Eating animals to extinction
The seamy side of Chinese gastronomy was in the headlines again this week, as fourteen police officers in Shenzhen were suspended and a police chief put…
Swedish adventures
We pulled the crayfish apart, sucking the juices from their heads and chomping through the claws, devoured their sweet flesh, deeply infused with the flowery scent…
Endangered sharks
I was very interested to see this article on the Guardian website, highlighting the threat to sharks from tuna fishing. Basically, enormous numbers of sharks are…
The threatened pangolin
The pangolin, or scaly ant-eater (chuan shan jia 穿山甲), is an extraordinary creature. Plated in armour-like scales, it looks like a pine cone (or a stylised…
Crunch crunch
Thanks to Lambda Li for sending me this video of a suckling pig being sliced at the Kimberley Hotel in Hong Kong! The whole point of…
James Beard awards update
Still can’t quite believe that on Friday night I won two more James Beard Awards – Every Grain of Rice: Simple Chinese Home Cooking took the…
James Beard Awards 2014
I’m thrilled and amazed to be nominated in two categories this year! Every Grain of Rice: Simple Chinese Home Cooking is on the shortlist for international…
Strange fruits
These extraordinary wild fruits, harvested in the Zhejiang countryside, taste rather like pear or jujube, although of course they have proportionally less flesh to skin, to…
Pizzle puzzle
How to cook a stag penis? Not a question I’d ever seriously pondered, until I inadvertently acquired four of them, and had to find a way.…
The ‘preserved mustard index’ 榨èœæŒ‡æ ‡
Who would have guessed that a famous Chongqing pickle, the preserved mustard tuber made in the town of Fuling, would be used by the Chinese government…