u m a m i

How to brighten up your boring old roasted vegetable salad?

Why, with lemon zest of course!

               

Quarter some peppers, cut some peeled carrots and parsnips, season and put into a roasting pan at medium heat. Peel sweet pototoes, cut into chunks and zap in microwave for 10 minutes, then let it join the party in the oven. While the vegetables roast, deseed cucumbers and slice. Also cut up some Italian bacon, which the vendor at the market says is called bacon, not any special Italian name, but it is very tasty and not fatty at all, just pure briny porky meat, throw that in too.

Toss everything gently with more of your favourite olive oil and good salt and a touch of balsamic vinegar if you like. Finally, grate the zest of one lemon on top, mix to let the heat soften the sour-bitter bite of the zest and there we have it, a beautiful and beautiful-tasting winter salad.

Thanks to my friend Sui Mai for the idea. She was raving about O & Co's lemon olive oil which has a bright irresistable flavour. I hesitated about buying but decided to adapt the idea for the salad and the result was astoundingly good. We should know because we eat roast vegetables ALL the freaking time yet this still amazed us that's how good it was.

Vegetarian Congee

                  

Yesterday I woke up really early and offered to send V to childcare. Husband was delighted, this meant he gets more time at his office. In the lift he observed that I was "full of beans". He may be right, I don't feel so lethargic anymore, the new formulation from my French endocrinologist must finally be working.

This morning the same thing happened, my eyes flew open at around 6.30 a.m. What would you like for breakfast, I badgered husband. Eggs, no, he has already consumed his weekly allowance. Oatmeal, no, I didn't think to soak some last night. Congee, hmm, sounds good.

I let Mimi out of the room, brushed my teeth and got dressed. It was just past 7 a.m. I looked in the pantry, there was plenty of vegetables but the meats were all frozen stiff so it would have to be a herbivorous version. I boiled water, scooped rice into saucepan, peeled and rinsed vegetables, prepared side dishes and garnishes, laid the table, boiled more water for a pot of tea, drew the curtains, ingested medication and did the dishes. At 7.45 a.m. I got GG and V out of bed. At 8.10 a.m. voila, a warming yet light breakfast was ready. I served it in a 70's covered crock found at a flea market and felt very Stepford wifey but the family loved it. The recipe is dead easy and could be adapted to whatever is in the larder, high energy housewife or not.

Vegetarian congee:

Rice, 1.5 cups for 3 adults.

Root vegetables: I used sweet potatoes, carrots, knob of ginger.

Green vegetables: I used napa cabbage, nai bai and defrosted green peas.

1. Wash the rice and bring to boil with about 5 times its volume of water. When the water boils, stir in a teaspoon of cooking oil. Leave on moderate boil and stir from time to time to prevent rice from sticking to the bottom of the pot.

2. Peel and cut root vegetables in small chunks and add to pot.

3. When rice softens and starts to break up, add hard stalks of cabbages. If congee is too thick, add more water, if too watery let more water boil off. Once desired consistency and thickness is reached, add leafy vegetables and peas and bring to a final boil.

4. Suggested condiments: pickles, chopped scallions, fried shallots, shredded seaweed, inari pre-soaked in hot water to remove excess oil and sugar, toasted sesame seeds, julienned ginger slices etc. Not all at once of course, just a selection. Taste would be enhanced with some soy sauce, sesame oil and of course, good old Marmite which would make it not vegetarian anymore but still very delicious.

                  

Did I send V to childcare again? Of course, and on the way back made a detour to the market for some groceries. Like they say, I was energetic enough to "ta lou fu", literally fight with tigers!

Easing into Autumn

                        

The daylight hours are getting very short, the wind is 'fresh' as the locals put it, and the body craves something warm. Instead of the usual braises and stews that most cookbooks call for, we are still eating our usual homestyle Chinese foods, but with definite slants towards warming foods. Such as congees in their various permutations. Above is a version with beef balls and a walloping swirl of Guiness Marmite. We usually have congees with pork ribs or chicken but tried beef balls because of a picture that Su-Lin (of foodblog Tamarind and Thyme) posted in Flickr.

                        

And soups of course. This season's favourite is a riff on the old confinement (post-partum ostracisation month for Chinese women) menu favourite Ginger Chicken Soup. A clear broth of chicken, ginger and conpoy as a base, then bolstered with some vegetables, wood ear fungus and sheets of rice noodles to make it a meal-in-a-bowl. Though some may argue that cabbage is strictly speaking a cooling food. Whatever.

                      

Ginger is the top ingredient in our shopping list. The freshest and cheapest I found at Tang Frères. Sausage and pork steamed over a bed of ginger does wonders in warming the body and easing joint aches and pains. Young spinach cooked in vegetable stock refreshes the palate and is full of good vitamins.

                     

Here thinly sliced matchstick ginger pops up again, this time fried to a crispy gold. If the ginger is not too old, the heat is gentler and the taste is half-sweet, half-spicy. Good eaten as a snack or as a topping for Sardine Beehoon.

                     

Another beehoon dish, this time stirfried with strips of beef, vegetables and kimchi. Kimchi has plenty of Korean peppers and garlic, natural body warmers. We have been eating quite a lot of simple one-dish meals because with husband often away on his business trips, we can go easy on the cooking and eat lightly.                                 

                      

Still, nothing perks up noodle dishes like a little snacky side dish. Potstickers for example, and falafels, made according to the Mark Bittman video in NYTimes but we halved the parsley and added cayenne and paprika to up the spice factor.

                      

And when all else fail, dress warmly and cover up well. If possible, travel to a place with warmer weather such as Rome which is where C and I are heading for tomorrow. Ciao!

update 8.38 pm Paris time: the weather in Rome will turn colder this weekend. And who knows whether I'll be able to get to the airport in time what with the transport strike and blocked roads. Fingers crossed....

                      

Grab the Sardines!

Two nights ago I happened to watch Soleil, a French movie starring Sophia Loren as an impoverished mother of 5 children and theif life in  Algiers during WWII. The plot was predictable and not half as engaging as say, Agnes Brown, but still worth watching, for me at least, because of the Sardine-Dinner scenes.

In the movie, the camera follows Sophia as she dipped butterflied fresh sardines into egg and flour, the following shots are of eager hands grabbing the sardines from the platter. Another platter appeared, and the sardines were devoured just as quickly. Scene repeats until everybody collapsed in sardine esctasy.

                  

I can so understand their passion. Whenever I see fresh sardines on menus, I'll automatically order it. The other day we saw some plump specimens in the market and brought home, it cost only 3.30 euros for 10 pieces. Back home GG fried half and the other half, she rubbed with a spicy mix and grilled. The kitchen got a little oily while aroma of fried fish lingered in the air for quite a bit of time which drove the dogs a bit nuts.     

                  

Both versions were delicious, but the fried fish got more votes because frying made the bones crispy and edible. We served the fish with a dip of soya sauce zinged up with some chopped coriander leaves and bird eye chillies. So next time you see some in your market, go get some!

Laksa: Highly Improvised Version

                        

Two weekends ago I received an email from my kind friend A the winelearner who informed me that her husband had left behind a package of hae bee in our designated drop-off spot. Andrew had bought it and passed it on to A. All the way from Singapore! Contrary to what some people believe, we do not receive a goodie bag of stuff from home every month, so a small bag of dried shrimps can definitely make us deliriously happy. So excited I was that the following Monday I decided that we should celebrate with laksa.

But we ran into some obstacles. First the markets are closed on Mondays, so we had to use whatever we had at home, which wasn't a lot. Second, some of the traditional ingredients  like daun kesom and fresh santan (coconut cream) are simply not available and there were no acceptable substitutes. Looking at cookbooks did not help, we didn't have half the ingredients specified. In the end I recalled a recipe in our Home Economics class that could be adapted  though it did call for some dried ikan bilis which is even harder to find.

Still, we were undeterred. After all, I still had a stash of Chan-Che's rempah paste in the freezer. The paste provided a robust base to work from, and together with the pounded roasted hae-bee and some unorthodox seasoning such as chicken jus, GG and I cobbled together quite a deliciously spicy and umamilicious laksa gravy. It tasted like a cross between mee-siam and Sarawak laksa, and only needed a squirt of lime juice to pair with the briny flavours. The dried shrimps were ground finely but still retained enough body and bite to the gravy. In Malaysia each of the 13 states have their own laksa, perhaps this can qualify as the Paris "outstation" version.

                        

It was fun. The bird next door was thrilling and singing his little heart out too, there's a few seconds of it in the video. I was wearing a light blue apron, GG a green one, and for once I actually did some cooking instead of her.

Thanks again, A and A!

Summer 11

By the time this post appears, we should be on our way to the Loire Valley. Me, husband, V, GG, Mimi & Rufus. The laptop gets a much deserved rest too. I will try to cope with the internet-withdrawal symptoms by drinking their famous wines.

Bonnes Vacances!

There is just something about the hot and heavy weather that makes one not very hungry, yet when the stomach finally growls there is not much time to make anything too elaborate. Nor would anyone really want to anyway, it's too hot!

A few weeks ago, the Minimalist Mark Bittman of the NYTimes shared his 101 recipes for quick summer meals which I noticed stayed in the "Most Popular" list of articles for a rather long time. And... here's mine. Only I am not so clever and can only come up with 11. But it's what we ate and have been eating, not just ideas and suggestions.

Let's go. In order of difficulty and time required:

                     

1. Fruits. These Mirabelle plums are so cute and made for all-day snacking. Apricots, peaches, prunes, dates, all good too. We put a dish of fruits in the middle of the dining table and sometimes we manage to finish it all! If not, it's a good excuse to put it into a buttered dish, sprinkle some juice or liqueur plus a bit of sugar and cover with crumble for dessert- of course this would up the time requirement considerably.

                     

2. Cherries are below the plums in ranking only because one has to yank out the stems in addition to spitting out the seeds. They are one of my favourite fruits and I have been known to down great big bunches of it for dinner. We are also seriously considering whether we need a cherry pitter. I do think that cherries are so much nicer than all the pretty vibrant red berries which call out to me at the market but which I know is too too tart for my palate.

                     

3. Melons. These sweet crunchy Spanish melons are so cheap now, only 2.50 euros. In Singapore I used to fork out $15 ( ~ 7 euros). I know, it is a bit more effort to cut up and de-seed, but they are versatile. Add a couple slices of salty ham and voila, appetisers.

                     

4. My very guilty secret. Eaten cold, it is as quick to assemble as the fruits, but I like to zap them in the microwave for one minute so that the briny juices seep out and mingle with the mustard to make a sauce.

                     

5. Sandwiches. Cold meats are nice. A ripe brie from a stall in Bastille market that specialises in this particular cheese, thanks to a tip from my good friend Sui Mai, makes it even nicer.

                     

6. Fried rice. Excellent if you have leftover rice. Add eggs, onions and vegetables. We opened our stash of bak-kwa and pork floss in the spirit of quick, tasty and just that bit trashy cooking. The soupy thing in the background was actually meant for the dogs, but I thought it was chicken stock because of the aroma and only realised my mistake when I noticed the rice grains and vegetables floating inside. I'm sure Mimi didn't mind sharing.

If it's too hot to fire up the stove, we make rice salad. I like to pour the vinaigrette-type dressing on the hot rice to let the flavours seep in, and then toss the warm rice with the other ingredients (smoked fish is my favourite, leftover fried chicken is fine too, apples are a must, maybe some finely chopped onions too) but not too thoroughly so that there is some clumped up tasty rice to ruminate on. Does not sound appetising I know, but trust me, everyone will enjoy it even if they may initially feel dubious, like my second sister and GG. And husband. Even Vera. Everyone.

                     

7. Bak-kwa comes in piggy shapes. Good for making sandwiches too. Takes 10 seconds to rip the packaging open. This is also the time to eat hams, jellied meats, terrines and pates. Support the bouchers and charcuteriers who keep their store open while everyone else (Pierre Herme, Mariage Freres, Marche des Enfants Rouges, etc etc) deserts the city.

Ditto too for ice creams. And especially for pastries and bread, we should salute these heroes who work with ovens when it is 35 degrees outside.

                     

8. From here on we have to make a bit more effort. Like minced duck keema, using the rempah that my sisters smuggled over from KL. Duck shoulder joints are incredibly cheap in Paris, as cheap as turkey legs, so we always have some in the freezer. It is also quite fatty, and that is good in making curries, meatballs and say, cottage pies, because the fat makes the dish moister and tastier. The dogs love duck. The great thing about curries is that it can feed many people, over quite a few meals and of course, it can be frozen. (If feeling foolhardy, one can attempt to make chapattis to go with the keema. Just make sure to have rice on standby in case the chappatis fail to puff up, like what happened to us.)

                     

9. I don't know about other people, but my salads always taste too healthy and vegetal to me, probably because we are not that liberal with the use of oils and dressings. Instead of salads, when we see the long Romaine lettuces in the market, known as "yau mak" back home, GG and I would immediately think of stir-frying them with fu-yu (fermented bean curd cubes). A quick toss in the wok in the garlicky, salty sauce tempered with a hint of sugar, and we have a plate of healthful tasty greens to go with rice.

                     

10. My friend w made some zucchini fritters the other day and the pictures of it on her flickr site made me salivate. So we rustled up some for ourselves, or rather I googled the recipe and GG fried. We served it Singapore style with chilli sauce, light yet satisfying.

                     

                     

11. When it gets hot, we drink hot soup. It sounds counterintuitive, but makes plenty of sense. Sweating cools the body, and drinking soups is a most pleasurable way of ensuring adequate fluid intake. Instead of the soups that may accompany the other dishes, it is easier to make the soup the main focus. A big pot of soup chockful with vegetables and a bit of meat to go with rice. Soups do not take up too much preparations and time if one considers that they can be left on the stove while we spy on the neighbours or sneak a nap. Like sinigang, which is top of the list in our weekly menu. Or bah kut teh, which goes really well with kway chap sheets (flat rice noodles) easily found in Tang Freres. Tom yam, made with ready made paste but augmented with lemon grass fresh chillies. Kimchi soup with pork, and okay, Spam if you really have to. Miso soup with tofu and cubes of chicken. Etc etc...

Finally, let's not forget too that today is Singapore's National Day. We will certainly toast Majulah Singapura and think of our friends in Singapore when we make the rounds of the chateaux and vineyards. Cheers!

Not futomaki, Not kimbap, more of a Hybrid Roll actually.

With a quickie braised cha-siew in the filling.

                        

As soon as I saw Su-Lin's of Tamarind and Thyme's entry on kimbap I knew I had to make some. But there wasn't any Japanese rice or nori at home so we had to wait until our next grocery run to Tang Freres. Meanwhile, Mia the Skinny Epicurean, went on a similar vein and made Futomaki. Seaweed rice rolls seem just right for the hot weather we are having right now, they keep well(ish) and the colours are so happy-making. We finally made some and loved it so much we made another lot within the same week.

But mine are strictly speaking neither kimbaps nor futomaki. The rice is seasoned with sushi seasonings rather than sesame and perilla; I used bottled seasonings for convenience sake. The fillings are a combination of cooked items and raw vegetables which nods at Korea with its sesame seeds but then again ginger notes allude somewhat to sushi. In the end we have a sort of Hybrid Rolls.

Also, purists of both camps may balk at the braised pork filling. Well, I had pork in the freezer and thought it would be nice to make some braised char-siew. Now, char-siew, as everyone knows, is usually roasted but in my family we have a tradition of making a braised version. My maternal grandmother used to make it a lot because she didn't believe in buying the red-dye shop versions yet did not have an oven at home for roasting. It is similar to char-siew in that the final product is glazed with a sweet and sour sauce derived from a lot of lemon juice, garlic and thick soya sauce. Over the years we have sometimes deviated from the recipe but stick close to the principles of slow cooking the meat in the marinade until the sauce thickens. In this case we didn't even have time to make a marinade because I was too impatient to wait, and had also substituted a soy sauce-mirin based marinade to keep it Japanese. The recipe for the braised char-siew is provided here. For the Hybrid Rolls "recipe" please scroll past the next three images.

                        

Grandma's original recipe:

• Garlic Juice (smash garlic and try to get the liquid, very messy, sometimes we substitute with chopped garlic instead)
• Lemon Juice
• Sugar
• Thick soya sauce

Variation

• Thick soya sauce
• Mirin
• Sugar
• Garlic clove (optional)

Mix marinade ingredients until desired taste. I always taste the marinade, just make allowances for it to be sweeter in the end when the liquids evaporate. Make enough of it to allow the chunk of meat (pork shoulder or belly) to wallow happily in. Marinate overnight if possible. If the meat is not marinated it looks pale like the one above.

Dump marinade and meat into the wok and let it simmer slowly. 40 minutes to 1 hour, depending on thickness of meat. Or you could keep stirring to move things along.

                      

Halfway through. if the meat is far too cooked in your opinion you could also take it out and thicken the sauce before returning the meat for its final glaze.

                      

Final product. The meat is tender yet has taken on the flavours of the marinade. Continuous wok-stirring may result in a darker and thicker glaze. Let it cool before slicing. It freezes well. If using it for Hybrid Rolls hand-shred into long chunks.

                      

While the pork braised, the rice was cooked, omelet made and vegetables sliced. Su-Lin's tip about not using too much rice was very helpful. Here we have, from left to right, omelet, West Country Rhubarb & Ginger Extra Jam, peppers, carrots, shredded char-siew with sesame seeds and scallions on top of seasoned rice. The jam was an inspired touch, I had bought in Borough Market in London months ago and it was languishing in the fridge because its gingery taste was far too strong to go with our usual morning toasts and scones. Here, it was the perfect substitute for the pickled gingers that may accompany sushi and the sweet-spiciness played off very well against the soy-heavy pork.

Roll away from yourself, pressing firmly with each turn. They can be eaten in the roll form, or cut into cross sections so one can admire their colourful pattern.

                      

It was delicious, and fun to make. Now, if only I had some of my mum's ikan bilis sambal, that plus cucumber strips and chopped peanuts would make a good nasi lemak version. Kimchi pork, maybe? Braised shitake mushrooms. Shredded tuna. Pork floss. Tempura anything. The possibilities are endless. Now, if only I can think of a cleverer name for them.

How To Make French Fries (Or Not)

                        

I pottered into the kitchen to get a glass of juice, and saw GG cutting up potatoes. Her favourite food is french fries, and well, she must have missed her weekly quota because she was absolutely intent on getting her fix right there and then. I grabbed the camera and started recording.

In the background we also have a subplot of Vera, Rufus and their quest for a pig-shaped bak-kwa.

                        

The result: It wasn't that fantastic, even with twice-frying. Tasted of potatoes, with a nice crunch outside but was a lot more oily than expected. Still, we ate them up quick. The clean up was not fun, all that transferring and draining and stirring generates plenty of oil splatters. But with more practice and some streamlining of work process I am sure we can come up with something better.

Fried Zucchini Flowers (Video)

                     

This morning at the market, we saw zucchini flowers. My friend W, who was visiting from Antwerp, suggested frying the flowers, it would be most delicious she assured me. I have heard of fried zucchini flowers but this was the first time I've seen such lovely specimens and my curiousity was definitely piqued. GG, on the other hand, was not so enthusiastic. Her family grows zucchini at their farm in the Phillipines and it seemed absurd to her to pay 1 euro for a single flower. Besides, in the Phillipines they usually cook the flowers in soups and never, ever fry them.

As a compromise, I bought six pieces. Back home, GG tried cooking one piece first, or more accurately half a flower, and rushed over to find me in my study with the result. It is good, she admits in an amazed tone. Coated in a thin crispy batter to protect the delicate petals, the flowers were deliciously tenderly crisp and sweet.

I carried the camera into the kitchen to video-tape the rest of the cooking process. We hardly ever fry at home; I am terrified of the hot oil and the messy aftermath and the last time I fried something was more than a year ago, so we may as well get the most out of this.

The video that follows is Highly Amateurish, full of abrupt interruptions, sentences that trails to nowhere, bad grammar, noisy background and my Donald Duck voice. Also, we ran out of batter halfway through and had to make a new batch, so it seems out of sequence, what with the frying followed by the batter making sequence. But don't let that discourage you from trying it out, it really is a doddle to make.                     

                        

The fritters are best eaten soon after frying, it gets limp after a while. Next time, if there is a next time, we may experiment with tempura flour or substitute with some rice flour.

                      

My Chinese friends cook

                        

As I still have not finished processing the pictures taken in Berlin and of the Bastille Day fireworks - also a bit of procrastination because I have a feeling the pictures did not turn out good as the damn remote shutter release died on us like just before the sun set &*@#$% - I looked up the archives and found a whole bunch of pictures of gosh, a cooking party.

Rewind to three months ago. I was sitting in the back of the stuffy classroom with my neighbour, Wang Li Min who is 20 years old, and comes from Shandong, China. The topic of our conversation was French food. Or in Li Min's case, the lack of it. He hates what he had tried so far and eats Chinese food every day. Yes. Every day.

I was startled by his revelation, and thought back to my student days. English food was not so bad, I remember eating very good bread, my first taste of Christmas pudding and also my granny's remark that drinking too much English tea can give one swollen ankles. The food wasn't that strange, if a bit plain. But to someone brought up on rice and Chinese food, it must have been a bigger culture shock. I wondered how he manages, and asked him if we can organise a cooking session. He readily agreed.

Which was how, one brilliant Saturday morning in April found husband, myself and Li Min meeting at the student lodgings of our other friend Liu Yang, somewhere in the 11th arrondissement.

                        

This is Liu Yang. In class, he sits across the aisle from me. Age 24, from Nanyang, he is also acknowledged as the better cook. Liu Yang has been in France since January 2006 so he has had some time to adjust and hone his skills.

Umami:      I heard you are a good cook. How did this happen?

Liu Yang:   It is hard to find the types of foods I grew up eating- robust spicy dishes typical of the Xi Bei (northwestern) provinces. So I had to cook or I would have starved. I learnt how to cook after I arrived. At first I simply added sugar and oil, it didn't taste good, so I experimented with different seasonings. I found many useful recipes in the Internet.

Umami:      Where do you shop for ingredients?

Liu Yang:   Belleville is nearby, I go once a week for supplies. Sometimes I buy fresh fruits and vegetables in the market, and once a month I go to the 13th arrondissement.

Umami:      What equipment do you use?

Liu Yang:   I brought a rice cooker from home. The hot plate was bought second-hand from another student- it heats up hotter and faster than the regular electric stove that the hostel provides. I also bought a pressure cooker to make soups, as well as a microwave.

Umami:      What do you cook for Chinese New Year?

Liu Yang:    We make dumplings. A lot of dumplings.

During the interview he moved smoothly around the crowded room, cutting up meats, soaking potatoes, showing me ingredients. The stove is a simple affair set on the floor and shielded with cardboard and newspapers to catch the most of the flying grease.

                        

The first dish was Shui Ju Niu Rou (Water Cooked Beef). Sliced beef is cooked in a very spicy broth of bean paste, dried chilli peppers and Szechuan peppercorn. We were curious, not having come across any of the fiery grape sized red chilli peppers in Paris, until he revealed that he uses the ones bundled in ready-to-cook packages (ding!). The szechuan peppercorns were unfortunately rather old, it is hard to get fresh ones here, so the dish was not as ma-la, or numbingly spicy, as we hoped for. Quantities are not given as he cooks by instincts and guestimations. Finished dish looks like a fiery soup with pieces of beef and vegetable floating on top.

Chopped garlic

Chopped ginger

Chopped onion

Soybean paste

Dried peppers

Szechuan peppercorn

Thinly sliced beef

Green vegetables or cabbage, as desired.

1. Marinate beef with salt, pepper and a little cornstarch.

2. Saute chopped garlic, ginger and onion till fragrant. Add soybean paste, then dried peppers and szechuan peppercorn. Stir until very smokey

3.  Toss vegetables in the spice mixture until crisply cooked. Set aside the spices and vegetables.

4. In a separate saucepan, bring some water to the boil, add the beef slices. Followed by the spice-vegetable mixture. Simmer on low boil for 30-60 minutes. Adjust seasoning before serving.

                      

The second dish was Hui Guo Rou, also known as twice-cooked pork. The pork is first boiled then tossed in a spicy bean paste sauce. The seasoning is similar to that used for the beef, so Liu Yang used a ready-cook paste. I would substitute a mix of bean paste, tinge of dark soy, pinch of sugar and dash of cooking wine.

Sliced Belly Pork- blanched

Sliced carrots, or any vegetables preferred

Bean Paste Seasoning (1 tbsp to 1 cup of pork)

Minced ginger

Minced garlic

1. Saute vegetables, and set aside

2. Toss ginger and garlic in wok until fragrant, add pork slices and then the bean paste. Stir until well mixed, adding a little water if necessary. Return vegetables to wok, mix, adjust seasoning and serve.

                      

Actually the pork dish was cooked with the help of Yie Thi, another Chinese student who joined us later. She has been in Paris about 6 months, and is more of an expert on Hunan dishes. It wasn't that cold in the room, she was wearing the windbreaker as an apron of sorts so that the cooking fumes will not permeate her clothes.

                     

The third dish was Yie Thi's specialty. Potatoes stirfried with vinegar and chilli peppers. It looked very easy when she was doing it but I've tried it at home twice without the same success. Wrong potatoes, wrong vinegar, not enough soaking, I'm not sure what the problem is, but it is not easy to get the correct balance of crunchy yet cooked potatoes, and the taste to be a warm spicy acidity instead of sharp acrid stinger. But for those who feel lucky, here is the basic recipe.

Potatoes

Black Chinese Vinegar, preferably Chinkiang

Dried peppers

Sugar

Salt

1. Slice potatoes and soak in cold water for at least 1.5 hours. Change water at least twice. To get rid of excess starch I suppose. Before cooking, drain potatoes of water.

2. Saute peppers in plenty of oil to fragrant (and sneezy) state.

3. Throw in the potatoes and toss. Splash vinegar liberally, calibrate with a little sugar and salt. Keep tasting and tossing. Remove when potatoes are cooked through yet still crunchy.                

                     

Finally, this is Li Min. He doesn't cook at all, but is good at washing up. His hometown is famous for "Lu" dishes of mostly meat-based stews cooked with plenty of spicy peppers and chilli oil. Give him a few more months, and he'll be cooking as well as his compatriots.   

                     

Lunch spread. The Tomato Egg Scramble is Li Min's favourite dish, as well as a favourite in many Chinese households I'm sure. There was debate about cooking the tomato separately or with the egg, or which to add first, and its various effects on the sourness of the tomato but Liu Yang and Yie Thi could not reconcile their opinions. The way Liu Yang made it though, was fast, simple - first cooking the seasoned egg in a lot of oil so it 'bloomed' beautifully in the pan, then adding the tomato quarters and smooshing it all together- and the end result light and delicious.

We sat down to lunch, with a bottle of wine and some strawberries for dessert. There was not enough rice, another pot had to be cooked to keep up with the boys' appetites, and in the interim period we watched dubbed American television series because the dialogues are sparer for easier listening. Learning and eating, the mainstay of student life!