China – snacks and street food

China wasn’t all multi-dish meals and dumplings, contrary to how it must seem from the previous post.  Oh, no.  There were also breakfasts.  And snacks.  Many, many snacks…

Shanghai and Beijing – one mouthful at a time

I always forget to take a notebook with me when I go on holidays. This means that one of the first essentials once a destination is reached is to find a stationery shop (the others being eat and find some tonic. The latter proved difficult for the second time in as many holidays – we need to rethink our duty free purchases). Travelling in Korea, Japan and Malaysia has raised my expectations of stationery but it soon became clear that I wasn’t going to find anything as cute as “Pochi and Mongi together forever, happiness always” in Shanghai (try a Morning Glory shop near you). After the supermarket in the basement at Times Square managed to achieve the ultimate disappointment – instead of not stocking tonic, it only stocked diet tonic – I realised I was going to have to settle compromise and bought a serviceable but mostly unremarkable exercise book¹.

Flipping through my notes from the trip, I am struck by the contrast in detail. Each dish in every meal is recorded, but a whole morning in the Forbidden City is noted in two lines:

– eggy pancake b/fast on the run towards Forbidden City
– lots of ppl but many areas deserted – so huge

Clearly the most important aspect of our visit to the Forbidden City was the breakfast en route. No wonder Mao didn’t care to visit².

So the highs, and not-so-highs, of the food in China…

China – travels with an architect

I’m slowly working through the photos.  Digital photography has made life much easier, in some respects – knowing that there won’t be horrendous processing costs for potentially dodgy pics frees you up to snap away.  The downside? Over 200 photos from a two week holiday.

My Picasa account now has sets from Shanghai and Suzhou.  Given that China is a heavily populated country, I was quite surprised by how many shots we have with no people in them.  I was not surprised by how many photographs we have of buildings – that’s par for the course when the travelling companion is an architect and takes possession of the camera.

I will write more about the trip soon when I 1. find a minute and 2. get to a point where I feel I can articulate my thoughts properly.  I am, however, constantly remembering amazing dishes and meals we ate while we were there, so perhaps food might be my starting point (who’d have guessed?!).

Shanghai – not quite like I’d pictured it…

Having arrived back home on Saturday, I was sure I’d be well and truly blogged up on the trip by now. The past four days have disappeared in a catching-up (on sleep, washing, giving-cats-attention) frenzy and it’s back to work tomorrow with no post yet written.

So… why not cannibalise an email in the interim? The following, therefore, is adapted from some possibly inarticulate thoughts scrambled together after a couple of days in Shanghai.

Top Chef Masters – Kelly eats!

I’m behind with Top Chef Masters, and I’m still behind with Hell’s Kitchen, too. This afternoon enabled me to catch up on episode five of TCM and the recap of that is posted over at Reality Ravings.

The Springboks are playing the All Blacks as I type this, so I will soon be losing the television to a delayed replay of the game. That puts paid to the plan of catching up today…

Hell’s Kitchen UK – will eight become seven?

It’s been a while since I saw the last episode of Hell’s Kitchen, due to some technical issues (i.e. failure to read a TV program correctly) this end. As far as I remember, Marco hasn’t sacked anybody yet, and nor has anyone walked out in tears. Tonight, though, Claudia is promising that Marco will be asking somebody to leave.

Our celebrities get up to find that Marco has thoughtfully provided them with half a pair of support hose each. Before they have to make that decision we are all dreading – which leg for the varicose veins? – Niomi thinks to read the letter on the bench. Anthea’s initial thought, that they would have to strain something through the sock, is not even half right. Our celebs are to take their “net” and use it to catch an eel. As she completes the instructions (“take them to the kitchen where they’ll be dispatched. You must catch your own eel”) Danielle is retching with horror.

Niomi interviews that she didn’t know that “dispatched” meant finger-across-throat. I’m guessing she figured she was going to attach an address label and courier it to a larger waterway, where it could live out the rest of its life in peace.

To an ominous soundtrack, Marco tells us that “in this day and age, there’s too many people who don’t know where ingredients come from”. I get what he’s saying (we’ve been on this trip many times before, thanks to Hugh F-W, Jamie, Gordon… god, probably even Ainsley) but I think most people would know that eel comes from, well, eel. He mentions the neatly sliced, packaged products in the supermarket, and I’m reminded of the Great British Feast episode a couple of weeks ago where he was absolutely delighting in the discoveries of the wondrous markets-of-superness.

Anyway, back to this show, with no further expectation of narrative consistency…

The eels are in a glass tank in the courtyard and Danielle (bravely? probably because she wants to get it over with) goes first. Bruce makes the obvious observation that they are going to get wet. As Danielle starts to dip her hands into the water, she’s screaming and doing the little retchy thing at the same time. Linda tells her not to scare the eels and she eventually catches one. All the excitement is too much for Niomi, who takes off indoors. Today’s episode must be brought to us by Stating the Bleeding Obvious^TM, because Ade’s first comment of the day is that “the eels are slippery”. They’re all having a lot of fun, but it looks a little less lighthearted for the eels. Particularly Grant’s, which looks as though it narrowly escapes being strangled before it even makes it to the kitchen for dispatching.

Jody approaches the task with a gung ho attitude. Ade comments on his approach as being “enthusiastic”, but Danielle sees it as bloodthirstiness and Grant merely observes: “Jody, Jody, Jody. He’s slightly different to the rest of us”. Niomi reappears to tick Jody off for catching “her” eel.

All eels are stockinged up… what could possibly be in store for them? Let’s find out, after the jump…

More Reality Ravings…

I’m continuing to blog Reality Food Television (Hell’s Kitchen UK and Top Chef Masters) over at Reality Ravings. Things caught up with me last week, so I was slow to get posting, but I think I’ve caught up now…

Marco still hasn’t sacked anyone over at Hell’s Kitchen and nobody has been driven to quit yet, either. Hopefull this will change shortly, as it needs a bit of spicing up.

The Masters continue to charm and the finale is shaping up to be a love-fest. The only slightly prickly contender so far – Ludo, of Ludo Bites (!) – failed to go through. Despite the lack of drama and sabotage between the contestants, Top Chef Masters is an entertaining way to pass an hour.

Alive in Joburg

When I first saw a poster for District 9, I’d heard nothing about it. The “Peter Jackson presents…” line looked as though it was a sneaky attempt to fool Peter Jackson fans, and I assumed that it was merely coincidental that the name was similar to Cape Town’s District 6. A little bit of investigation revealed that the name was not unintentional; plot summaries made it sound like it would be an embarrassingly clumsy allegory.

It’s not. The film has some weaknesses, but Ienjoyed it immensely (and Sharlto Copley’s performance as Wikus Van De Merwe is amazing). I’m hoping for a District 10 to follow…

The plot was first explored in the short film Alive in Joburg, which is here via Youtube:

It was thanks to Youtube that I discovered that Neill Blomkamp had directed the Citroen C4 transformer ad:

Just to continue the links, Moviefone‘s interview with Sharlto Copley led me to some of his other work, Hellweek and 2001: A Space Oddity.

Top Chef Masters – Heat Two

Again, only a smidge of Tom Colicchio in this episode and no Gail, but we got Wylie Dufresne, a great Lost crossover (Dharma Initiative jumpsuits!  Food in tins!), a bright red hat and the phrase “avant garde pastry chef”.

Full recap over at Reality Ravings…

Hell’s Kitchen UK

Hell’s Kitchen UK is back on and I’m strangely unexcited.

For most Australian viewers, Hell’s Kitchen means Gordon Ramsay giving over-confident American chefs a bollocking, and spray-tanned women desperately flirting their way to screen time. Whoever survives until the end is given a job (or, at least, a flashy title and some publicity for a casino). The original Hell’s Kitchen, whilst it still featured Ramsay and some bollocking, was slightly different.