liuzhou

Fresh tamarind is sweet and sour. I've never used it in a drink though. I just eat it.

I've seen the frog pizza, but I don't do Pizza Hut. They don't even cook their pizzas in store. They are shipped in pre-assembled, frozen and then microwaved to order. I have nothing against eating frog, though!

That is normal. There have been at least a dozen Japanese restaurants in town which were 100% Chinese owned and staffed. No Japanese involvement. Around 90% of "Indian" restaurants in the UK are Bangladeshi owned and staffed and I read somewhere (Bourdain?) that most cooks in "Chinese restaurants" in the US are Mexican. Extremely few of the western restaurants in China are owned or staffed by westerners.

The same happens here in Asia. There was a Thai restaurant opened in town a few years back. Everything on their menu was the same Chinese dishes you could find in any restaurant in town, but they had parked a quarter lime on top! Except, it wasn't even lime. It was a local green lemon! They lasted about a month!

That (or something similar) was my favourite in the Malaysian place in town. Made with bighead carp, though here. Still more 'authentic' than most of their menu.

Of course not. These sites are almost all just clickbait. Count the adverts per page. Ridiculous.

Because eating the monarch's dinner is not allowed! It is theft of royal property and therefore causes harm to the monarch. Ridiculous, I know, but.... That's why I emphasised 'technically'. It has never been enforced in modern times and I think never would be.

Eating swans in the UK is decidedly illegal (nothing to do with Henry VIII) - they are protected wildlife birds. When the UK abolished the death penalty in 1969, it was still reserved for a very few crimes, especially treason. Technically eating some swans can be considered treason, and although all death penalties were finally abolished in 1989, it still technically could attract a life sentence. The reason for this is that there is a precedent that the British Crown enjoys ownership of all unmarked mute swans in open water and has done for centuries. The one I sampled as a schoolboy was definitely mute (on account of being dead) but wasn't in open waters - it was in a sandwich! So, although still illegal to eat, doing so wasn't an act of treason. I'm not aware of any other foods the consumption of which is still considered treason, although history has many examples of such in times past. China has many.

The Malaysian restaurant was a small, casual café-like place and, for obvious reasons, I suppose, leant heavily to the Chinese side of the country’s multi-culturally influenced cuisine. The menu was entirely in Chinese, too so I never really learned the Malay names of many dishes. Looking back, I realise the menu was somewhat clichéd with a heavy reliance on the more obvious ‘famous’ dishes and those they thought would appeal to the locals. 'Foreign' restaurants have never done well here. Malaysian Restaurant - Liuzhou Funnily enough, the young Malaysian woman I met didn’t know it was there until I told her. She was Malay-Chinese, born and raised in Malaysia where she met a young man from Liuzhou and eventually married him and moved here. Anyway, she visited the restaurant and was unimpressed, saying it wouldn’t last long in Malaysia. It didn’t last long here either. Neither did she. After having delivered a healthy bouncing boy, the couple moved back to Malaysia. I didn’t visit the restaurant often, maybe three times maximum, but when I did, I nearly always went for one of the Indian influenced curry dishes. Few curries to be found here and when they do appear they are usually sweet Japanese-style – not my idea of curry. Their fried chicken was acceptable, if not great and they couldn’t mess up nasi goreng. I did eat Bak Kut Teh, there but wasn't knocked out by their version. Incidentally, for many years there has been a hugely popular and more ‘authentic’ Malaysian restaurant in London near where I worked. The name escapes me for the moment, but it was standing room only with long lines every day. There are a few others in London, too.

So happy to see this and delighted you managed for once to take a trip without being sick! Looking forward to more. My local Malaysian restaurant (admittedly not the best in the world) has closed down and my lovely Malay friend has gone home (no connection between the two other than the country), so I'm having Malaysia envy!

Host's note: this and the first many responses were moved from the Gotten any fun stuff lately? topic. I didn't buy this so perhaps doesn't qualify as 'gotten', but I had fun looking it in the bakery as I was picking up some bread. It's a cake. I don't do cake. I don't do swan either, after a less than fun tasting about 70 years ago. I only remember being appalled at how bad it was*! Long story. * Also totally illegal!

I mainly use duck eggs and must confess I prefer to buy those with the green-tinged shells, even though I know there is no real advantage to doing so. They are the same price as the white ones. Now emu eggs are a different story! They are beautiful. Image from Taobao Online Shopping App

Yes. I buy them live. They were still kicking until minutes before they hit the wok.

Generally, yes.

I should have said the white aubergines (and all the others) come in both the long Asian varieties and the western rounded ones more often found in the west. In fact we get long, bulbous and completely round varieties. Here are the long white type.

晒兰 (shài lán) ham and shrimps with green 樟树港辣椒 (zhāng shù gǎng là jiāo), zhangshugang chilli and red 指天椒 (zhǐ tiān jiāo) pointing to heaven chillies, garlic, ginger, Shaoxing wine and Chaoshan fish sauce. Served with rice and stir-fried snow peas.

Yesterday, I had fun shopping in a newish store in Nanning, the provincial capital an hour south of Liuzhou by bullet train. Its game is importing ingredients from Thailand and Vietnam as well as other SE Asian countries. I’ve often moaned here about not being able to get these goodies despite us bordering Vietnam and only three hours from Bangkok. So, I bought some eggplants / aubergines which I posted here in the relevant topic. Here are a couple more purchases which don’t have a dedicated topic or really merit one. First up is Alpinia galanga, galingal, Thai: ข่า (kha), Vietnamese: riềng nếp; Chinese: 高良姜 (gāo liáng jiāng). I was able to source this occasionally in the past, but this new place will hopefully be more reliable. Galingal Next we have something I am more excited about. This is the first time for me to find it here, although I’m told it is native to and still grows in neighbouring Yunnan province. They must keep it all for themselves! Boesenbergia rotunda, fingerroot, Thai: กระชาย (krachai); Vietnamese: ngải bún or nga truật; Chinese: 凹唇姜 (āo chún jiāng). The English name, one of many, is derived from its appearance. The Chinese name literally means ‘concave lip ginger’, which is derived from who knows what? That'll come in handy! Both of these are in the ginger family, but are subtly different in taste from other members and each other.

Yes, it's the same here. Eggs are laid out in the market all year round. I don't recall seeing any fridges in the markets. Supermarkets have fridges, but no eggs in there. I wash mine immediately before cooking to remove any 'dirt'; until then they sit there as they came from nature. In the last 28 years, I've only found one bad egg and that was a man. 坏蛋 (huài dàn) 'bad egg' is slang for 'a scoundrel' or 'absolute bastard'. Unwashed eggs in my local market - sitting in baskets on the ground.

So far as I know, only America washes eggs. It is ridiculous to wash off the egg's natural protective coat then have to refrigerate them. No one here in China would dream of refrigerating eggs. Also in the UK and some other countries, all chickens must be vaccinated against salmonella, so that issue doesn't arise.

@DesertTinker My apologies; 'chicken egg' should read 'lemon'. I did take another photograph (not relevant here) with an egg for scale and confused myself, then you!

Yes. I do sometimes use the small bitter ones to counteract sweet stuff. But generally I do have a relatively high bitterness tolerance.

By apple eggplant, do you mean the first one in this post? They can be eaten raw, just like apples.

They may not have been the same plant. Here (centre) are some white eggplants in a market in Ho Chi Minh City / Saigon, Vietnam with chicken eggs in front of them.

Today, to amuse myself and hopefully any of you who have a sense of humour and wonder, I did some aubergine shopping. I never buy eggplants because they don't exist. So, here are my purchases. First up these green(ish) ones. I have included a regular chicken egg for scale. These are common across SE Asia and south-east China. They can be eaten raw, but I usually cook them. Then these: They are tiny and can be quite (OK. very) bitter but I like bitter. My left hand for scale. And finally my all-time favourite. The reason why certain people call them eggplants. White aubergines. Again common in SE Asia, especially Vietnam in my experience, but also here in the last year or two. Again they are about egg-sized or smaller. The last image is from my shopping app. They haven't arrived from Yunnan yet. On track for tomorrow.

More soybean ‘extractions’. At around 20% in dried beans, soy beans contain more oil than any other beans and this too is extracted to make 大豆油 (dà dòu yóu), soybean oil for cooking, but also has industrial uses. Although I can buy it easily, it is not the oil of choice in this part of China, where the locals prefer peanut oil. However, soy oil is the world’s most common cooking oil, with most of it being in otherwise unidentified ‘vegetable oil’ or ‘salad oil’. Soybean Oil The extraction process has led to a particular by-product polluting not the earth, although it does that too, but the minds and bodies of the unwary! In the 1960s, in cooperation with big agriculture interests, the huge scandal-ridden American agribusiness outfit, Archer-Daniel-Midland Company, commonly known as ADM, invented a new product which they patented and trademarked as TVP® which stands for ‘Toxic Vegan Plague’! They pretend it stands for ‘Textured Vegetable Protein®’, to fool the unsuspecting. Don’t believe them! Terrible Vegetarian Propaganda! It was initially tested on kids in school meals and prisons raising all sorts of moral issues. It is basically the dregs of the oil production process, but would be more accurately described as textured soy protein (TSP) as TVP® is also made from plants other than soy, such as peanuts. Whatever the source, it is widely used in processed ‘foods’ and fake ‘meats’ for people who refuse to eat meat but like to pretend they are eating meat. It is still used in prisons and schools to save money feeding the captives who would prefer to eat real meat!