Last night I cooked for eight people, Sichuan food naturally. Now I’ve got the mother of all washings-up to grapple with. Cooking for eight people is three days’ work altogether and the dish-washing is pretty grim, especially with the oily chilli sauce, but it’s worth it when I hear the groans and sighs of pleasure as my guests chew down on dish after succulent dish.
Last night I debuted a dish I’ve invented myself: Fritters Without Frills, 炸肉茄子 (ja yok keh tsi – deep-fried meat aubergine). It came about by having some leftover aubergines and some leftover pork from dumplings and a bag of tempura powder.
It worked! Which is just as well because I put the recipe in my new book CHILLies! Sichuan Food Made Easy, available soon at the touch of a button.
You’ll laugh when you see how easy it is to cook Sichuan food. It’s almost as easy as learning Cantonese with Happy Jellyfish People’s Democratic Language Bureau!
煮飯 (jyu faan – cook)
琴晚 (kam maan – last night)
洗碗 (sai wuun – wash dishes)
Joy to the world, my life is complete. For ages I’ve been writing Chinese characters in the worst way invented by man; by typing the words in pinyin, in other words Mandarin, imperialist communist speech-language.
Oh, the pain! Not only did I have to remember the pronunciation of all those Mando-words, but it was so fiddly to look up the ones I didn’t remember how to spell (and when has Chinese ever been about spelling?) and I had to use zeros to write normal Cantonese characters like 0野， 0的 and
0係！
The pain!
But now, wonderful Penpower Handwriter has issued a writing pad suitable for Mac. Now I’ll be able to use handwritten Chinese characters and get them right every time. It’s a new era. A new dawn.
Oh, and where can you get it? Why, the Mac shops! And probably all computer shops worth their salt in gold.
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