Chicken garlic chilli stir-fry

Bacofoil is the new black
What the conspiracy nutter is wearing this year (and any other year for that matter)
Source: https://www.perpetualkid.com/tin-foil-hat/

Conspiracy theories really piss me off. Actually, that's not true. They crack me up because they are ridiculously hilarious. No, people who fiercely believe conspiracy theories, and cling to them in the face of overwhelming evidence against them, are what really, really piss me off. "Lizards run the world" (as espoused by a famous British conspiracy fuckwit who I'm not going to give the oxygen of publicity by naming). No they fucking don't. I've been to countries where lizards literally run all over the walls, and they are ace. However, there is no way they could collude with the Rothchilds and comandeer the global finance market. What, human-sized and shaped lizards you mean? I've seen some fucking huge monitor lizards, but they aren't very smart. What, masquerading as world leaders? I've never seen Bill Clinton regenerate a limb, Bill Gates catch a fly with his tongue or anyone with the name Rothschild lay an egg. Actually, to be fair, I don't know what any of the Rothschilds look like, but given that I've not seen any person lay an egg, I can safely say I've not seen a Rothschild lay an egg. It's almost as if the word "lizard" is a cypher for "Jew" and it's all a form of twisted antisemitism.

That moment you're at an illuminati meeting and you see one of your buddies who is also a member of the British Royal Family and you've not seen one another since you took control of the IMF
Source: https://www.storytrender.com/77851/fighting-lizards-hug-it-out-after-playful-tussle/

The lizard thing is on the fringes of conspiracies, it has to be said, but there are less immediately outlandish myths. The Rothschilds (who aren't lizards in this iteration, but are still Jewish. Do you start to see a pattern?) run the world, and are planning the New World Order via the Illuminati or the Freemasons or, I don't know, the WI, which flaunt their symbolism everywhere, from buildings to actual currency to appearances by prominent popstars. I mean, they don't, but nice try. Again, no real evidence, apart from some badly spelt meme written by some racist 35 year old virgin who still lives with his mother and isn't allowed out on his own after 6pm following his prosecution for the contents of his hard drive in 2012. The theories claim that pop stars like Beyonce and Jay-Z (who aren't Jewish, but are black. Or are they? Of course they fucking are, see link below) promote the New World Order through the way they hold their hands in videos. No they don't.

Freemasons you say?
A  corking dance track by the act of the same name, a cover of an Alanis Morrisette song, The Uninvited

At the time of writing, under the spectre of Covid 19, it's like every conspiracy theorist's wank fantasy has come true all at once. Claims include it's man-made (it's not), it's got some connection to 5G (utter bollocks) and that Bill Gates is paying for a virus that contains nanobots to control people (oh, for fuck's sake). You can argue the point of the imperialistic and paternalistic implications of Gates' approach to philanthropy, and that, far from throwing money at their own pet interests, billionaires like him should contribute to countries by paying their full commitment of tax, so their wealth can be distributed more equitably, but this doesn't change the fact that he (via his Foundation) is putting large amounts of real money into things that do save people, like vaccinations and measures to prevent the spread of malaria. It's funny that many of the people criticising Gates as a do-gooder are the sort of people who say "charity begins at home" yet don't actually donate anything to charities at home either.

SARS-CoV2 the virus
The resemblance between this and a 5G mast is... non-existent as this is a computerised model of what the virus is supposed to look like. It is too small to actually have any colour
Source: https://www.crick.ac.uk/news/2020-03-16_tackling-covid-19-at-the-francis-crick-institute

The thing with conspiracy theories are the ridiculous assumptions that have to be made to believe in them. They fall down with any sort of close scrutiny, but the thing over-ruling all these leaps of faith that ultimately indicates they are, in fact, bullshit is that they need to have been organised by the people in charge. Can you really believe someone who has been impeached, bankrupt 6 times and divorced twice, having had numerous affairs, could manage to hold together some huge global plot to subjugate the human race? Or that the same someone, who has bragged about pretty much every aspect of their lives (usually without anything to be proud of), could possible keep their part in such a massive global operation quiet, even during those long, dark toilet trips of the soul at 4am (a common ourcome of a diet based on fast food, showing they are as devoid in dietary fibre as they are in the moral variety) with nothing to keep you company apart from a Wi-fi-connected smartphone and a Twitter account? Or could a different someone, who lacks the foresight to plan contraception in numerous affairs, resulting in an untold number of children (apparently at least 6) by any number of women could play any part in something so meticulous to enslave the population? Really, could someone who has lost several jobs because they have been caught lying and have several abandoned pie-in-the-sky projects that have held their name, be trusted by the overlords to be a part of something of such scale? Honestly, if you do fall for these sorts of fables, would you be interested in buying some magic beans? They came as a topping on a pizza sold from the Pizzagate restaurant. Of course, I could be part of the conspiracy, writing a sweary cooking blog in the privacy of my own home that conspiracy theories are bollocks. Just follow the money, bearing in mind I get fuck all for writing this stuff. Wake up sheeple!

So where is all this going? Trust me, I'm dragging it back to the recipe in hand. The science suggests that Sars-Cov2 originates in a bat, but may also be found in pangolins which possibly act as a reservoir for the virus, though we're not sure (given that we only became aware of this virus about 9 months ago at the time of writing, this is hardly surprising). Both animals are sold as food in wet markets across China, including Wuhan, where the disease was first reported. so people are in close proximity to this and other viruses. While wet markets obviously present a possible route for transmission of animal diseases from animals to humans (zoonoses), they are in no way the only one (BSE anyone? Possibly HIV/aids, maybe? And how about looking up the derivation of the word "vaccine") All this adds to the myths surrounding the eating habits of people in other cultures, which further contribute to the "othering" of people from different cultures, giving ammunition to the sort of people who sit in their dimly lit bedrooms making up racist conspiracy theories, when they're not wanking over child sexual abuse images. 

Oriental food in general, and Chinese in particular, gets a bad rap ("rap", not "rat", but I'll be covering this in a soon to be published edition of this blog, once I've got some pictures), largely because of stories like this. However, to be so dismissive of the entire cuisine of over a billion people, incorporating numerous regional varieties, covering tropical coastline to inland tundra and all in between, is a culinary crime. One of the fundamental techniques involved in Chinese cookery is stir-frying, which is a very quick way to cook and uses relatively little oil. The technique orginates, apparently, because when you make fires using bamboo, they burn very hot, very fast, so you have to do quick cooking at high tempreature. The important thing to remember about stir-frying is that all the ingredients need to be prepared to be a similar shape and size, so they cook evenly, and though the actual act of cooking by stir-fry is actually pretty rapid, the preparation takes longer.

This recipe is something similar to what you might find in any Chinese takeaway, and chilli and garlic work very well together with chicken. You can of course buy ready-made sauces with similar ingredients, and they make a really quick dinner mid-week, but any homemade sauce has a much better flavour.

TIMING
Preparation: 20 minutes
Cooking: 20 minutes

INGREDIENTS
Sauce
1½ tbsp light soy sauce
2tbsp dry sherry
2tsp white wine vinegar
2tsp sugar
1tsp cornflour
½tbsp sriracha chilli sauce

A thumb-sized piece of ginger, finely chopped
2tbsp vegetable oil
5 cloves of garlic, finely sliced
1 small-medium sized carrot, cut into julienne strips
2 green chillies, finely sliced
3 spring onions, trimmmed and cut diagonally into 3cm batons
1 green pepper, seeded, cored and cut into thin strips
200g chicken fillet, cut into strips

RECIPE
Combine the sauce ingredients and mix well, ensuring there aren't any lumps of cornflour, and set aside.

Heat the vegetable oil in a wok or frying pan until it's really hot, almost smoking.

Add the chicken and stir fry until cooked (about 7-10 minutes).

Remove with a slotted spoon, reserving the remaining oil.

Add the ginger and garlic and stir-fry for a minute before adding the spring onion, chilli and green pepper for a further 5 minutes.

Mix up the sauce mixture and pour it into the wok, stirring contantly while it thickens.

 A wok full of joy

Serve it up with rice (ideally egg-fried). Feeds two easily.

NOTES
The basis of this recipe can be modified to make other Chinese style stir-fries. The meat can be changed to beef, pork or prawn. You can even make it vegetarian by just adding lots of different vegetables, or tofu. You can flavour it differently by omitting the chilli sauce, chilli and most of the garlic (it always need some garlic). the important factors are the soy sauce, wine/sherry and the cornflour. That by itself has a great flavour, but mess about with it, adding black pepper, lemon, or whatever is in your favourite Chinese takeaway.

Cornflour acts to thicken the sauce, and if you use too much it can become a bit too thick, so try not to overdo it. It gives the sauce a lovely, clear, gloss that you wouldn't get from regular flour.

Like most of these Chinese sauces, dry sherry is used in place of the more authhentic rice wine. I've never used rice wine in one of these dishes asit seems a bit overkill. Do use decent dry sherry, however, like a fino and not oversweetened shite like Harvey's Bristol Cream which tastes like alcoholic syrup.

Sriracha is the archetypal hot sauce of Asia, particulary in Thailand. It's rich and warm, but there are similar sauces that could be used. Thai sweet chilli sauce would work. In a lot of countries, (notably Malaysia and Singapore) there is a bottle of Maggi Chilli Sauce on tables in food centres everywhere, and this would also be a good alternative.

You generally don't have to scratch too deep below the surface of most conspiracy theories to find the true motive of the myth. More often than not there's a racist trope (very often in the form of antisemtisim) just sitting at the bottom, like that awkward turd in the toilet bowl that won't flush away. Many of these stories have their roots in Nazism or hate propaganda from even earlier.

The problem with most people who believe in conspiracy theories is that they add two and two and get a dirty weekend for two in Skegness. The X-Files and The Matrix have shit-loads to answer for. At least the first Matrix film ended on a banging anthem against the murder of black people in the USA by the police. There was a great cover of it made by New York protest collective, Brass Against, below.

Brass Against: Wake up
Cover of Rage Against the Machine's polemic railing against murder of black people in the US. This version is every bit as angry as the original and the song is more relevant now than when the original was released 28 years ago.

Black Lives Matter

Chilli chicken drumsticks with basil

Something that really pisses me off is when you get a recipe and try it out, following it to the letter, then it doesn't work or, worse, turns out to be crap. Often it's a recipe from a book from a really trendy chef, some currently hot restaurant or some newspaper column. You think "that sounds good, I'll give it a go" then you try it and you find the dough has the consistency of mayonnaise or the potatoes have the qualities of marbles or the chicken is still raw in the middle. It's the equivalent of really looking forward to a film and it turning out to be Batman and Robin. It's essentially epicurean premature ejaculation

I don't understand how this can be the case. The recipes must have been tested a few times before writing them up. Is it because the flour wasn't bought in the right pissing souk in Marrakech? Perhaps the aubergines weren't twatting organic enough? Maybe the cow was a fucking Capricorn and needed to be a Gemini. Who knows? Whatever the reason, it gets on my tits not being able to rely on a recipe from a respected and/or trendy source.

This recipe is a good example of this. The original version of this involved stir-frying the chicken drumsticks until cooked. It took ages and you can't tell exactly when the fucking things are cooked. On the plus side, it's a great way to start slimming, since salmonella will make the weight drop off you.

So I added the idea of having the drumsticks in the oven to part-cook them before adding them to the pan. It's a really easy recipe and tastes fantastic, despite having no really fancy ingredients, with the sauce being ready-made dipping chilli sauce.

INGREDIENTS
6-8 chicken drumsticks (depends on the size, enough for two people), skinned,
2-3 tbsp light soy sauce
Black pepper
1 tbsp cooking oil
3 cloves garlic, crushed
4 or 5 spring onion diagonally cut into 5cm lengths
2 assorted peppers of any colour (though at least one should be a sweeter re/orange or yellow one), cut into thin strips
1carrot cut into matchsticks
3 tbsp sweet chilli dipping sauce
1 tbsp dry sherry
pinch dried chilli flakes
handful of fresh basil leaves (20 or so)

RECIPE
Make deep slashes diagonal to the bone in the drumsticks

Put them in a bowl and add the light soy and black pepper

Using a basting brush, coat the drumsticks well with the soy and pepper working it into the cuts

Cover, place in the fridge and allow to marinate a couple of hours or so

 To marinate

Heat the oven to 200 and cook the drumsticks for 10minutes.

Heat the oil in a wok and add the part-cooked drumsticks and gently cook them over 20 minutes, constantly keeping them moving.

Cut into one of the drumsticks to ensure it's cooked through.

Add the garlic, spring onions, peppers, chilli flakes and carrot and keep stirring for another 5 minutes until the vegetables are tender.

Add the chilli sauce and sherry and allow to heat until bubbling while coating the ingredients.

Stir in the basil leaves just before serving

Serve with rice, preferably egg-fried.

NOTES
I don't know what nationality this is supposed to be. Thai? Chinese? Whatever, the basil adds a really different twist to your usual stir fries.

Another deviation I do in this from the original is that demands you deep fry the basil leaves before adding them to the dish at the end. I'm too mean to waste the oil this requires, and it tastes just as good

The marination of chicken in soy sauce and pepper really adds some flavour to what would otherwise be fairly bland chicken. I do this any time I do a Chinese chicken dish, as was the case on my chicken chow mein. It's great for any old bog-standard stir fry.

Chilli sauce in the recipe is something like this:

Rhubarb Triangle 1: Hot and Sour Soup With Chicken and Rhubarb

50 Shades of Rhubarb

I live in West Yorkshire, in the heart (actually, it's really more of an apex) of The Rhubarb Triangle, so called because they grow arguably the world's best forced rhubarb here which comes into season in February, around the time I'm writing this blog entry. We are so proud of it in these parts that weeven have an entire festival dedicated to it. You see, although we might not have much to be proud of, what we are proud of will fuck up your kidneys and kill you if you eat the wrong bit (how fucking Northern is that?). OK, so rhubarb's not got the risk of fugu, but it's still fucking great to eat: long, deep pink stems with a unique tartness.

It's a traditional British thing to have your rhubarb in sweet dishes, like rhubarb crumble for example, but if you've read much of this blog you'll know that's not my style. Where's the spice, the chilli, the fucking profanity in that? No, I decided to get some rhubarb at the Festival and do my own sweary rhubarb triangle of three recipes, starting with this hot and sour soup. It's an Asian-based dish that I'm adding a bit of northern grit to*. Stick this one up your arse, Jamie! Fusion recipes? I shit 'em!

Hot and sour is one of the common soups you get from your average local Chinese takeaway in the UK, though usually in the UK the version we get is about as authentically Chinese as the late, great Christopher Lee yellowing up to play Fu Manchu (yes, this actually happened, for five films in the 60s). It's a great dish all the same, and you can put just about anything in it. So much so, in fact, that you do wonder if, sometimes, the less ethical establishments might gather the ingredients from the sweepings of the floor round where they prepare their food. Anyway, the point is that the throw-together nature of hot and sour soup, along with the sourness that gives it its name and the touch of sweetness it has, means that it really does suit the tart flavour of rhubarb really well.

TIMING
Preparation: 10-15 minutes chopping plus1 hour to prepare the stock base
Cooking: 30 minutes

INGREDIENTS
Stock base
2 litres water
3 or 4 chicken thighs with bone in
1 thumb-sized lump of root ginger,
1 stick of celery
half an onion, quartered
4 cloves of garlic (whole)
1 tsp whole black pepper corns

Soup
1 tbsp vegetable oil 
1 carrot cut into julienne strips
3 cloves garlic, crushed
1 thumb-sized piece of ginger, finely chopped
100g mushrooms, sliced
3 or 4 spring onions, sliced
2 stalks of rhubarb, leaves removed and thinly sliced
2 red chillies, finely chopped (including seeds)
4 tbsp vinegar
5 tbsp light soy sauce
2 tbsp sesame oil
4 tbsp dry sherry
2 tsp sugar
2 tsp cornflour
2 eggs, lightly beaten

Vegies chopped
(clockwise from top left: ginger, mushrooms, spring onions, red chilli, rhubarb, carrot.
Oh, and that's my favourite knife at the top of the chopping board)

RECIPE
Put the water in a big pan and start heating it on the hob.

Meanwhile, remove the skin from the chicken thighs and throw this and the thighs they came from into the pan, along with the other stock ingredients.

Heat to a rolling boil, cover and simmer for 60 minutes.

Remove the skinless thighs and shred the meat off the bones and set it aside.

Strain the stock and return it to the big pan.

In a small pan heat the vegetable oil then add the garlic, ginger and carrot to cook for a couple of minutes before adding the mushroom and cooking gently for a further 2.

Add the sauteed ginger, carrot, garlic and mushrooms, as well as the spring onions, rhubarb and chillies to the stock and allow to mix for a couple of minutes.

If only pictures had smells

Add the rest of the ingredients, apart from the cornflour and egg, to the pan and allow it to simmer gently for 15-20 minutes.

Add a little water to the cornflour in a cup and mix into a thin paste. Pour into the soup, stirring constantly.

Stir the soup so it swirls and dribble the beaten egg into the pan to make thin strands of cooked egg as it meets the boiling broth.

Serve up and enjoy. This made enough to make at least 5 hearty lunches or is a good starter for 6 people.

NOTES
*Despite being regarded as Northern as cloth caps and whippets, rhubarb actually originates in China and has been used in traditional Chinese medicine for literally thousands of year so, technically, this isn't actually a fusion recipe at all. It took the West a further couple of millenia to get to the stage of civilisation where we had developed custard in order that we could claim rhubarb as our own.

Where I mention "julienne strips" for the carrots, it's another wanky foody word for "matchstick sized pieces".

The vinegar used in this recipe would traditionally be rice vinegar if it was an authentic Chinese soup. I've never bought any rice vinegar in my life and wouldn't know what it looked or tasted like even if someone rectally assaulted me with a bottle of it. I'd usually use white wine or maybe cider vinegar instead. However, in the instance I wrote up for this blog I discovered, after buying the rest of the ingredients for the soup that I needed, that I'd ran out of wine vinegar and had to make do with some white pickling vinegar I had in the store cupboard. The soup still tasted fucking great so it's not that critical what form your acetic acid comes in. I'd probably draw the line at malt vinegar, mind and balsamic vinegar probably wouldn't work nor be worth the expense. The same thing goes for the sherry. In an authentic version it would be rice wine. As my local supermarket is in Yorkshire and not Canton, a dry sherry is (apparently, according to the cookbooks) a suitable alternative.

The word rhubarb is apparently spoken repeatedly by background actors on TV as a non-descript word to show them talking without actually saying anything, much the same way that politicians do when they're evading questions, the vacuous twats.

I couldn't do a recipe about rhubarb without mentioning the fantastic silent comedy short by Eric Sykes from 1980 called "Rhubarb Rhubarb" which I've embedded below. It's hilarious and (assuming you appreciate the ethos of this blog) you won't regret watching it, though it has got nothing to do with food.

Look out for further rhubarb-related japery in the next two recipes of my Rhubarb Triangle

Chicken chow mein

Yes, it's supposed to be chow mein and this is Chop Suey.   
It's a great song so fucking sue me

While I've been doing this blog I've done recipes from various parts of the world, but so far not from China, as such. And that's not going to change with this recipe, since this is yet another bastardised/Anglicised variation on an authentic regional dish. OK, it's Chinese, in that the ingredients are oriental but, like chicken tikka masala in Indian restaurants, it's basically thrown together to appease the delicate pallets of us poor, fragile westerners. There's no sharks' fin, no rotten smelling durian fruit, no bird's nest composed of dried avian spit (or other exotic ingredient regarded as a delicacy in the orient). Not that there's anything wrong with these ingredients from a culinary point of view per se. Tastes vary around the world and what one culture find a delicacy other people find repugnant. I mean, nobody east of the Danube in their right mind would even consider bringing a lump of rancid, congealed, mouldy milk (or "blue cheese" as we refer to it in Western Europe) anywhere near their mouth, never mind eat it. Or there is surströmming arguably the most disgusting "delicacy" in the world, which is a tinned form of effectively rotten fish originating in Sweden. On the other hand, and taking a broader view, the demand for sharks' fin in the east and in oriental restaurants all over the world is seriously depleting the global population of sharks. This is because sharks' fin soup is a luxury dish and a burgeoning middle class in countries like China, Singapore and Malaysia, keen to show off their wealth and status, has increased demand.

I've eaten sharks' fin soup. It tasted delicious. Not because of the fin but because of the ingredients that went to make the broth of the soup. The fin itself added fuck all to the flavour, only being present as strips of slightly chewy gristle floating in the broth.

This raises an obvious question. If it doesn't have any taste of its own, why is sharks' fin so popular? It's so highly prized because, according to traditional Chinese medicine, it's supposed to impart sexual potency. So sharks are being hunted to extinction because businessmen can't get a stiffy. That is bad enough, but there is actually no evidence that sharks' fin is in any way an effective remedy for erectile dysfunction. In fact, since sharks are apex predators, they accumulate toxic metals like mercury in their tissues which can lead to all manner of health problems including sterility and erectile dysfunction in men. Ahh, the irony. Personally, if any bloke wants to show his social status or how magnificent his tumescence is, I think he should buy a bigger car, shag his secretary then just fuck off, and leave sharks alone. Or try Viagra.

Dragging myself back on track, noodles are huge in east Asia. They are the perfect foodstuff: filling, cheap and versatile. They are popular street food, taste fantastic and really keep these countries running.You can have fried dishes like this or soups with noodles in. In fact most eastern Asian countries have their own versions of a noodle dishes: pad Thai in Thailand, mee goreng and laksa in Malaysia, Japanese udon. They are the origin of pasta, brought back from China by Marco Polo, apparently. Like shark fin, they also taste largely of fuck all. This means they need a well-flavoured sauce (or broth in soup recipes) and other ingredients to turn them into something worth eating.

This is a really easy dish to make. The most time-consuming part is preparing the ingredients. Chopping carrots into matchstick-sized pieces, slicing peppers into strips and finely chopping ginger are a collective pain in the arse, but they cook quicker and the results are worthwhile.

INGREDIENTS
150g dry egg noodles
300g chicken fillet cut into strips
2 tbsp light soy
black pepper
3 or 4 cloves garlic, crushed
1 piece ginger (about 3 cm), finely chopped
1 small bunch spring onions, cut diagonally into pointy sticks
1 small-medium carrot, cut into matchstick sized strips
1 red pepper, cut into thin strips
100g washed bean sprouts (about a handful)
200g mushrooms, sliced
2 tbsp vegetable oil (not olive, see notes!)

Sauce
2tbsp dark soy
1 tbsp sweet chilli sauce (the thick dipping kind)
3 tbsp dry sherry 
1 tbsp sesame oil
1 tsp sugar

RECIPE
Put the chicken in a bowl and pour the light soy over it and add a liberal grind of pepper.

Mix them well so they are well coated in the soy and put in the fridge to marinate for a couple of hours or so.

Boil up a large pan of water and add the noodles.

Simmer gently until they are soft, about 5 minutes (depends on their thickness). Drain them and set aside.

Make up the sauce by adding the dark soy, chilli sauce, sherry, sesame oil and sugar to a cup and mix well then set aside.

Add half the oil to a frying pan or wok and heat until it's very hot.

Stir fry the chicken until it's cooked (about 10 minutes).

Remove the meat with a slotted spoon, leaving the oil plus any juices from the cooked chicken in the pan.

Add the remaining oil and the throw in the garlic and ginger and stir fry for about a minute.

Throw in the carrot, pepper, spring onion and mushroom and stir fry for 5-10 minutes.

Add the bean sprouts and carry on stir frying for another couple of minutes.

Return the chicken to the pan and keep moving on the heat to make sure everything is warmed.

Refresh the noodles by running them under the cold tap, drain well and add them to the pan.

Try to mix up everything and once the noodles are warmed through add the sauce mixture, and the best way I've found to do this is to gently turn them over like you might do when dressing a salad.

I would add a warning that it is a bit of a ballache to make sure that the noodles are mixed with all the other ingredient.

NOTES
Use a neutral-flavoured oil for this, like sunflower or soya, but NOT olive oil which has too much flavour and is definitely not Chinese and doesn't tolerate the high heat you need to stir fry.

The chilli sauce adds a little spicy edge to the sauce as well as a bit of sweetness and stickiness. It should be the Thai sweet type as made by the likes of Blue Dragon or Encona. These aren't very hot, but if you really can't tolerate chilli, leave it out. Then again, if you do have an aversion to chilli, why are you using a cookery blog which has a significant Scoville rating in almost every recipe?

You can put lots of different vegetables in this. I've done the same recipe with combinations including mange tout, sugar snap peas, green beans, baby sweet corn, bamboo shoots, water chestnuts. They ought to be fairly crunchy, but otherwise it's up to you. You could also make it with any other meat like beef, pork or prawn. You could even omit meat altogether and make it vegetarian.

Recipes in Chinese cookery books suggest using Chinese rice wine, or sherry as an alternative. The sherry works perfectly well, but it needs to be a dry type. Something like a fino is what you need but definitely not Harvey's fucking Bristol Cream

Like rice, soy sauce is best bought from Asian supermarkets where you can get a huge bottle for the same price as you might pay for a tiny one in your usual place.

No pictures on this entry yet. I'll take some next time I make this.

This isn't intended to be a racist blog. The rant about sharks' fin is a rant against general fuckwittedness anywhere it raises its head in the human race. All of these superstition-based remedies are as idiotic as one another. For "Chinese traditional medicine" you could just as easily read "homeopathy" or "astrology". If this sounds cynical, I can't help it. I'm a Sagittarian, it's in my nature