liuzhou

Sometimes, simple is best. 农家小炒肉 (nóng jiā xiǎo chǎo ròu) can be translated as ‘peasant family fried meat’. As always, when the type of meat is unspecified, it means pork. Stir fried, thinly sliced pork tenderloin with hot green chillies, garlic, ginger, scallions Garlic chives, rice wine and soy sauce. 好吃! (hǎo chī!) literally ‘good eat’ but meaning ‘delicious’. Accompanied by rice, of course. I would have thrown in a handful of fermented black soy beans, but it was good without them, too.

On the 8th of March 1997, I moved from Xi'an, where I had been staying in hotel style accommodation, to Hunan hundreds of miles away. It was all very strange and a totally different culture from what I'd become used to but nice to have my own apartment and kitchen again. The only thing that upset me was that there was no 肉夹馍 (ròu jiā mó), which had kept me alive for the previous year. But it had three redeeming features: 1) 湖南辣妹 (hú nán là mèi). This is used to refer to Hunan women, especially the younger unmarried variety and literally means Hunan Hot Sister(s). It carries all the innuendo that has in English both referring to their love of spicy food and their physical allure. It is also the name used to refer to the British girl pop combo, the Spice Girls. Every day in Hunan, for professional reasons, I was required to spend time in a lecture hall filled with around one hundred examples of these beautiful creatures in their twenties. Shit job, I know, but someone had to do it. 2) Spicy food. Hunan has the reputation of having the hottest food in China, hence one meaning of the previous. I loved and still love it. The Hunan people consider Sichuan to be full of irredeemable wimps on the spice front. 3) A TOTAL LACK OF GBPs. It took me a while to notice – I wasn’t looking for the wretched things – but they just didn’t have the things. Chilli peppers by the truckload but none of these insults to the capsicum clan. Of course, if they had been in possession, I wouldn’t have bought them anyway, but the total non-availability meant no one, no restaurant or friend could sneak them into my repast. Bliss. Looking back, I realise Xi’an didn’t have them either but as I wasn’t cooking here, so I hadn’t noticed. Two years later, I moved again to Guangxi where I’ve been now for twenty-four years Unfortunately, they do have the miserable things here. They are a feature of Cantonese cuisine and Guangxi was, in the past, part of the same province as Guangdong, home of Cantonese food, my least favourite Chinese style. Xi means ‘west’ and ‘dong' means ‘east’ denoting the two parts the original province split into. So I have to tread carefully, avoiding green bells and yellow kernels from Hades. It’s a hard life.

Yeah. No reason it couldn't be served with another sauce, other than tradition. I'm imagining a spicy sauce. Doubanjiang based, maybe.

Although Mandarin Fish, Siniperca chuatsi is the preferred choice, it does get made with everything from carp to sea bass. I suppose any reasonably firm and meaty fish would work. I've never made it, but have eaten often. I'm not a huge fan of sweet and sour. Mandarin Fish

Another favourite. This time from Hunan. 孜然炒牛肉 (zī rán chǎo niú ròu), Cumin Beef and a very good version, too. This is very similar to my preferred 肉夹馍 (ròu jiā mó) filling. What's not to like?

According to Wikipedia so it must be true, This is definitely true of the UK, where sweet and sour remains the second most popular Chinese food after ‘chow mein’. And with Chinese restaurants being the first choice for take home restaurant food in the UK, that lands sweet and sour near the top of the most eaten food list in the country. Sweet and sour certainly exists in China, but is nowhere near so popular. I can't remember the last time I saw it outside of a banquet setting. But what interested me most in the article, and I’ve seen the same claims elsewhere, was the choice of proteins. So, I decided to do a comparison of those “Chinese restaurants in Western countries” and the Chinese restaurants here in this Chinese city. I got onto my food delivery app and searched for ‘sweet and sour’ in the most common Chinese name - 糖醋 (táng cù, literally ‘sugar [and] vinegar). There were three main choices of protein just as in Wikipedia’s article. However, not the same three! The most common choice was, of course, China’s default protein, pork. However, this was split into two distinct subcategories, sweet and sour pork tenderloin fillet - 糖醋里脊 (táng cù lǐ jǐ) - and sweet and sour pork ribs -糖醋排骨 (táng cù pái gǔ). I think those are different enough to treat them as different dishes, despite the common animal source. That is certainly how my neighburs think of them. So breaking down the figures, I found 1,038 sweet and sour dishes available for delivery with the details being: Sweet and Sour Pork Tenderloin - 351 Sweet and Sour Pork Ribs - 193 Sweet and Sour Chicken - 90 Sweet and Sour Fish - 404 Sweet and Sour Shrimp - 0 I have included shrimp (or prawns) for comparison purposes. Clearly, combining the two pork dishes makes that the most popular, but what may surprise people is that, of specific dishes, fish comes out top. It is certainly my experience that fish is what most often comes to people’s minds here at the mention of sweet and sour. Shrimp however, popular in western Chinese restaurants, is completely absent. The simple truth is that shrimp are not easy sourced in most of China. I always smile ruefully when I see Kung-Pao Shrimp on a menu in the west. This Sichuan classic is almost unknown in Sichuan, a land-locked province. The fish dishes usually utilise freshwater fish (yes, I know there are freshwater shrimp, too, but they are rarely used in western restaurants for the sweet and sour treatment.) Of those, 404 fish dishes, 218 are what is known as Squirrel Fish – 松鼠鳜鱼 (sōng shǔ guì yú) or Pine Fish – 松子鱼 (sōng zǐ yú). No squirrels or pine cones are involved. The fish, traditionally Mandarin Fish, Siniperca chuatsi, a freshwater species, is used (although grass carp or, in coastal areas, yellow croaker is often substituted). The body of the fish is scored in such a way that, when deep fried, the flesh opens up to resemble the tail of a squirrel or the petalled segments of an open pine cone. Prepared well, it can make for a spectacular banquet dish. After frying, it is coated with the sweet and sour sauce. Squirrel Fish As for the pork dishes, the tenderloin is normally dusted with starch (corn or potato starches are common), fried and again coated with the sauce. Most western restaurants try to replicate the Cantonese treatment known as 咕噜肉 (Mandarin: gū lū ròu; Cantonese: gu1 lou1 juk6). Sweet and Sour Pork Tenderloin In Cantonese areas, including Hong Kong, this is made using vinegar, preserved plums and hawthorn candy to give colour. Most western restaurants use food dyes instead, resulting in that day-glo orange colour which amuses Chinese visitors immensely. Chinese sweet and sour tends to be darker in colour. Also western versions tend to be much sweeter than their Chinese counterparts. Pork ribs 生炒排骨 (Mandarin: shēng chǎo pái gǔ; Cantonese: saang1 caau2 paai4 gwat1 ) are given a similar treatment. The ribs are always chopped to chopstick-friendly pieces. No Fred Flintstone ribs, here. Sweet and Sour Pork Ribs It is interesting to note that most sweet and sour dishes are not cooked in the sauce. Nor is the protein usually battered, although a verion known as 鍋包肉 (guō bāo ròu) from Harbin in China's far north does use a potato starch batter. Also note, that the examples I have given are those most replicated in the west. There are regional variations and many other dishes featuring these proteins. Images from Meituan (美团) food delivery app.

I grew up wih horses, too. I'm told I could ride a horse before I could walk but I have no compunction about eating them when they are bred for that purpose. I wouldn't have been able to eat my own horse, though. It's not a matter of logic; but of emotion. It's illogical to eat pig, but decry eating sheep. I've eaten dog meat (again bred for meat) but wouldn't knowingly eat cat. Purely emotional.

I would say it's slightly sweeter than beef without being sweet if you know what I mean. It is much more tender than beef. Melt in the mouth tender. One of my favourite meats. Donkey pips it to the post.

This is certainly small and gets used much more than I ever anticipated. Here it's with nutmegs but it nearly always gets used to grate ginger, something I use in almost every meal. I do have a traditional bamboo one, but it is less efficient and difficult to clean.

In Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in the far west of China, horse is something of a staple protein and again nothing is wasted. The flesh is cooked as would be any red meat, appearing in stews and hotpots, stir-fries etc. It is often also smoked and used like bacon. Horse jerky is available. Horse Meat Smoked Horse Horse noodle dishes are also popular. Horse Noodles with Laoganma Chilli Crisp Besides eating the flesh, the innards are consumed just as with other animals. Intestines are used as skins for horse meat sausages as well as being fried like chitterlings (chitlins). The liver, heart, lungs etc. are all used. Horse Intestines Stewed Horse Lungs Rice Noodles with Horse Tripe And then there's my favourite, horse marrow bone in broth. A winter warmer. Images courtesy of Zhuge Horse Noodles (朱哥马肉粉) restaurant, Liuzhou

I keep thinking I should plate these delivery dinners and make them more attractive, but then I'd just create cleaning tasks which I'm not really up to, so I just eat them (in bed) from the delivery cartons. Tonight, was 鲜香菇烧肉排 (xiān xiāng gū shāo ròu pái), fresh shiitake pork ribs. In Chinese menus, the first named ingredient predominates, so this has more mushrooms than ribs. It is possible for essentially the same dish to be on a menu twice (at two different prices). "Bitter Melon with Beef" and "Beef with Bitter Melon" both appear on the menu in one of my favourite spots. The ribs were the smallest I've seen and as is customary with most rib dishes in China, had been chopped to bite sized, chopstick friendly pieces. They were buried among the shiitake. It was a tasty meal, accompanied by smacked cucumber and, as ever, rice.

One for the enablers.

No. Chinese.

Last month, I posted in the Unexpected Food Gifts topic a selection of chocolates a friend sent me from a startup company providing up-market chocolates to the Chinese market. This garnered some interest and prompted more than one person to express surprise at the inclusion of dark milk chocolate, something some people felt was perhaps a contradiction in terms. Now, I am no chocolate expert or even a big fan of chocolate* of any kind, and therefore I was clueless, as usual. So, I was interested to read this in today’s Gruaniad. It is a review of some, dare I say, artisan chocolates of that description. Notes on chocolate: darker bars that pack both moral and fibre I know we have some chocolatiers here. How common is it? Do you make it? We also have major chocolate eaters. Thoughts? Opinions? * My only real interest in chocolate is linguistic. The name has an interesting history as it passed from language to language. English took it from French which took it from Spanish which took it from pre-Spanish Mexican which took it from Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs. Chinese, 巧克力, meaning 'chocolate' was borrowed from English and is pronounced something like chow-ke-lee. (Pinyin: qiǎo kè lì)

Thanks. The wrapper contained a second jia mo.

These were delivered. I'm still not up to cooking.

Tonight, I revisited an old friend but with a twist. These are 羊肉夹馍 (yáng ròu jiá mó), a variation on the type I normally make and eat. Like mine, these originated in 陕西省 (shǎn xī shěng), Sha'anxi province in west-central China. Much of the province's population is Muslim and so eschews pork. Their meat of choice is mainly mutton / lamb / goat* or beef. Order rou jia mo in Beijing or Shanghai and you'll probably get pork. These are sheep or goat. I tend to make them with beef. Apart from the meat being non-standard, the buns 馍 (mó) are also different. Instead of a bread-like bun, these are more a flaky pastry. I prefer the bread type, probably because they're what I first encountered when I lived in Sha'anxi's capital, Xi'an. But I like them all. * As with many languages and cultures there is no difference between these meats in people's minds unless it's essential to differentiate. In Mandarin Chinese, 羊 (yáng）cover all three unless it's absolutely imperative to specify say, goat. That would be 山羊 (shān yáng, literally ; 'mountain sheep'.) I've come across the same phenonomen in India and Jamaica among other places. Here is the dedicated rou jia mo topic. These

What I do in my supermarket when facing death by plastic bag reluctance to open is head over to where they lay the fish out on ice, rub my hands on the ice and then open the bag no problem. i don't know but I guess rubbing the walls or freezre cabinets would do the same. Cold wet is the aim.

We had a Marathon bar in the UK too. In 1990, they were renamed Snickers to fall in line with the rest of the world. In 2020, Mars Wrigley brought it back for a limited three month stretch. I even get Snickers here; it's the only western chocolate widely available in China.

I've only once seen donkey in a market. That was in a small Yunnan village in 1998. The poor beast's head had been removed and propped up on the vendor's table as an advertisement or to prove the meat's provenance. Here, I've never seen it in any supermarket. The only place to buy it seems to be in restaurants which serve the meat. They will sell you a jin or two (a jin=500g) raw. I've often bought in the past to cook myself but my local place closed down a couple of years back, so I'm glad to find this new place. The same applies to horse meat. I can get both from the delivery app. Donkey Meat

I was delighted tonight to find on my delivery app 小炒驴肉 (xiǎo chǎo lǘ ròu) - stir fried donkey with garlic, ginger, scallion, hot green chilli, carrot, Shaoxing wine and soy sauce. One of my favourite meats and eats. So tender, lean and nutritional.