{"id":1408,"date":"2011-01-14T21:05:54","date_gmt":"2011-01-14T13:05:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kerry.net.au\/?p=1408"},"modified":"2011-01-15T07:12:23","modified_gmt":"2011-01-14T23:12:23","slug":"last-of-the-food-photos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kerry.net.au\/?p=1408","title":{"rendered":"Last of the food photos"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/a><\/a>Last of the food photos<\/p>\n

The last few weeks coincided with Christmas, New Year and farewells so there\u00a0were many opportunities for eating out.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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This is a small plate of food from a buffet at a nearby large and popular \u00a0restaurant.\u00a0 Food was a mixture of western and Chinese dishes.\u00a0 The first word in the restaurant’s \u00a0name was “OK” and it pretty well identifies the food, not good, not bad,\u00a0 just OK.\u00a0 Attention to keeping the food containers hot would go a long way towards improving it.\u00a0 Prices were far too high for it to be a student haunt.<\/p>\n

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This was taken in a student haunt.\u00a0 It’s a potato noodle\u00a0 and vegetable meal in a cast iron bowl.\u00a0 Not only was it thermally hot but also extremely hot \u00a0on the taste buds, the hottest I’ve ever had.\u00a0 Due to the height of the table and\u00a0 stools and the difficulty fishing slippery noodles with chopsticks I ended up splashing spicy liquid into an eye.\u00a0 Initially\u00a0I thought my after dinner \u00a0plans would need to be abandoned.\u00a0 Fortunately the chili quickly\u00a0made its way through my eye and I was right to go to a New Year concert.<\/p>\n

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My favourite kebab\u00a0 cook.\u00a0 My kebabs are finished cooking and are on the aluminum tray to the far left.\u00a0 I finally extended my meal repertoire to include tofu which is on a stick and cooking on the hotplate.\u00a0 The round items are buns and many people have a meal of tofu and\u00a0meat in a bun.<\/p>\n

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This is a well used pressing apparatus for producing \u00a0sesame oil.\u00a0 It is outside a shop, and covered by a gazebo,\u00a0in a\u00a0 street full of numerous permanent and temporary market stalls.\u00a0 It is a different street from that in the previous post.<\/p>\n

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A butchers shop in the same street.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0A man rolling dough for a giant savoury pancake in the same street. One is cooking in the pan where the steam is rising.\u00a0 The green bucket contains prepared dough.<\/p>\n

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2 The dough is transferred by rolling pin to the pan.<\/p>\n

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3 The pancake is turned over using the rolling pin and a bamboo stick.<\/p>\n

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4 The cooked pancakes on the nearby table where they were cut and sold by weight.\u00a0 We bought two styles but I was too engrossed in eating mine to photograph it.<\/p>\n

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Exactly opposite was a man creating noodles from dough by stretching and shaking it.<\/p>\n

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An armful of noodles ready to enter the steaming pan.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>One of the college’s teachers who, until recently had been teaching overseas at the behest of the Chinese government invited us to dinner in a nearby flash restaurant.\u00a0 We ate in a private room which is the norm, even in many of the cheap restaurants.\u00a0 Given the level of noise in the buffet restaurant which did not have private rooms I can understand the desire for individual rooms.\u00a0\u00a0On several occasions\u00a0we had one when there were only three of us dining together.\u00a0 \u00a0The\u00a0container is\u00a0my individual\u00a0hotpot with a \u00a0\u00a0prawn cooking in the broth\/soup which is also in the small white bowl.\u00a0 It was delicious.\u00a0 Once the prawn was eaten other food was added to the pot.\u00a0 The temperature of the\u00a0pot was controlled by electronic controls in the table.\u00a0 Waitresses passed by periodically pressing the table and adjusting temperature.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The table with some of the food for the hotpots.\u00a0\u00a0 The small bowls contained flavourings for the broth and the bowls soon disappeared.\u00a0 The rolled meat on the left is common for hotpots.\u00a0 It consists of thinly shaved\u00a0 fatty\u00a0beef rolled and frozen.\u00a0 It is also available in supermarkets\u00a0\u00a0in kilo packets. More food including vegetables later appeared on the table.\u00a0 Waitresses were plentiful, quiet and\u00a0observant.\u00a0 We ate in the same restaurant about a week later courtesy of other college leaders.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Inside\u00a0one of the\u00a0the restaurant’s corridors.\u00a0It is a vast cavernous space underneath\u00a0a nearby\u00a0shopping centre.\u00a0 Recently one of the patrons was murdered by a man\u00a0with a machete and another\u00a0\u00a0diner was severely injured.\u00a0 One of the local foreigners mentioned it\u00a0at Christmas dinner.\u00a0 Reports in English on the internet were so garbled that\u00a0I was able to learn little more.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

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The pot for another hotpot dinner at a student frequented restaurant.\u00a0 It was so popular that we had to wait for a table to be available.\u00a0 Heat was provided via a gas bottle and looked rather more stable and safe than one I’d had at a different restaurant a few days before.\u00a0 The crockery is provided\u00a0 shrink wrapped in individual serves.\u00a0\u00a0 It is charged for as an individual item on the bill.\u00a0 Blue tubs sit outside restaurants and dirty crockery is placed in them\u00a0to be whisked away for cleaning.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0Some of the tubs, less than a quater of those available,\u00a0of vegetables and other food available for inclusion in the hotpot.\u00a0 It was very busy so photographs were few and of poor quality.\u00a0 Diners picked thin metal trays and selected any food they want from that displayed.\u00a0 This place was unique in that it also provided fruit and some seed snacks for dessert and not intended for the hotpot.\u00a0 The student I was with chose \u00a0\u00a0meat.\u00a0 It was provided direct to the table in a plastic 1kg bag.\u00a0 I had no idea how 2 of us could consume so much meat especially when so many vegetables were also available.\u00a0\u00a0However, it all disappeared into and out of the pot.\u00a0 The fact that it was fatty reduced its real quantity.\u00a0 It was Christmas lunch and everyone received a small tree decoration.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Christmas dinner was roast goose and roast chicken with all the trimmings including baked dumpling, \u00a0courtesy of the new teacher at my college.\u00a0 He likes to cook and had bought himself a proper oven so we got to sample a few of his culinary achievements.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u00a0A few days before Christmas the local educational bureau provided a dinner, entertainment and gifts for foreign teachers in the area.\u00a0 The dish above which looks like tripe didn’t receive any nibbles and we soon had it disappearing from the table.\u00a0 The plate of prawns which we were interested in was soon whisked away when it was only partly empty.\u00a0 Fortunately we didn’t make a fuss and it soon returned on a smaller plate.\u00a0 So many dishes had been ordered that the only way to make them fit was to replate food onto smaller plates as the meal progressed.\u00a0 A packet of cigarettes was also provided as part of the hospitality.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>This is a plate of duck tongues.\u00a0 I tried one and while it tasted OK it was a bit too different for me or \u00a0anyone to want it remaining on the table too long.\u00a0 One of the dishes on\u00a0 a \u00a0flight home looked like 3 very tiny duck head and necks on a bed of shredded carrot.\u00a0 \u00a0I didn’t taste them and the carrot wasn’t palatable either.<\/p>\n

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Some of the numerous other dishes on our table.<\/p>\n

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Peking duck with sauce and shallots on a thin crepe also available at the dinner.<\/p>\n

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Some of the dishes provided when two of my students took me to lunch after our last ever class.\u00a0 We were at a restaurant famous for dumplings.\u00a0 We also had meat dumplings and ones filled\u00a0with spinach and egg.\u00a0\u00a0 They ordered many different dishes and then took a ‘doggie bag’\u00a0 of uneaten food.\u00a0 It is common to take a ‘doggie bag” of unfinished food from some, but not all types of restaurants.<\/p>\n

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This is a meal cooked by two of my ex-students.\u00a0 I only taught them for one semester more than a year ago, but one would visit me\u00a0once or twice a semester.\u00a0 The other was much less competent and confident with English and very busy with other college demands.\u00a0 However, they worked together to\u00a0make a memorable end to my visit. \u00a0\u00a0They had offered to cook me a meal for\u00a0the previous night.\u00a0 They did but while I have recipes I don’t seem to have any photos.\u00a0 I was still busy cleaning out my office and tearing up papers and they insisted on\u00a0helping me with it \u00a0the next day.\u00a0 We had a couple of busy hours and soon it was meal time and they wanted to cook again.\u00a0 We went to the nearby vegetable shop where they purchased what they wanted and combined it with remaining items in my cupboard.\u00a0 If I’d known cooking would\u00a0 give them so much pleasure I’d have had them and any other interested\u00a0 students on a roster\u00a0from the beginning.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It was a delight to see them work so well together and to have so much fun doing something many people, including me prefer to avoid.\u00a0 They did have a noisy discussion about the need for one of the ingredients in the bean and pork dish, but it was just noise.\u00a0 Not all of their dishes were fully successful, but they were clever in creating tasty food from next to nothing and had lots of fun doing it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last of the food photos The last few weeks coincided with Christmas, New Year and farewells so there\u00a0were many opportunities for eating out.\u00a0 \u00a0 This is a small plate of food from a buffet at a nearby large and popular \u00a0restaurant.\u00a0 Food was a mixture of western and Chinese dishes.\u00a0 The first word in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[93,94],"tags":[9,15,20,16],"class_list":["post-1408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-china","category-xingtai","tag-china","tag-culture","tag-food","tag-xingtai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kerry.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kerry.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kerry.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kerry.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kerry.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1408"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.kerry.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1432,"href":"https:\/\/www.kerry.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1408\/revisions\/1432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kerry.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kerry.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kerry.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}