liuzhou

Enough already! This is a family friendly forum!

Hey, can we please remember that Yukon Gold potatoes are American and seldom available elsewhere (or only at high prices)! I'm fairly certain the OP is British (going by some language and the use of Celsius temperatures) where YG potatoes are far from mainstream. No one where I am has even heard of them! I would suggest it is better to refer to specific traits of the potatoes rather than one cultivar. Waxy, floury, etc. For what it's worth Maris Piper are my go to variety for chips in the UK. (King Edwards are OK , too). Not that I've lived there for decades.

My favourite porn movie! . . . . . . Weak attempt at a joke.

Right on!

Nothing hurts when it's frozen solid!

Breakfast BLT

Burmese Chicken with Mint. This is sort of a Burmese version of the Thai/ Laotian laab or larb. I more or less follow this recipe. This time it was less. I don't have sambal oelek*, skipped the sugar and didn't have coriander/cilantro. No great loss. Served with rice and a side of wilted spinach. *Subbed it with Guilin chilli sauce. Mint tenderly nurtured through the winter and now rampant on the balcony.

Roasted me some ripe tomatoes for 45 minutes, then simmered them with garlic, diced carrot, diced celery and a chopped green chilli (similar to a jalapeño), diluted with a little chicken stock, then blitzed in the doo-dah! Served with crusty baguette. Only made enough for two bowls, but there's only one me.

It depends on what has been deep fried in the oil. Oil for chips/fries, I will happily, filter, store in a covered metal pot which sits on the counter and re-use once or even twice. Oil used for fish or anything spicy, I dispose of after one use. I have a 5-litre old oil bottle under the sink and used oil is put there until full, then properly disposed of.

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Spicy, lemony, garlicky, wild-caught shrimp with cous-cous, flying fish roe and Chinese sea grass.

Me too! Sadly, It's difficult to find either the ham bones or the peas, here.

For dips etc, I am partial to this brand, which has a deeper, more complex flavour than most. but for day to day cooking, I just use a regular popular brand. The other flavours tend to dominate anyway, so I'm not about to use a brand that costs 30 times more!.

猪肚鸡混搭肉末萝卜干 Pork tripe, chicken offal, dried daikon radish and rice noodles.

Yes.沙 茶酱 (shā chá jiàng) Shacha Sauce. The 沙 means 'sand' referring to that grainy texture you describe. Could be duck blood, but pig's blood is more common.

Coley. What you may know as pollock. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollachius_virens The Scots don't have an accent. You do!

There is more information on the oil tea in this post from the Munching with the Miao topic.

Sushi for breakfast. Why not?

A quick throw-together. Penne with Italian sausage, shiitake, chilli and scallions.

Yes, Xi'an has a large Muslim minority population which, of course do not eat pork, but instead use mutton or beef. Beef jiamo are common there. I've never heard of the beef in raw dough, though. There is more information and a recipe for beef jiamo on this topic.

For me, that sums up Jamie Oliver.

SATURDAY LUNCH After another hotel breakfast, lunch was at the "another friend"'s home with the same group of people at last night's hotpot plus "another friend"'s husband. "Another friend"'s mother-in-law made the statutory oil tea while "another friend" cooked lunch. A very typical, simple, but delicious family lunch. Scrambled egg with garlic scapes Eggplant with pork and bacon Bean curd skin with ham Celtuce with heavily smoked ham - my favourite All with rice. Then we ate oranges from mother-in-law's orange groves. Then I set off for the station and home.

DINNER FRIDAY Dinner on Friday was more of a family affair. One of the people in my client company and the one who introduced me to the company in the first place, is also an old friend. So, I had dinner with her, her husband and just-teenage daughter as well as another friend. We chose this place which was conveniently right next door to my hotel. A "hot ticket" in town I was told and I believe it. It is an up-market Sichuan hotpot restaurant. We arrived at 7 pm and it was just beginning to fill up. Bright young things. Family groups. Loving couples. All sorts. By 8 it was rocking! 3 Generations Of course, we weren't here to discuss the clientèle, but to get our fill. As soon as we were seated we were presented with this. Even the non-spicy side would be considered spicy by many. The spicy side is incendiary. We then collected things on sticks of our choice and parked them on the convenient stick parking thing at the side of out table. Batch 1 - far from the last! then they go into the boiling dual stocks. Pig Offal on Sticks So you want to know what's on the sticks? Are you sure? Various bits of pig offal - intestines, liver, bits neither you or the pig knew it had. Best not to know! Here are a few. By this time we were living in a micro-climate of chilli-laden steam so the pictures aren't as clear as I would like. Celery wrapped in pork. Enoki mushrooms wrapped in pork Quail egg on a stick In case things aren't hot enough for you. Pickled chilli wrapped in pork and cooked in the hot side of the pot. Pickled chilli stick and pig's blood. This we washed down with the local beer, Liquan. This particular line, 1998, was brewed to commemorate Bill Clinton's visit to the city in the said year. Finally, we were stuffed and requested the bill. This is calculated by the number of sticks you have in your stick bin. The various skewered items were on one, two or three sticks depending on price. Non-skewered items such as the pig's blood were priced by colour-coded plates - Sushi conveyor belt style. And so to bed. Next morning, I woke with chilli and Sichuan peppercorn still oozing from every pore! But a lovely meal.

FRIDAY LUNCH For lunch an associate and I headed to the local university area and a nearby street full of small restaurants mainly aimed at the student market. We were on a quest to a tiny restaurant called 老陕西 (lǎo Shǎn xī). Old Shaanxi, Shaanxi being the province which is home to the Terracotta Warriors near Xi'an. Alongside students, we ate Liangpi (凉皮 (liáng pí)) or 'cold skin. This is a type of noodle made from beans rather than rice or wheat. A Shaanxi special. We also had a couple of roujiamo, but I had a photography failure, which I'm going to blame on the poor light, so no picture of them. My Chinese companion, who had never eaten this food before, was convinced we had not ordered enough, but ate his jiamo and was unable to finish the liangpi. Here is roujiamo from another restaurant. The ones we ate were near identical.

It's not common, but I've seen before. Definitely a "thing". They can be filled with anything. I've even seen ice-cream jiaozi!