liuzhou

Although Chinese bouillon cubes certainly exist, they are somewhat uncommon. Every kitchen in the land (domestic and professional) has at least one pot of this instead. It goes in everything. Only available as chicken flavour.

There is one type of century egg which is prized over all others, yet they are just a matter of luck, really. With 松花蛋 (sōng huā dàn), literally 'pine flower eggs', the processing of the egg leads to the formation of these 'pine flower' patterns in what was the white of the egg. They make no difference to the taste, at all, but can be very visually attractive. I shelled two eggs this morning for my congee; the first was uniformly black but the second had formed 'pine flowers'. Lucky me! 松花蛋 Both went into the congee which had been slow-cooking all night. Also added some fried lean pork and enjoyed 皮蛋瘦肉粥 (pí dàn shòu ròu zhōu) for breakfast. Looks dull after the pine flowers, but tasted just fine, thank you!

I’m thinking few, if anyone here will be gracing the dinner table with this any time soon. In fact, for most members, it would involve a degree of criminality! In the USA, as I understand it, it is legal to consume this foodstuff, but illegal to import or sell it. Lungs have never been mainstream in the Anglophone nations or in western culture in general (with one honourable exception). Yet, they are common enough in Asian cultures, even appearing as a street food speciality in places. The exception, of course, is in Scotland with the ‘Great Chieftain o’ the Puddin-race!’, my beloved haggis. * referred to as ‘lights’ when used in the culinary sense. Usually from sheep. Haggis (Centre) Here in China, the Sichuan dish 夫妻肺片 (fū qī fèi piàn) is justly famous. This literally means ‘man and wife lung slices’ and consists of beef offal including the tripe, heart, tongue and skin, but is notable for containing zero lungs! Fuchsia Dunlop explains in her The Food of Sichuan (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) that the dish is misnamed , probably because of confusion over similar sounding Chinese characters. But all is not lost. Pig's Lungs 猪肺 (zhū fèi), pig’s lungs are easily available and used in soups and other dishes. These can seem alarmingly large, especially when they are soaked to clean them, but they quickly deflate when cooked and become more manageable. Cleaning the lungs is particularly important and it is best to pump water through them until it runs clear. This can take time and several changes of water. Masochists could seek out a recipe for 杏汁猪肺汤 (xìng zhī zhū fèi tāng), Cantonese almond soup with pig’s lungs. More sensibly, find it in a Hong Kong restaurant. This dish is notoriously difficult to prepare and requires around two hours just cleaning the lungs. Or you can do what I do; let someone else do the work. Lungs are cleaned, prepared and cooked as snack food on the streets and in some supermarkets. Lungs on sticks Not bad, but I'm sticking with my haggis.

Chicken and fresh shiitake fried noodles with the usual Shaoxing, garlic, ginger, chilli, soy sauce, coriander leaf. Fresh hand-pulled noodles. Steam.

13,000 After yesterday's badly fried bread, I was determined to do another poached (duck) egg. Better. Egg was, I like to think, spot on.

I did say in the first post it may not all be in order. Anyway, I see the neck as a main cut and am concentrating more on the less usual parts. But fear not, neck will arrive.

Pidan (皮蛋 -pí dàn) is the Mandarin for ‘century eggs’.

And so we come to the heart of the matter and one of my favourite piggy parts. It’s an extremely busy organ and so is quite lean compared to much of the animal, but not at the cost of flavour. Pig's Heart I am, of course, talking about the pig’s heart. ¾ of a pound / 350 grams of delicious muscle. Enough for two servings. Scale up as required. The heart does not taste or have the same mouthfeel as other pork parts; in fact it’s more like beef in flavour, but a smoother texture, I find. Heart is one of those foods which like, for example, squid, need to be cooked for the briefest possible time or cooked for a very long time. Anything in-between is inedible. I’ve done both and can’t decide which I prefer – except when I’m hungry which is most of the time – then quicker is better! As always the heart is cleaned and any connective tissue, sinews and silver skin removed. There may be some fat around the top; trim away any excess. Some recipes suggest soaking the heart overnight to remove blood and impurities; I’ve never found that to be necessary. | Pig's Heart The heart can be sliced and flash fried or diced marinated overnight in olive oil and herbs of choice, then again fried for 10 minutes at most before serving with a salad and any remaining marinade. For some reason, I find many recipes pair it with carrots. Wouldn’t be my first choice, but then I find carrots boring most of the time*. Here is one French recipe and one Thai/Chinese both featuring carrots. If you want to go the slow cooking route, hearts need a minimum of an hour’s simmering to get them anywhere near tender. Seems like too much trouble for little gain, to me. Beef hearts are rarely available around here and are larger than is practical in my life. I’ve had lamb hearts in northern China and damned good they were, too, but I’ve never seen here. *There are exceptions, I know.

The smoke alarm!

Congee, I find, benefits from egg in all its many guises. Simply boiled then chopped or diced, salted eggs or even a poached egg on top, but my favourite is definitely 皮蛋 (pí dàn), century egg. Which reminds me it's time for me to start a new batch of congee. I do several days worth about twice a week and keep it plain in the fridge. Toppings and additions are added to my bowlful each day depending on my whim. But pidan and minced pork is the most common.

You may, indeed. In the meantime I'll point out that I never said it was implied here, but, as you well know, it is a common error. I merely asked that it not be repeated here. While sushi is often served with raw fish it is not a synonym. Sushi (寿司 or 鮨) refers to 'rice', irrespective of the topping..

We’ve eaten the snout, the tongue, the ears, the brains. We’ve discounted the eyes. Please tell me that you’re not going to throw away what remains of the head just yet. Please, please tell me you have designs on the pork cheeks! Whether slow cooked fresh or cured to make a guanciale-type bacon, these cheap cuts are utterly delicious. And we still won’t be finished with the head. Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) Pork cheeks are one of the most overlooked parts of the pig. They live in a pocket of fat just beneath the eyes, next to the jowls with which they are sometimes confused. They aren’t large to begin with and will shrink more as their fat renders during cooking so you ‘ll need two or three per person for a main dish, depending on the recipe. It is best to sear them in a pan, then slow cook them, giving that fat time to render out and moisten and flavour the flesh. The braising liquid can be enhanced with white wine or, of course, cider. Alternatively, a tomato sauce does no harm, at all. If you fancy a Chinese treatment, this recipe braises them with 5-spice, chillies, Sichuan peppercorns and rice wine or Serious Eats has an adaptation of a Fuchsia Dunlop recipe for braised cheeks with daikon radish, although cauliflower could easily be substituted if preferred. The jowls can also be used in this recipe which has more Cantonese flavours. Finally, should you wish to cure your pig cheeks or jowls to make guanciale-type bacon, here is a method. Note that, depending on weight, it takes between three weeks to four months to cure in the fridge, so isn’t something you decide to do one wet Tuesday afternoon. It takes planning, but is well worth the trouble. This link includes full instructions and a video. Guangiale - Image by Popo le Chien, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. So what do we have left of the head? Teeth and whiskers. Not much we can do with them. I have heard of a fabled Sichuan preparation whereby the animal’s hard upper palate is converted to something chewy but edible by the name of 天堂 (tiān táng), meaning ‘paradise’ but although I’ve seen pictures and it looks like something I’d try, a recipe has so far proved elusive. However, there is one thing left. The stripped skull is sold in markets to be used in making stocks and broths. Bone soup, if you will. How much actual flesh and or collagen remains attached is a matter of luck, but it will probably brighten up your noodle soup.

Well, yes, names vary from place to place in many things.

Can I be briefly pedantic and ask that we get the terminology right? Sushi isn't raw fish! A lot of sushi ingredients are cooked and the key ingredient always is - the rice! Sushi is, at heart, vinegared rice with toppings - sometimes raw; sometimes not. If you just want raw fish, that is sashimi. /endrant

What?? Peanut butter is eaten around the world. It certainly isn't US only. The USA isn't even the top consumer! My local stores in China all carry it as do stores in most SE Asian countries. It's eaten all over Europe, Africa and the Antipodes.

It is ages since I poached an egg. Can't think why. Duck egg with olive oil fried bread. (Somewhat unevenly fried, but no matter.)

Spicy Braised Chicken Hearts

I get through a lot of these - on average ten a week; I have home made 皮蛋瘦肉粥 (pí dàn shòu ròu yù) - Century egg and Pork Congee for breakfast several times a week. I tend to agree with you though; they are best served with a chilli sauce (and a soy dip). They are often served that way as an appetiser in restaurants. I was apprehensive the first time I ate one all those years ago, but really they just taste like very eggy eggs. A lot of the reports are highly coloured by their visual appearance and people forget to describe the taste.

The largest organ we possess is our skin and the same is true for most vertebrates. This is does not go to waste, either. Often known as ’pork rinds’ when used in a culinary manner, the skin is fried or roasted until crisp and sold as a snack food, often with beer. In the USA, this is pork cracklings while in the UK, they are the pork scratchings sold in many pubs. Newfoundland in Canada has its scrunchions, used as a condiment and scattered over some dishes. In South America, Columbia is known for its chicharrones which come in two guises – chicharrón toteado which are made from meatless skin and chicharrón cocho which retains some meat. Mexico, of course, is also famous for chicharrones. In SE Asia, pork rind, known in Vietnamese as tóp mỡ is often added to noodle dishes in Vietnam while in Northern Thailand, แคบหมู (khaep mu) is commonly eaten in Chiang Mai. It is often served with hot chilli sauces and even appears in some salads. Here in China, people often render their own lard from pork fat and skin. The by-product is dry fried pork skin and this is eaten as a snack food or cooks’ treat. Unprocessed pork skin is sold in most supermarkets. Pig Skin Also found in supermarkets is processed pork rinds, often from the animal’s head skin. This is often flavoured with 5-spice or other seasonings, again intended as a snack. Five Spice Pig Skin However, pig skin is also served as a main dish along with its fat and, often chillies. This is cut from the pork belly and is rather popular.

This is where I get grumpy. The internet is full of badly written clickbait informing us of the top 10 or 20 or 100 "grossest foods" in the world. They are nearly all full of innocuous choices and all are stuffed with misinformation. It does NOT take months to make century eggs and they do not stink of ammonia. Of course, the usual cretins line up to record themselves eating these suggestions of what to avoid. Eating something because it is gross is the very antithesis of everything I think food should be about. I recently stumbled across possibly the most illiterate garbage I’ve ever read, informing me that a nearby small town is the world centre for just such a food example and that the locals there regularly wolf it down of an evening. I know the town rather well. I have friends who live there. The article was a complete load of nonsense. The 'writer' claimed that pig’s eyes were being barbecued with chilli and cumin and sold to passing foreign tourists and he did us all the favour of trying one. The problem with that is that the town in question sees a negligible number of foreign tourists. It does see a lot of 90-year-old ex-revolutionaries and students of communism as the town played a small but significant part in Mao’s revolution in 1929. They certainly don’t come looking to chow down on porcine peepers. So, the question arises – do the Chinese eat pig’s eyes? Not in my experience or in that of anyone I have spoken to. The claim that these are being grilled over charcoal in the streets is a total fabrication. My friends who have lived there all their lives have never seen any such thing. They have seen eyes on sale in a market, as have I (hence my picture). They were not being sold for human consumption, although no doubt someone tried – probably while filming it for YouTube or reality television. The idiot who ‘wrote’ the article is very light on any detail of what his supposed meal tasted like or what texture it had. I don’t believe he ever ate any such thing. Sheep’s eyes are eaten in some Arabic countries and in Iceland, but are not regular fare. Fish eyes are popular in China.

Millions did the same and more. Millions still do in parts of the world. And it wasn't / isn't just the odd bits of otherwise famliar animals. People in desperate straits will eat anything. Part of China's nose to tail attitude comes from starvation caused by both natural disasters and Mao-made famines, some in living memory, most recently in the 1950s when it is estimated up to 30 million died. People ate literally anything they could find. Many of my friends remember their childhood as a time of hunger. "Tongue, heart, liver, kidney, brains" would have been luxury.

I am half French. My mother was French. Tongue and offal in general was no stranger to me growing up. One of my earliest memories is of being in my grandmother's kitchen in southern France watching her lift a whole cooked beef tongue from a pan and set it aside to cool, then her slicing it. In my memory, this all took mere seconds, but couldn't possibly have done. It's over 50 years since she left us, but I still never see a bit of tongue without that memory flooding back.

Twenty years ago, Liuzhou made its own 'Yufeng' beer in a local brewery. It was disgustingly unpalatable but delicately flavoured with formaldehyde. I remember being invited to a government sponsored event showcasing local products. Ever single guest refused to drink the beer until some lackeys were sent to replace it with Liquan beer from nearby Guilin city - major embarrassment. The brewery closed down two weeks later! The banquet, I recall, did include pig's ears though, so not all was not lost.

Wonderful resource, thanks. It's going to take some exploring to get the best out of it, but that is an adventure in itself!

Here is the fourth instalment and we still haven’t left the head yet. Nor shall we for a few more days yet. First, we will be talking tongues. Tongues used to be more popular than they are now; time for a revival, perhaps. Get them while they’re still a cheap choice. Pig's Tongue Beef tongues (aka ox-tongue or neat’s tongue) were the main choice in most western countries, usually boiled, roasted or pickled, but in recent years consumption has declined. The problem with beef tongue is its sheer size. They are large and they need cooking whole. For this reason, they were more often cooked by butchers shops and sold by the slice as cold cuts. I remember well being sent off to school, happily clutching my lunch bag of tongue and pickle sandwiches. Pre-cooked beef tongue is still sold by one of my local supermarkets here in China. Cooked and Sliced Beef Tongue But, pig’s tongues have long been number one in those countries where pork is the more popular meat of choice, such as in most of Asia. And they are more manageable in terms of size. The flavour is not so pronounced as that of beef tongues, but that can work to the cook’s advantage, allowing for other flavours to be incorporated. They are also less fatty than beef tongues. 猪舌 (zhū shé), pig’s tongue is by far the main choice here in China, sold in most supermarkets or in the wet markets by the pork butchers. Weighing up to a kilogram / 2.2 lbs at most, they are more suitable for family cooking, but like most hard-working muscles they require long cooking to reach optimum tenderness. This can take at least a couple of hours of boiling, but the tongues are often pressure cooked, drastically reducing the time to around 30 minutes. As ever, they need cleaning first and any connective materials, excess fat etc removed. However , they are cooked with the skin intact. It is removed afterwards. Well, as much as possible; those skins can be tenacious. Then the tongue is sliced and used in whatever recipe the meat is to be finally employed in. I’ve used it in stir fries, fried rice, curries etc, but a favourite is just to eat it cold with pickles. Slow Cooked Pork Tongue I’m not going to list all the places where tongue remains easily available. That covers the globe. It seems to be one of the more acceptable offal choices. Beef tongues are sold by some butchers and pig’s tongues are available in those ethnic markets which have no taboos against pork – Latin American, Asian, and East European in particular. Unlike for some other parts, there are several recipes for tongue on the internet – ranging from Mexican tacos with tongue and avocado to creamy Filipino lengua; from langue de porc a la ravigote from France to Polish ozory w galrecie or jellied tongues. And if that lot doesn’t get you talking in tongues, what will?