liuzhou

No. It's all over. Tea is often served lukewarm or just room temperature.The exception is in more serious tea tastings, where the tea is central to the event, and it is normally hotter, but never boiling hot.

You'll get no pooh-poohiing from this Scot. The last batch I made (and posted) for dinner reappeared next day for lunch and definitely tasted better (not that they were bad first time round).

Vegetarian? Good Lord! I can be accused of many things, but vegetarian? I do occasionally make vegetarian dishes - like some salads. Or a poached egg. But please be reassured, this was not in the least vegetarian. 晒兰 (shài lán) is ham, ham, ham! Any rumours to the contrary are fake news and lies.

Cauliflower stir fried with 晒兰 (shài lán), green and red chillies, garlic, ginger, Shaoxing wine and soy sauce. Served with rice and wilted spinach.

Looking forward to that !

紫苏杨梅姜 (zǐ sū yáng méi jiāng) means "purple perilla, bayberry, ginger" and that's what we have here. 紫苏 (zǐ sū), known in Japanese as "shiso", is Perilla frutescens. 杨梅 (yáng méi) is Myrica rubra and 姜 (jiāng) well, you know what ginger is. The yangmei are slightly, but pleasantly tart, the ginger is spicy and the perilla adds a herbal note. Fresh Yangmei

Post Thanksgiving. from the New Yorker. “That was fun. Let’s do it all again in three weeks.”

Bacon 'n Bun

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.