liuzhou

That's what I usually do.

Saag gosht. Goat curry with spinach. Cubed goat leg meat marinated for four hours in a paste of home-made yoghurt with garlic, ginger and green chillies. Onions, curry paste, more ginger and red chilli fried until fragrant. Added the goat with marinade and some goat bone stock and slow cooked for two hours. Spinach and mint leaves added for last few minutes until wilted. Served with rice and a mint and shallot raita (not shown).

This amused me.

Ah! ha! My gratefulness is eternal. I told you I was numerically illiterate. I misread the '$' sign as a '1' and added on another dollar for good luck. Still seems ridiculously expensive to me, but duck is the cheapest animal protein here. I'm not even going to tell you how much I pay for a lovely duck breast. You would just hate me even more! But your $4.99 per breast could buy me a whole duck, a dozen of its eggs and the taxi fare home!

I'm confused. How much was each breast? I am seeing $15.99. But hey, I never did understand numbers.

Wontons in a spicy, garlicky chicken broth with spinach.

Same here in China. Eggs are always weighed. And bagged the same way. Here a couple of duck eggs I bought this morning. Sea duck eggs, to be precise. Very fresh. But I was interested in the differing sizes. These are the smallest and largest of the batch. More were at the smaller end of the scale. Those black lines on the mat are 2cm apart. They weigh 64g and 88g respectively.

another via Facebook

They also had these 融安金橘 (róng ān jīn jú), locally grown kumquats from Rong'an County, just north of Liuzhou city.

When I got back to the supermarket, the number of pomelo types had risen from four to (almost) six. One signposted variety had sold out. Here are the remaining five: 沙田柚 (shā tián yòu). Citrus maxima ‘Shatian’. The most common pomelo. 容县沙田柚 (róng xiàn shā tián yòu). This is another 'Shatian' pomelo, but a highly prized one. It is from Rongxian County in southern Guangxi. The area is famed for its high quality (and high priced) pomelos. 福建蜜柚 (fú jiàn mì yòu), Fujian Honey Pomelo, a sweet and again prized example from Fujian Province in SE China. Then two together in one pile. 红肉柚 (hóng ròu yòu), red fleshed pomelo (in the red wrappers) and 水蜜柚 (shuǐ mì yòu) or 'juicy, sweet pomelo). Next to them was an empty display marked 三江柚 (sān jiāng yòu) or Sanjiang pomelos, Sanjiang being a nearby county. They are usually very good, and being local means that they are often the cheapest, which may explain why they had gone so quickly.

The only crucial thing for me, and I use different rices, is working out the correct water/rice ratio for each type. Once I crack that, it is perfect each time. I mainly cook Jasmine/ Hom Mali rice, but recently my regular brand was out of stock and I had to choose another. The amount of water required for perfection (in my view) was slightly different, but I worked it out quickly. I've also cooked sushi rice, sticky rice, arborio rice, red rice, black rice etc. They all require slightly different ratios.

Another fermented black bean dish. Pork slices marinated in Shaoxing, with garlic, ginger, black beans and chillies. Stir fried with sliced mushrooms, and finished with soy sauce, scallions and coriander leaf. Rice. Simple but tasty.

Many market stalls here let you try at least a segment of one before you buy. Small tangerine types, you'll usually get a whole one. Of course, it isn't a 100% guarantee that what you buy will be the same, but usually near enough. Very seldom do you get to try in supermarkets, though. I find sniffing them is a good, if not foolproof plan. The good ones usually smell better, too.

I just remembered. They had lemons, too. I bought a couple.

I shuffled out mumbling into the frozen rain this morning to obtain any form of sustenance from the nearest store - fortunately a smallish supermarket. Among their offerings, I noticed that they had several representatives of the citrus family. For example: These were labelled "巴西柑 (bā xī gān)", which literally means "Brazil Tangerines", but they have little to do with Brazil. They are citrus sinensis and native to China. THat said Brazil does now grow more than anyone else, so perhaps that's why. These were grown in Hunan, the province to the north of us, though. Next, we have 大红柑 (dà hóng gān) or large red tangerines. and 宫柑 (gōng gān) or 'palace tangerines', so called because they were once reserved for sending as tribute to the emperors in the Imperial Palace (aka Forbidden City). Now, foreign plebs like me can eat them. Next up: 蜜柑 (mì gān). Literally 'honey tangerine', but honey is often used just to mean 'sweet'. Then the oranges. Those are 砂糖橙 (shā táng chéng) which means 'sugar orange'. Again sugar is just used to mean 'sweet'. 脐橙 (qí chéng) or 'navel oranges'. 赣南甜橙 (gàn nán tián chéng), literally South Jiangxi (Province) Sweet Oranges Then we have: 花皮金橘 (huā pí jīn jú) - 'flower skin kumquats' and 西柚 xī yòu - 'grapefruit' They also had four different kinds of pomelos, but the battery in my cell phone died. I'll photograph them tomorrow. I find this an astonishing number of citrus fruits for a small neighbourhood supermarket to carry, but they were selling well. I bought the green-skinned ones at the top.