liuzhou

Yes. And they often use the Chinese brand I mentioned.

No. It is a green skinned lemon. Common here.

Chicken 'n Chips. With a tomato and basil salad.

Current written Chinese menus are still very often the same. Here is a random example from a book entitled "Stir Frying". The ingredients are listed as 200 grams of shrimp, then scallion, ginger, cooking wine, soy sauce, sugar, salt, MSG, vegetable oil in "appropriate amounts". The cooking instructions are equally vague. Wash shrimp then heat the oil, add all the ingredients and cook. No time is given. Normal.

I seriously doubt that there is a kitchen in China, domestic or professional, that doesn't have some of this. Although I usually make my own stocks, I too keep a jar of this for emergencies. Despite the strange list of ingredients, it is actually very good, considering. Ingredients: MSG, salt, rice, sugar, chicken, food additives (5-taste nucleotides, Sodium, Riboflavin, egg, flavoring, curry powder, shallots, garlic. Allergin Tips: Contains eggs, soy products. Can contain celery, sesame oil, clams, scallops, dairy products.

Tagliatelli and pork kidney with asparagus and basil. Garlic, shallots, chilli, black pepper.

We are far too cultured and polite to mention bell peppers! I apologise from.the heart of my bottom for just so doing!

Pork with black garlic, capers, wine, scallions, okra and rice.

I have a 30 year old Black and Decker toaster. It makes perfect toast! That'll do.

Another thing that gets my goat is recipes telling me to use ingredients at room temperature or asking me to cool things to the same fictional degree of heat! What room? Which room? Whose room? I am willing to bet the temperature in my room and that in yours vary enormously. Like many of us, I have more than one room. Lucky us. They have different temperatures. 5°C, for a random example, is a temperature - room temperature is an ever-changing chimera - a folly on which recipes and gustatory experiences have floundered. I also see this absurdity in reference to ideal wine serving temperatures - reds, we are told, must be served at room temperature. From experience, I can tell you that the average temperature in a Bordeaux chateau's room is nowhere near my, or probably your, room temperature! But I'll confess I may not have been entirely sober when I made that observation. I'd better go back and check.

I haven't made it for a long time, but I always use beef stock, like my French mother taught me. Beef stock in days gone past would have been the cheaper choice. Before the industrialization of chickens, it was an expensive protein. P.S. I only have one mother!

See the The Kitchen Scale Manifesto

The thing is is the "average" medium onion varies enormously. The average here much larger than I was used to in England, say. But my use of onion was just an example. Of course, I judge for myself how much onion to include in a dish. The fact remains that half an onion is an unknown quantity, which in a recipe which is microscopically precise about other ingredients becomes absurd. But my entire post was partly in jest.

That is the problem. The recipe writer knows what they mean by half an onion but fails to convey that information to the reader.

I seldom cook from recipes although I read a lot of them. Today I was looking at one which went into meticulous detail to the nearest milliliter about how much vinegar to add then suggested I use half a red onion. The colour of the onion is irrelevant. What I want I know is "how much onion is half an onion?" Which onion? Here are three red onions found today in a local store. Which one should I use half of? Do recipe writers ever read their recipes? Or do their editors? This is far from an isolated example. I see such absurdities all the time. 27 milligrams of this and a pinch of salt? Whose pinch? What is a large pinch? A thumb of ginger. Whose thumb? I've even been advised to add a tickle of spice to a dish! My reply to that is not publishable on a family friendly site such as this. Grrr!

Chicken breast marinated with garlic, capers and white wine. Stir fried, finished with basil and served with orzo and tomato. Dressed with sesame and chilli paste.

Yes, generally, but when I said "round here" I was referring to my part of China - Guangxi, Hunan, Guizhou and Sichuan. Definitely garlic, ginger and chillies, except when it's chillies, chillies and chillies. Guangdong and Beijing can do what they like! 😂

Not in China!

Yes, you are right. "Banger" was originally simply slang for a sausage of any description. But today, at least in the UK, it is only really used when it refers to the component in "Bangers and Mash", which is nearly always a sausage of the short fat type. The long skinny ones are known as chipolatas as mentioned above.

Wontons in chicken broth with garlic and lettuce.

It's 35ºC / 95ºF here. Has been for weeks and will remain so through September - may get higher on the way. But cooking continues. Thank god, Chinese cooking is generally very rapid so I melt for a few minutes and life goes on. I have no air-con.

Simple dinner for one. Shrimp with black garlic and garlic scapes with spaghetti.

Thanks for the link. Ireland has wonderful food. I spent a lot of time there 40 years ago and still miss it a lot. I don't know the writer but I'll be reading the article in a minute!

No. The etymology of "bangers" is well documented. It dates from World War I and referred to the cheap sausages given to the miitary, which often exploded during frying, due to the high fat and bread content used. The term is first recorded is 1919, but it was in WW2 that the expression became common. Today, sausages are only called bangers in the context of the dish "bangers and mash".

Yes, please. With seconds!