Home cooking

Living with a homestay family means I am being extremely well-fed in Kunmimg. I haven't had 2 meals the same so far. Spicy and oily food is pretty ubiquitous, and pretty much every day for lunch I go and have some hot and spicy noodles (my favourite!), so it's a good thing that my homestay mum cooks pretty plain food at home.

Some examples of my dinners here - the first one was some simple vegetables in soup, with some fried pork - accompanied by hot sauce :)

This meal, we had pumpkin soup, tofu with carrots and chinese chives, and some Kunming roast pork - very much like 叉焼 (char siu), but less sweet:

Last weekend, I also had some time to learn some dishes and help with the cooking (normally I get home from school about 5pm, and dinner is already on the table - the Chinese do eat alarmingly early). My sister Yang was making a beef stew (need to find out the Chinese name), which involved orange peel, chillis, ginger, star anise:

Rough method was:

1. Frying off chunks of beef brisket until dry; add in some soy bean paste, then remove to a plate

2. Fry the above ingredients in the same wok, until the chillis change colour

3. Return the beef to the wok, and add about 3 large bowls of water and bring to the boil

4. Pour the whole thing into a slow cooker and slow-cook for about 3 hours

I was doing my homework with it all bubbling away, it made me darn hungry that afternoon! The resulting beef was just melt in the mouth, must try and cook more beef brisket at home.

That day for lunch, my honestay mum made us all wontons (餛飩/雲吞). Kunmingese wontons are a little different from the Cantonese ones I'm used too - much less filling for one thing, and wrapped different too.

And of course eaten with some hot sauce - I really liked the addition of Chinese chives in this one though:

Thank goodness it's all pretty wholesome and healthy food, otherwise I shall return to England the size of a house.

Some things I am missing though right now:
1. Cheese - which always happens when I'm in Asia, not a sniff of Stilton to be had here
2. Tea - obviously I am drinking buckets of Chinese tea here, but I haven't had a proper cup of milk tea since I arrived!!! I do actually have Earl Grey and PG Tips in my suitcase, but we don't drink milk at home
3. Alcohol - no, actually, I'm quite glad to be missing it (although a nice glass of Chilean red would definitely warm me up in the evenings). I haven't ventured out to any guilo bars yet, I don't really felt the need. Last week I managed to go the whole week without speaking a single complete English sentence. Today, some Swiss students arrived today - the first guilo students I've encountered actually, but they speak French!!! I will probably really confuse myself if I try to speak French to them too... :)