liuzhou

Simple but satisfying. Penne with tuna, chilli, garlic and ginger.

I don't need a calendar to know where in the year I am. Right now, it's hotpot season and this shows in this month's leaflet.

I love me a good sausage roll, but can't find them here. Chinese sausages aren't what I want, so I have to make my own sausage meat from fatty pork. But then I have the spicing problem. The spices and herbs I want just aren't available here, so I just use black pepper, sometimes chilli powder, maybe some nutmeg. If I'm feeling industrious I may make pastry, but usually buy frozen (not easy to find - I only know one shop which carries it, but they take forever to restock when it sells out, so I usually buy tons of it (which is why they run out!)) I never pre-cook the meat. Bake from raw. They only get minimally greasy and fat is flavour! Sausage rolls need grease! Flavourless, dry sausage meat in pastry is not what I want.

I always make mapo doufu with ground beef. That is the more traditional way in Sichuan.

Here is another recipe for coca cola wings, written by a Chinese teenager as a college exercise.

Yeah. Winged it. I've been flapping for years!

Pork marinated with garlic, ginger, chilli and Shaoxing wine. Stir fried with mushrooms, spinach and scallions and finished with a little soy sauce and sesame oil. Rice.

I haven't decided if this was a watery fish stew or a thick fish soup but it was lunch.

I had a fairly substantial, if uninteresting lunch today, so this evening a spinach omelette (duck eggs) and chips sufficed. With a beer, so all four food groups are covered. Protein, carbs, veg and alcohol.

This tasted a lot better than it looks. It's a sort-of Maghreb inspired dish of chicken with lentils, garlic, ginger, coriander seed, cumin, lemon zest and scallions. With rice and garlicky spinach.

Indeed it is, but I've never seen so much being used, and I spent a lot of time in Ireland when I was younger.

Way too much sugar.

Steak, kidney and mushroom pie without the pie, because of the much mourned decease of my oven. Still, an OK dinner. Added chilli and Thai fish sauce. Once again, I neglected to photograph the side dish - cauliflower. I was too hungry to hang around taking pictures for your gratification while everything got cold!

My freezer is literally, 100%, completely, without reservation EMPTY! Time to start working towards overfilling it again, I think.

It's certainly common. All my local supermarkets have it, both fresh and frozen. I only buy the fresh. I guess it's Pacific cod (Gadus macrocephalus).

Coconutty, fish curry (cod) and rice. There was a side of greenery which didn't get photographed.

Duck eggs and flatbread. Black coffee.

Leatherjacket or leather jack, filleted and fried. Served with black rice and wilted spinach with garlic.

Sad to hear of the death of Antonio Carluccio, one of the people who first turned me onto the pleasures of wild mushrooms, long before anyone had heard the term "foraging". More information on this topic.

This may not mean much to non-British members, but I'm sad to read this morning of the passing of Antonio Carluccio, the only "celebrity chef" I ever met and spoke with. Many years ago, I was standing outside his beautiful Italian deli in the northern fringes of Covent Garden, London admiring the wonderful fresh wild mushrooms on sale which were displayed by the open door and regretting that I couldn't afford them that day. As I was doing so, the man himself came out and stopped to chat with me. He was large of body and heart. At that time he was known mainly from his books and for his passion for (the then unfashionable) mushroom foraging, only later becoming a television star, too. Here are a few links. One to an obituary, one to a personal memoir from food writer Matthew Fort and one to a Q+A session with the maestro.

As I was typing "black", I was thinking "It might be dark blue". Thanks for the info.

I've been away from home for just over a week. Nothing interesting to report food-wise other than I had one evening meal with a couple of young Chinese associates at a roadside grilled oyster stand. I asked the woman in charge of the place to serve me some shucked, uncooked oysters. She looked highly suspicious but complied. Unfortunately she ditched all the liquid from them, though! I had been talking with my companions explaining that raw is my (and many others') preferred way of eating oysters. They didn't believe me. Most Chinese people are hugely nervous of eating anything raw. Rare beef? Forget it. Salad? Rarely. Anyway, raw oysters arrived and I scoffed the first plate of 10, then ordered another, to the amazement of my companions and the vendor. When the second plate arrived, each of my two companions decided they would risk trying one, on condition that I promised they wouldn't die. I explained that I had no ability to render them immortal and that one day they will pop off, but probably not any time soon. To my delight, they tried one each; proclaimed them surprisingly OK, but preferred the grilled ones (grilled with a little chilli, garlic and topped with vermicelli). Brave young women. But this all just a prelude to my saying that I arrived back home this evening about 7:30 and threw together a quick store cupboard dish of linguine with duck meat slivers (from the freezer), rehydrated dried shiitake, green chilli (from my balcony plants), pimiento-stuffed olives (from a bottle), and tomato. Lots of black pepper. Tomorrow, I'll go shopping and get back into cooking.

Love your black plate.

Why not?

I did a simple salad of spinach, scallion and crisp chicken skin "croutons" as part of dinner last night (as shown on the Dinner thread). Dressed with a simple lemon vinaigrette. The spinach wasn't as "young" as I would prefer, but it went down fine.