liuzhou

Beef marinated with garlic, ginger, Guizhou bullet head chillies, fresh green Sichuan peppercorns, potato starch and Shaoxing wine then stir fried with okra. Finished with a little soy sauce and coriander leaf.

I decided to check further into the confusion about Guizhou Bullet Head and Facing Heaven Peppers and have concluded they sure ain't the same cultivar. Here are specimens of each as sold dried in the supermarket now.

Sad to hear this. Always a great contributer.

The plating doesn't impress me much. Looks like they threw it onto the plates from a great height, too.

These little beauties turned up in the supermarket this mornng. First time I've seen them here. They are dried 贵州子弹头 (guì zhōu zǐ dàn tóu) - Bullet Head Chillies from Guizhou Province. The interwebs seem to confuse them with Facing Heaven cillies, but although the heat level is similar, the shape is very different. That said they could happily be used in Sichuan recipies. Mid to hot in heat and carry a fruity profile.

Scrambled egg on buttery muffins.

Fish is traditional for Chinese New Year, so I repurposed it . I get to have two New Years a year. Paper bag fish. Tilapia cooked in a foil wrap. In local restaurant.

Here we go again. Another day, another year. We made it!

Things can only get better.

via Twitter Jack's Saloon at Camp Claiborne, L.A., 1940s

Indeed! I've never eaten canned asparagus of any sort, nor am I ever likely to do so.

One of the best starters I ever had was in a one-M star restaurant in London many years ago. It was three spears of asparagus wrapped in filo / phylo pastry and baked/roasted.

I have no knowledge of the book other than that it exists. I've never seen Red Boat either in Vietnam or anywhere else, but I do know it is a superior product. I base this on the opinions of Vietnamese cooks in the USA and England, especially Christine Hà who told me about the book and her opinion of the product. It is incredibly pure.

I wouldn't. You have to be pretty careful not to burn them first time round.

I don't have a dishwasher. Don't want one.

I can only think of one thing that I avoid doing. Breaking down a chicken? No problem. Boning a duck? Great fun. Filetting a fish? Ditto. Chopping onions? A breeze. Prepping squid? My favourite kitchen job! But one of my favourite dishes is 辣子鸡 (là zi jī ) or chicken in chillies. This Sichuan dish requires that 50 grams of dried chillies be snipped in half and then as many of the seeds as possible removed. I'm not squeamish about it or worried about the heat or anything similar. It's just plain boring and always takes longer than you can imagine. 50 g of dried chillies is more than you might think. So I have to work myself up to it. This means I don't eat it as often as I would like. I need to find a volunteer chilli snipper.

Marmite morning. Marmite on toasted baguette washed down with Marmite "tea"* * Just a teaspoon of Marmite in a cup of boiling water with a little freshly ground black pepper.

Tasted better than it looked. Brined chicken cooked 1-10-10; 黑皮鸡枞菌 (hēi pí jī cōng jūn), 'black skin chicken fir mushrooms', Oudemansiella raphanipes stir fried with garlic. Served with orzo and, for kick, some real Sriracha sauce from Thailand (not pictured).

I thought I had posted this Christmas morning breakfast, but it seems not. A long standing tradition back in Britain last century was to have smoked Scottish salmon, but none of that here. Instead hot smoked sturgeon with its own wonderful caviar. Accompanied by champagne, of course.

No comment.

Just squeezing into 2021, this is due to be published on the 28th December. It will be a late Christmas gift to myself.

Oyster mushrooms come in many colours ranging from white through brown to yellow, red and even blue. My local stores and markets always have at least three or four varieties. and here are the king mushrooms (aka eryngii) More information here.

This morning a German woman who lives here gave me these two boxes of cake and cookies she had baked. Big surprise. I hardly know her.

酒鬼花生 (jiǔ guǐ huā shēng) - Drunkard's Peanuts Salted roast peanuts to which I added some shichimi togarashi. Beer food.