Market Forces

A timely reminder yesterday that supermarkets are not the only, or the best, places to food shop. The Dear Leader took me to Preston Indoor Market while we were in town, and it was worth the detour. Two best buys were duck-egg-sized cream aubergines from the Asian veg stall, and un-vinegared whelks from one of the fish stalls (it also yielded some fine naturally smoked haddock enjoyed for breakfast this dreary Bank Holiday Sunday). Not only was the fish stall offering a wider range than Sainsbury's or Booth's, but it appeared better kept/more freshly sourced. And the prices on both were competitive - a huge bunch of coriander for 70p for example, easily four times what you'd get for the money at JS.

We'd invited some friends for a pretty impromptu Chinese-y meal, so most of the market finds were included in that, the little aubergines (the Americanism egg-plant in their case would have been perfectly valid) in a Thai green curry with other veg, the whelks as one of the starter dishes.

In my old life I travelled frequently in Taiwan, several times taken to one of those fish restaurants with stalls outside displaying the available ingredients. Asked what I fancied one time I opted for the whelks, partly because I love seafood, partly to see what Chinese cookery would do with them - this proved to be a simple dish of just the whelks barbecued with chili aplenty, and it proved a revelation.

I rinsed our £2.50 worth, then marinated them for three or four hours in a paste made with red and green chilis and coriander, a little soy sauce and sesame oil. Stir fried with some more green chili, soy, and sping onion they were lovely rather than rubbery as it were.

Whelks are, if not a superfood, a terrific one. Stuffed full of protein, minerals, vitamins and a little carbohydrate they're little packets of goodness. But equally importantly, they bring a taste of the sea in the way the more revered oyster does - and at a fraction of the price.

One Flame Chinese - Take-out Made in

Chinese food is one of my favourite cuisines, or several of them - there is, after all, not one single style of Chinese cookery. What I have eaten as Chinese food has changed over time and geography. In the Seventies when the first Chinese takeaways opened in my hometown there was a preponderence of really gloopy stuff, like sweet and sour sauce in which a spoon would stand. Today the dishes available from such places are - often - subtler. In the Gorleston of 1975 Peking Duck never featured on the menu.

I was lucky enough to visit mainland China about a dozen times and Taiwan far more often when I worked in industry, so had the opportunity to try authentic Chinese food. On the mainland I ate in Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Shanghai, the food in the latter - especially in the countryside beyond the city - very different from the first two. Taiwanese food was different again, perhaps for economic reasons then with meatier dishes to the fore, and fantastic seafood (barbecued chilli whelks one of the best things I ever tried). 

Travels in the USA meant trying their version, again with its own characteristics. I still don't get the point of fortune cookies. 

All of which is a long-winded way of saying that I love food made in a Chinese style. So I make my own attempts at it. One of my favourites, and something that qualifies as austerity cooking and one flame cookery, is fried rice, which was the core of last night's meal, and we would not have been deprived had it been all of the meal. 

White rice carefully and lengthily washed in a fine sieve to ensure the grains keep separate later was boiled quickly (boiling water covering it and a half inch more, slow simmer in covered pan for five or six minutes, then taken off the heat and left to steam for another ten minutes). While it steamed finely chopped carrot, red onion, yellow pepper, and a red chilli seeds-and-all were fried gently in rapeseed oil, then the boiled rice was added with about three tablespoons of soy sauce, the mixture stirred together and allowed to fry again very gently for five minutes. Defrosted sweetcorn and peas, and a handful of basics prawns were thrown in, and two brutally crushed garlic cloves to max their impact. A shake of 5-Spice powder completed the flavour enhancement.

I did enough for six, and the three of us ate it. Which when you think about the millions who have to survive on a bowl or two of plain boiled rice a day gives pause for thought.

Another no-flame dish complemented this, a way of using a bit of leftover (uncooked) white cabbage - the Chinese love their brassicas. The thick stalky bits were removed, leaves rolled together like a cigar and chopped very finely, then with a few spoons of boiling water and another of soy added to their bowl along with another smashed garlic clove it was cling-filmed and cooked on medium-high in the microwave for a couple of minutes or so to steam it. Virtuous and delicious.