liuzhou

Yes, you are almost certainly correct. However, he has still got it wrong. I am not FROM China. I'm British as my profile states.. And there is no need for prediction. It says beside my name that I am in China. The rest of the post remains confusing - I realise that it it is a language problem. Mangosteen extinct? Who on earth wrote that.? (lthough it soon might be if I keep eating so many.)

Bought myself some mangosteens. One of my favourite fruits. The price of durians has slipped so low that they are almost giving them away. However, to get the good deal you have to buy a whole one which I'm never going to get through. Need to round up some friends, but a lot of them hate durian!

Yes, I filled a whisky glass with water and popped the sprigs in. Sometimes they take; not always. I can't find "rooting powder" here. No doubt that would help. When they do work, it takes about three days to have roots, but I guess that is weather dependent. A sprig this size, grew to this in about ten days. And here is a cutting from the above after five days. Some has been eaten from both plants.

A largely liquid farewell lunch today, saying goodbye to a friend who is leaving China to return to his native Australia. Nothing better to accompany a beer or seven than a nice plate of spicy, stewed river snails - a local speciality. The snails are stewed with chilli, garlic, ginger, pickled bamboo shoot (another local delicacy) and various mystery roots and herbs. Good stuff.

Tonight. Mango beef with asparagus and rice. The beef is marinated in rice vinegar and osmanthus flavoured rice wine with garlic, minced ginger (lots) and chili flakes, then slow-cooked until tender. Mango is hedgehog cubed, added to the beef and allowed to warm through. Served in a half 'shell' of mango skin.The asparagus was grilled/broiled.

I buy sprigs of mint at the local market then, when I have one I like, let it sprout roots and plant it. I have no idea what variety. As @gfwebsays, it grows like mad. The one I have now has that room filling aroma and certainly doesn't taste like lettuce. It's dark now or I'd post a picture of a ten day old sprig which is now a hedge!

Your prediction would be wrong, then. As @Allen89 points out the picture is taken at his father's home town in Malaysia. I have no idea what you mean by "the specific fruit in china". Specific is the wrong word. But although strawberries are available in China (sometimes), I doubt there is another person on the planet who, when thinking about fruit and China, comes up with strawberries. Lychee maybe would be number 1. I have posted many pictures here of what fruit I get in China. How you can assume that life in China is wonderful because of strawberries is an utter mystery.

Lemon and coriander pork. Cubed pork marinated overnight in olive oil, lemon juice and zest, crushed coriander seeds, garlic, red chilli pepper, S+P. Pan fried. Grilled/broiled vegetables. Mushrooms, shallots, garlic, yellow bell peppers, cherry tomatoes. All with olive oil. Rice.

I forgot to mention what is probably the most common use here. Dips. Almost every meal is served with a dip of some sort and they nearly always contain Chinese chives. Here is a simple dip served with jiaozi dumplings. It's just soy sauce and chopped chives. More common is this. It is served with all meals. Chinese chives, coriander leaf (cilantro) and hot red peppers are chopped finely and mixed with soy sauce and/or vinegar. So common is this that my nearest supermarket only sells the coriander tied in a bunch with chives. Chive and Coriander Bunch as sold in most markets and supermarkets for making dips.

I thoroughly recommend the yellow variety if you can find them. They are the same plant, but grown without access to direct light so remain yellow. This seems to intensify the garlic flavour and, in particular, thescent. Wonderful things. Use as above, especially in stir fries, but also in dumplings.

They are very versatile. I am never without them. As has been said, they enhance any stir fry and are great with eggs - try in an omelette. Add to soups at the last minute. Anywhere you could use.garlic really. Salads. On (or in) steamed fish. I also sometimes just stir fry them with a little dried shrimp or ham (or both) and serve as a vegetable side.

The dreaded Chizzas have turned up in China.

I never did any such thing. My breakfast today is in complete accord with anything I have previously said. I previously mentioned unbalanced, inappropriate additions to fried rice. I selected my ingredients carefully. I had other leftovers I could have "dumped" therein but then I am not a complete philistine. Northern China has many more, but yes, Russian stuff wends its way down here. Areas of Beijing are very Russian. When I first arrived in China, I spent a lot of time there. I could understand people! I had no Chinese then. That said, we often get "Russian" stuff, too. Nothing wrong with it. It just means that it is Russian style rather than actually made in Russia. But still often made by Russians. The Chinese labelling is unambiguous. The sausage this morning was imported from Russia (about ten minutes from the border) but we often get "Harbin Red Sausage", which is Russian in all but name. Russian vodka is very cheap here compared with the UK.

Fried rice with duck egg, asparagus, scallion, yellow bell pepper, Russian sausage, red chilli pepper. Fridge clearance, really. Isn't it odd how clearing the trash from the fridge can provide the best breakfast of the past week or so?

Forget that! I just looked for one on Taobao, China's (the world's) biggest online shopping portal. They are offering one for ¥308. The same one costs around $5 to $7 in Walmart in the USA. ¥308 is equal to $45. Someone is extracting the urine!

I was trying to cook a chicken breast by the 1-10-10 method after brining it for 24 hours, but I'm not used to my new cooker yet. It's much hotter than I had before. A real Chinese heat blaster and difficult to control. So I over-seared the bird in that first minute. However, I compensated and the meat ended up tasting perfectly fine - juicy and not over-cooked. Just a bit messed up cosmetically. With rice and enoki mushrooms in a mushroom Zhajiang type sauce. There was some water spinach, too. I need to buy a heat diffuser. Never seen one here, though. But then, I've never looked, either.

I used to do that in London about 25 or more years ago. My emergency can't-be-bothered-cooking dinner was ravioli just as you describe. China doesn't do them as such, but I found that many varieties of frozen wontons are incredibly similar apart from the use of cheese. Pork and mushroom. Chicken, pork and shrimp. So now I usually have some of those lurking in the freezer. Must buy some tomorrow.

This is possibly probably the fastest lunch I know of. Live protein readied to entertain my mouth in less than 5 minutes, including prep*, cooking and plating. Garlic Prawns with Capellini. The pasta takes three minutes, so I start that off, then mince one head of single-headed garlic which I add to a wok with olive oil, salt and chilli flakes. When it comes to a sizzle (almost immediately) add prawns** and stir. If it looks like catching at all, a sprinkling of water (from the pasta pot) is enough to prevent it burning. At three minutes, drain pasta and add to prawns. Make sure all prawns are cooked through and pink. Check seasoning and adjust if necessary. Serve. Eat., * except shopping, of course **I threw on a wok lid at this point as the prawns were still alive and felt there were better places to spend a Saturday afternoon than in a red hot wok, so attempted to jump back out. They soon surrendered.

I've been thinking about / planning this for a couple of days and pulled it together tonight. Not that it was difficult. In fact, the opposite. . Steamed cod with a simple salad. The cod was dressed with olive oil, salt and pepper and steamed. Boiled some potato, dressed with OO and left to cool. Salad of lettuce, coriander leaf and scallions. OO and lemon dressing. Served with my magical, spicy ginger sauce imported at great expense from Thailand (which isn't that far away). Everything came together like a dream. Happy mouth!

You don't say where you are now, but in Europe you will probably find all the same stuff you have at home. It's globalisation.

Free range duck eggs (two) scrambled. Toast. Asparagus.

I haven't made this in an age and I can't think why. It's one of my favourites. Clams with fermented black beans, garlic, ginger, Osmanthus wine and soy sauce. Scallions. Served with rice. I always make "too much" sauce then soak the rice in it. Delicious. Or I may even mop it up gravy style with bread. Sauce from Chinese heaven. I had originally intended to serve this with asparagus on the side, but in the end felt it didn't need it, so it's in the fridge for breakfast tomorrow.

Very Mongolian. I love it.

Tonight (and tomorrow's lunch, I suspect.) I prepared diced chicken breast, green chilli, black olives, shallots, black garlic and capers. The roots and stem ends were cut from the coriander leaf, too. All of this was unceremoniously dumped into a wok with S+P and thrown around until the chicken was all nicely browned. Then the whole lot was transferred to a slow cooker and forgotten about till the smell woke me up. Mise 2 was simple. Some rehydrated dried shrimp, a duck egg and leftover rice deposited in the fridge last night. The rest of the coriander was chopped and added to the chicken, then the rice fried by my usual method. First I fry the egg until it thinks it might solidify but would actually prefer to remain liquid. Some sort of lurid poultry erotica, no doubt. The shrimp were fried just enough for colour then the rice was added. Clumps were broken up. Most people do this by using the wok scoop to 'cut' into the rice and all they get are smaller clumps ad infinitum. No! No! No! Whatever are you thinking of? Use the back of the scoop to press the clumps of rice down onto the base of the wok. They split into separate grains easily. Salt and shichimi togarishi added. Like everyone in China, I don't usually salt rice other than in fried rice and not always then. Here are the plated results. That'll do nicely.

Mise en place Plating One satisfied customer - me. (I did have a couple of tasty cheese sandwiches with spicy mango relish on home made bread (no bananas involved), but who needs to see the lumpy stuff?)