liuzhou

Yes, I know how to take a spore print. Unattached gills, single strands, dry cap. The taste wasn't particularly distinctive - just generally mushroomy. Mild and not unpleasant, but not thrilling.This was my first time to cook them on their own. I usually do them with a mix of wild mushrooms, including the morels.

Chicken, "some kind of mushroom", olives, chilli, scallion in a lemon sauce. Rice.

Well, I went back to the market this morning and bought some more of these to check them. As you can see I have been forced to change my diagnosis. Obviously not boletes, but I'm stumped as to what they may be. I have a friend visiting from Shanghai next week (it's a 5 day national holiday here) . She may know more about these. I'll let you know if I have any info. If you or anyway cares to hazard an identification I'd be delighted. In the meantime, I'll clean them and have them for dinner.

Thank you! I've been buying my mushrooms from the same woman or 20 years and she hasn't killed me yet! Nor have I given her reason to to so, I think!

I may be wrong, but I seem to remember that in the UK fish for shashimi has, by law, to be frozen to kill potential parasites. It is in many places.

I'm familiar with blewits from England and I'm fairly sure that those aren't such. They are much darker in colour - maybe it's my photo, but they aren't at all blue. They are black. Whether blewits grow here or not, I just don't know. I can't even remember what the vendor called them in Chinese, but she was speaking the local dialect - there may well be a more standard name. I'll ask again. They definitely aren't matsutake. Or I've stumbled on the cheapest matsutake ever! But they were more expensive than most mushrooms - but not matsutake levels. The morels were more expensive. And no, they don't have that cinnamon whiff. We do get matsutake here, but usually dried and I'd have to re-mortgage my house and myself to afford them regularly. Most are shipped to Japan where the inhabitants are happy to pay silly money. I am guessing they are some kind of Boletes. The mushrooms; not the Japanese!

Same in China. In fact, I think Japan inherited the idea from Chinese culture. There are several Chinese sayings which refer to 'every grain of rice...'.

小笼包 (xiǎo lóng bāo) with chilli dip.

That is something I've been trying to find out for a long time. The vendor told me the Chinese name which doesn't help. I've been using Google and his Chinese counterparts but can't come up with any Latin or English name. I need a mycologist!

Breakfast part 1: Shrimp wontons or ravioli (What's the difference?) with red vinegar dip. Breakfast part 2: Repeat the above.

Squid and shrimp stir fried with snow peas, ginger, garlic, chilli, Shaoxing wine and oyster sauce. Served with rice, of course.

Actually I quite liked the look of the chairs. What confused me was that it is fully booked until September, but there are vacancies in the summer. If there are vacancies, it isn't fully booked, surely?

Where is the best place for a seafood restaurant? Under thewater, of course.

Round here they are usually mildly pickled. I've also seen them candied. They are also one of the very few things Chinese people eat raw.

I'd say, probably. Here is a b&w photograph I took a week ago of one of the women in my local market peeling water chestnuts.

Fresh rice noodles in spicy broth with pork and wilted lettuce.

@Anna N As promised and intended, I cooked half of them tonight with dinner. To my surprise and slight disappointment, they were rather mildly flavoured with no hint of the advertised mustard at all. Kind of like but not like courgettes/ zucchini or similar gourds. Not unpleasant at all and they did retain a nice crispness. I wouldn't rule out buying them again.

Boeuf en Daube provençale avec les cêpes, or you might just say beef stew with mushrooms. Beef, onion, carrot, garlic, red wine, tomato paste. Served with rice and mustard root (for which my provençale mother will never forgive me).

Yeah, they don't keep well, but then Chinese shoppers tend to only buy what they will prepare that day, or next at worst, so it doesn't really matter a lot. I couldn't do the canned ones again. but after 23 years in China, I don't have to. I've never seen them canned here but then again, I see very little canned. .

I did intend to cook them tonight, but fate intervened and I had to go out for dinner. I'll deal with them tomorrow and let you know. They are often pickled and I've eaten that many times, but I've ever had them fresh before.

This morning, I came across something in the supermarket that I don't recall seeing before. I had a vague inkling as to what it might be, but wasn't sure. When this supermarket opened a few years back, it seems they had a competition among the staff to see who had the best Chinese handwriting. The person who came in last was given the job of writing all the hand-written signs in the fresh food area. They are illegible. The only way to identify things you don't know is to ask the staff at the weigh station or take a chance and then read the label their scales magically produce indicating the price and identity. This cunning ruse failed immediately. As I approached the station, the guy behind it looked at me most strangely as if I had deliberately smuggled some alien vegetable lifeform into his store just to upset him. "What's that?" he asked. "I'm not sure," I wittily responded. Several seconds of silence ensued as he stood there panicking, then he said "wait a minute" and ran off in search off a manager. Miraculously, this was a successful strategy and he returned to consult his long list of vegetables to find the code he needed to enter. Then he handed me my choice of duly labelled produce. I immediately looked at the printed name and read 肉芥菜 (ròu jiè cài). My inkling was spot on. Mustard root! The leaves of the plant are ubiquitous in the local cuisine - I featured them pages back, but now we have the roots, which research informs me is the new big thing. They can be treated like any other root vegetable: boiled, roasted, steamed; and of course stir fried. (One source gives me the very useful information that, in parts of Africa, they are considered to be an aid to promoting lactation in those people who do such things.)

Pork slivers stir fried with fresh cepès, porcini, penny buns, boletus edulis, 牛肝菌 or whatever. Garlic, chilli, ginger, Chinese chives, Shaoxing wine and soy sauce. Served with rice and stir fried lettuce with oyster sauce.

1-10-10 chicken breast with morel cream sauce.

北京炸酱面 (běi jīng zhá jiàng miàn ) Beijing Zha Jiang Mian - Noodles with Soy Bean Paste - Beijing's favourite noodle dish, perhaps. But this example was eaten in Nanning in Guangxi.

The local, overpriced, state-owned department store's basement supermarket had these on offer today on special. Grabbed a couple of bags. Beer food.