liuzhou

Indeed, but Xi'an isn't low-carb. It's bitterly cold there in winter and the locals like to fill up on bread and wheat noodles. I had a look at Famous Food's menu online. It's quite limited. For comparison, here is the menu from my local restaurant from 1996, when I lived in Xi'an. That place really became my dining room! Ignore the prices. They are 25 years old. Thought it might be of some interest. My translation. Any errors entirely mine. Xi'an.doc

Another mystery today. These are labelled as 黄尾鱼 (huáng wěi yú) which translates as “Yellowtail fish’. Given that hundreds of different species are labelled as ‘yellowtails’, this is less than unhelpful. They are about 15 – 18 cm / 6 - 7 inches long and I would classify them as an oily species, similar in taste to mackerel, but not so strong. I like them a lot and would love to finally nail down an identification. They are usually gutted and fried whole, but would work well on a grill, too I suppose.

Just a small dinner cooked by some friends' 23-year-old daughter.

This was unexpected, but when It turned up I knew immediately who had sent it. About a week ago, I had a conversation with a friend who is from and still lives in Yunnan province in the south of China, bordering Burma/Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam and Tibet as well as Guangxi where I am. It is largely a rural area with many ethnic minority peoples. Anyway, said friend (delightfully her given name is 莹莹 pronounced "YIng Ying"), and I were chatting about foreigners' perceptions of China and, in passing, I mentioned that most foreigners think China doesn't do dairy - especially cheese. She found this hilarious. Yunnan is famous for its cheeses, as are Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang regions in the north and west of the country. Yunnan specialises in goat's milk cheeses. This evening, this unexpectedly arrived on my doorstep. I haven't tried it yet. Maybe after dinner. I will report back.

The Chinese love 鱿鱼 (yóu yú), Squid. 70% of the world’s catch is landed in China. In order to satisfy the demand, fleets of boats travel all over the oceans in search of the shrinking squid populations. This naturally causes disputes and recently the Chinese agricultural ministry has announced that they will limit the amount permitted to be caught. Whether they follow up on that remains to be seen. The squid I buy is fished in the Gulf of Tonkin area and landed in the coastal city of Beihai a short way south of me near the border with Vietnam. The city is famous for its squid and squid products. Exactly what species of squid, I’ve never been able to determine. In fact, it may be a mixture of species from the Loligi genus. Public Domain image. It goes by many names in English. I’m using ‘squid’ as it seems to be the oldest, but it is also known as ‘calamari’ (in various spellings), cuttlefish, pen fish etc. Of course, they aren’t fish, but cephalopods. Here, I never let the fish sellers clean them for me. They only know one recipe and always prep the critters for that dish. There is nothing wrong with that dish (I often make it myself), but I also use it in different ways. Anyway, I like cleaning squid! Although, they occasionally surprise me. Surprise! Squid hadn't finished dinner. Now he's my dinner. Their preferred dish is made by removing the innards, then cutting open the body sac and scoring a cross-hatch pattern before cutting them into bite size pieces. These and the tentacles are then stir fried with garlic, ginger and chillies along with snow peas, before being dressed with soy sauce. The snow peas go in early as the squid is only fried for the briefest of times. Once it curls up, it’s done. I never order this in restaurants; it's always overcooked. The skin is edible, but is normally removed for aesthetic reasons. Cross-hatched squid To my eternal amsement they also do squid tentacles which they call 鱿鱼须 (yóu yú xū, literally 'squid beards'). And dinner... Squid with snow peas We also get baby squid which are cleaned but left whole and stir fried. Baby Squid I should note here that the 'salt and pepper squid' which seems to appear on so many 'Chinese' restaurant menus, I've never seen here. It may exist somewhere, but... Also very popular is dried squid which comes in many forms. I see it as whole animals and as strips sold as snacks. Many bars will serve you some dried squid with dips as beer food. Apart from t hat it is also used to add unami to soups and hotpots etc. Whole Dried Squid Dried Squid Strips Dried squid served with dips in a local bar. Top: soy sauce and fake wasabi. Bottom: Black rice vinegar. And if you still haven't had enough:

Fish and chips! Finally got round to cooking my pangasius / basa fish from here. And jolly good it was too! Still have two more half fillets in the freezer for later.

I make it three. The aforementioned 'squab'. 'Oystern' unless it's some obscure dialect plural. And "Holliday fruit cake' unless Billlie made it⁈

"The menu for Thanksgiving dinner at the United States Military Academy in 1916 also showed a daily menu at USMA in November of 1820 taken "from an old record."

By emissions they mean climate changing emissions in general; not just flatulent emissions, human or bovine. There are others.

Image by Totti - This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. This is a fish I rarely see. In fact, it’s been about two years. For good reason. This is 石斑鱼 (shí bān yú - literally ‘stone spotted fish’), Epinephelus akaara, Grouper, specifically Hong Kong Grouper. Groupers are, again, a huge family. The HK grouper is native to the East China sea from Japan and down to the Tonkin Gulf, passing HK en route. The species is considered to be endangered due to over-fishing. China, excluding Hong Kong, has introduced some controls. Farming the fish has proved unsuccessful as few of the hatchlings survive. When it was available it was, like so many other varieties, mainly steamed and dressed with soy sauce. I hope it recovers.

Men’s meat-heavy diets cause 40% more climate emissions than women’s, study finds I resisted the temptation to make some crude joke, but this is interesting, if unsurprising.

I mentioned in this post that, when the fish counter staff clean your fish for you, they will try to hold on to the creatures’ float bladders (aka fish maws) in order to sell them separately. Another part they like to collect is the liver. Again, these will be sold separately, even though they made up part of the weight which determined how much you were to be charged. Float bladder (maw) OK. They don’t usually weigh much and one won’t go far in feeding a family. But some can be sizeable. What I see in the supermarket is this. These are freshwater 鱼肝 (yú gān) fish livers - mainly from various carp . That ¥9.80 is the equivalent of $1.54 USD for 500 grams / 1.1 lbs. These are best fried and, in my home, eaten on toast. My neighbours probably don’t know what toast is. They are mild tasting and not overly fishy - the livers, not my neighbours. They taste of pork and some definitely seem a bit fishy. If you get the chance to buy a monkfish liver 安康鱼肝 (ān kāng yú gān), jump at it. They are delicious. Like eating foie gras by the beach. They cost more. Last time I bought them, they were ¥65 per 500 g. These I like to briefly brine (usually in soy sauce and vinegar) then steam in foil wrappers. I've also happily eaten them raw as sashimi in Japan. Monkfish Liver Strangely, although I can get the monkfish liver, I've never seen monkfish among any fishmongers' wares in China. It is available frozen, online.

I like me a good bhuna. Last time I had one was in Hong Kong about 10 years ago. Good Indian food in HK.

For a long time I've been puzzling over what these are. The are labelled as 芒鱼 (máng yú). Google does turn up a few similar looking fish, but the vast majority look nothing like these. Today I worked out what they are! They are about 30 cm - 51 cm / 12" - 20" long, dark skinned on the back and lighter on the belly and shiny bodied. I was fairly sure that they were a seawater species, but whether they were just a local or more widely distributed one, had no idea. One suggestion that they are caught in coastal areas around Guangdong and Hong Kong proved false. I decided we really needed a better look at the mysterious 芒鱼 (máng yú), particularly its unusual head. Today, I looked a bit more closely. And got some stats. The fellow below is 48 cm / 19 inches from tip of nose to end of tail. It weighs 1.2 kg or 2.7 lbs before evisceration. They are a river fish, but imported from Vietnam's Mekong Delta where the fish enjoy the brackish water, hence them being included in the seafood sections of the supermarkets. Yes it's good old pangasius / basa fish as discussed above. Apparently, the 芒鱼 term is a Cantonese translation of the scientific name for the entire genus, although Cantonese uses the rare character 𩷶 which is not available in Mandarin. He's now sitting in my fridge waiting to become fish and chips for tomorrow's lunch!

Crucian Carp (centre)* Although grass carp (see first post) is probably China's most consumed species of fish, more valued is 鲫鱼 (jì yú), Carassius carassius, the Crucian Carp. Resembling overgrown goldfish, to which they are related, as are all carp, these freshwater fish are native to England but have long since been introduced worldwide. Indeed, they are considered an invasive species in many places. China has been raising carp for over 1,000 years, and until relatively recently, in inland areas such as the land-locked provinces of Sichuan and Hunan, carp was often the only fish easily available and crucian carp were the prime choice. Their flesh is described as “particularly delicious” and “similar to cod”, although they are quite bony. They are generally fried or grilled and sauced or added to hot-pots, stews and soups. It is also used to make a delicious, milky-white fish stock. * Note, in the image above, that the fish is mislabelled as 鲈鱼 (lú yú), a totally different (seawater) species. This is one of the problems I am up against all the time when trying to identify fish. Mislabelling is the norm. The tank also contains (left) the cheaper but less common, 丁桂鱼 (dīng guì yú ) or tench to which I will return. Sweet snd Sour Crucian Carp

They already have been!

That was my understanding. Just checking. My mother never bought anything but lamb's liver (calves' liver was far too expensive) when I was a kid - and she made liver and onions regularly. I was very surprised when I moved to China and ate lunch one day in a small three table restaurant near work. I found 'liver and onions' on their menu. Of course, I ordered it. It was absolutely delicious and only slightly different from my mother's despite the Chinese influences. I asked and found it was pig's liver. Now I regularly and happily eat pig's liver - it and chicken being the only ones I can get. No cows or sheep round these parts. Oh. I do get anonymous fish livers, too. This picture was taken years ago in that very restaurant on a return visit (one of many - it became my work canteen!)

What kind of liver? Which animal?

Dried Sea Cucumber Not quite a fish; more of an etcetera are the 海参 (hǎi shēn) or Sea Cucumbers. These echinoderms are members of the Holothuroidea family which runs to 1,707 species, although only a fraction of these are commercially fished for food. They go by various names: trepang in Indonesia, ナマコ(namako) in Japan , bêche-de-mer in France, etc. They live in large packs on deep ocean floors worldwide and are basically scavengers surviving on plankton and any organic detritus which falls from above. This breaks down the said material allowing its nutrients to recycle. Sea cucumbers are sold both dried and fresh. The dried ones resemble dog turds more than they do cucumbers. The live ones are not much better – slimy and utterly pointless. They taste of nothing but rubber. Smelly, tasteless rubber. Yet they are inexplicably loved by many in China and other parts of Asia. So much so, that in 2013, the Chinese government banned its officials from eating them at official banquets. Civil servants all across the country were paying fortunes for them and apart from the perceived greed, the strain on the public purse was just too much. I’m told wild Alaskan specimens were the most highly valued. Fresh Sea Cucumbers This ban didn’t help the creatures, though. The prices tumbled after the ban and sales went up, this time to private citizens attracted by the new lower prices. Sea cukes require boiling in water for about a week before being fried or stewed in sauces where they may soak up some flavour. They pair well, I’m told by enthusiasts, with mushrooms. Waste of some good mushrooms, if you ask me. They are also used in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), particularly in cancer cases, but the American Cancer Society has said

Fresh hand pulled noodles fried with pork (marinated in Shaoxing with garlic and ginger), fresh shiitake mushrooms, shimeji mushrooms, snow peas and chilli. Finished with a little soy sauce made from black soy beans. Would have added chopped scallions , but didn't have any. Veg Mise

I grew up on 'butter beans'. Loved them. They are Lima beans by another name. The more common name in the UK. They were served as a side vegetable in the lunch canteen when I was in junior school. I even have a can here.

I had just posted the above when this landed in my email. https://www.seafoodsource.com/news/premium/supply-trade/growing-us-sales-lift-vinh-hoan-s-export-earnings-in-october

There is nothing wrong with this fish! It wouldn’t be my death-row last wish fish, but I’ll scoff it down in less troublesome times. 巴沙鱼 (bā shā yú), Pangasius bocourti, Basa Fish is one of the world’s most under-rated fish while also being unjustly libelled and vilified in certain sectors. Known variously as “basa” or “river cobbler” in the UK, "basa fish", “swai” or "bocourti" in the US and Australia and “dory" in parts of SE Asia, this is a freshwater type of catfish, native to the Mekong river in Vietnam where it is extensively farmed. In Vietnamese, it is “cá ba sa”. It is also found in Thailand’s Chao Phraya river basin where they call it "ปลาเผาะ (plā p̄heāa)”. China farms it in lesser amounts. Basa Ramen Much of the species is sold as frozen fillets. The mild-tasting flesh of the fillets is firm, white and boneless with a texture not dissimilar to that of cod or haddock. In fact, it has been illegally sold as cod in some fish and chip shops in the UK. It can be sold legally if described simply as “fish and chips”, but “cod and chips” must be cod. I have often used it happily in fish and chips when cod was unavailable, as well as using it in fish stews and soups. For more information on the vilification may I refer you to this 2013 article on “the money-maker that nobody loves”? For a more recent report see this 2020 “more balanced appraisal of Vietnam’s pangasius sector”. The article includes this video which I will also link to separately for those in a hurry!