liuzhou

1. Those walnuts do look atypically smooth. Perhaps a different cultivar. Perhaps, I should have used this image which is, I think, more typical. 2. Red pistachios. An abomination indeed! Never seen those anywhere in my life and never want to. Why? A bit of digging around provides this weak excuse of an explanation. hmmm!

I have something to get of my chest. 栗子 (lì zi) are trees in the genus Castanea. There are several of such around the northern hemisphere which supply their nuts for human consumption. Here, I want to look mainly at 板栗 (bǎn lì), Castanea mollissima, the Chinese chestnut as these are what are available not only here, but most places. The most common chestnuts, Chinese chestnuts are joined by the European chestnut, C. sativa, aka known as Spanish chestnut; the Japanese chestnut; C. crenata; but sadly not the near-extinct American chestnut, C. dentata. Not chestnuts are the horse chestnuts, which are so-named because they look like chestnuts but are unrelated and mildly poisonous to humans. Neither are water chestnuts which aren’t even nuts in any sense; they are tubers of an aquatic herbaceous plant. Of course, the name chestnut has nothing to do with chests of any sort. It came into English from the French chesteine which in turn came from the Latin name. Chestaine morphed into chesten so we had chesten nuts for a while and this gradually changed into chestnut. Th name derives back to the ancient Greek κάστανον referring to a place called Castania where the nuts were prolific. No one is sure where this place was in Greece and there are competing theories. The Italian polenta was originally made using chestnut flour from antiquity until the 17th century imported the dreaded maize/cØrn instead. Chestnuts are unusual among nuts in that they contain little in the way of protein or fat, instead being mostly carbohydrates. Something to consider if you are avoiding carbs for any reason. Peeled chestnuts As a child in the UK, I loved the smell of roasting chestnuts around this time of year and still associate them with Christmas. Street vendors hawked them on every corner. However the actually chestnuts disappointed, although they were popular. So I was delighted to find the same thing here, not only at Christmas which is not celebrated in China. As in other places, here they are roasted in a mix of salt and sugar. I’d guess this is how most are eaten all across China. Roast Chestnut lady in Liuzhou They are very common and are sold raw and cooked, the latter usually vacuum packed but sometimes frozen, in supermarkets. A number of dishes use them. Fuchsia Dunlop has a recipe for Sichuan chicken and chestnuts in her The Food Of Sichuan (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) as well as a recipe for Red-cooked pork and chestnuts in her The Land of Fish and Rice (eG-friendly Amazon.com link), her book on eastern Chinese cooking. My take on Chicken and Chestnuts Sichuan style - not pretty but tasty. There are other regional variations on the chicken dish. I often make the Sichuan version in winter. The chestnuts give a texture like roast potatoes. I think I know what might be on the chez liuzhou menu for Christmas.

This will be a short one. Prunus amygdalus or Prunus dulcis, 扁桃 (biǎn táo) are almonds. These, too are not a true nut but a drupe. I never buy them in China and suggest no one should. The problem is that in China they are almost always Prunus armeniaca 杏仁 (xìng rén) instead. Although they are related, these are not Prunus armeniaca but apricot kernels. Almonds? Apricot kernels? Who knows? No thanks! Real almonds are imported from the USA, but that too is problematic. According to this article Also, the high price imports can fetch, some unscrupulous vendors may be passing apricot kernels off as “Californian”. This article is about fake imports in the fruit trade, but the same applies to almonds and other goods. The inclusion of a photograph of a market in Liuzhou does not imply it happens here, although it may. So, you still don’t really know what you’re buying. Avoid.

Next up we go to the wall. Or we don’t. 核桃 (hé tao) or less often 胡桃 (hú táo), are Juglans regia, Walnuts. Add 仁 (rén) to those names and you have walnut kernels. Both unshelled and shelled are widely available, 核桃 (hé tao) being walnuts in the shell and 核桃 仁 (hé tao rén). Walnuts are true botanical nuts. Of course walnuts are not etymology linked to over-devoted Pink Floyd fans or any other walls. Introduced to English from Frisian as walhhnutu, the ‘wal’ part ultimately originates in Old Teutonic walχo-z, meaning foreign. Foreign to the Romans that is. ‘Nutu’ is an early version of ‘nut’. 'Wal' is etymologically related to Wales, and was originally an insult to the people of that fine country who were regarded as foreign barbarians. Not only are they very popular in China, but China is the world’s largest producer, with 1.4 million tonnes in 2022, followed by the USA with 0.68 million tonnes. Again most are eaten here as snacks or incorporated in bakery goods- cakes and buns. One local bakery does a good jujube and walnut cake. There is a savoury use. Unlike the missing Chicken and Cashew dish, Chicken and Walnuts is popular in Cantonese cuisine, especially in Hong Kong. The interwebs have recipes. Hop Po Gai Ding in Cantonese. One interesting use of walnuts, although non-culinary, is interesting. 文玩核桃 (wén wán hé tao) means something like ‘cultural playing balls. Almost every day, I see usually elderly men like me, holding two walnuts in one hand and manipulating them. It is seen as a form of therapy. Over the years, the walnut shells become polished and red. This link explains in detail. I have two pairs myself along with the required brushes for maintenance. They were a gift. Mine aren’t red yet.

Now that we can't edit posts after 12 hours, i have to post this separately. Hmmm. Pistachios in a coconut shell bowl.

Researchers at the University of Bath, England, RWTH Aachen and Goethe University Frankfurt have found that sales of the last lonely banana on supermarket shelves rise by 58% if labelled as being 'sad and lonely'. The story is here. In other banana news some idiot from China has paid $6.2 million for a banana and eaten it. He needs a different sort of scientist - a psychiatrist. Clearly bananas. That story is here.

Pork with sugar snap peas, garlic, ginger, chilli, soy sauce, Shaoxing wine, Served with rice and a side of stir fried water spinach.

Today, I’m being happy. I’m looking at 开心果 (kāi xīn guǒ), literally ’happy nut’, Pistacia vera, pistachio nuts. Native to Afghanistan, Iran and Central Asia, this is another drupe seed, rather than a true nut. Pistachios are members of the cashew family which also contains mangos. They were introduced across Europe by the Romans throughout their empire. In the 19th century low yielding varieties were introduced from Europe to the USA. The United States Department of Agriculture later introduced hardier cultivars to California collected from China and commercial production began in 1929 and now the USA is the world’s top producer, followed by Iran. Ironically, a good proportion of the pistachios sold in China, today are from the USA, presumably grown on those trees and their descendents. Very limited numbers are grown in China. 82,000 tonnes in 2022 compared to the USA with 400,000 tonnes - still enough to make China the fourth largest. American Pistachios As with cashews above, they are mostly eaten as a snack; as an ingredient they are used in hideously garish coloured cakes, for which they are sold as pistachio paste. Pistachio Cake - Helena is a large bakery chain. I’ve also seen pistachio bao buns. No thanks. Pistachio Buns The are used in pistachio ice cream and I’ve seen pistachio milk tea on offer. I can find no evidence of use in Chinese savoury dishes though There are a few recipes for stir-fries using pistachios, but they are all North American. Cake and bun images from Meituan shopping app.

That's interesting. Yet, Googling cashew chicken gives endless recipes for the dish on American websites or other sites claiming it's a Chinese American takeaway classic in Chinese restaurants. Wikipedia's entry for 'Cashew Chicken' says:

I’m almost going nuts. I’d go fully nuts but many of the ‘nuts’ we eat aren’t nuts at all in the botanical sense. Many are drupe seeds; some are gymnosperm seeds; others are angiosperm seeds. However they are considered nuts in a culinary sense. The most eaten 'nut' is actually a legume. I’ll start with one culinary nut which may leap to some minds when thinking of Chinese cuisine. 腰果 (yāo guǒ), literally Kidney Nut, Anacardium occidentale, the Cashew Nut. Native to South America but cultivated mainly in Africa, they are grown in limited amounts in China, particularly in Sanya, Hainan Province. However, Vietnam is the largest exporter and much of what we get here are from there. However, cashews are used far less in Chinese cuisine than most people think (and isn’t a botanical nut; it’s a drupe seed). Although cashews are certainly easily available, they are nearly all eaten as a snack; rarely in cooked dishes. Googling for ‘nut Chinese food’ returns dozens of recipes for cashew chicken, a dish I’ve never seen and which is absent from my food delivery app covering almost all the thousands of restaurants in the city. Using Chinese search engines return a blank. In fact. the delivery app only mentions two dishes containing cashews – 腰果虾仁 (yāo guǒ xiā rén), cashew shrimp and 西芹百合炒腰果 (xī qín bǎi hé chǎo yāo guǒ), cashew with celery. These I have seen here, but not often. There are only two restaurants serving the shrimp dish and a two others selling the celery and lily dish. Fuchsia Dunlop gives a recipe for Gong Bao (Kung Po in the west) Shrimp with Cashews in her ‘The Food of Sichuan’ (eG-friendly Amazon.com link), but as she notes, that is a recent, non-traditional innovation. Cashew, celery and day lily The Chicken cashew dish seems to be a Chinese-American take on the Thai ไก่ผัดเม็ดมะม่วงหิมพานต์ (kị̀ p̄hạd mĕd mam̀awn), stir fried chicken with cashew nuts.

Yes, I realised the dates didn't tally, but it was the best description I could find. But the dish could well have existed long before described in writing. Most things are. But in the end, I don't know.

I came up with this:

This may be the ultimate rabbit hole. New York Public Library’s collection of 17,562 menus ranging from 1850 to the 2000s have been digitised and are available here. They are also in the process of extracting all the dishes from those menus to make a searchable index by dish rather than establishment name. So far, 1,335,578 dishes have been transcribed. The are looking for volunteers to assist with this project.

It's soft as were those I ate in Lombardy, Italy in 1993.

Yes Ciabatta in Italian has the /ch/ pronunciation.

Spicy squid and sugar snap peas plus the usual garlic, chilli, coriander leaf and soy sauce. Usually I add a little oyster sauce but I seem to be out of it. No worries. It was fine.

I’m donning my carpet slippers despite having no carpets and getting into ciabatta. It started last Friday when I went searching my online shopping sources for ciabatta buns. I certainly found some – too many, but soon narrowed them down to three. But one type wasn’t what I was looking for – a small ciabatta loaf with olives, cheese and bacon embedded within. I found that interesting so ordered a couple. I had one for breakfast yesterday as mentioned on the Breakfast topic. $2.75 USD per bun but and extra $1.11 for delivery. How the cheese didn’t melt in the baking, I don’t know. Then I was left with what I really wanted – plain ciabatta buns. First up are a set of seven buns (the minimum order) at $0.66 per bun. Delivery free. Second a set of three (again min order), $0.92 per bun and despite coming by far the furthest, again free. There wasn’t much flavour difference between them but the set of seven were cheaper per bun. However I think I preferred the set of three buns; they had a nicer texture. They came from all over China. The olive variety from Jiangxi in Eastern China; the seven plain from Henan in Central China; the three plain from the far northern Liaoning province. I’m in South China. Despite being from different destinations and being ordered at the same time, they all arrived yesterday morning. The reason for my interest was a desire to use the plain buns as subs for burger buns which I always find too sweet, especially here. Never done this before but have seen them recommended for burgers several times.. Anyone tried? Another question. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the American pronunciation of ciabatta has an initial /s/ sound as opposed to the /ch/ in both the British. Is that universal in America or regional?

On a recent day trip to Hong Kong, I came across these fellows. Alba Truffles. Those prices are Hong Kong Dollars; not USD. 7,950 HKD = 1,022 USD 8,160 HKD = 1,048 USD Did I buy? Of course! Both! Well, I had fun imagining I did.

Certainly not. I haven't eaten margarine since the 1950s. I try not to eat industrial effluent! Never seen margarine in China. Finding butter is hard enough.

Yes. I always nuke poppadums. Have done for decades. Much cleaner and crispier.

When I first came to China in 1996, olive oil was impossible to find. I first found a bottle on August, 23rd 2005. I only know the date because I took my first ever selfie holding the bottle to send to family and friends, some of whom had lamented my serious deprivation. Since then it has become commonplace but not of great quality but great expense. This one is the best I've found but is even more expensive, being imported from Italy. It's also from a cooperative rather than a massive multi-national distributer of oils which could be from anywhere. Much of the olive oil sold here is used for skin care by my lady friends, I think. No one I know cooks with it. I never use it in Chinese dishes. Totally unsuitable, but I use it in western food, of course. I've never seen it here in bread before except when I've baked the bread myself. My olive bread and its oil

I ordered this olive, bacon and cheese ciabatta loaf online (actually I ordered two) and they arrived at 8:30 this morning when I was setting up my coffee machine for my morning fix of caffeine. Perfect time for breakfast to turn up. Lovely bread infused with olive oil flavour. I just ate it as it came. Got through half a loaf. Here's one slice.

I hope you mean 'gourmet'. 😂

Tonight, I made an experimental dish of fried rice with prawns and shailan ham from Hunan. I described that more in this post back In September. It also contained garlic, chilli. Shaoxing wine and Chaoshan fish sauce. Finished with coriander leaf/cilantro and Chinese chives. I slightly over-salted it because I forgot the ham and fish sauce are a bit salty, but didn't ruin it. I'll certainly repeat. The shrimp and ham nicely complemented each other.

The person who posted about the aprons is no longer a member and hasn't been for around for 16 years so is very unlikely to answer. Perhaps someone else may know.