liuzhou

I'm in my element in China where blood is rightly considered to be delicious and nutritional and far too valuable to waste. Also having been brought up in both Scottish and French cultures, I was exposed to blood from an early age and still eat it regularly. Congealed pig blood for hotpot or soup Duck Blood - Ditto Pig's Blood in soup with chicken and Tonkin Jasmine Hunan Blood Sausage Breakfast - Guangxi blood sausage, beans and fried egg. Scottish Black Pudding Black pudding and poached egg.

Not very sexist! Of course, only women cook! That article is very badly wrtten.

A place to passs on interesting food related events - whether on-line or not. I'll start with:

Home-cooked Chicken 'n Chips with Nando's Peri-Peri sauce.

Yes, but it's not cooked yet.

Multi-coloured okra. Trouble is that it all turns green when you cook it.

Always complete with 'toe nails' here.

I see. 砂糖 literally translates as 'sand sugar' meaning 'granulated sugar', hence my confusion.

The myth and its association to China predate any movie. The middle eastern restaurant scene was based on the China myth, not the other way round. There is no documented first-hand evidence. And China has documented everything for centuries.

Yes, But I'm getting worried. It was eight years ago!

Online shopping substitution of the century

A lot of things are "except in the United States"!

I presume you mean 砂糖. That is granulated sugar.

Cotoletta (meaning cutlet) alla milanese in Italy is also bone-in. Cutlet does not necessarily mean off-the-bone.

Ah, but frisée has yet another meaning in French, confusing the issue even more.

Perhaps not what they meant?

18. Monkeying Around Or so the story goes, with various embelishments. I have several times read that the live monkey sits under the circular table and sticks its head through a hole in the centre to allow the diners access to the cranial delights on offer. The main problem with the story is that it is utter BS. No one has ever satisfactorily photographed or filmed this practice - YouTube videos are obvious fakes. Any accounts are always third or (3,000th) person anecdotes. Wikipedia unconvincingly suggests that the legend may have risen due to a mushroom known as 猴头菇 (hóu tóu gū - Hericium erinaceus), which means 'monkey head mushroom'. The mushroom is white when fresh but turns brown when dried - the most common way they are sold. Allegedly it looks like a monkey's brain. No! It vaguely looks like a monkey's intact, furry head - hence the name. Fresh Monkey Head Mushroom Dried Monkey Head Mushroom My main problem with that theory is that you would have to be brainless to confuse a mushroom with a brain! My own theory is that when some westerners came to China they saw tables like this in many restaurants... ... and some wag came up with the story to explain why the table has a hole in the centre. Of course, the hole is to hold a burner for hot pots. These are disappearing rapidly as built-in induction stoves are taking their place. The story spread as some sort of sick joke or, more often, racist anti-Chinese propoganda. Note: Eating monkey is illegal in China and attracts a minimum 10 year sentence behind bars for both the restaurant owners and customers.

I suppose it depends how much is used, but what do I know?

Ōwakudan Valley in Hakone. Yes. I've been there and sampled one of the black eggs. Interesting and different. I believe it's now closed due to volcanic activity. The eggs are called Kuro-tamago and are boiled unlike century eggs, which are just cured.

http://www.foodreference.com/html/fchicoryandendive.html Wikipedia

What makes you think that is a myth? Fields are most certainly irrigated and fertilised with 'night soil'. Chinese people wash vegetables thoroughly and still eat almost nothing raw for this very reason. It's not that long since night soil was used in the USA and UK, too!

Could be, but it still seems an odd thing to list. Montmorillonite clay is a common anti-diarrhoea treatment here. Useful after eating non-existent sparrows!

I thought it was well known that crab sticks don't contain crab. They are made from surimi (i.e fish paste made from the stuff they can't sell!) That's why, in many places, they cannot be labelled or advertised using the name 'crab'. So we get Krab Sticks', Ocean Sticks, Sea Legs and Imitation Crab Sticks etc.

Pork in soup with fresh rice noodles, century eggs (皮蛋 - pí dàn ) and spinach. Garlic, ginger, chilli, Shaoxing wine, soy sauce.

17. A Mixed Bag The article which included the horse urine nonense above also went on as follows. I've put their claims in italics; my comments follow unitalicised. 1. Sparrows are a common food both in the street and as a snack at home. No they aren't. Never seen any such thing. 2. Banquet specialities include cow's lung soaked in chili sauce, goose stomachs, fish lips with celery, goat's feet tendons in wheat noodles, shark's stomach soup, chicken-feet soup, monkey's head, ox forehead, turtle casserole, pigeon brain, deer ligament and snake venom, also lily bulb. Some of these are common world-wide. Chicken-feet soup, for example. Some (marked in red) are extremely rare or mythical. It is well-known that sharks are de-finned then cruelly thrown back into the sea to die. They take their stomachs with them. Fish maw (float bladders) , usually from freshwater fish, are used in soups. Snakes are eaten; their venom rarely if ever. Grass Carp with its Float Bladder What is so surprising about lily bulb? 3. Some people in China eat dirt as "famine food." What? Drivel! 4. Huangshan Stone Frog is a speciality of the Anhui province. Yes. So? Frogs of many varieties are eaten world-wide. 5. Interestingly, the Chinese considered many foods eaten by non-Chinese to be strange. They consider eating a plain cooked steak as primitive and unappetizing. Many regard eating cheese or butter as disgusting and find the French custom of eating snails to be strange. Yes. But you might want to consider that if a food is popular in a country with a population of 1.5 billion, but 'strange' in a country with only 330 million, then maybe it is you who are strange! And you should have stopped at cheese and butter (but see my comments on dairy above). Snails are extremely popular in China. Why would they think France was strange? Chillied snails in my local market These Jade snails below are imported from Africa at great expense and are considered a delicacy in China. "Don't believe anything you read on the internet" - Plato.