liuzhou

Today, I had lunch with a friend in a restaurant on the 73rd floor of a building near my home. It is the tallest building in the city and the restaurant allows for 360º views of the city. We ate: Pumpkin Soup - Good but could have been seasoned better. Seafood Fried Noodles Grilled Pork Grilled Shiitake Fried Rice with Goose Liver - Excellent Fruit Salad with Sweet Mayonnaise - I ignored this and prayed it would go away. The view from my table I am not one for heights, but the fruit salad scared me more than the view.

Simple breakfast this morning. Two boiled chicken eggs in a Chinese flatbread sandwich.

The name 'dried plums' was a marketing ploy introduced to get round the common association of prunes with their laxative properties.

They can be eaten as is, after the brittle skin is removed. The seed is inedible. The fruit flesh turns from white to brown or black and the taste intensifies. They are chewy. However, there isn't much flesh once it's dried so you need to eat quite a few. They are also made into a "tea", desserts and used in soups. One can buy them shelled and pitted, but that is an expensive option. And they wouldn't be as fresh as these ones.

I had friends to dinner last night, and as is the Chinese habit they brought a gift of fruit, but this time a very special gift. These are dried longan, which they picked from the trees planted in their home village by their grandfather.

Somewhat unusually, I cooked dinner tonight for three young guests - sisters. Hunan style cumin beef (湖南式孜然牛肉) Sweet and Sour Ribs (糖醋排骨) Clams steamed in Shaoxing wine with garlic and black salt fermented beans (豆豉) Thai red chicken curry Fresh straw mushrooms steamed with garlic, olive oil and water. While the three sisters declared themselves happy with all the dishes, their runaway favourite was the mushrooms which tasted better than my unappealing photograph shows. Four people, five dishes plus rice. The formula for Chinese eating. One more dish than participants.

I grow some herbs, but haven't found either rosemary or thyme seeds and importing them is illegal.

Agree, but I can't get calves liver here. Or rosemary. Or thyme.

The cruellest ordeal I was put though during my primary and secondary education was the regular serving up of liver and onions at what we called "school dinner" which was lunch in the canteen. This dish consisted of liver of unknown origin, unseasoned and boiled to death then drowned in an onion "sauce" powerfully seasoned with charcoal. And that is me being polite. I didn't eat liver from the day I left school at 18 and headed to university until many, many years later after I arrived in China. One day, dining with friends and being somewhat distracted, I grabbed something nearby with my chopsticks and absent-mindedly put it into my mouth. It was delicious, so I had some more. Naturally, I enquired as to what this might be. Chinese liver and onions! Rather than boil it overnight as my school canteen apparently did, the onions were just nicely caramelised and the thinly sliced liver was melting in the mouth from a rapid, brief toss in the wok with green onions and red chillies. After that, I often ordered it in restaurants around town. Always delicious. Then, one day, I thought "What would happen if I tried to recreate my school child nightmare dish, but using Chinese techniques." Damn! I liked the results and have cooked and eaten it many times since, Including this evening. Pig liver thinly sliced. Red onion thinly sliced. Onions fried slowly in the wok until just beginning to caramelise. Liver added along with any blood. Fried at high heat for one minute and served with thinly sliced cabbage fried in bacon fat with chillies and buttery rough mash. Not the prettiest dish you'll have seen, but very tasty if I say so myself, which I do.

Squid, cucumber, radish and cashew nuts with citrus-chilli dressing About once a year, when I have guests, I make this squid salad. The infrequency is due to the fact that I live alone and it's a dish that is really for sharing, I think, and that I cannot get the required jarred stem ginger here so have to make my own to get the syrup, which I don't mind doing, but it does take time. Also, we rarely get radishes. Sadly, I appear never to have photographed my attempts at it , but there is a fine photo in the article.

I tend to agree. I usually do 1½ to 3 inch squares.

I guess you mean this one. Yeah, I hadn't noticed until you mentioned it. It reminds me a bit of Munch's The Scream, but a couple of seconds earlier.

This may be of interest to some members, although at $220 USD, maybe a library borrow rather than a purchase. The Routledge Handbook of Gastronomic Tourism Edited by Saurabh Kumar Dixit

Tomorrow, October 1st, is the 69th anniversary of Mao declaring the People's Republic of China from the gate of the Forbidden City in Tian'anmen Square, Beijing. This is celebrated each year with a week long holiday*, giving the government a chance to pretend they are communists and the people to go shopping. Liuzhou traditionally celebrates this with yet another: This is basically an excuse for a bunch of foreign, thick, rich kids to show off their powerboats and act like utter morons. We have competitors deported and charged with sexual assaults on local girls in past years. So, today I was busy helping with translation duties for more boring speeches and came home almost too exhausted to cook or eat. I managed to prepare a very quick dinner of fresh ramen noodles fried with chicken and some very fresh straw mushrooms I managed to pick up at noon. Garlic, ginger and chillies and some soy sauce. Tomorrow I have a 6 am start so I'm off to bed. * Actually it's only a three day holiday, but they manage to fool themselves into thinking it's a 7 day holiday. Under Chinese law, the statutory holiday is only three days , Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, but to stretch it out they worked both Saturday and Sunday this weekend. So on Thursday they tell themselves we have already worked for Thursday and Friday last weekend, then they have next weekend off, which they do anyway. Somehow they equate this to seven days off work. This bizarre practice of working what they call "make-up" days happens at other public holidays, too.

The third ham in the usually recited trilogy of "famous hams" is Rugao ham (如皋火腿 rú gāo huǒ tuǐ). It is the least well known of the three in China, even among the Chinese. Although I have eaten it in restaurants with great pleasure, I have never seen it on sale where I live. It is made in Jiangsu Province and like Jinhua ham it's made from one particular breed of pig., in this case, Jiangquhai black skinned pigs. Next time I'm in JIangsu, I'll pick some up! Don't hold your breath. Until then, no pictures from me but there is one here.

Jinhua ham (金华火腿 jīn huá huǒ tuǐ) is a dry-cured ham from Zhejiang Province in eastern China, specifically from the town of Jinhua. It is made from the rear legs of a breed of pig native to China. Production starts in winter and takes up to 10 months. The traditional process is at least 1,000 years old, and consists of salting, soaking, and ageing the hams. Traditionally, Jinhua ham is added to stews and braised dishes to deepen the flavour. It is also used extensively in stock making. It is also a key ingredient in the dish known as “Buddha Jumps Over the Wall”, a type of shark’s fin soup, a dish recently banned from official banquets by the Chinese communist party and falling from favour elsewhere. However it can be used in many ways. I have used it with spinach in pancakes, in omelettes, on pizza, with noodles etc. But most often I just eat it straight from the pack. Delicious. Jinhua Ham Jinhua Ham Slices

It is possibly not well-known that China has some wonderful hams, up there with the best that Spain can offer. This lack of wide knowledge, at least in the USA, is mainly down to regulations forbidding their importation. However, for travellers to China and those in places with less restrictive policies, here are some of the best. This article from the WSJ is a good introduction to one of the best - Xuanwei Ham 宣威火腿 (xuān wēi huǒ tuǐ) from Yunnan province. This Ingredient Makes Everything Better I can usually obtain Xuanwei ham here around the Chinese New Year/Spring Festival, but I also have a good friend who lives in Yunnan who sends me regular supplies. The article compares it very favourably with jamon iberico, a sentiment with which I heartily agree. Xuanwei Ham Xuanwei Ham more coming soon.

How sad! Little known fact: When Chinese people take photographs, instead of saying the equivalent of "Say cheese!" to get their subjects to smile they say "Say aubergine!" In Chinese, of course. In Chinese, the (usually) purple delights are called 茄子 qié zi, which when pronounced correctly produces the same cheesy (or eggplant-y or aubergine-y) grin.

Tonight I made pork with what I call aubergine but I've been told many of you here call "eggplants". Don't you know that eggs aren't plants? The same reliable source also told me that the chick peas that I used are called Garfunkel or Carbuncle beans or something similar by those same strange people. There was also garlic, chilli, various spices and those green things many of you don't realise are herbs and not 'erbs, green onions which are actually spring onions, and lemon juice. I hate to think what you might call lemon juice! Or pork for that matter. Served with 米饭.

Not for the first and probably not for the last time, I don't really know what I cooked and ate for dinner tonight. Fish, sure. Skinny chips, definitely. Tomatoes, no question. But what kind of fish? The labelling in the usually incompetent supermarket labelled them simply as 红鱼, which literally means 'red fish'. It can also mean 'red snapper', but I'm sure these ain't them. About 5" to 6" nose to tail. Kind of half way between white and oily. I like how the lower one looks shocked and offended by being so described, while the other two just look sad.. Anyway, I fried them and served along with aforementioned skinny chips/fries and some nice tomatoes. Some lemon juice did get involved.

Yeah. I've been doing that for decades.

Late afternoon snack. Clams with garlic and chilli steamed in Shaoxing wine. With crusty baquette to soak up juices.

Flow with the go.