liuzhou

I'm not sure. It could work, but I suspect the flavour of the duck would be less developed. Kind of like making a tomato sauce and adding cooked meatbals to the sauce to warm them rather than simmering them in the sauce to cook them.

炒面和鸡肉 (chǎo miàn hé jī ròu) - Chow Mein with chicken.

After last night’s dinner debacle, I decided to play it safe tonight. I revisited a supplier I have used before and ordered 鱼香肉丝 (yú xiāng ròu sī), fish flavour pork slivers. There is no fish involved. Instead, this Sichuan dish uses ingredients normally or traditionally used to flavour fish dishes. These include the normal garlic, ginger, chillies and scallions along with Baoning or Zhenjiang (Chinkiang in America) black vinegar*, Shaoxing wine, soy sauce and sugar. Here these are used with thinly slivered pork tenderloin but it is also often made with sliced pork when it is called 鱼香肉片(yú xiāng ròu piàn). Fuchsia Dunlop has a recipe. The portion was generous enough to leave me with lunch tomorrow And jolly good it was, too. $4.88 USD inc delivery. * Baoning vinegar is from Sichuan, so would be first choice, but Zhenjiang (from eastern China) is more widely available and is very similar.

I've seen it occasionally with 腐乳 (fǔ rǔ) on menus but never had the combination. Like @KennethT, I like it simply stir-fired with plenty of garlic. Nearby Guilin is renowned for its furu, which comes in two varieties, plain and spicy. I can imagine it with the spicy （香辣腐乳 - xiāng là fǔ rǔ). Spicy Furu

Dinner was a delivery disaster. First of all I had selected a dish of steamed sea bass and rice, which I intended supplementing with some of the bags of 酸菜,(suān cài) that I have collected recently. This is the pickled vegetables that Korea took and turned into their kimchi. Fifteen minutes after placing my order, someone from the restaurant called to say that they were out of sea bass. After my berating them for running out of a major protein by 5:30 in the evening yet continuing to advertise and accept orders for something they don’t have, they offered me a full refund. Well, they suggested first I chose something else but I declined. They only have six main dishes on their menu, none of which appealed. Time wasters. I then skimmed my phone and remembered that I’d heard of a new place offering Zhuang Lemon Duck, one of my favourites. Found it quickly and ordered that with rice. That came to ¥18, under the minimum ¥20 charge. So, I added some smacked cucumber in spicy sauce. That tipped me over the minimum and up to ¥25. $3.50 USD. 18 minutes later it was at my door. Sadly, it was nowhere as good as I’ve had before. The duck was nearly all flabby skin and bone and there was no sign of the statutory Zhuang long-preserved lemons. Instead, I think, they had just squeezed some lemon juice over the delivery container. It was heavily flavoured by thick slices of raw ginger. Also, the dish was swimming in sauce. It is normally a relatively dry dish. Big disappointment. The rice was over-steamed, too. The cucumber was fine, not having required any actual cooking. Oh, well try again tomorrow.

Yes, I did mention the white variety. I too prefer the green, but then I also prefer green aparagus to white. Yes, I know the Vietnamese and Thai names but was getting concerned I was giving too many names! Cambodia certainly has it; in Khmer, it's trakuon. Laos too, where it's pak bong.

Water spinach is illegal to grow or sell in most US states as, if not carefully controlled, it can become invasive. Story (podcast and transcript) here (NPR).

Ha! I'm kind of bored with the stuff. It is the default greenery in every restaurant or canteen here. It was the only green vegetable offered in the hospital I was in this year. Everywhere, you hear people asking the wait staff "有什么青菜 (yǒu shén me qīng cài)？What greens do you have?" The answer always includes, and is often limited to "空心菜 (Mand: kōng xīn cài; Cant: hung1 sam1 coi3)." This has many names in both Chinese and English. water spinach, river spinach, morning glory, water morning glory, water convolvulus, Chinese spinach, Chinese Watercress, Chinese convolvulus, swamp cabbage, ong choy or kangkong. In Mandarin Chinese, besides 空心菜 (kōng xīn cài), it is 通菜 (tōng cài), 通心菜 (tōng xīn cài), 壅菜 (yōng cài), 瓮菜 (wèng cài), 应菜 (yìng cài), 藤菜 (téng cài), 瓮菜及葛菜 (wèng cài jí gé cài), among others. The most popular name, 空心菜 (Mand: kōng xīn cài) literally translates as 'hollow (or empty) heart vegetable' referring to its hollow stems. There is also a white variety, grown under restricted light à la white asparagus, though that is rarer. Maybe I'll give it a try again - it's been a while.

Frozen (home made) wontons. Boil water, salt it, drop in wontons. When they float (approx two minutes later), fish them out. Pretend they're Italian. Dress with olive oil and black pepper (or chili flakes). Eat.

Canned sardines on toast.

It can be hard for me to source lamb / mutton / goat here in south China, although it is very popular in the north and west. The southerners complain about the smell. Pity for me as I love it.

The only real difference in the second burrito was that the chicken was cut into larger cubes and the sauce lacked the Sichuan flavours. But it was good, too.

Ms Dunlop's Food of Sichuan has just been published in a German translation.

... and you've just returned from Indonesia! Did you forget to restock when you were there or did your sick spell preclude that?

Here is an oddity. Being dependent on delivery meals for a while, I’m constantly searching 美团 (měi tuán, China’s leading delivery app) for something tasty and interesting enough to perk up my battered appetite. Although most of what is available is of a high standard, it can get repetitive. To my surprise, I found a restaurant reasonably close to me offering a selection of 墨西哥卷饼 (mò xī gē juǎn bǐng). 墨西哥 (mò xī gē) is Mexico and 卷饼 (juǎn bǐng) is how they have decided to translate burrito. Literally, it means ‘rolled cake’. Now, what I know about Mexican food could be written on a perforation hole of a postage stamp, and I’ve never eaten a burrito, so I have no idea how authentically Mexican these may be, although they look to me like images Mr. Google supplies. Having no idea how large they are from the image supplied by the vendor, I order two. First, a 鸡胸里脊卷饼 (jī xiōng lǐ ji juǎn bǐng) or Chicken Breast Tenderloin Burrito. And second, out of curiosity, a 川香无骨鸡卷饼 (chuān xiāng wú gǔ jī juǎn bǐng), a Sichuan Flavour Boneless Chicken Burrito. A Chinese burrito no less. So, the first time I eat Mexican food, it’s Chinese! On arrival, well wrapped in a heat retentive, insulated foil bag, they appear identical. Even sniffing them offers no clue. The tight wrap of the tortilla hermetically encloses all evidence. So, I choose at random. I can’t really show you the interior without destroying my dinner. Here’s the best I could manage. Right at the first bite, I know. The distinct heat and abundance of chillies is accompanied by the numbing sensation of Sichuan peppercorns. The chicken has been shredded and combined with a mixed salad in a delicious Sichuan 麻辣 (má là) dressing. I don’t know if Mexico has these, but they should. The whole thing is huge and very filling. So I slip the other one into the fridge for later. I’ll get back to you on that.

You need these.

I have eaten (a little of) it. Not all the fat is rendered and the sauce isn't particularly greasy. In fact, I quite liked it. If you really want to replicate the dish, get the fattiest belly you can find. Chinese pigs are raised to be fatter than those in the west.

But what constitutes 'correctly' is a matter of opinion. I wouldn't dare tell the Chinese they are cooking their Dongpo pork incorrectly. They've been doing it their way for over 1000 years.

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It's not fat per se that I dislike. I don't mind it at all if it is cooked to crispiness. However, here, it is often still gelatinous and the texture is, to me, unpleasant. I regularly eat grilled mutton skewers from Xinjiang where the cubes of flesh alternate with cubes of fat from the animal's tail. The fat is nicely crisp and an interesting contrast to the flesh.

I'm not too keen on pork belly either, which is a bit inconvenient here as it is considered the prime cut here. Too much fat for me. It always amuses me in the supermarket when I see the grannies fight over the bits of pork that most westerners would shun. It is called 五花肉 (wǔ huā ròu) which means 'five flower meat' as the best is said to have five layers- meat, fat, meat, fat, skin. 東坡肉 (dōng pō ròu), Dongpo Pork is a very popular dish from Zhejiang Province near Shanghai. It is basically cubes of pork belly braised in Shaoxing wine. The pork is about 90% fat. I don't go there. Dongpo Pork