A writer of good taste

"What I want to do is to try, to the best of my ability, to describe the recipes accurately. If I make a change, I explain it," she says.

The 350-page book is divided mainly into three parts: the introduction of Jiangnan and its regional food culture, the recipes－including appetizers, meat, poultry and eggs, fish and seafood, tofu, vegetables, soups, rice, noodles, dumplings, snacks, sweet desserts and drinks－and concluding with a summary of basic recipes, ingredients, equipment and techniques for making Jiangnan cuisine.

In total, there are more than 160 recipes that cover the typical food and dishes that people in Jiangnan will eat, either at a sumptuous banquet or at home every day, such as clear-simmered lion's head meatballs, eight-treasure stuffed calabash duck, Hangzhou breakfast tofu, "green pak choy with dried shrimps" or "green soybeans with snow vegetable".

However, because Jiangnan is a large region, it was not easy for her to decide which dishes should be presented in the limited number of pages.

"In the end, it's just a matter of personal choice and judgment," she says, adding that she wanted to include as many as possible of the really essential famous dishes like Dongpo Pork, Westlake vinegar fish, and lion-head meatballs, "the really classic dishes".

"But I also like to include dishes that I've enjoyed, or that have a particular meaning for me, like maybe a simple dish that someone cooked for me that I thought was lovely and that I want to cook at home.

"It's like trying to paint a picture of the region and show its many different sides, the different dishes from Ningbo, Shaoxing, and Hangzhou, different regional dishes and different levels of dishes, from the banquet to the street food," she says.