liuzhou

Anticipating a large dinner tonight, I kept lunch simple. The chips were not good - the potato had a strange texture. Not sure why. Omelette was fine. Plain 2-egg omelette and chips.

Keeping it simple tonight. Marinated chicken in the usual Shaoxing, garlic, ginger and chilli with a little potato starch. Stir fried with shiitake, asparagus and Chinese chives. Rice.

I wish my local stores promoted International stuff. They almost never do. The only examples I can think of from recent leaflets are Ferrero Rocher chocolates and Blue Ribbon "beer". I don't like chocolates and I don't consider that wet stuff to be in any way related to "beer".

I think our many gifted bread makers might be interested in this. 14,000-Year-Old Piece Of Bread Rewrites The History Of Baking And Farming

Yes, lurking rice. There is more in the rice cooker pan, which is now in the fridge. What you see is about a third of what I cooked. I know what you mean. Living alone, I did have the same problem. However, I do have a smaller rice cooker which does maybe two rice bowls worth (cooked). Today, I used the larger one as I am thinking of some fried rice for lunch tomorrow. If that doesn't transpire, I'll just freeze it for another day.

I've made and posted this before, but, as I probably said last time, it is a favourite and anyway, it's never the same twice. Lemon coriander pork. With a tomato, red onion and basil salad. I'm working my way through a record basil glut on my balcony. Rice. For dessert I ate the rest of the salad. It is simply dressed with white rice vinegar and salt. No oil. The pork is liberally marinated in olive oil in which it is then cooked.

Bought me a fish. I was thinking I'd steam it Chinese style, but then thought "I can eat that any time. Do something different." In the end I did it the same and different. I prepared it for steaming as if it was going to be a Chinese dish. You have to creep up on these critters. Gutted and de-scaled it then washed it in Shaoxing wine and stuffed it with garlic and ginger. Decorated the top with ginger "scales", chilli and carrot. Just to confuse it, I used two scallions to act as an honour guard on either side. Then I steamed the baby for 12 minutes. before After 12 minutes steaming in the wok, I removed it, after let it cool a bit then removed the top fillet. That confused it. It's usually served whole, Chinese style. Plated the one fillet with orzo and asparagus. In case it felt like a fish out of water, I added the two now steamed scallions to give it a feeling of security in this bizarre foreign environment. Then I ate it. Then went back for the lower fillet., more orzo and more asparagus. The fish was nicely spicy from the ginger and chilli and I think it went well with orzo. I'm likely to revisit this.

...never again set my cell phone timer for 8 hours instead of 8 minutes to cook my pasta. I usually use my kitchen timer, but it was busy with a prior appointment. The kitchen timer only has minutes and seconds. Didn't notice that the cell phone went up to hours. I was thinking "that seems like a long 8 minutes" after about 20, but I was distracted on some food internet forum or other. I think its name began with an 'e" and ended with something sounding like it may be a baby sea bird. Pasta was perfectly cooked into mush. Start again!

I heard it's OK if you don't inhale.

It's a locally produced mozzarella which is made into a rectangular block rather than the traditional ball shape in Italy. It is made from buffalo milk and tastes just the same as the Italian original. Certainly nothing like brie or provolone in either taste or texture.

More con-fusion food. After an OK insalata caprese for last night's dinner, I fancied another with lunch. (Mozzarella doesn't last long, after all.) When I had it ready, I had a notion to add some drops of balsamic vinegar, but when I opened the vinegar cupboard door a bottle of Zhenjiang Vinegar ended up in my hand. (镇江醋 zhèn jiāng cù - what you may call Chinkiang, which is meaningless to most Chinese.) I wouldn't say that one is a direct substitute for the other, but they have similarities, mainly colour, acidity and depth of flavour (albeit somewhat different). Anyway, it worked for me.

I seem to have got my cultures mixed up. Starter: Insalata Caprese from the beautiful Italian island of Capri Main: 牛肉孜然夹馍 (niú ròu zī rán jiá mò) Cumin Beef Rou Jia Mo from the great Chinese city, Xi'an. Three were eaten.

Boiled egg baguette.

This morning, just a bacon sandwich and an industrial strength black coffee.

แกงกะหรี่ Thai yellow curry with fish*, potato, Chinese chives and asparagus. Rice. *I used sole, but any white fish would do well, I think.

Except he didn't. Noodles were known in Italy long before Marco Polo.

I don't understand. Why break spaghetti? There is a big taboo here in China against breaking or cutting lengthy pasta. The long strands are thought to represent long life and cutting or breaking them is an omen of lack of longevity.

The ones shown were home made. People generally make them at home, although they may sometimes use wrappers bought in the local market. Assembling the jiaozi becomes a sort of group activity with everyone joining in. Even the youngest kids can form a neat jiaozi. The stuffing can be pretty much anything from a simple pork and cabbage to a more complicated mix like the one below. I tend to do pork, shrimp and mushroom stuffings - a classic mix.

Lunch chez a friend's house. Hand-Shredded Beef, Braised Wasp Fish, Jiaozi Dumplings, Stir-Fried Duck with Ginger, Steamed Oyster with Garlic, Pan-Fried Steak, Minced Pork with Tomato Sauce Noodles, Fried Pork, Fried Sweet Potato Greens, Fruit.

ผัดกระเพราไก่ Holy Basil Chicken Got to be better than unholy basil, I reckon. With asparagus and oyster mushrooms. With rice.

I knew it wasn't a good idea, but did it anyway. A few weeks back, I was given a box of packs of an "instant" variety of the local iconic noodle dish, Luosifen (螺蛳粉 luó sī fěn, pronounced roughly as Low Si Fun but with a different tone on each syllable.) I like this dish. Typically, it is sold in small restaurants which are no bigger than shacks. A few years ago, the dish was featured on the highly successful Chinese television Series, "A Bite of China" and factories started making these ersatz "instant" versions. For the real version, the stock/broth/soup base is based on the local river snails (螺蛳 luó sī). These are boiled, along with pork bones, for anywhere between 3 and 10 hours. Additional ingredients include black cardamom, fennel seed, dried tangerine peel, cassia bark, cloves, salt, pepper, bay leaf, licorice root, sand ginger, and star anise. No one really weighs or measures anything. Each shop ‘knows’ how much of anything is needed. There may be other ingredients, too. Once the broth is ready, rice noodles made from ‘old rice’ are added. The ‘old rice’ gives the noodles a firmer, more chewy texture than other rice noodles such as those used in Guilin Mifen (桂林米粉 guì lín mǐ fěn), for example. Alongside the noodles, fried dried beancurd sticks, pickled bamboo shoots, black wood ear fungus, lettuce, peanuts and preserved cow peas are also added. A hefty slug of chilli oil is necessary for authenticity. You may add more chilli, pickles etc to taste. Then you are ready to rock. To prepare instant luosifen, you boil the wrong noodles then add water and a bunch of gloop from plastic bags. This is what I had: This bag contained nine smaller bags. Here I've translated that they are: The ingredients list is as follows: Rice noodle bag: dry rice noodles (rice, edible corn starch, water) Sauce bag: fresh snail meat, vegetable oil, edible salt, spice, rock sugar, monosodium glutamate (MSG), chicken powder, bone soup, rice wine, cassia bark. Small vegetable bag: sour bamboo shoots, black wood ear fungus, mustard, dried radish, capers, vinegar, salt, paprika, potassium sorbate, sodium benzoate) Fuzhu bag: dried bean milk skin, sodium metabisulfite, edible oil Peanut Pack: Peanut, Edible Oil Spicy oil bag: cooking oil, chilli, spice I love me some sodium metabisulfite. The instructions told me to boil the noodles for 10 to 12 minutes (I choose the lower end of the spectrum), then drain and set aside. I was then instructed to boil 350 ml of water and add the soup mix. Stir until well mixed, add the cooked noodles and the rest of the ingredients to taste. In the interests of exactitude I added everything. I was convinced the 350ml of water was misguided but was determined to follow their recipe. Although the finished product looked right, it tasted awful. Massively over-salted, over MSG-ed and tasting of raw chilli. While a good luosifen does pack a clout, it is also full of complex and subtle tastes. This was just a hit to the head with a blunt instrument. I'd say I was disappointed, but I wasn't expecting any miracles. My problem now is I have another 11 packs of this. I'll need to find some people I don't like to pass them on to.

For the love of cookbooks.

A day off work. Home made spicy quail scotch eggs, tomato, balcony basil and home made mango relish. There are more Scotch eggs in the fridge for munching later.

I have read that "it’s best to toss the bitter melon in some salt and let it sit for 30 to 45 minutes to help draw out some of the bitterness and excess liquid.” I've never done that, though. I like the bitterness.