Friday food is a weekly article about one of the more unusual food items to be found in Liuzhou that week. This week, we are bucking trends. Recently, a new arrival in Liuzhou asked me where she might find buckwheat noodles in town, as she is gluten intolerant. I was, happily, able to tell her […]
“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door.” …and your chefs. A mere ten years after it was first proposed, Liuzhou has this month arranged for a local […]
Friday food is a weekly article about one of the more unusual food items to be found in Liuzhou that week. This week, we are lovin’ some lentils. You are probably thinking there is nothing ‘unusual’ about lentils, but there is round here. A few days ago, I came across the red ones being sold […]
Some brain-dead official cretin in China’s customs bureau has decided to ban the import all European soft cheeses on the grounds that they contain “too much bacteria”. A bit like Mozart’s music having “too many notes”. I want to get hold of the jumped-up ignoramus and point out to him that his body probably contains […]
China Daily (English version) has a story where the reporter gets himself tied up in geographical knots. The first paragraph states that the events take place “in Liuzhou”. The second para says “160 kilometres away from Liuzhou”. Which is correct? Well, both are. The story’s setting is Rongshui County which is in Liuzhou Prefecture, but […]
Friday food is a weekly article about one of the more unusual food items to be found in Liuzhou that week. This week, we are looking at celery with a difference. There are two types of celery widely available in China. First is what we westerners think of as regular celery (Apium graveolens), known in […]
Friday food is a weekly article about one of the more unusual food items to be found in Liuzhou that week. This week, we are longing for beans. Long beans, yard long beans, snake beans, long-podded cowpeas, asparagus beans, pea beans, or Chinese long beans are all the same thing, Vigna unguiculata subsp. sesquipedalis, a […]
This amused me. A couple of days ago, a man in Matou Village, Liuzhou was tending his bamboo forest when he came across some strangers stealing his bamboo shoots. He wouldn’t have minded, he said, had they only been taking a few for themselves, but they had amassed sack loads, so he called the police. […]
Despite sitting on Vietnam’s shoulder, we are strangely unable to source many of the key ingredients for their wonderful cuisine. I’ve never encountered lemongrass or basil, for example in Liuzhou. I grow my own mint, so that’s no problem. I did, about three or four years ago find limes in Bubugao and had a few […]
Friday food is a weekly article about one of the more unusual food items to be found in Liuzhou that week. This week, we are boiling beans. “Edamame” isn’t a term you are liable to hear anywhere on the streets or markets of Liuzhou. It is the Japanese name for immature soy beans (Japanese:枝豆), known […]