liuzhou

2. Tibetan Water Various brands of Tibetan water have hit the market recently purporting to be purer than pure. This one is from Eastern Tibet. Concerns have been expressed by scientists as to the environmental damage extracting this water is causing. Also, you can bet your life, none of the revenue is likely to benefit the Tibetan residents. Again, there is little, if any, evidence of any significant health benefits. Except to the companies' bottom line. Yes, they charge premium prices. 3 - 10 times the normal price.

There are, as I'm sure people know, many concerns about the environmental impact of bottled water. Billions of plastic bottles are sold around the world every day and only a tiny proportion are recycled. Here are a some of the more ridiculous examples I've come across. 1) Bama Water (巴马丽琅 bā mǎ lì láng) Bama is a tiny village in the west of Guangxi which has a notably high number of centenarians - a well known longevity cluster. The inhabitants are mainly subsistence farmers and lead a very simple life and follow a simple diet with very little meat, salt or sugar. Organically grown corn, rice, millet, sweet potato, and soy bean are their main foods. They also eat pumpkin seedlings, sweet potato leaves, pak choi, mushroom, and bamboo shoots. The main cooking oil, used sparsely, is colza oil (a relative of rapeseed or canola oil). In recent years, the government has decided to cash in on the reputation of Bama as a "healthy place", building hotels and encouraging tourism. They have even gone so far as to suggest making the place a "Longevity Theme Park". Scores have people have come running thinking that it will increase their longevity to hang out there for a weekend or longer. They are totally ignoring the fact that most scientists attribute the longevity mainly to genetic factors. An alternative theory for the long life comes from one of the inhabitants, 104-year-old Xiao Yuanying. She puts her age down to the two ‘cups’ of rice wine she drinks every day. Of course, it isn’t your average supermarket ‘baijiu’, but home made ‘snake wine’ – bottles of rice wine in which a couple of snakes are suspended. (Being long, things like snakes and noodles are associated with longevity in China). Not content with their alcohol consumption, the locals are also partial to a bit of cannabis. Not to smoke. They use the oil, euphemistically referred to as ‘hemp oil’ in most English reports, but openly labelled on the local brand. This is used in dips and in a soup eaten twice a day. (At least that’s what they tell nosy researchers.) One thing for sure: drinking this water ain't going to make you life to 112. (In addition we've been hit by Bama eggs and Bama sesame oil. Naturally at double to triple the normal prices.) (Parts of this post have been copied from my blog here, which has more details about Bama.)

Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking by Samin Nosrat. Just started yesterday, but fascinating already.

Nor in the OED or any other dictionary. I'm going with it being a typo for "toothless"!

Fish and chips. Bought then gutted, de-scaled and filleted a red drum. Beer batter with chilli powder. Triple cooked chips. Just what the doctor didn't order. This is half of my repast. Went back for the second fillet and more chips.

????

...spend 20 minutes attempting, unsuccessfully, to Photoshop away a stray dot of black pepper which was ruining my otherwise immaculate picture of a perfect dinner, only to find that it was actually a speck of dust on my computer monitor.

The twist in the tale of the Nutella riots? Illegal Nutella! Whatever next?

Another found on Twitter Just my luck, 250 million year old salt and it expires next year.

After exhaustive research this morning (one brief phone call), I am informed that traditionally the central pot was indeed used as a heating element using solid fuel. However, today the hot pots are normally used on portable gas burners or induction cookers, rendering the central pot redundant. Today, the central pot is most often used to hold dry, uncooked ingredients to be cooked in the outer ring as and when required, or to hold cooked food so as to keep it warm without overcooking in the broth.

It's not actually a wok. It's a northern Chinese/Mongolian hotpot chafing dish. A soup is cooked elsewhere then added to the outer ring. Various ingredients (lamb/mutton and vegetables) are added by the diners, who essentially cook dinner themselves in the soup - fondue style. Very popular in winter. In fact, I hate winter food in China. It's the same every day. Here in the south we don't have the dishes with the central funnel/pot. The central pots seem to have various uses. I'm not sure which is most traditional. (Your chip and dip analogy may not be so far off. I confess I had to Google 'chip and dip'.) I will consult wiser people than me in the morning. You caught me at bedtime - I'll add more tomorrow, unless someone chips or dips in first.

Soup noodles. Fresh ramen noodles (拉面 lā miàn) in a pork bone broth with pork, mushrooms, spinach, green onion, chilli, garlic and ginger. Finished with some chilli oil, Sichuan peppercorn oil and white pepper. Hot and spicy for a cold day.

Pistachios in my new dispenser/disposer. With a nod to @Kerry Beal over here.

Indeed. I remember that two or three years ago there was great social unrest and near riots in India when the onion harvest failed.

Je ne sais pas. Peut-être qu'ils étaient trop ivres après le vin pour écrire cet avis.

This wasn't meant to be funny. It's a genuine health notice from France, 1954. For the non-Francophones, it says I'll do my best.

Tonight a meal I've made, and probably posted, many times before. But with a very slight difference. Pork with salt fermented black beans (豆豉 dòu chǐ), garlic, ginger, chilli, Sichuan peppercorns, Shaoxing wine, and soy sauce. With spinach. Unusually, and non-traditionally, I wilted the spinach in with the pork. The reason for this is highly scientific. A full explanation is beyond the scope of this post, but can be abbreviated to "pure laziness". P.S. The gold thing top left is a traditional Chinese compass used in 风水 fēng shuǐ and nothing at all to do with my dinner or my laziness, other than I was too lazy to move it out of shot. By the way, such compasses point to the south rather than north. Well they point both ways really, but the southern direction is the one highlighted. Hey, they invented compasses, so they can point any darn way they please.

香酥金薯片 (xiāng sū jīn shǔ piàn) Sweet Potato Chips.

辣子鸡 là zi jī is one of my all-time favourites. I cook it often and have posted it on the Dinner topic more than once, for example here (with preparation steps). This is one dish where I think you really do need the right peppers. I don't recommend eating the chillies. Not only because of the heat. The short cooking time means that they never fully rehydrate so remain quite dry and unpalatable.

Of course, many people can eat a lot of chillies with no ill effect, but then it also depends on the type of chillies. They vary enormously in heat. Also, I did say often the chillies are not meant to be eaten. In many dishes, they are eaten (usually fresh), especially in Hunan food which is probably China's hottest (more so than that of Sichuan). I still say that if you eat all the chillies in 辣子鸡 là zi jī , you stand a good chance of being hospitalised. I've seen it happen. And "kung po" (宫保 gōng bǎo) is one of the milder dishes!

I guess it would work out, but whether it would be "authentic" Chinese, whatever that means, I couldn't say.

Largely that the dried chillies are used to flavour the oil and are often not intended to be eaten. If you ate all the dried peppers in a dish of the Sichuan favourite, 辣子鸡 là zi jī, for example, you'd be hospitalised. Also, in many Hunan dishes the peppers are not intended to be eaten, but to add flavour to the overall dish. In much of Chinese cooking, dried ingredients such as peppers or mushrooms are not seen as merely preserved for rehydrating, but for the altered tastes drying brings. They are seen as different, separate ingredients. I regularly cook with both dried and fresh shiitake or peppers in the same dish. They bring different attributes to the party.

No. I didn't make the wrappers - they are store bought. Apologies if I may have inadvertently suggested otherwise. I buy these wraps in the one supermarket which still has an in-house bakery. The local name for them is 面皮 (miàn pí) which literally means 'wheat (flour) skins'. Somewhat confusingly, the same name is sometimes used in Xi'an and environs for a type of wheat noodles, also known as 凉皮 (liáng pí). Apart from the name, they are unrelated. It occurs to me that I haven't the faintest idea how they are used locally. I only ever use them as I have shown above. They are certainly not like egg roll wrappers nor tortillas. They are in two thin layers with an overall textural resemblance to thick wrapping paper (but tastier!). I will make enquiries and get back to you on how they are used here.

Tonight, I made myself some chicken wraps/rolls. De-boned three legs (it was a mutant chicken I guess) and marinated the meat with garlic, ginger, chilli and Shaoxing wine and Thai fish sauce. Fried and finished with a little oyster sauce to glaze. Wrapped with lettuce, cucumber, scallion and coriander leaf. I ate four.

I vividly remember, as a child, my father saying something along the lines of "the smell of frying onions would make the dead hungry". I thought he was barking mad. He passed away ten years ago, and frying onions hasn't revived him so far, but I've come to see the wisdom in his thinking. Just yesterday, I was walking home after lunch with friends, smelled my neighbour's onions frying and felt ravenous all over again!