liuzhou

It's not the first 'fast food joint' to be found at Pompeii, but is the only 'complete' one and by far the best preserved. There are others.

9 in total. My ramen noodles are not the dried ramen with flavour packs you are talking about. These are fresh vacuum packed noodles with nothing else. I add whatever I fancy, thereby controlling the salt levels, although it's not something I obsess about. It's 1 pm here on Sunday and being retired, I do whatever I want, whenever I want (with due regard to local laws). Anyway, checking the ingredients on a pack of noodles took up a whole 15 seconds of my life. No wonton noodles today. Have other plans.

I just checked the locally made and the imported Japanese udon noodles I have in stock. Although both do contain salt it's the last listed ingredient (the lists being in order of amount by law), so not very salty. Same with the ramen noodles I have. I, too, always salt Italian pastas.

Looking back at the images you posted in the Pandemic topic, I'd wager that is tianmian sauce you had. It is thicker and darker than hoisin. And less sweet.

My go to brand of tianmian sauce 甜麵醬. Apart from being used with Beijing duck, it is used in a number of northern Chinese dishes.

Indeed. Noodles and rice are normally cooked without salt. The are intended to be a neutral background to the sauces or other dishes served. When I first came to China, one of my Chinese friends was horrified to see me salt the rice water. I've never done that since.

So you soak the pasta for a couple of hours, then boli it for two minutes and call it "two-minute" pasta? It took over two hours.

yes

The main reason for freezing fish for sushi or shashimi is that it is legally required in many jurisdictions to kill parasites.

A couple of my more imaginative Chinese friends came up with food and drink related "Christmas trees".

12. Beijng Duck and Hoisin Sauce? Although Beijing duck (北京烤鸭) may be served with hoisin sauce (海鲜酱) in some restaurants (mainly American), it is not traditional. Hoisin sauce is Cantonese, as is the word 'hoisin' (in Mandarin, it's 'haixian'). When the first Beijing duck restaurant opened in Beijing in the Ming dynasty some 600 years ago, Guangdong (home to Cantonese food) was several weeks or months away from what is now the capital and its cuisine hardly known to the northerners. Beijing's oldest surviving duck restaurants, including Bianyifang (便宜坊), established in 1855 and Quanjude (全聚德), esbalished 1864, still to this day serve their ducks the traditional way - with tianmian sauce (甜麵醬) aka sweet bean sauce, sweet flour sauce or sweet wheat paste. Tianmian Sauce Now, I'm wondering if the confusion arose because hoisin and tianmian look similar and people were eating tianmian, but thinking it was hoisin. I don't know. Everywhere I have eaten Beijing duck here in China, it has come with tianmian sauce. The only substitute I have occasionally seen has been sweet plum sauce. Never hoisin.

Hoisin with Peking duck? Sacrilege! One for China Food Myths tomorrow! ETA Done!

That's not two!

Definitely wrong, if she said that. I haven't seen any quote like that, but she is often wrong about China.

Well, she didn't go to China until the 90s, as did I. And there were plenty of cookbooks then.

She really said that? It's not true! There are many recipe books published in China, including regional recipes. I have several. Including several Sichuan books.

That ain't gonna happen. I may have low standards, but I have standards.

I'm going to take a wild guess and say it means 'cloves - two of', as opposed to any other number or amount of pre-ground cloves.

Clearly a black hole.

Congratulations are due to Fuchsia Dunlop, whose "Food of Sichuan" has just been published in a Chinese language version - a rare honour here. I've ordered a couple of copies as gifts for local friends who loved the Engish version, but struggled with some language issues. 《川菜》， 中信出版社。

For what it's worth, McD's has been messing around with Oreos for years (I see the ads in the store windows), but I've never seen this application. Spam is not common here - I've only ever seen it in one store, once upon a time. To my great amusement the Chinese name is pronounced Shi-bang!

But I have never been inside a McDonald's and I am certainly not a member.

Bacon and egg ramen. With spinach and chilli.

I use a wok scoop. I'd say the egg is around 75% cooked, but not fully. Next time, I'll take photograph.