New York Times recipe lab (+ a note on substitutions)
You can see Julia Moskin and three New York Times readers chatting with me about ‘Every Grain of Rice’ here: And the full article, focusing on…
The MSG controversy
This article ‘Breaking Bland’, by John Mahoney, is the most lucid, informative and interesting I’ve read on the whole MSG controversy. It goes into great detail…
Chinese vegetables grown in Kent
You can read my piece about Farmer Mau Chiping in today’s Financial Times magazine. For years I’ve been torn between my desires to buy as much…
Magic ingredients: Papery dried shrimp 虾皮
I always keep a bagful of these tiny dried shrimp, known as ‘shrimp skin’ in Chinese, in my freezer. A spoonful or two can be used…
Malabar spinach in London!
The range of fresh Chinese vegetables available in London is growing all the time, and the best news is that some of them are grown locally.…
Chinese seaweed in Whitstable
We picked over Whitstable beach, finding empty winkles and oyster shells calcified into heavy white reliquaries. And then between a couple of groynes there was a…
The joys of garlic
One Chinese vegetable that I always miss when I’m in London is green garlic, which the Sichuanese call suan miao 蒜苗 and people in other parts…
Chinese vegetables in Oxfordshire
A glorious morning yesterday at the Worton Organic Garden and Farm near my parents’ house in Oxford. I brought back purple sprouting broccoli, basil, multicoloured tomatoes…
Chinese food emergency helpline?
Every so often, I have an SOS telephone call from a friend in desperate need of information about some aspect of Chinese food. Usually they are…
In praise of hong cai tai (and other Chinese greens)
I’m back in Changsha, where I lived for a few months while researching my Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook, for the first time in five years. It’s wonderful…