A Sino-Moroccan feast in London
Anissa Helou beat me to it with her blog post about today’s culinary collaboration! Anyway, here’s mine. Anissa (a brilliant cook and food writer specialising in…
Sichuan pepper production at home?
Look at this beauty! It’s a tiny Sichuan pepper tree! It was a present from Richard S., a friend of the Oxford Food Symposium’s, who managed…
Room service
Of course, you can get a club sandwich from room service at any international hotel in China, and probably anywhere in the world, but how about…
Quiz answer!
Yes, many of you guessed correctly, the dagger is a fishbone! To be precise, it’s a bone from the head of the Ya fish (é›…é±¼, a…
Observer accolade for my Sichuan book
My first book, Sichuan Cookery (published in the US as Land of Plenty), was chosen by the Observer Food Monthly as one of the ten best…
The true pepper
My acupuncturist friend Simon came for lunch the other day, and one of the dishes I cooked was that old favourite mapo doufu (Pock-Marked Old Woman’s…
Sichuan ya cai – further developments
Another brand of ya cai, bought in London’s Chinatown. Not as good, in my opinion, as the one highlighted in my previous post, but perfectly usable…
Sichuanese preserved vegetable – 芽èœ
I was very happy to discover today that my local Chinese supermarket stocks Sichuanese ya cai 芽èœ, a speciality of the southern Sichuanese city of Yibin,…
Gong Bao chicken
I’m quite chuffed to read this thread on a Chinese web discussion board about Gong Bao chicken (apologies to those of you who can’t read Chinese).…
Who’s calling who greasy?
An illuminating little story from Sichuan, told to me by my friend Dai Shuang, the wife and business partner of the Sichuanese chef Yu Bo (who…