liuzhou

Quick lunch. Busy. Penne with Italian sausage and mushrooms. Garlic, chilli.

A friend just dropped by with these, after returning from a Chinese New Year/Spring Festival trip to Thailand. She knows I like Thai food a lot (as does she), but find it difficult to get some of the herbs and spices.

and today's

I don't have a sweet tooth at all, but these were a gift. 板栗糕 (bǎn lì gāo), literally 'chestnut cake'. but they are more like what I would call biscuits and most of you would call cookies. Very sweet. Thanks, but...

The last of my wild mushroom glut (until I buy more tomorrow). Fried rice with chicken and cèpes, topped with morels. Garlic, ginger, scallions and Shaoxing wine in the mix.

Given that China has flooded the French market with highly inferior black truffles, I'd say the whole idea is a nightmare. We'll see unicorn steaks first.

Brined chicken breast cooked 1-10-10. With butter and olive oil fried cèpes and morels. Rice.

"... and she feeds you tea and oranges that come all the way from China"

Scrambled eggs with morels and chives. Half a cow of butter. With toast. The empty space bottom centre is where the toast went.

Interesting, but still tiny in comparison with other mushroom cultivation in China. There are mushroom farms the size of cities.

She told me these came from the mountains just to the north of the city here in Guangxi. Yunnan has them too, though. As does Hunan. Probably other places.

While China has made some process in morel farming, it is still far from "large scale". I posted the same picture on Chinese social media yesterday and no one had ever seen them before or knew what they were. I had to go back and tell them the Chinese name.

This morning I went back and interrogated my mushroom lady. The morels are 88元 / 500 grams, which is $13 USD. If my mathematics is correct that is $11.81 per pound. I did buy some more.

They are foraged.

I didn't weigh them, but those you see plus maybe 4 or 5 more out of shot cost me 18.50元 this morning. That's $2.73 USD. I'll see if she has them again tomorrow and find out for sure.

Fresh. Yes morels grow in China, but today was the first time I've found them in the market.

Not pretty, but beef in Guinness stew isn't meant to look pretty! But packed with taste. Served with buttery mash and even more buttery, garlicky morels. Winter warmer food.

I know what you mean, but it retains its glamour in Chinese thinking.

A nice display of fruit in the market this morning considering it's a freezing day in the dead of winter.

For the first time ever in China, I found these in my local market this morning. I knew they grew here, but had never been able to find them. Morchella esculenta. Morels. In Mandarin, 羊肚菌 (yáng dù jùn) , literally sheep's stomach mushroom.

This morning's mushroom medley from the market.

Lazy cooking tonight. Stir fried noodles with pork and mushrooms. Garlic, ginger, Shaoxing, chilli, soy sauce, scallions. Lazy but tasty enough.

It might be a while. It needs very slow cooking. Could take months! 😎

Thanks! You have given me a great idea for dinner! Here's my mise en place. And it's Fusion Food. Anchovies from Italy, chocolate from Belarus and oranges from China!

It depends on how I'm going to use it. Very occasionally toaster, sometimes just by leaving on the counter, most often, with baguettes (halved before freezing) in the microwave on the defrost setting for 45 seconds.