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Hello and welcome to an episode of Table Talk. I'm Lara Prendergast. And I'm Olivia Potts.

And we're delighted this week to be joined by Fuchsia Dunlop, a writer and cook who specialises

in Chinese cuisine, especially that of Seshwan. She was the first westerner to train as a chef

at the Setsuan Institute of Higher Cuisine in Chengdu

and is the author of five books, including the autobiographical, Sharks Finn and Sashuan Pepper.

Welcome to our podcast. Hello.

So let's start at the beginning, where we always do.

I suspect we're not going to get to the real Session on Chinese bit for a little period.

What are your earliest memories of eating?

Well, I grew up in a household that was filled with international flavours.

So my mother has always been an extremely adventurous cook, and she was a teacher of English

to foreign students in Oxford.

And so we just had constant streams of Iranians, Turks, Japanese,

Lebanese, Sudanese, coming over to cook and, you know, cooking dinner parties at our house

and leaving recipes behind. And then my mother would go on cooking them. So I really had a very

unusual diet for sort of 1970s, England.

What sorts of dishes were they cooking?

Well, you know, the Japanese did sukkiaki, I remember,

and the Turks made kufthir on a barbecue in the garden,

...