• 2 large Chinese dried mushrooms 800g diced pork
• Bunch of choy sum, thick ends cut off 2 tab cornflour
• 1 small hot red chilli 4 tabs light soy sauce
• 5 cloves of garlic 4 tabs Chinese cooking wine
• 5cm piece of ginger 4 tabs brown sugar
• ½ tsp fennel seeds 375ml beef stock
• ½ cinnamon stick 250ml water
• ¼ tsp cracked peppercorns 5 spring onions, 5cm lengths
• 1 star anise snow peas
• 2 tabs peanut oil

1. Soak mushrooms in hot water will soft. Discard stalks and chop finely.
2. Blanch choy sum in boiling water for 3 mins, refresh in cold, drain.
3. Chop chilli, garlic, ginger.
4. Brown pork in oil, add chilli, garlic, ginger, fennel, cinnamon, peppercorns and star anise and cornflour. Mix well and fry for 1 min.
5. Add soy sauce, wine, sugar, mushrooms, stock and water and bring to boil.
6. Cover and cook slowly (in oven for 1 ½ hours or slow simmer on top until tender).
7. Add more water if dries out.
8. When cooked add choy sum, spring onions and snow peas and simmer for 2 mins until they are cooked but still crisp.

It’s not all pretty. It’s not nice seeing mass-bred animals caged for the taking, though the highlights are the birds, a traditonal past time of old chinese bastards everywere (”bastards” in the affectionate “kiwi” sense of the word) and the random stalls selling everything from exotic plants to hamsters and snakes.. yeah, snakes.

Natalia and I were at the Bird and Flower Market (BAFM) in search of a gold fish… I dont know what I was thinking, though she is a sucker for pets and I like making her happy. This is why we have a cat, a cat which is going to cost me dearly to relocate to Taiwan.. TMD.

After some looking around, distracted by the cute puppies and gagging on the various stenches (I have a weak constitution) we settled on a place that had some pretty healthy looking fish and I (in retrospect, stupidly) immediately pointed ut the, grinning, funny looking, spotty green things; thus asking the owner “are they eay to keep?” to which se replied.. “very easy”.

Fantastic. We get the little fish home and put them in the lame-ass little tank we brought and within days they bein to wither. Natalia, the smart girl she is decides to google them and finds out the are a brackish fish, part saltwater part fresh, very aggressive and mildly poisonous. They are a species of puffer fish, not easy to keep. In fact nearly every site on te interweb states “not for beginners” .

Which brings us to the present day, having “operation toilet-flush” vetoed on its first reading, we set out to buy a “real tank” and something to salnate the water. Though I’m still a major proponent of “operation toilet-flush” our new friends are growing on me.. especially now they are not just floating on the surface gasping for dear life.

Behold, the Green Spotted Puffer Fish (GSP Fish)

Not all pets are compatable..

Click for the full text

It seem’s that the IOC does care about right’s violations, if it’s their own rights that is.

The International Olympic Committee asked Sweden to help stop a file-sharing website from spreading illegal downloads of ceremonies at the Beijing Games, government officials said.

Link

Broken olympic promises don’t cost dollars, though piracy does, but it’s nice to see the IOC put their cards on the table and show where their real interest lies.

My message to the IOC; the games are in CHINA.. what did you expect?

“We assign workers in [the Main Press Center] to check and replace tape that has been peeled off to make sure the tape still works every day,” says a Chinese official in charge of that work at the MPC.

Here’s how I make it.

Ingredients:

• 500g Tofu, cubed (use soft tofu, not to lao/old which is coarser and harder)
• 100g ground pork
• 2 Tbsp peanut oil
• 2-3 Minced garlic cloves
• 1 Tsp minced ginger
• 2 Tsp ground Sichuan peppercorn
• Dried Sichuan chili pepper
• Chopped spring onions
• 1 Tbsp fermented black bean
• 2 Tbsp chili bean paste
• 1 Tbsp soy sauce
• 1 Cup of Chicken stock
• White sugar

1. Add oil to the wok and brown the pork.
2. Add garlic and ginger and stir fry until fragrant. Then break the dried chili and add with the ground pepper corns and stir fry for 30 seconds or so.
3. Next add the bean paste and black bean and stir fry for about a minute until the flavors come out and the bean paste has coloured the other ingredients and the oil in your wok red.
4. Stir in the chicken stock and simmer for 30 seconds before adding the tofu cubes. Some stock powders and cubes contain a lot of salt, so if you’re using short cuts like me, be aware of the saltiness of the stock mixture before you add it lest your final result turns out a salty disaster.
5. Be careful not to stir the tofu too much as it breaks easily, though you can turn it over gentally or ladle the sauce over the top to ensure even coverage and that each and every bit soaks up all the flavours. (I have a shalowish wok so the tofu wasnt quite covered while it simmered in the sauce)
6. Add a pinch of sugar, cover and simmer for about 5 minutes but no longer than 10.
7. Add cornstarch mixture (2 tsp starch to 1 of warm water to thicken the sauce if still needed after simmering and garnish with spring onions.
8. Serve.

CCTV has done a great job of providing a great variety of sports on the 6 or channels they have commandered for the event. I have a natural disposition towards the team sports, such as the volleyball, baseball (two sports I would never otherwise watch) and field hockey (which I used to play at school) where Natalia our resident “remote nazi” has been getting into the equestrian and athletics. I was also fortunate enough to catch, by chance, New Zealand twins, Georgina and Caroline Evers-Swindell, taking the double sculling title for the second consecutive time and as an unexpected sideeffect of Olympic Fever, I’ve developed an adolecent crush on the bubbly Saori Kimura of the Japanese womans volley ball team who enjoys shopping, pasta and cheese cake. (OMG me too!)

One thing I would like to see more of though is balanced sports commentary by the CCTV team. Now I don’t mean the coverage, this is China and it’s China’s olympics, though from what I’ve seen so far the CCTV commentary box serves more as a patriotic cheer squad than a commentary team. For example, what could they say about the Evers-Swindell twins beating the Chinese rowers to gold? “Mei Guan Xi” or no problem **cut to the 37th olympic montage of the day**. Don’t get me wrong sports commentary is never going to be totally unbiased, though it would be nice to hear somethng other than “Hao Qiu! PIAOLIANG! every 30 seconds. Perhaps when the opposition wins a point, say something about the skill of the shot, the background of the player or what actually just happenned on the court, rather than silence, excuses or muttering when the Chinese are trailing a point.

Related Linkage:

Slate: If You think NBC is bad? You haven’t seen CCTV

CNReviews: NBC Makes opening ceremony look better than CCTV

..though our Suzhou born cat is not amused.

Tuesday’s United Daily News reports that fans plan to wave the Myanmar flag because, like the Taiwan flag, it features a blue star-studded square on the upper left corner of a red backdrop.

Link

I’m not sure that this will actually eventuate, though it will be interesting to see how the locals react. If the games weren’t political this wouldn’t even be news.

Nick, Natalia and Dennis the cat.