©Zoe Laughlin

My piece about this unusual event is in this weekend’s Financial Times Magazine here. Since that memorable evening, I’ve noticed myself on a few occasions unconsciously sucking my cutlery, just to see what it tastes like… One intriguing question that I didn’t have space to explore in the article is why we are sensitive to the tastes of different metals: could it be so that we can avoid those that are harmful, and are drawn to those that we need for our health? Zoe Laughlin told me she had noted that ‘men of a certain age’ have a penchant for copper; while Mark Miodownik cited a recent study backing up the suggestion that zinc, taken with Vitamin C, can help to stave off a cold. ‘Perhaps, instead of shelling out fortunes on mineral supplements,’ he said, ‘We could just stir our hot lemon juice and honey with a zinc-coated spoon.’ You can find out more about the materials adventures of Zoe, Mark and their colleagues here, at the Institute of Making.

P.S. My article about a cheese-tasting in Shaoxing (which appeared in the FT last year) won the James Beard Foundation Journalism Award for Food Culture and Travel on Friday night! Thrilled!

The names tai cai 苔菜, taitiao 苔条 and hu tai 浒苔, all refer to seaweeds from the Enteromorpha Genus (also known as Ulva), which include Entermorpha intestinalis (named for its strandy form), E. prolifera and E. Clathrata. Their English common names include grass kelp, sea lettuce, green string lettuce and sea hair. In eastern China, particularly the Ningbo area, they have various culinary uses.They may be deep-fried, sprinkled with sugar, and served with glossy deep-fried peanuts; chopped up and added to a batter used to clothe strips of yellow fish for deep-frying (the finished strips have a lovely speckly appearance); or used in sweet-savoury pastries like these divine flaky-pastry buns from one of my favourite restaurants in Shanghai. This kind of seaweed is, I guess, the origin of the ‘crispy seaweed’ served as an appetiser in Chinese restaurants, which is actually made from other deep-fried greens such as pak choy.

Drying on the radiator

By the next morning, the seaweed had hardened and dried, and my whole flat smelt delicious! (The smell is really captivating.) When I compared it with some seaweed I brought back from Ningbo, I realised that over there they must have rinsed the weed in seawater, because it still tasted salty and mine didn’t: otherwise they were very similar. I called a local forager called Fergus Drennan to ask his advice on eating the stuff we’d gathered in Whitstable. He said the coast of the Southeast of England wasn’t the cleanest place for foraging, and that although seaweeds were highly nutritious, they could accumulate heavy metals in their environment. His own tests on other varieties of seaweed gathered nearby showed that most contained toxic elements at very low levels that were considered safe to eat, but that he reckoned even

if levels were higher, little harm was likely if one was eating them only occasionally. (As I was speaking him, it occurred to me that it was hilarious to be so concerned about the water quality off the coast of England when I’ve happily eaten seaweed from Ningbo!) Fergus rinses his own seaweed in seawater, or failing that in a saltwater solution, so that it retains its sea-salty taste and also keeps better after drying. I’ll know for next time!

On the left is a pic of some seaweed with peanuts. I also served some, Ningbo style, with slow-cooked pork, but the photo did not come out well… If you want to deep-fry your own seaweed, take care to keep the oil temperature fairly low (about 140 degrees C), drain it well on kitchen paper, and then serve with a sprinkling of granulated sugar.

Anyway, it’s such a great name for a dish that I’m seriously tempted to use it from now on! (although perhaps it would be better suited for the explosively hot ‘chicken with chillies’ (la zi ji 辣子鸡 )）

Of course I couldn’t resist stopping by for a quick bite, and ended up with a delicious and healthy bowlful of spicy tofu, scrambled eggs with tomatoes, cucumber salad, stir-fried lotus stems,pickled taro stems with a little minced pork (these were stupendous), and rice jelly with Chinese chives, all served with steamed rice. I sat at a table outside in the sun, opposite the small son of one of the sisters, who had just popped back from school in his lunchbreak.

The market  itself consisted of a couple of streets where peasant farmers from the surrounding countryside were selling their own produce, gathered that morning: lettuce stems and radishes, spinach and potatoes, garlic stems and peasprouts, mint and garland chrysanthemum leaves… It was a vibrant reminder of what freshness really means (and of the sad un-freshness of much of the produce sold in supermarkets).

On the lefthand side of the board are garlic stems (known confusingly as suan tai 蒜薹 in Sichuan, suan miao 蒜苗 in Hunan and suan xin 蒜芯 in at least some Cantonese areas. In China, they are often sold complete with their little bulbs on the top of each stem; here in England, where they can be found in some Chinese greengrocers, they are usually trimmed and bulbless. Raw, they have a strong and forthright pungency, but when you stir-fry them they become sweet and mellow. They are heavenly stir-fried with cured meats or firm pressed tofu.

On the right, you can see a pair of fish (fish are an almost obligatory part of New Year’s Eve dinners because nian nian you yu is a phrase that can mean both ‘fish every year’ and ‘plenty every year’: so the dish is an auspicious play on words.) You can also see home-reared chicken, and chunks of meat from the pig the household had fattened up in the last months of the lunar year, as well as steamed buns (hua juan) dotted with food colourings to make them look more festive. In the cold, arid north, particularly in rural areas like this, wheaten foods such as hua juan, man tou 馒头 (plain steamed buns), deep-fried dough-twists (麻花 ma hua), noodles and dumplings are normally eaten rather than rice.

On the left, you can see several of the ingenious ways in which local people transformed one kind of food (pork) into many different tastes and textures. In the centre there are chunks of meat, on the bone; on the top left a stir-fry of lean meat and green onions or chives; centre bottom a kind of meatball wrapped in eggskin, steamed and then sliced; bottom right some ‘pearly meatballs’ made from minced pork studded with whole rice grains; and on centre right slices of a jelly made from the skin, which I was given in every single household, and which was usually made in a few different colours, using food colourings. And on the top left, you can see a few steamed buns, which were eaten with the main dishes.

Anyway, I must stop writing and start cooking, because I have some people coming over for a New Year’s dinner and it’s getting late! On the menu: spinach with either a gingery or sour-hot dressing (haven’t decided yet), spicy cucumber salad, a stew of red-braised wild venison with beancurd sticks, Gong Bao chicken, stir-fried pork and yellow chives, steamed wild sea bass with ginger and spring onion, Chinese broccoli with ginger, fish-fragrant aubergines (I find it hard to do a dinner party without them, and they are often the most popular dish), and a couple of other dishes TBC. Oh, and some of the winter meats mentioned in my previous post, steamed, sliced and served with ground chillies and Sichuan pepper in homage to my beloved Chengdu. The stew is simmering away as I finish this post, wafting out lovely aromas of fermented chillies and beans, ginger, spring onion, venison and star anise.

Happy New Year!

Afterwards:

I wanted to show you a couple of uses for this home-cured meat. On the right you can see how I served it on New Year’s Eve: simply rinsed, steamed, cooled, sliced and served with a dip of ground chillies (you can add a little ground roasted Sichuan pepper too, if you like). The meat has an intense umami flavour, a little like ham.

Another scrumptious use for it is to chop it finely and use it to add an umami deliciousness to fried rice or eight-treasure stuffings. Below you can see the fried rice I made with leftovers from the dinner: a little home-cured pork; an egg or two, beaten; finely chopped gai lan (Chinese broccoli); a little ginger and garlic; and a whisper of sesame oil to finish.