liuzhou

The Guardian has an interesting (and amusing) piece on the rise of cookbooks created by AI. Titled "'One of the most disgusting meals I’ve ever eaten’: AI recipes tested", it's here. Prompts me to post this.

Hmmm. I don't know anything about the author of this piece, but she clearly knows nothing about China or its cuisines. She misspells a number of well-known place names and points out that Gansu is "semi-arid and the soils are not productive enough to grow rice or green leafy vegetables". The rice part is true of all of north China, not just Gansu. Rice is very much a southern staple. Wheat has been the staple in the north for centuries for the simple reason that the north is too cold for growing rice. The vegetable part is just nonsense. Many vegetables are grown in the north, especially brassicas. Yes, more regional food is becoming more available, not only in Australia but across Europe and the English speaking countries. And usually carried by students. And that change isn't new. A dear friend from here in Guangxi (not Guanxi as she spells it*) studied her master's degree in Australia, settled, then opened her Guangxi food restaurant in Melbourne 25 years ago, this year. She wasn't the only one. There are several other errors but my favourite is "they did not want to eat Cantonese yum cha". Lucky for them! Yum cha means 'drink tea'. I don't want to eat 'drink tea' either. She means dim sum. *Small difference in English perhaps, but crucial in Chinese. Guanxi means connections or 'you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours' and is often linked to corruption.

Standard air conditioning, although I don't like it and only use it in extremis. Mainly I use electric fans. When I mentioned too hot, I meant outside. 40℃+. Supermarkets, restaurants etc are air-conditioned.

I very rarely order meals now, but still in inclement weather (too wet or too hot) order ingredients to cook with. 99.99% of the time, it goes well. The food is fresher than the nearest supermarket and the range wider. Today, they royally screwed up. I ordered some squid, specifying from the preparation options they offer, uncut. I also ordered some coriander leaf, some sinsensis militaris mushrooms and four duck eggs. Simple. No. Here is what turned up Two wasp fish, Tachysurus fulvidraco (my least favourite fish), three tomatoes and a cucumber. A quick phone call and they said they would resend. Very quickly my actually order turned up. Almost. Miraculously the uncut squid has been cut and the four eggs have paired up and become two. I did inform them and say 'stuff it' in Chinese. They didn't ask for the tomatoes or cucumber back. Those I still have. So I've won. They didn't want the fish either, so it has been donated to the local feral cats who are eyeing it suspiciously. I must, in fairness, note that this is highly unusual. They are usually very efficient. The heat may have scrambled their brains, too.

EVOO fried matsutake on flatbread. Salt, pepper. Stop.

Squid and shrimp fried rice. Local noodle and fried rice 5 table restaurant. I added some chilli sauce after taking the photograph. It didn't really need it, but my preference.

Having reluctantly come to the conclusion that, depite this ridiculous heat (40℃ +), I can't really survive on beer and ice cream, I made some fried noodles with chicken, straw mushrooms* and Asian herbs. The usual aromatics were in there too, along with Shaoxing and soy sauce. Exhausting to cook; exhausting to eat! * The Chinese is 草菇 (cǎo gū) which means 'grass mushrooms'.

And neither do I. But it looks like Big Head Carp (Hypophthalmichthys nobilis), used here in fish head and tofu soup, which I like a lot. I can imagine it working in an Asian curry. I could be totally wrong of course!

I told you! I warned you! I made it clear that it was out to take over the world. And you scoffed and dismissed me! You continued to inflict misery upon me and, no doubt, unwittingly on yourselves, by maintaining the pernicious habit of infiltrating its image into these very forums in your preparations under the delusion that they are edible. But after years of determined ferreting and stealth, I have unearthed irrefutable evidence of the ghastly evil intent of the pestilential weed from hell and its determination to take over by any means necessary. It is attempting, unconvincingly I may add, to transmogrify into the stolen identity of a blameless and beloved vegetable, the onion. But don’t be misled! Be vigilant and stop the scourge! The future of humanity depends on it. Your honour, ladies and gentlemen of the jury – Exhibit A.

This is not one of those 'guess what it is' posts. That's clear. The mystery is where did they come from? I went to retrieve some duck liver pâté from the fridge for breakfast and found these sitting next to it. I have no recollection of buying them, whatsoever, nor I'm sure were they there when I put the pâté in the fridge last night! I live alone and have had no recent visitors who could have insinuated them into the fridge. What a mystery!

5 am. 33℃. I've taken to eating in the dark to avoid the heat. Still too hot to cook though. Breakfast: Home made duck liver pâté with Chinese flatbread. I made the pâté at 9pm last night.

This is real. I've been to both places. Sandwich is a town in SE England and Ham a village to its south. But an amusing and much photographed sign.

You are absolutely correct. Brain fart. Told you it's too hot. I have edited. Thanks for letting me know.

It’s too damned hot to eat, never mind cook. Over 40℃, so tonight, I waited until dark then just quickly fried some shrimp with garlic, chilli, garlic chives, salt and pepper, then finished with a splash of Chaoshan fish sauce. Served with a simple salad of ‘Vietnamese’ herbs. The salad contains Vietnamese Coriander - VN: Rau răm Culantro Rau mù Mint bạc hà Coriander leaf / Cilantro Ngò and Garlic Chives Hẹ Struggled to finish that! No carbs were possible.

One of the reasons I love living in this strange land is that ordering a whole pig's head for delivery within 30 minutes is perfectly normal. That's said I've never done so. But I love knowing I could. For ¥198 ($23.77 USD) this could be moving in with me shortly. Although I've eaten every part of those heads with delight, I buy the parts individually as I simply don't have the space to invite them all to stay en masse. My heads move in in instalments.

Totally normal here except when they read "Cook until cooked".

I've mentioned the nearby city of 百色 (bǎi sè), Baise before. It's a small city on the Guangxi - Yunnan border, famous in China for a significant part it played in the Chinese Revolution and for being mango central for China. Not far from me and home to some good friends. However, they have a problem. Mangoes. The things grow so prolifically there, they have become a public nuisance and every summer city employees have to go out and cull the juicy bombs which drop on people's heads or turn sidewalks into skating rinks. Here are a few images from social media showing this week's cull. They'll be back out for several days as more ripen. BTW, they are excellent mangoes!

And that's why I prefer jokes unexplained.

I usually eat legs by preference (they are tastier) and I genuinely enjoy preparing them - removing the skin (cook's treat), deboning them (easy). I never bother with the veins, they melt away in the cooking. They may not taste like breast but that's why I prefer them. Bones are reserved for stock (and yes, feet are essential in chicken stocks).