Fuchsia Dunlop's *Signed* 'Five Tastes' + Zhongba Handcrafted Soy Sauce

Getting Started With Chinese FlavorsOur first shipment of this new book is signed by the author! Chinese-food authority Fuchsia Dunlop's new cookbook, Five Tastes, focusses on the building-block flavors that underscore all of Chinese cooking. The number one building block in Chinese food is soy sauce, so we have combined Five Tastes with Sichuan's heritage brand, handcrafted soy sauce for this gift set. Our premium, small-batch Zhongba soy sauce is discounted 15% when purchased with the book. As Fuchsia explains in the book’s introduction, most Chinese recipes are defined by one of the country’s classic flavor combinations—like Sichuan’s mala, red-oil and "homestyle" flavor profiles. But in this book she goes beyond expected and traditional dishes and also uses these flavors and ingredients in expansive and adventurous ways.The book asks you to think about a Chinese pantry by identifying a product's taste and the flavor profiles you can create with it. The salty and umami category of seasonings includes the most important Chinese ingredient, soy sauce, which plays a role in many of China's most popular complex flavors. For example, sweet-and-sour; red-oil; spicy-and-savory; "fish-fragrant," etc. While there is a lot of Sichuan influence in the book's recipes, they are by no means all spicy, and the flavor profiles range across the whole of China. "The minimum requirement for cooking Chinese food" Fuchsia writes, "is one bottle of light or traditional soy sauce. If you will be doing a lot of Chinese cooking, I recommend keeping in stock a big bottle of light soy sauce, a small bottle of dark soy sauce, and one premium soy sauce for dips and cold dishes." The Zhongba Handcrafted Soy Sauce in this collection is just such a premium soy sauce, but it's also in a quite large and impressive bottle that allows you to use it in any dish that deserves a complex, rich, umami flavor.