including knotweed, citronella, basil and choucai (Acacia pennata).

"Many Chinese think herbs like pepper and lemongrass are indigenous to China because they have been in our food culture for centuries," he says. In fact, they arrived in China via the ancient Silk Road. Rosemary, a herb that has become popular as Western cuisine has become well-known in the past two decades, was recorded in Yunnan a couple of hundred years ago, he adds.

Gathering material for his book, Xu spent many hours in local markets - at least 30, he says - but that was as much for convenience as necessity.

"In Yunnan, herbs are growing everywhere, they're in nature for the taking."

In the process of his research, the chef says he found considerable overlap between the plants of traditional medicine and traditional cooking.

"Some of the plants smell bad," he says with a grin, "but they taste good."

(China Daily Africa)