Chinglish cooking lesson number 1

Cooking and eating bacon, eggs and fried tomatoes with chopsticks.

Well, it is to be said that a Chinese kitchen is not what I am used to. Occasionally I had cooked bacon and eggs for Alex, along with some fried tomatoes. So he put in an order for me to do that for breakfast today. That’s all very well when you have the equipment, but not so easy when you don’t.

I had bought the frying pan in Xiamen. It was not big, so I knew I’d be doing a few batches. I’d also found the bacon, which is probably not available here in Putian.

In this kitchen, as with most Chinese kitchens there is one electric hot plate and everything gets cooked on that. They are very fast, a small kettle will boil on it in about two minutes. I guess they are designed for wok cooking.

The cooking utensils consisted of one metal small fish slice thing and chopsticks. I managed the cooking reasonably well, doing it in batches. But I was cooking for several people. There was Alex, and his wife, (they have a strange arrangement at the moment, it seems like she stays here for weekends only, so she was here last night), his father, his 5 year old niece from one flight up, and me. Oh, and his aunty from one flight up who came to check on things.

But then you have the problem of eating the stuff. The bacon is not too bad, you can pick it up with chopsticks and chew bits off. There are no knives and forks to break up the food. The egg is a bit messier, picking the whole thing up and taking bites off it as you go. But the fried tomatoes were really tricky. I suggest you have a go at picking up a slippery half of a fried tomato with chopsticks and eating it without dropping it all over the place and sploshing juice everywhere. They didn’t really know how to go about it, so it sort of got shovelled in the best way they could.

I cheated. Although there are no knives and forks there is one desert spoon and one teaspoon in the house. I got the desert spoon and sort of cut up the egg and tomato with that then ate it with the chopsticks.

Ah well, the dishes are done and they are off again to find her a wedding dress. She took one home that she didn’t like, a white one. He wants her to wear white and she wants to wear red. I wait to see the outcome and who wins this little battle.

Chinglish cooking lesson no. 2

Pork and mushrooms.

You  need to use a bit of poetic licence with this, because getting quantities ain’t that easy.

You need to buy some mu’er. It is a Chinese black mushroom. You can get it in any Chinese shop. Soak it for an hour or so then boil for three minutes.

For three people you would need about 1 cup of pork, diced and sliced quite small. Add some salt, and some soya sauce. Leave for about 10 or 15 minutes. Then they add potato powder, which I guess is potato flour. I don’t know if we can get that, but I think cornflour would do the job. Add enough to mix all together and make a gooey mess.

Have your wok or frying pan with hot oil, I couldn’t get a quantity from him, and add the pork. Stir and cook through, this will only take a few minutes.  Then add the soaked and boiled mu’er, a few pieces of finely chopped celery, and continue to cook another minute or two.

I would think you could add quite a bit to this if you wanted to be a bit more adventurous, a bit of chilli or ginger.  But it is a delicious meal, and with rice and a vegetable is sufficient.