liuzhou

I have discovered that the majority of quails here are used for pet food - particularly cat food. It seems the locals are only really interested in the eggs. My supermarket stopped stocking them about 5 years ago. That does mean, though, that quails are dirt cheap online. If I buy 20 quick frozen oven ready birds (intended for human consumption), they work out at 86 cents USD each. Buy only 10 and that rises to $1.28. Must check my freezer space.

Lays do do a Mexican Tomato and Chicken chip, at least here in China. See top left.

Good help is indeed hard to find and I haven't found it yet! I need to get hold of a new batch of caltrops and experiment. Probably, I'll get a new tool thrown in which is just as well, because I just realised she may have binned that too. It isn't where I left it!

I presume you are referring to the water caltrops. If you can get them open and like fresh water chestnuts, then you are in luck. You can drop them into soups, stews and hotpots, but most people just eat them from the shell.

A double apology. First, I believe I posted this and was then hospitalised and largely out of contact. No one did supply a guess, which brings me to the second apology. Apologies for posting something so obscure. I guess you don't see many water caltrops round your way. I bought a bunch (they are similar in taste to water chestnuts but a different shape. That tool came with them and is intended to aid in opening the stubborn little shits! Water caltrops I never got to test it as the woman whom I pay to clean my apartment decided she didn't know what they were and binned them while I was in hospital. She also binned my dish draining rack (go figure?), my shrimp knife and at least one oyster knife along with a priceless* piece of artwork that I loved and treasured. My famous half a plate - gone! There may be other things missing. I'm not accusing her of theft; I just honestly think that she has no idea and anything alien to her must be garbage. Including me. I have now binned her. *Some spell that "worthless".

Dinner: 酸菜鱼 (suān cài yú) - Sichuan Fish with Pickled Mustard Greens. This is a classic Sichuan stewed fish special, but not so well-known abroad. It is popular throughout China. Most internet recipes suggest using catfish, which makes sense, but I've often had it with carp or tilapia. It is important to use a fairly firm-fleshed freshwater fish. This is a very spicy dish with facing heaven chilli peppers and copious Sichuan peppercorns, as well as doubanjiang. There is a reasonably authentic recipe here, should you wish to have a go at making it. The only difficulty may be sourcing the pickled mustard greens (which are the heart of the dish) but your local Asian market should be able to supply it. 酸菜 (suān cài) Pickled Mustard Greens I was wary of ordering it as it's normally a large dish meant for sharing, but they did a sensible sized one-man version and were generous with the fish. It was GOOD.

8. 酸肉和酸鱼 (suān ròu hé suān yú) Miao Maidens One of the more unusual gastronomic delights among the ethnic minorities is 酸肉和酸鱼 (suān ròu hé suān yú) - the pickled pork and pickled fish which are essential foods for the Miao and Dong peoples. These are sacrificed in their ancestor worship festivities and also served to entertain guests. Pickled fish and pickled duck are indispensable to wedding receptions, funerals, to welcome new babies etc. A large pickled goose is considered a great gift. More than half of the dishes in a Dong meal will be pickled. You could almost say, for the Dong, if it isn’t pickled; it isn’t food. The following is compiled from various descriptions by Miao and Dong friends so please take it as it comes. I have edited it slightly, but been careful to change nothing significant. For what follows, it is essential, I think, to show you and explain the pickle jars to which it refers. Luckily, I have two to hand! My other is plain glass, so harder to photograph. This jar can contain 5kg of water (1⅓ US gallons), but they come both smaller and much larger. Like most of these jars, it is in three parts: the main container; an internal lid and an external lid. The neck of the jar has a reservoir into which the external lid fits. The reservoir is then filled with water forming an airtight seal. Simple but effective. Pickle Jar Internal View and Reservoir Space With Internal Lid With External Lid and Water to Seal The story: The pickled pork comes in bright colours: the skin is yellow, the fat is milky white, and the lean meat is dark red. Each piece of meat has a few grains of rice or pepper attached, and has a fragrant taste. The skin is crisp, the meat is fresh, the pickling is moderate, and the aroma is pervasive, but pleasant. It tastes refreshing and has no greasy feeling. When eating, the diners sprinkle the pickled meat with dry spice powder. Pickled Pork Cooking Methods 1. Put the raw meat with skin on a charcoal fire. It's better to use pork head meat and remove the bones. Burn the skin and scrape away the blackened results with a knife. The purpose is to remove hair and dirt. Do not scrape with water. After scraping and the skin is golden yellow, then cut into thin slices and placed in a pot. Pour prepared salt, pepper, saltpetre, and dried glutinous rice into the pots of the meat and mix evenly. The usual mix is 40g salt, 25g peppercorns, 10g saltpetre and 100g glutinous rice for 500g fresh pork. 2. Put the washed pickle jar upside down with the mouth of the jar down, and use the smoke from the embers to smudge the jar for 2 to 3 minutes, so that the smoke flavour in the jar is lingering, and then the jar is placed in a positive position. Squeeze the pork meat with the hand and then put a piece of burning red charcoal into the jar on the pressed pork noodles. At the same time, add the jar cover and seal it with water. Place it in a cool and dry place and pay attention to always keeping the jar sealing water sufficient. When the pickling is mature (usually 10 days in summer and two weeks in winter), you can open the jar and eat the meat. 3. Notes A. When the jar is installed, it is not advisable to overfill with meat. It is necessary to leave a certain space. Generally, the meat surface should be 2 to 3 inches from the mouth of the jar; B. During the period of pickling, the lid should not be opened, otherwise air will enter and the meat will be mildewed; C. After removing any food, you should cover the jar quickly and keep the water in the tray so that it is always in a sealed state. Generally, the maximum storage time of pork in the jar after opening the lid is about 3 months. I've posted this before, but it is both informative and amusing (unfortunate typo). Note: 酸 (suān) means both 'sour' and 'pickled'. I prefer 'pickled' for foodstuffs, but I often see it translated as 'sour', as here. Pickled Fish For more on Miao and Dong people and their food see these two topics: and

Last night I ordered some seafood fried rice. It doesn't look like much, but it was very good. Plenty of shrimp, squid and fat juicy mussels. One to repeat.

No. There is only about a teaspooon of filling in each dumpling. The pork is ground (actually chopped) to a very fine paste and it cooks very quickly.

I saving this for the Guangxi Gastronomy topic, but it fits here, too so. A Chinese treatment - 烤鹌鹑 (kǎo ān chún) - Grilled Quail. Butterflied, generously sprinkled with cumin and chilli powders and grilled over charcoal - finished with sesame seeds. A popular late night snack sold on the streets.

7. 糯米 (nuò mǐ) As in the rest of southern China, the staple food in Guangxi is rice (Northern China tends more to wheat.) So, you will find that the majority of noodles here are rice noodles (米粉 - mǐ fěn*), although we can buy wheat noodles, too. The standard expression 你吃饭了吗 (nǐ chī fàn le ma), literally meaning ‘have you eaten rice’ is used as a greeting – it isn’t an invitation to dinner. Nor are you expected to answer with a list of what you have eaten in the last 24 hours, any more than "how are you?" is an invitation to list every disease you have ever suffered or imagined suffering. The ethnic minorities, including the Zhuang and especially the Miao, Dong, Yao, Mulam, Maonan etc favour 糯米 (nuò mǐ) which is glutinous rice, also known as ‘sticky rice’. Like all rice, glutinous rice contains two starches: amylose and amylopectin in varying proportions. Glutinous rice contains higher amounts of amylopectin which gives it its glue-like nature. NOTE: Rice, sticky or glutinous or otherwise does not contain gluten! The names are similar simply because gluten is also sticky. So is maple syrup but I don’t see people avoiding that! Celiac people can eat rice without fear! Contrary to much of the wisdom on the internet, glutinous rice comes in both long and short grain types, although the latter is much more common. As well as being a staple, eaten with every meal, glutinous rice is used in festivities and at weddings etc. The dish below, 五色糯米饭 (wǔ sè nuò mǐ fàn) – 5-colour glutinous rice - is a favourite at festivals. Some of the rice is coloured using vegetable dyes; some (purple and red) are natural. I first ate it at a wedding in a Dong village near Liuzhou city. The glutinous rice is also used to make rice wine with which to prolong the celebrations! It is also used in the manufacture of Shaoxing wine, etc. * 米粉 - mǐ fěn is often mistranslated by computer translation systems as 'rice powder'. It is true that 粉 (fěn) can mean powder, here it is refering to powdered rice (i.e. rice flour) which is used to make the noodles, so 米粉 is kind of an abbreviation.

Pork, egg and bread for breakfast. What 's wrong with that? 肉包 (ròu bāo) - Pork baozi and 蛋饺 (dàn jiǎo) - Pork dumplings with egg wrapper. The danjiao are similar to jiaozi, but the wrapper is a tiny omelette (ya boo hiss to those show-offs with their one egg omelettes. These 5 dumplings used two eggs between them and there was some leftover! Half egg omelettes!) They are made in a ladle held over the gas burner. It is filled with egg and briefly heated so that the egg in contact with the metal begins to set, then the rest of the egg is poured off to be used for the next one. When the wrapper is almost fully set, the filling is added and the wrapper folded. Flip the thing over to finish. The whole cook takes seconds. Popular as a dim sum 点心 (diǎn xin) item round here. Or served in soup.

Simply roasted. Season liberally and generously drizzle with olive oil. 8 to 10 minutes in a 200℃ oven.

I would love to know when they did their research. I'm betting 2017 -2018. They are a bit coy about that information, just saying 'in recent years'. Even Wikipedia would question that! Anyway, let's not get too off-topic.

Why do I have five oyster knives? And no oysters?

I am aware of another study published in 2005 in which researchers looked into how the introduced species had an impact on the native population on Daishan Island in the east of China. I've only read the abstract which I quote (with due citation). This is something I'm more interested in. Citation: Zhengjun Wu, Yiming Li, Yanping Wang, and Michael J. Adams "Diet of Introduced Bullfrogs (Rana catesbeiana😞 Predation on and Diet Overlap with Native Frogs on Daishan Island, China," Journal of Herpetology 39(4), 668-674, (1 December 2005). https://doi.org/10.1670/78-05N.1 Accepted: 1 August 2005; Published: 1 December 2005

That the frogs were introduced is exactly what I suspected.The study seems to be addressing the issues I mentioned, many of which have since been addressed. Thanks.

6. 牛蛙 (niú wā) Yet another benefit of the rice paddies are of course frogs and there are plenty round here. I often meet them as I walk around the city. 25 years ago, I lived in Hunan on the edge of a rice paddy and every evening I was treated to a chorus that would have made McCartney realise the futility of writing that dreadful song of his. At that time, the frogs were mainly wild yellow frogs, but in recent years bullfrogs* have all but taken over. Yellow Frogs in My Local Supermarket In 2017, a craze for bullfrog consumption hit Shanghai’s restaurant scene and spread out from there. Previously, they were mainly only eaten in the countryside where they were found. They are now incredibly popular and are being extensively farmed to meet the demand. There was a dip in the market a few years ago, when a number of less scrupulous individuals were raising the frogs in unsanitary conditions and there were a number of food poisoning incidents. To this day, my dear friend J won’t touch frogs, despite the cute branding of the restaurant. However, the government cracked down and the industry has revived. My local shopping mall has three frog restaurants all doing good business. There are also about twenty peddling their wares on the delivery service I use. Also, the supermarkets and markets all serve live frogs. My place of choice has a number of sharing dishes on offer - the Chinese love to share food. As I remember from the top of my head they offer Mala** Bullfrog, Hot and Sour Bullfrog, Pickled Pepper Bullfrog and Garlic Bullfrog, Cumin Bullfrog. There are others. As you can probably guess from this, these frogs are often served Sichuan style as it is considered that they benefit from a bit (a lot) of spice – I can’t agree more. Sichuan restaurants across China are now offering the likes of 宫保牛蛙 (gōng bǎo niú wā), which America would call Kung Po Frog, and other travesties. ** Mala is the flavour of Sichuan Peppercorns (ma) and Chilli (la). So, here is my dinner tonight, 麻辣味牛蛙 (má là wèi niú wā) Mala* Bullfrog as advertised on the delivery app. Now I should address the question I always get asked. "Do you only eat the legs or ...? The frogs are dispatched by being beheaded (a swift swipe of the cleaver) and the head discarded . They are gutted and then everything else is chopped up, skin, bones and all. This is the food. These are not creatures for the bone haters. We suck every bit of meat off those bones. Perceived wisdom is that, sort of like the shrimps's head having the most flavour, with frogs it's the toes! * I've been trying to find out if the bullfrogs are native to China or are American bullfrogs which have been introduced. Unfortunately, this information has been hidden by the communist party so that they can have their meetings in peace. Google is inaccessible at the moment, as are most websites. I'll get back to this later. I suspect they have been introduced, though. See also here, for something I forgot to add.

5. 发糕 (fà gāo) A quick one today and one I'm not that interested in but for the sake of completeness, I bring you 发糕 (fà gāo), a kind of steamed sponge cake. These are made in huge flat pans then cut into squares or cubes for sale. The Chinese version of Tik-Tok is full of videos of people slicing them. Why? The only flavour (and colour) comes from the red sugar used. It is way too sweet for me, but I suppose it's good that in a country which usually overdecorates cakes in garish colours, something plain is a clear winner.

Well, I have finished my exhaustive study into the uses my friends and neighbours put dried figs to and can report. I’m reliably informed that the vast majority are simply rehydrated and eaten as a table fruit. However some are made into a sort of tisane or fruit ‘tea’. However the suggestion I got most, apart from just eating the thing was to make a 煲汤 (bāo tāng). 煲汤 (bāo tāng) is the Mandarin verb ‘to simmer’ but is also used as a noun to describe a type of restorative soup given to invalids or hypochondriacs. As the name suggests it is a long simmered soup, usually rather simple, consisting of a bone stock (pork or chicken) with a few added ingredients matched to the ailment in traditional Chinese medicine. Most of these symptoms are stunningly vague, so pretty much anything goes, including dried figs. I have no intention of simmering bones for hours and throwing in some figs, just for your amusement, so here’s a picture of a totally different 煲汤 (bāo tāng). This one is a pork bone stock (the bones have been simmered so long they are crumbling away). In the stock is 海带 (hǎi dài) - Kelp – the seaweed. No doubt as a cure for drowning. There was also some ginger and a few yellow soy beans. No one was willing to give an opinion on what the figs might be good for.

My oven back in London is a 1970s model conventional / convection oven. Still working, I'm told. Never had an air fryer, but it's just a little convection oven, isn't it?

I woke this morning absolutely starving. I'm not sure why. So I ordered breakfast. I ordered two! 1. 皮蛋瘦肉粥 (pí dàn shòu ròu zhōu) - Pidan (Century Egg) Lean Pork Congee. Doesn't look like much, but it was tasty and filled most of the void. This, I'm told, is the most popular of all the congees locally. 2. 上海汤包 (shàng hǎi tāng bāo ) - Shanghai Soup Dumplings. These had suffered in the journey and a couple had burst spilling their soupy contents. Came with my dip of choice. You can have no dip, vinegar, chilli oil or vinegar and chilli oil. I chose the latter. It comes in these little catering packs. I should have said no dip - I have better vinegar and chilli oil at home, anyway! It also came with an unadvertised pack of Chillied Dried Daikon Radish - the Chinese pickle Korea likes to claim to have invented. Yes, It's basically what they call 'kimchi' but has been known in China much longer as 泡菜 (pào cài). So having had two breakfasts and started a war, I'll go off and think about lunch.

Another serious problem with western food in China is the almost ever-constant lack of seasoning. I have the idea that Chinese chefs and cooks are so used to seasoning with soy sauce etc that they never think to reach out for the salt. I've lost count of how many times I've been served fries without a trace of salt; same with salads. At one time, I used to carry a bunch of those little salt packets you get in western fast food places (they don't have here - I'd load up in airports etc) . Later I gave up doing that; I just gave up western food, After all, it was seldom worth seasoning!

While we wait to find out how Chinese people use figs, an interesting / amusing aside. The Chinese name for figs is 无花果 (wú huā guǒ) which literally means 'no flower fruit'; something of a misnomer. In fact, figs are more likely to be no fruit flowers. The first 'fruit' of figs and the one most eaten is, in fact, tiny flowers encased in a shell. Only the second 'fruiting' bears true fruit, but many figs never get that far. Not many people know dat!

Yes. Nothing like fondant potatoes. Except they are potatoes.