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Do you know what breed of duck these come from? I just checked my 8 duck eggs I bought earlier today and the heaviest is 78 grams.

Minimally. Those definitely weren't Dricoll's.

Looks lovely to me and I don't really like lasagna. Yes, pro food shots are actually usually of partially cooked food, chilled food or totally fake food.

Strawberry Season! Yippee!

Chinese stovies. Well, Scottish stovies really, but made in China and with a Chinese twist. It's cold and I've been busy, so I wanted to do a simple one pot meal. I had a sort of a thick pork chop, so I cut off the large amount of fat and rendered that, then chopped the meat roughly and fried it in the fat with onions, red chilli and carrots. While that was going on I peeled and thickly sliced some spuds, added them then braised in water with a bit of Shaoxing wine and Shanghai Worcestershire sauce*. Finished with some scallions. Plenty more left for breakfast or lunch tomorrow. * Yes. Shanghai Worcestershire Sauce is a thing, although the Chinese are no better at pronouncing Worcestershire than the Americans! 🤣

This arrived at my door about 30 minutes ago. From a friend. It is a form of cured pork known as 晒兰 (shài lán) only made in one small, remote town in Western Hunan province. I described it in more detail here. 3 kg of the stuff to play with!

Story here.

This morning I ate the 西湖肉燕 (xī hú ròu yàn) I mentioned a few days ago in this post, but this time treated it the the way nature (or at least, the manufacturer) intended. In a light soup of chicken stock, garlic, chilli and scallion. Photographed through steam.

Thanks. The Chinese name would be nice, if possible.

Another interesting article on a related topic. No paywall. And another. Ditto.

I was about to ask what the chef was panting to buy in Ontorio, when it clicked. Sorry, not very helpful.

I'd love to know more about that sauce - especially a name I've been eating Beijing Duck in Beijing for a quarter of a century and have only ever been served the tian main jiang, even in 便宜坊 (biàn yí fānɡ), the oldest Beijunng duck restaurant, established in 1416. That doesn't sound like much of a recommendation! 😄

It's not blocked to me and I've never paid them a cent. The variety is Cocke's Prolific, as mentioned in the second post.

An unexpected gift. 烟台苹果 (yān tái píng guǒ）, Yantai apples. Yantai is a city in Shandong Province in northern China and is famous for its apples, widely regarded as China's best. A friend's family has orchards there and she sent me a dozen, very seasonal, just picked examples to try. Here are just four. They are huge and very good!

They are not the same thing. I'd say the only similiarities are that they are sweet and Chinese. Sweet bean sauce, from the north of China, despite the name, is largely made from fermented wheat, with only a tiny bit of soy bean. It gets its sweetness from a type of musk melon used in the manufacturing process. It is thick, black and yes, sweet. It is the traditional sauce with Beijing duck. Hoisin sauce (海鲜酱 - hǎi xiān jiàng), from the south of China, 1,171 miles from Beijing, literally means 'seafood sauce' as it's mainly used in Cantonese / Hong Kong cooking to accompany seafood. It contains no seafood, but is made from soybeans with fennel seed, red chili peppers, garlic. wine vinegar, five-spice powder and gets its sweetness from sugar.

北京烤鸭 (běi jīng kǎo yā), Beijing Duck - aka Peking Duck. Served traditionally! With 春饼 (chūn bǐng) - spring pancakes, scallion, and 甜面酱 (tián miàn jiàng) or sweet bean sauce.

Autumnal colours and flavours. Chicken with almond mushrooms and maitake, garlic, chilli, olives and coriander leaf.

No, it isn't. It is traditionally served with thin pancakes.

Wild caught shrimp with flying fish roe, garlic, ginger, chillli, coriander leaf/cilantro, white wine. Served over orzo.

Every market (and some supermarkets) round these parts cooks and sells hand-torn chicken. Delicious and the vendors do all the messy stuff for you!.

A rather special form of dumplings. 西湖肉燕 (xī hú ròu yàn) means "West Lake Meat Swallows*". 肉燕 (xī hú) or West Lake is a beautiful lake in Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang Province in the east of China, near Shanghai. 肉燕 (ròu yàn) are best known as being from Fujian Province to the south of Zhejiang. But there is a crucial difference betweeen their rou yan and those of Hangzhou. The skin of the dumplings in both versions is called 肉皮 (ròupí), literally "Meat Skin". This is made by pounding meat to a paste and adding starch and glutinous rice flour to make something very similar to that known in Japan as すり身 or surimi, a term also now used in English. Basically it is the same stuff as used to make fake crabsticks etc. In Fujian, the roupi is made from pork, but in Hangzhou it is made from fish and other seafood. These are stuffed with a bizarre mix of meats and vegetables including chicken, duck, pork, seafood, water chestnus, bamboo shoots etc. They also have some spices and chilli. I'm sure you can imagine this a fairly labour intensive process, so most people buy them frozen, as did I. Oddly, the cooking instructions on the package recommended them being boiled for 5-10 minutes. Quite a range! I split the difference (nearly) and did them for 7 minutes and was pleased with the results. Served with a soy and chilli dipping sauce. 10 in the picture above, but I ate 20. They are normally served in soup, but I'm not normal. * "swallow" as in the bird.

It might surprise some that it's me who is posting this, but despite my loathing of c*rn, I am always happy to read stories like this. Whether it's c*rn or anything else, we need to preserve our crops and traditions. Not that I'd eat the wretched stuff, though! A once-famous, long-lost corn variety returns from the dead - from The Washington Post.

I am delighted to say that unmolested carrots have been located. Can't remember why I wanted them, though.

I don't think the only one American who lives here would ever get through the amount they had on offer until next Thanksgiving!

Good question. I'm not aware of any dish that uses both carrot and c*rn, but as you may have noticed, I eschew c*rn dishes, so am no expert. That said, this is the fìrst time I've seen that combination. Combination purchases are not unusual, but as you suggest are more usually based on tried and tested, popular combinations. Clams and mustard greens is a big one. Carrots and daikon radish. Gin and tonic.