Andrew Wong: A Wong has been open for seven years. A lot of the dishes I put on in the beginning were celebrations of other people's dishes from across China. They've run their course now, and I’m a firm believer that you have to do something which keeps your own mind interested; something that keeps you moving and evolving. The stuff that we do with Mukta is really relevant, and I think there is a market for it as well. People want to know more about China and I think there's a lot to be said and explored about it.

Mukta Das: I've been studying a Masters and a PhD in the anthropology of food, focusing on China for the last six years. I started tweeting about bits and pieces that I discovered about Chinese food which I thought were a bit surprising. Andrew used to study anthropology a long while back and we got talking about why certain things were surprising – certain ingredients, certain techniques. He just wanted to know more and more, and not just the recipes. He’s interested in how chefs from 2,000 years ago would have approached cooking in elite kitchens in China – the ingredients, methods and kitchen technology at the time.

AW: Because Mukta is very open minded and she understands how chefs are, the way I think is probably no different to the way a chef would have thought 2,000 years ago. We have a certain amount of ingredients and around six cooking methods. Our job as chefs is to do something interesting with them. Whether it's for the Emperor or it's for a regular diner, it's just about doing something creative. You've got over 2,500 years’ worth of history to draw from, and it's very easy to lose track of where stuff comes from, you know? But we’ll talk and talk and a story will come out, and then Mukta puts it all into a historical context in a chronological sense, like where everything is placed in a broader kind of picture. The conversation will just flow, and then I'll go away and have a think about certain stuff and at two or three o'clock in the morning I'll text her saying, ‘Well what about this? What about this?’ and she'll send me loads of WhatsApps of texts and stuff that she's found for me.

After that, I’ll start experimenting and cooking and I'll send her photos of a dish and she'll always go, ‘I’d have never thought in a million years it would look like that’. That’s because she comes from a world where the look and the taste of a dish isn’t the only thing that’s important – I think what she finds really interesting is having something tangible to relay that stuff to. Mukta then passes what we’ve come up with on to others at the SOAS Food Studies Centre who have done even more research than her and never actually thought about what these dishes might look and taste like. It snowballs and leads onto another thing, and then another thing after that.

MD: Andrew will talk about how he's put certain ingredients together using certain techniques, or he'll talk about a particular type of ingredient to pair with something that we've discovered in some of the archives or menus. I'll talk about how that's historically grounded, saying things like, ‘Well actually that does make sense because during that time that was grown over there, and it was sort of celebrated in artworks and poetry.’ And so really it's not necessarily a reproduction of one old recipe or something from a menu that we’ve discovered. It's a bit more like a painting a picture that revisits history, to understand it more fully.

AW: It takes time – a lot of time. We can’t do it overnight. But the way that we're doing it feels right. A lot of the stuff that finds itself on the menu are tiny little things which only I and Mukta know about. To the guests it's just an ingredient or taste, but perhaps they get a sense of the part of Chinese history or culture they originated from. We might have added dried rhubarb into a broth, for example, even though you can't really taste it. But we added it because it's a celebration of the fact that rhubarb is therapeutic in traditional Chinese medicine. Only me and Mukta will know about things like that, but slowly our work together has more and more influence on the menu. You modify one dish and you modify another dish and you modify another dish and before you know it every dish has some of our work in.

Cheese? Truffles? Not exactly what most of us associate with the Chinese larder, but in certain parts of the country they've been enjoyed for centuries. Read Mukta's piece to discover the inspiration behind Andrew's dish, then take a look at the recipe to see how he's interpreted the cooking techniques of vegetarian Buddhist monks.

In Imperial China, the Emperor would hold huge feasts with hundreds in attendance along one long table. Andrew and Mukta have worked together on a dish which both represents these grand occasions and champions the street food of Taiwan.

The province of Yunnan stands out from the rest of China thanks to its subtropical climate and unusual bounty of ingredients. Mukta and Andrew take a closer look at the area and how it's shaped the rest of China's cuisine, before coming up with a dessert that represents it beautifully.

Everyone knows about The Silk Road, but traversing its many routes was a long, tough undertaking. Andrew and Mukta talk about the oasis towns that provided a lifeline for weary envoys and the Chinese emperor's decision to plant grape vines in his palace so they could be welcomed with a taste of home when they finally arrived in the country.

The idea of replicating the taste and texture of meat and fish with vegetarian alternatives has been practised in China for centuries. Andrew and Mukta explore this tradition further, before taking a look at why seafood is often served alongside strong flavours, such as Shaoxing wine, even though they can overpower the delicate taste.

Bird's nest has to be one of the most unusual and interesting ingredients to come out of China – especially seeing as it has very little flavour. Mukta and Andrew discuss the importance of status, health and culture in Chinese ingredients, as well as the problem of serving Chinese desserts to a western audience.

There are three sections of a typical Cantonese kitchen – wok cookery, dim sum preparation and roasting. Andrew and Mukta take a look at how each one takes a lifetime of practice to master, before sharing a recipe that brings all three disciplines together in a single, elegant mouthful.

Dim sum chefs are incredibly skilled and often spend their whole lives perfecting their craft. Andrew and Mukta take a closer look at just how long it takes to create these bite-sized treats, highlighting the similarities dim sum chefs have with their western pastry chef counterparts.