And have any of you invented any useful words or phrases that you use for food or cookery?

‘We see that the posters here on the “Home Cooking” Forum are a very tough bunch. Especially when 1400 years for the technique of “stir fry cooking in a wok” is not considered a sufficient time to have passed the “long test of time” in terms being considered a classic cooking technique, nor the introduction of the New World foods, which would only be in the neighborhood of a mere 700 years.’

It reminded me of the fact that many of the professional Chinese cooking manuals I have encountered in my work begin their introductions with an account of the discovery of fire, the moment when human beings ceased being savages who 茹毛饮血 (literally ‘ate feathers and drank blood, i.e. ate birds and animals raw), and embarked on the path of civilisation by cooking their food. It also reminded me of the late Chinese premier Zhou Enlai who, when asked for his assessment of the 1789 French Revolution, supposedly replied that it was ‘too early to say’.

Anyway, the Chowhound discussion was triggered by a question about what brand of soy sauce to serve with xiao long bao (小笼包）. Actually, as some of the posters suggested, these deliciously juicy dumplings are normally served simply with a dip of rice vinegar and slivered ginger. Chinkiang vinegar, or black vinegar as it’s often called, is actually made from glutinous rice, and the dark colour comes naturally from scorched ricegrains.

Incidentally, I went recently with a chef friend to the wonderful Islington wine shop The Sampler, where you can taste small amounts of a wide range of wines. We began with modestly-priced examples of some fine Sancerres and New World Sauvignon Blancs, and ended up with a swig of a 1955 Pauillac, which was one of the most incredible things I’ve ever tasted - utterly delicious, as rich as an old Spanish ham, smooth and glorious, in a league of its own. Afterwards, we went back to my place and had an impromptu tasting of Chinese sesame oils, soy sauces and vinegars.

My friend, who is currently working as head chef at a very well-known restaurant in the West End of London, could not believe the quality of the artisanal sesame oil I’d brought back from Hangzhou, from the small factory I wrote about recently in the Financial Times. He was bowled over by it - it was SO much better than the toasted sesame oils available in the UK.

Of the soy sauces, the stand-out favourite was the Clearspring Tamari I use most often at home. It had a richer, more rounded flavour than the Kikkoman and Pearl River varieties we also tasted. I find this the closest soy sauce to the artisanal soy sauces I’ve tasted in China.

As to vinegars, I gave him a few different kinds of Chinkiang vinegar to try. We tried three produced by the famous Hengshun vinegar factory in Zhenjiang (Chinkiang), and a cheap Chinkiang vinegar that I’d bought in London’s Chinatown. Two of the Hengshun vinegars were fairly sharp, but the 10-year-old vinegar that I was given by the manager of the factory when I went there was superb, a bit like an Italian balsamic in some ways. The cheaper one tasted dull and musty by comparison. I wish the matured Zhenjiang vinegar was more widely available.

I don’t know why, but it’s put me in a really good mood.

In the print edition, there’s also a little list of Chinese New Year traditions by me, but I can’t seem to find it online.

And, did you see the news that Ferran Adria says El Bulli is actually to close permanently, after 2012?

There was a Q&A with the director and Patrick Holden of the UK Soil Association after the screening. One of the topics that came up was the particular US focus of the film. Robert Kenner said they’d decided to concentrate on the US, but could have gone anywhere, including to mass meat-processing centres in Romania. And he also mentioned that China was heading in the same direction as the US.

Does anyone out there know much about factory farming in China? Many of my Chinese friends are very worried about speed-rearing, and about hormones in meat, and prefer to buy what we would call free-range and organic foods where possible, but it is hard to find trustworthy sources unless you know the farmers yourself. Certainly I’ve met farmers who don’t eat their own pesticide-laced vegetables themselves, but keep a separate patch for produce grown for the family table.

The Party Secretarys Wifes version

According to a report in the Daily Telegraph, a local government in Hunan is issuing precise instructions for making Mao’s favourite dish, Red-Braised Pork (hong shao rou 红烧肉), in an attempt to stem the flood of imitations. They are also attempting to standardise recipes for other dishes enjoyed by Mao, including stir-fried pork with peppers (nong jia chao rou 农家炒肉) and steamed fishhead with chillies (duojiao zheng yutou 剁椒蒸鱼头).

I was particularly amused by this because in the course of research for my Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook I was shown two different versions of this in Mao’s home village Shaoshan alone: one, made by the wife of the local Communist Party Secretary, was a simple dish of braised pork belly, cooked in lard with dark soy sauce to give colour, a dash of vinegar and a little sugar; the other, made in the kitchens of the Shaoshan Guesthouse, where I’d just had lunch with Mao’s nephew, was a more sophisticated dish, coloured with caramelised sugar (糖色), spiced with dried red

The Shaoshan Guesthouse version

chillies, star anise and ginger, and enhanced by some juices of fermented beancurd. Who can say which is truer to Mao’s own tastes?

The other thing is that local officials have said that true hongshao rou can only be made with the meat of some rare breed of pig from Ningxiang County. This I found hilarious, because of all people, Mao Zedong, a notorious lover of coarse grains, wild vegetables and robust peasant food , seems unlikely to have been concerned with the precise sourcing of his ingredients. I’m sure he would have left that to the refined, bourgeois gourmets he so despised.

You can hear me talking about this story on the BBC World Service this afternoon, here - it’s the last item in the programme.

Personally, I’ve never understood how people can be horrified at the idea of eating dogs, while happily eating pigs (which are also intelligent creatures).  Both are equally gruesome, when you really think about it.

So why are the Chinese thinking about a ban? Is it really the result of the increase in numbers of people who keep dogs as pets, and can’t bear the thought of them? Or of concern about the role of the dog trade in ‘causing social problems’, as one lawyer quoted by the Guardian alleges. And if it’s partly about disquiet at the maltreatment of farmed dogs, have the campaigners ever seen what happens in a factory farm producing beef or pork?

The other explanation, of course, is that the Chinese are growing increasingly sensitive to Western pressure on the subject. If Westerners think dog-eating is barbaric, is it time to ditch it?

What do you think?