Mr Book’s Ginger Tea
Mr Book suddenly let out a hoot and, leaning closer, pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose with his forefinger. Glancing around to see what had caused the […]
Tag Archives: Recipes
Merry Christmas Chilli Sauce
Merry Christmas one and all! I hope you’ve all managed to have fun despite the ice storms, floods and smog clouds that have afflicted various parts of the world in […]
Great Markets of Northwest China 3: Muddy Jade
Deep within the Kunlun mountains (昆仑山 Kūnlún shān) lie enormous reserves of jade. Thick veins of nephrite – from opaque, milky-white stone to the more typical deep green type – […]
A Detour & Mapo Tofu
For the first time since university, I have a proper backpacking trip coming up – six weeks across northwest China – in order to update a guidebook. I’ll be heading […]
Comfort Food in Any Language & Disanxian
I’ve been thinking about comfort foods recently. What is it that makes them comforting? My guess is that they’re often foods that we ate as children – in my case, […]
Fish-Flavoured Eggplant & Why Cook Chinese at Home?
Fish-flavoured eggplant (鱼香茄子, yúxiāng qiézi*) was one of the first dishes that I ate in China. I think I must have chanced upon it via a random order from a […]
Breakfast in Dali & a Congee Recipe
A few years ago, while working as a tour guide in Yunnan, I had a guest who – every morning – insisted on “not eating lunch for breakfast”. She had […]
Vegetable Porn & Chinese Cheese
Dali in Yunnan is home to some of China’s best-looking vegetables. The Bai people who live in and around Dali have been blessed with a lush, fertile strip of homeland, […]
Learning to Cook & Garlicky Greens
While I’ve been living in China and Hong Kong for almost seven years, I still can’t really cook Chinese food. Earlier this month, while trawling Hong Kong’s supermarkets for pickled […]
Village Food and a Recipe
I was in Guizhou around the time that the Great British Horsemeat Scandal kicked off. On my first afternoon in the countryside, I came across a group of men butchering […]
Little Yak 