Beyond the Great Wall: Recipes and Travels in the Other China.

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

In this latest book veteran food authors Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid want to introduce the world to the “Other China,” the ancient and traditional one west of the Great Wall where two-thirds of China’s land mass lies. It is not populated by ethnic Han Chinese but by Tibetan, Dai, Hui, Kazakh, Hmong, Mongol, Uzbek, and other ethnic populations. Along the border China shares with Russia, Mongolia, Pakistan, India, Burma, Nepal, Laos, and Vietnam, the cuisine differs tremendously from what Westerners think of as Chinese cooking. Isolation, unique local ingredients, extreme weather, mountain altitudes, and limited cooking facilities have created thousands of diverse and unique dishes that are rarely seen outside their own borders. Dishes like Steamed Yak Dumplings from Tibet or Lamb Sausages from the Mongolian grasslands are accompanied by bowls of barley or millet, spicy crepes, bread loafs, and South Asian–style naan instead of the tradition bowl of steamed rice most Westerners associate with Chinese cooking.

As much as Duguid and Alford are interested in food, they are equally interested in places and people. Braving bad roads, June blizzards, and humour-challenged Communist bureaucrats they zigzag through the Chinese outback collecting stories as well as recipes. In Lhasa, they learn to cook their dinner over dried livestock dung. Near the Pakistani border they are stopped at an army checkpoint and fear they are about to be arrested but instead they are invited into the guard house for lunch.

The result is a massive foodie’s travelogue packed with beautiful photos, intriguing recipes, and fascinating travel yarns. Because the average reader may not be able to easily find yak meat or Mongol-style kebab skewers in even some of Canada’s better equipped supermarkets, ingredient and equipment substitutions are offered where necessary. The authors also give tips on what the more exotic dishes should look like at various stages of preparation. Most of the recipes are well within the skill level of a basic cook, and if you do blow it, fortunately there aren’t likely to be any Kazakh, Hmong, or Uzbek critics hovering nearby to mock your efforts. A glossary, food source page, and full index are included in the back. Alas, there is no source listed for dried dung cooking fuel, in this one small detail you are on your own.