Ridgey Didge Chinese tucker.

For un-Australia readers, tucker is food, and ridgey didge is true blue, all right, fair dinkum, true, the real thing, the real McCoy etc.

Alex’s mother died about 7 years ago, so his retired father takes care of him, doing all the cleaning, cooking, etc. His father is a good cook, and while I am here I am getting some good food.

The Chinese seem to pack away an enormous amount of food at each sitting. I think, for my visit, there is some extra food being prepared, this is one of their ways of showing that their guest is welcome, by supplying copious amounts of food.

At most meals there are about 6 or 7 dishes on top of the obligatory rice. At each meal there are about 3 fresh dishes, and a big bowl of vegetable soup with some sort of meaty bones in it. The problem is, that what you don’t eat at this meal comes back to haunt you for the next one. And the next one, and sometimes the next one. So there will be 3 or 4 fresh dishes and several cold ones. With my stomach being what it is, I rarely eat the left over stuff.

Here are some pictures of last night’s dinner. 

At the back you can see two small bowls. These are some left overs from previous meals. Then there is the white carrot soup, which tastes like a sweet swede, pork and mu’er, the black mushrooms, and on the right of that a fish and tofu dish. I don’t usually eat their fish, it is full of little bones.

Pic 2. You can see how much rice they eat each meal, I would have about half to three quarters of a cup, they put away the rest.

Pic 3. The pork and mu’er dish. Not a very clear pic unfortunately, and I can’t take another one, it has all been eaten. Mu’er stands for wood ear, it is a type of mushroom that grows round wood. It is black, slipper, you buy it dried and soak it and boil it for a few minutes, but it is surprisingly tasty.

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.