liuzhou

Your non-egg based breakfast seems to have eight eggs in it!

Summer food. 38ºC. In the shade. 1-10-10 chicken. Pre-brined for 4 hours. Not a drop of sous or vide. Left to rest for about 30 minutes. Tender and juicy. Home made potato salad. No I didn't make the potatoes, but I did cook them. Made the mayonnaise, though. Egg, mustard, a splash of rice vinegar and rice bran oil. A winner. Tomato and balcony basil with black pepper and lemon dressing. Seconds were had. (Don't mention the thirds!)

Exactly.

I haven't seen straight since January 1963. Have never wanted to. But still manage to comment. Sometimes.

What a novel idea!

What tiny percentage of the population use sous vide? The topic has every relevance to today and tomorrow.

Squid boiled for one minute in acidulated water. Srirarcha. Edamame. Couscous with scallions. There was a small and simple side salad.

Freshly made rice noodles* with pork tenderloin slices, garlic, baby bok choy, green and red chilli, rice wine and rice vinegar. Boiled duck egg. Before adding broth to the bowl: and after: * by my neighbour.

Next time you are passing drop in! Much as I like beef, I'm with you on most pasta pairings. Although, I have to say, a few years back, I did have one hare and pasta dish which was literally awesome.

Penne rigata with a pork ragu. Onions, fresh tomato, red chilli, red wine. S&P. Finished with balcony basil and grana padano.

Yeah. Apparently when Kissinger visited Mao to set up the Nixon-Mao meeting, he presented the Chairman with a John Denver cassette as a gift from the then President and so, Denver became the only approved western singer.

Another fine tribute here from Matthew Fort. THE FINEST MEAL OF MY LIFE

Now you mentiuon it, I have heard that in China, too.

The packet of fresh ramen noodles I was 100% sure I had in the fridge has evaporated into thin air, so this is not quite what was intended. A deft noodle substitution was called for. Linguine with clams. Clams done with garlic, ginger, shallots , coriander leaf (cilantro), Shaoxing wine and oyster sauce.

You remind me. A few months back my dear friend J invited me to lunch at her place and her husband cooked what I was told was chicken in aged vinegar. That is what the Chinese call matured Zhenjiang vinegar (镇江香醋 zhèn jiāng xiāng cù) and what America calls Chinkiang, or some such nonsense. Anyway, what ever you call it, the dish was delicious. I must ask them for the recipe. It will not be withheld.

Interesting read. Grocery shopping developments in China.

Restaurant lunch yesterday. August. 40ºC "Jingle Bells" and "Auld Lang Syne" Astonishingly common in China. Makes a change from "Edelweiss" and "Yesterday Once More", the only songs ever to have been written outside China.

It's been a while since I did this. Duck egg with flatbread.

454g Not that i know of. The vast majority of Chinese never use butter All the butter I have access to is imported. The Chinese is 黄油 (huáng yóu) which literally means 'yellow oil' but also just means 'grease'.

I think I've come over a bit Irish. Tonight, fried pork tenderloin slices with riced potato and scallions. And that Irish standby - baby bok choy. My potatoes weren't up to Joël Robuchon standard (whose are?), but were OK. No butter involved. liuzhou's tragic butter story: When I first moved to this city, there was only one tiny store that occasionally carried what the locals considered to be weird. Capers, pickled gherkins, Tabasco sauce, canned Portuguese anchovies, Heinz baked beans, French liver päté, Bovril. Things would run out and not be restocked for months or even years. But to the then tiny ex-pat community, the prize was that they had butter. So much so that the shop was universally known as "the butter shop". About three weeks ago that store closed down for extensive renovations. Extensive to the point they razed the building and are rebuilding it. In the meantime, butter became more available. There has been a fashion for home baking recently and many "baking supply" stores now stock butter - usually unsalted. All of it imported, so pricey. The butter shop sold salted and unsalted Anchor butter from New Zealand at ¥18 a block. My local supermarket is selling the identical butter for ¥38. I refuse to buy it. This particular place always racks up the price of anything they think will only be bought by dumb foreigners. In fact, I hate the place, but it is my nearest supermarket and they do have a few things I can only find there. It's not that I couldn't afford it; I just hate being ripped off. So, the point of this long sad tale is that I am temporarily butterless. Sorry, M. Robuchon

The legendary mashed potato recipe is here. Joël Robuchon's best mashed potatoes in the world – recipe

Which? They are not the same. Tree ear (木耳 mù ěr. 'wood-ear' is a better translation) is dark, brown to black. Cloud ear (云耳 yún ěr ) are white to light gray. Taste wise they are the same .Tasteless.

Then you are doing it wrong. I regularly fry squash blossoms and they do not taste either 'all' or 'mostly' (contradiction there) of fried batter.

Pan-fried sole with shichimi togarashi, served with salad and couscous with fresh basil and basil oil.

Joël Robuchon, 'chef of the century', dies aged 73