It is this simple. Without  Baby Shananigans there would have been no Shananigans blog.

I was already smitten by Chinese food and culture when we visited Beijing last July but it was the news that a baby was on its way to Shane and Shan that spurred me on to deepen my understanding of the world into which the child would be born and to capture it in tales and recipes.

On 5th February, baby Dermot arrived into our world to cement the relationships between the O’Neill and Gao families. Where  ”Baby Shananigans” was an idea, the real live Dermot was a bundle of soft skin, sounds, baby smells and thick silky hair, with a distinctive personality from the moment he was born. Though I may be a long-distance nai nai the bond I feel with this little man on the other side of the world is extraordinary and at times heart-wrenching. We hope his feet will touch Irish soil very soon and I look forward to giving him post bath cuddles.

Meanwhile, yesterday he was 100 days old, a very important milestone in China. I will let my son Shane tell you a little bit about it. After all it is his story to tell…. and maybe if I ask nicely MaMa will give me the recipe for her 100 day long-noodle dish.

一百天 

“It’s almost impossible to believe that our little dragon, Dermot, has been with us now for 100 days. Mostly because it seems like just yesterday we were welcoming him to the world, but also, somewhat paradoxically, it feels as though he has been in our lives forever.

One thing that helps me to put this time in perspective is the radically ever-changing Beijing weather. I cycled to work today in blistering heat, through warm wind and beaming sunshine. When I first stepped out of the hospital in the early hours of the morning of February 5^th having just met my son for the first time, there was a fresh blanket of snow covering the cars, roads and trees of our little corner of this great city.

He has changed so much in the past three months it’s hard to keep up. He’s growing so fast I can almost see him stretching out each day, and for the precious hour I spend speaking to him each morning before work, he visibly is trying so hard to respond you can almost hear the words “Dada, Mama” coming from his little mouth… but I’ll admit some of that is wishful thinking.

100 days is a rather auspicious age for a child in China. As the first three months are considered the most risk-filled for a child’s health, many Chinese babies (and indeed their mothers) barely leave the home during this time. As such, the 一百天 or “yi bai tian” ritual is a sort of coming out event. It’s a chance for family and friends to welcome your child into the community, celebrate their life, and see them up close for the first time. To draw a parallel, it most closely resembles a Christening back home.

I went to my first yi bai tian just under two months ago – that of our good friends’ son, William – a joint event held by another mixed race couple and their close Chinese friends, both of whom had baby boys born just a few days apart. As Shan and I had little intention of keeping our child in quarantine for three months, this was also our first time taking Dermot out in a crowd, which he seemed to revel in. The host of the gathering, being an American living in China for over two decades, made a fantastic speech in English and Chinese. Since that fun filled day, all of our friends have been regularly asking when we would be having Dermot’s 100 day party, and reminding me that I too will have to make a speech…

I came home from work this Wednesday, giddy and looking forward to holding my 100 day old son, only to find him sleeping peacefully and not the least bit aware of his auspicious day. I also arrived home to a big bowl of long noodle & pork soup, specially prepared by Mama to encourage longevity in our little man’s life. Whilst eating through the delicious feed, we finalised the details for the get-together this coming weekend.

Traditions and rituals surrounding yi bai tian seem varied and quite open, although it always involves the parents treating their guests to food and drink somewhere other than their home. Guests would usually bring a hong bao of lucky money or gifts for the child, although most of our friends and family have already been very generous during their first visits to meet Dermot in our home.

Planning a formal gathering is not the easiest thing to motivate yourself towards when you are juggling life as a new parent and running a business, but in truth I’ve been really keen on the tradition ever since first learning it existed. We’ve opted to make it more of a party, and have booked out a section of the lovely outdoor deck in a Parkside Bar & Grill near our home, just at the entrance to the park where we walk with Dermot every few days. We’ve arranged loads of beer, soft drinks, platters of food and decorative balloons, and have invited about 30 of our closest friends along with Shan’s family.

Our party plan took a little talking around with Mama – being of a different generation and always a venerable hostess, she found it difficult to understand why we would spend that kind of money on casual drinks and finger food, when we could spend less taking everyone to a nice local restaurant for a proper meal. Quick to accept new customs though, she appreciates that an outdoor party in the sunshine is a fitting celebration for a child. Not wishing to entirely offend local sensibilities, we’ve compromised by inviting Shan’s family to our house first for a home cooked lunch, and then migrate over to greet all the laowai at Parkside.

All in all, it should be a fun afternoon, and while I don’t expect Dermot will remember it or understand it at the time, hopefully he will enjoy all the attention on the day and the photos we will cherish for years to come. As for my speech, I’ve heard the trick is to keep it short and sweet…

Shane”

Happy 100 days Dermot. We wish we could be there to celebrate with you. May you live for 100 years. – Nai Nai Julie

 

Our little grandson is due to arrive for his first visit to Ireland this day 3 weeks. He has been growing in our absence. Here he is enjoying his first stay in a hotel room after his first plane journey to the city of Changchun where Shan has her hukou and where they travelled to try and sort out the permits for his journey home. I will explain the complex hukou system of household registration and its ramifications some other time when I have figured it out for myself but for now I’m reminded of the biblical journey to Bethlehem to register for the Census, albeit with more comfortable accommodation and not a donkey in sight.

To distract myself while I await his arrival, I’ve been cooking again and tonight I recreated the braised pork rib recipe that Chef Chao taught me when I attended Hutong Cuisine cookery school in Beijing. This is one of the dishes I served at our Shananigans’ Feast in Sydney the following week where it was a big hit.

It is simplicity itself to prepare but needs to be cooked slowly over a low heat to achieve the correct sticky, melt in the mouth texture. The magic ingredient is a few tablespoons of bai jiu - which translates literally as  ”white wine” but is in fact a distilled spirit with an alcohol content by volume of between 40% and 60%.

In China, the best quality bai jiu is associated with the practice of toasting gan bei style – the Chinese equivalent of “cheers” which translates as “dry glass”. The liquor can be horrendously expensive with a price of a bottle for a special occasion banquet running to €100 or more but you can by a cheap and socially acceptable bottle for less than a euro. It is knocked back in shot glasses.

My first encounter with bai jiu was when we visited Shan’s family in Urumqi in Xinjiang province last summer. During our visit we attended a number of formal family banquets and on each occasion the ritual of formal gan bei toasts was an important part of proceedings. There is a definite hierarchy to these toasts.  The host will toast the most important guest first, then the next most important and so on. The toaster always stands to make the toast and the glasses are filled to exactly the same level (in practice to the brim) as to do otherwise would imply disrespect. The glasses are clinked gently and low in a manner reminiscent of bowing. Sipping is not an option. Each toast involves the proposer walking around the table to stand beside the person proposed too while the rest listen in respectful silence and then cheer noisily. Mercifully only those directly involved in the toast are required to drink.

The first family gathering held in our honour was an amazing experience. Twenty five people gathered in an ornate private room in a local hotel at a big round table with a lazy susan at the centre. A large screen TV remained on at low volume in the background throughout but for the chatty Gao family this wasn’t a distraction. A chandelier hung over the table and a huge flower display, formed the centre piece.

The family was arranged strictly in seniority order – as honoured guests we were at the top of the circle, Shan’s MaMa to our right, first uncle and wife to our left, 2^nd and 5^th uncles to either side beyond them with their own direct offspring, their spouses and children if present. Next in order the daughter of Shan’s MaMa’s sister, her sister’s daughter and first cousin and finally any remaining members of that generation. Everyone was addressed by title and family rank rather than name. Nai Nai if you were the granny generation, Ayi for the aunt, Shu Shu for uncle.

The consequence of this table arrangement was that Shane and Shan were a long way away from us leaving us pretty helpless at making conversation as only one of the younger son-in-laws at the far side of the table had any English at all.  Still we got by as the food started to swirl around the lazy susan, hot and cold dishes of local fare and what they called “hotel fare”. Shan’s Mum, who I had only just met at that stage, was trying to teach me the names in Mandarin for tofu, pork, beef, lamb, chicken, noodles, dumplings and many vegetables I didn’t then recognise.

It wasn’t long before the ritual of bai jiu started.

First Shan’s Mum proposed a toast of welcome to us, then, with our permission, she passed the responsibility of host to first uncle. Second uncle repeated the ritual with the same challenge to “gan bei”. And so it continued around the table as, one after the other, each branch of the family said their piece and made us welcome with Shan translating every speech.

Generally speaking only the men were required to toast but Derry was off the hook as he doesn’t drink alcohol. Instead he responded with a perfectly pitched speech on our behalf, and managed to make Shan cry as she translated it. Meanwhile I decided to do my bit for the family honour and quickly earned a reputation as being li hai (deadly) by downing two shots of bai jiu in a row. The truth is that I swallowed the first one fast to avoid the taste and was immediately proffered another one. I quickly migrated to red wine in tiny glasses but by then the Uncles had decided I was good fun and insisted on telling the entire family of my prowess with bai jiu for days to come.

Shane had the bigger challenge. As someone entering the family on marriage, he had to make an individual toast to each of the uncles and male family members present – no shirking for him and I’m astounded he was still standing by the end of 10 toasts and able to walk home in the summer heat.

Shane ended by toasting Shan, the woman he loves, making her cry again and then her brother Gao Feng spoke in his capacity as head of the immediate family, asking us to take good care of his sister who he loves very much – more tears and by this stage we were all emotional wrecks.

There was much talk of welcoming us into their family and of making their already large family an international one and huge appreciation of our coming such a long way to visit them and saying how easily we fitted in. There was even a toast for me from First Auntie when she realised I had once worked for the Department of Transport in Ireland because she works for the equivalent Department in Xinjiang province.  Another was needed between me and one of the cousins when the lazy susan stopped with the whole fish pointing head to me, tail to the other end of the table. I made a brief toast to Shan’s Mum at the end thanking her for making me feel so welcome and like a sister and saying how special Shan was. Cue more tears.

Eventually we were asked about the proper way to bring a family gathering like this to a close in Ireland and we explained there was none so the honour fell to First Uncle to make a final toast and invite us all to dinner on our last night in Urumqi so that we could do it all over again. He enquired if we were Catholics and if that meant there were any foods we couldn’t eat and on having been reassured on that score they planned another Chinese meal.

The meal below is more like Chinese comfort food than banquet cooking but the use of bai jiu brings back happy memories indeed, especially now that Dermot has arrived to cement the family relationships.

The bai jiu I used is one I picked up for about 70c on my shopping expedition with Shan’s MaMa in Beijing and is 42% proof. If you cant get a bottle of it in your local Asian market, substitute vodka (or potcheen which is closest to the flavour!!) The eagle-eyed among you will recognise it as one of the 10 ingredients featured in the recent competition on the blog.

Braised Pork Rib with Soy Sauce and Sugar - Hong Shao Rou

Ingredients:

• 1 kg belly bork or pork ribs
• Cooking oil
• a few slices of ginger
• 200 ml water.
• 2 pieces of star anise
• 1 1/2 tbs of dark soy sauce
• 4 tbs light soy sauce
• 4 tbs sugar
• 2 tbs bai jiu (at least 30% alcohol)
• 4 tbs Chinese black vinegar

Method:

1. Chop the pork into sections about 5cm long.
2. Brown the pork pieces and ginger slices in a few tablespoons of oil for about 5 minutes.
3. Add 200 ml of water, star anise and all the other ingredients.
4. Bring to the boil and stir until the sugar has dissolved.
5. Cover and cook over a low heat for 1 1/2 hours.
6. Remove the lid and reduce any remaining liquid over a higher heat until the pork is coated in a thick sticky sauce.

Serve with boiled rice and a simple stir-fried vegetable dish such as:

Stir-fried baby corn and peppers

Ingredients:

• About 400g baby sweetcorn
• 1 red pepper
• 1 green pepper
• Cooking oil
• Salt

Method:

1. Cut the baby corn into 2 cm lengths and the peppers into chunks of similar size to the sweetcorn.
2. Heat a few tbs of oil in the wok, add both vegetables and stir-fry over medium heat for about 5 minutes until the corn is tender.
3. Season to taste and serve immediately.

 

Competition time! – [Competition now closed - winner to be announced shortly!]

Well it’s the May bank holiday weekend and the sun is shining here in Duncannon, Co. Wexford. Today our grandson Dermot Gao O’Neill is 3 months old. I’ve just been speaking to him in Beijing on FaceTime or, rather, he has been staring in some bemusement at me on the screen of an iPad…

Now I’m in the mood for a long walk down by Loftus Hall and Hook Head Lighthouse where there are lots of fun things going on this weekend. I’m also feeling too lazy to cook today so instead it’s time to have a bit of fun on the blog too and to give something away to one of my lovely followers.

When I was in Beijing to meet Dermot in March I picked up a spare hard-back copy of  Serve  the People – A stir-fried journey through China. The book is written by Jen Lin-Liu, a Chinese American journalist and food writer who decided to enrol in cooking school in Beijing. She went on to found Black Sesame Kitchen, one of the two cookery schools I attended while I was there.

Her book is a mouth-watering tale of her exploration of Chinese food and culture and paints a wonderfully vivid picture of Chinese society and it cuisine. It is a good-humoured insight into life in China and what its like for a la0 wai (outsider – literally old strange), even one with Chinese parents, to break into that world and live like a local. There are lots of recipes dotted through the book to whet your appetite further. And it has been signed by noodle master Chef Zhang who features as one of the fascinating host of characters in the book and now teaches at Black Sesame Kitchen.

To be in with a chance to win, all you have to do is leave a comment on the blog identifying as many as possible of the 10 ingredients pictured below. It would be great if you can also suggest a recipe each ingredient can be used in but that’s not essential.

The competition will close at midnight on Saturday next 11th May and I will post the book to the winner.

Who am I and what am I used for?

I brought all of these food items back from Beijing but most are available in Asian markets here in Ireland although the brand names may be different.

(Hint: I’ve used all but two of them in recipes on the blog and many can be used in more than one dish.)

If there isn’t an outright winner, I will draw the winner at random from those who get the most right answers with my decision being final as to what’s a correct answer. Ooh the power

The competition was prompted by my daughter Claire sending me the same question with photos of some of these ingredients which she had taken back to Australia from Beijing – and no you cant enter this time Claire because you already know the answers!!

So have fun and learn a bit along the way.

Today felt like the first day of summer here in Dublin and I came home on a high after taking part in the Irish Tatler Business Academy organised by that dynamo Norah Casey. It’s a long time since I’ve spent the day in the company of 450 women and I came away buzzing from the positive energy in the Dublin Convention Centre and the extraordinary openness and honesty with which the panellists spoke about their personal adventures on the road to leadership. Women are good at revealing their hearts and inspiring energy and positivity in those around them. Passion with purpose is what I saw today.

And I loved the time I got to spend in the “green room”,  (now doesn’t that sound posh), with such special women as Clodagh Higgins Online Marketing Specialist, Marie Chawke of Aghadoe Heights Hotel, Margaret Nelson CEO of FM104, Ros Hubbard casting director, Aubrey Tiedt, Vice President of Etihad Airways, and Emmeline Hill, Co-founder and Chair of Equinome Ltd.

Now passion and positivity is all very well but as the in-domnitable Ros Hubbard said “what’s the point of being beautiful and fabulous if you’re broke,” to which I might add “what’s the point of being in high good humour if there’s not a thing in the house to eat.”

I arrived home to a near empty fridge and tried to figure out what I could rustle up with some vegetables left over from earlier in the week. Back last September, on one of those miserable Mondays that heralded the onset of winter (and what a long winter it has been) I had posted an impromptu recipe for winter vegetable chow mein. You can check it out here. So I searched for it on the blog, dusted it off and recycled it in a summer dress. Here goes.

Ingredients (serves 3 -4)

• 4 nests of whole wheat noodles
• 4 spring onions
• Piece of ginger – about 4 cms
• 2 – 3 cloves garlic
• 1 whole fresh red chilli
• 2 large or 3 small carrots
• 8 baby sweetcorn
• 2 sticks of celery
• 1 red, yellow or orange pepper
• 10 stalks of tenderstem broccoli
• 10 – 20 mangetouts
• Groundnut oil
• Salt and white pepper
• A pinch of sugar
• 2 – 4 tbs light soy sauce
• 2 – 4 tbs Shaoxing rice wine
• Heaped tsp of Chinese 5-spice powder

Preparation:

1. Prepare the vegetables first. Thinly slice the spring onions, Peel and finely dice the ginger and garlic. De-seed and finely chop the chilli.
2. Cut the carrots into thin batons and the pepper and celery into thin slices.

Cooking:

1. Cook the whole wheat noodles as per packet instructions – about 3 minutes in boiling water.
2. Meanwhile heat a few tbs of oil in a large wok over high heat. Add the spring onions, garlic and ginger and stirfry for 1 minute to release the aromas. Add the chilli and stir for another few seconds to release the chilli flavours.
3. Add carrot and sweetcorn and cook for a few minutes keeping them on the move all the time with the back of your ladle, then add all the other vegetables and stirfry for a couple of more minutes until they are heated through but still crunchy
4. Season well with salt, pepper, sugar and scoop out of the wok and set aside in a dish.
5. Drain the noodles. Reduce heat under the wok to medium and add a small amount of oil. Add in the cooked noodles and 5-spice powder. Season with soy sauce and rice wine to taste.
6. Cook, stirring for a minute or two. Return the  vegetables to the wok and toss the lot together over heat. Adjust seasoning with soy sauce and rice wine.
7. Tip into a serving bowl and serve. Drizzle with home made chilli oil if you have any. I’m addicted to this homemade condiment and we have it with everything, even pizza! Wok to table in 15 to 20 minutes.

Verdict and Variations:

This hit the spot on a Thursday evening – really tasty and crunchy and a satisfying vegetarian meal. I had a glass of Prova Régia Arinto from Portugal with it, a wine Elaine Cassells introduced me to. Thank you Elaine!

Every element of this recipe is just a guideline and I didn’t  measure anything. Just use whatever vegetables you have to hand. Mushrooms, chinese cabbage, sugar snap peas would all work well. Experiment and enjoy.

PS

In the context of  the Irish Tatler Business Academy, Matt Cooper had a panel discussion on women and leadership on The Last Word on Today FM yesterday and I took part with Anne Marie Graham of Health Force and Orlaith Carmody, CEO of Media Matters. If you are interested, you can listen back to the podcast here.

 

 

I’ve been enjoying cooking “fish fragrant” recipes since I started this blog and I have discovered several different ways of creating the salty, spicy, sweet, sour yu xiang flavour which the people of Sichuan love to use in their land-locked region to recall the flavours they associate with fish. The description often causes confusion among westerners as there is no fish or fish sauce used in these recipes.

The first time I made fish fragrant pork I used a recipe given to me by Chef Ricky when I went inside the kitchen of China Sichuan in Dublin and you can read it here. That version used chilli garlic sauce and owner Kevin Hui told me that in the early years they described it as Pork in Spicy Garlic Sauce on the menu to avoid putting off diners!

More recently I’ve cooked fish fragrant pork using fish fragrance marinaded peppers, as prepared by the chefs of China Sichuan at the Taste of China cookery demonstration. Before I left for China I promised to post the recipe for using this marinade and it is now below.

I know some of you have had these marinaded peppers in your fridge for at least 3 weeks now so it should be nicely flavourful. I used my now 9 week old marinade tonight, this time with chicken, and it was delicious.

When I visited Beijing recently, I learned how to make a classic fish fragrant sauce based on pickled chillies chopped to a puree with a cleaver blade. The recipe for fish fragrant aubergine below is the one taught to me by Chefs Chun Yi and Chao at Hutong Cuisine in Beijing and is the way Chun Yi learnt to make it when she trained as a chef in Chengdu in Sichuan Province.

Hutong Cuisine fish fragrant aubergine - yu xiang qie zi

Ingredients:

• 500g aubergine cut into small fingers
• 2 tbs minced pork marinated with 2 tsp of rice wine
• Cooking oil

Spices:

• 3 – 4 pieces of pickled chilli, finely minced
• 1 tbs minced ginger
• 6 cloves of garlic minced, about 2 tbs

Seasoning:

• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 tbs sugar
• 1 tbs soy sauce
• 2 tsp black vinegar
• 50 ml water

Garnish:

• 3 spring onions minced, about 3 tbs
• 1/2 tsp sesame oil

Method:

1. Heat the wok over high heat, season with 1 tbs cooking oil. Reduce the heat to medium, add the aubergine and stir-frry until soft. This will take anywhere between 5 and 10 minutes. Remove the aubergine from the wok.
2. Season the wok with 2 tbs oil and, over a low heat, add the pork and stir-fry until it separates and changes colour.
3. Add the chilli, ginger and garlic and stir-fry for a few moments to release the aromas. Add back the aubergine then stir in the salt, sugar, soy sauce and vinegar and mix well.
4. Pile the food in the middle of the wok, add 50 ml of water around it, cover and cook for a few minutes until all the water has done.
5. Turn off the heat, add the spring onions and sesame oil. Mix and serve.

China Sichuan fish fragrant pork shreds - yu xiang rou

Fish fragrant marinaded peppers

• 500 g red peppers
• 500 g sweet red pepper
• 60 g salt
• 25 g ginger
• 25 g garlic
• 1 shot of vodka     (30 to 35 ml)

Prepare and deseed peppers.  Dice the peppers, chop the ginger and garlic. Place in a clean bowl and add the salt and vodka.  Wrap with cling film and leave to stand in the fridge for at least 3 weeks. Blend roughly with a hand blender at the end of the 3 weeks. The marinade will keep well in the fridge.

Fish fragrant – yu xiang – sauce

• 250 ml water
• 100 ml black vinegar
• 80 g sugar
• 2.5 g salt
• 10 ml chicken stock

Mix all of the ingredients for the yu xiang sauce and bring to the boil.

Pork shreds

• 200 g pork fillet, trimmed
• 1 egg beaten
• a good pinch of salt
• 1 tbs potato flour
• 1 tbs water
• Cooking oil
• 1 to 2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
• The equivalent amount of ginger finely chopped
• 100 g fish fragrant marinade
• 200 g fish fragrant sauce
• 1 heaped tsp potato flour
• 100 ml water
• 4 to 5 spring onions chopped
• ½ a fresh chilli chopped or a dash of home-made chilli oil (optional)

Method

1. Prepare the pork fillet by trimming all the fat.   Slice against the grain and then shred in to matchsticks.
2. Add in the beaten egg,  salt and a little potato flour. Mix with your hand or long chop sticks and set aside.
3. Mix the potato flour and water and leave to one side.
4. Heat the wok until hot.  Add sufficient oil to coat the wok and stir-fry the pork until it is cooked, then drain and leave aside.
5. Using  the same wok, add a little more oil and heat up to a medium heat.
6. Stir fry garlic, ginger and  fish fragrant marinade until the aromas are released.
7. Return the pork to the wok and fry for 30 seconds, mixing well .
8. Add the  fish fragrant sauce.
9. Bring to the boil and add potato flour and water mixture  to thicken and produce a nice glossy consistency (add a little more potato flour and water mix if the consistencey is not thick enough)
10. Add chopped spring onion to garnish and sliced chilli if desired or add a good dash of home made chilli oil if you prefer a spicier taste.
11. Served with steamed rice.

Note: This recipe works equally well with chicken shreds.

I enjoy playing around with the ingredients and methods used in these recipes and I see lots of scope for experimentation. For instance Sichuan chilli bean paste – toban djan - can also be used to create the spicy kick. If you come up with any new variations, let me know.

Post script:

As I write tonight Im thinking of the many families in Sichuan Province affected by the recent devastating earthquake which left at least 200 people dead, over 12,000 injured and tens of thousands homeless and living in makeshift tents or on the streets as the efficient Chinese authorities rushed support to their aid. What those lovely people would give for a simple dish of yu xiang qie zi or yu xiang rou tonight and for some certainty about their future.

I also cant get out of my head a little story from the Irish Times by Michael Harding that Barbara Scully sent to me today – “The hug that’s more valuable than gold”. It reminded me forcefully that “generation emigration” is not just one-way traffic and that, just as we miss our far flung children and grand-children every day, there are mothers and fathers in China longing for their children who are here with us in Ireland. Read it. It’s beautiful.

Anyway this little man is now an Irish citizen. He just seems to be a little bemused at the prospect

 

“Nine times boiling will make nine kinds of changes, that depends on the fire controlling. Sometimes use high heat in cooking, sometimes use gentle. Clearing the fishy, foul and smell of mutton, the key is to control temperature. Only mastering the law of using fire, can we turn the stinky sweetly fragrant. We usually use these five seasonings, sweet, sour, bitterness, spicy and salty, but when and how many should we put are so delicate and subtly, and it cannot be described. Just like archery on the horse, you must master the skills with facility, Just as the naturally combining of yin and yang, and the natural transformation of seasonings, so that the cooking skill to do boil long but unbeaten, ripe but not mushy, sour but not stimulating, salty but not astringent mouth, spicy but not stimulating, mild but not tasteless, fat but not greasy.

Master Lu’s Spring and Autumn Annals – Original Taste Chapters”

Thus begins the menu at our favourite Peking Duck restaurant, XiHeYaYuan. It’s a quote from a classic Chinese text compiled around 239 BC during the Qin Dynasty and yet it sums up neatly what I learned about Chinese cooking in Beijing in 2013.

I was reminded of our meal there when one of my followers and Twitter friends, Majella, asked for suggestions for restaurants for her first visit to Beijng. Like all major cities, eating out in Beijing can be daunting for the uninitiated. The usual difficulty of finding the really good restaurants where the locals eat is compounded by the language barrier and the fact that most restaurant names and menus are in Mandarin script. On our very first visit over 6 years ago, when Shane had lived there only a short time, we tended to fall back on expensive hotel restaurants or cheap and cheerful spots frequented by him and his student friends. These days we are lucky to have his wife Shan as our interpreter and guide with local knowledge.

With all the great food cooked by Shan’s Mum at home and a new baby in the house, she and Shane don’t eat out very often these days. But no visit to Beijing would feel right without having Peking Duck which is rarely cooked at home as kitchens don’t have ovens. So we did manage to lure them out for one excellent meal at this neighbourhood restaurant.

XiHeYaYuan is a chain of restaurants specialising in Peking duck but they also serve regional specialties from Sichuan, Hunan and other provinces.

We went to the new branch that has opened in the Indigo complex attached to East Hotel. This Swire complex is another of the swish shopping malls popping up all over the city. This one is still so shiny new that more outlets open every day, many of them international chains. A whole upper floor is devoted to baby shops, including a Mothercare due to open shortly, and another to women’s clothes. The top level includes a food mall for Chinese fast food, the inevitable McDonalds and access to a super iMax cinema complex, all a barometer of the growing consumerism and changing tastes of the burgeoning Chinese middle classes. And yet it exists right beside the traditional Jiangtai wet market I visited with Shan’s Mum

XiHeYaYuan is in an outdoor courtyard alongside a number of other restaurants, cafes and bars. Its interior is ornately furnished with rich furnishings and fabrics so that it resembles the inside of an old courtyard house.

The menu is in Chinese but features photos of the dishes and some rather entertaining attempts at translating their names into English.

It was great to have Shan back in action choosing dishes for us – this is what led to me starting the blog after all. She has a fantastic instinct for judging the balance in a meal. To start we had six or seven dishes to share between five of us:

• Mixed clam and garlic in wasabi vinegar dressing
• Fried pork with water chestnut
• Spicy three delicacies
• Stuffed pancake rolls
• Sauteed celery and lily with egg tofu
• A black fungus dressed with sesame oil
• Something described as “Caterpillar fungus flowers and green bean with sesame oil.”

Shan commented that for a restaurant that pays such attention to detail and presentation they might have been wise to have someone vet their menu translations but for me the occasional “Chinglish” was part of the charm. She knows me well and several of the dishes had the numbing Sichuan kick that has become more addictive for me than caffeine. I would love to be able to recreate the crispy salt and chilli pork dish and the “Spicy three delicacies” dish of aubergine, clam and pork neck.

The centrepiece of the meal was the “Four-phase” duck carved at our table. All the duck served at the restaurant is raised alongside the Yanqi lake. “Four-phase” refers to the way in which it is meant to be eaten using the condiments on the lazy susan at your table.

First the crispy skin should be dipped in the garlic sugar and blueberry sauce. Shan and I found the blueberry sauce a little too sweet for our taste but it’s an intriguing combination. The duck meat with crispy skin is eaten in the normal way with cucumber, spring onion and plum sauce in plain or spinach flavoured pancakes. Then the lean breast meat is eaten in the pancakes with the pureed garlic and carrot strips. Meanwhile the carcass of the duck is taken away and either deep-fried or made into a soup. Shan opted to have it deep-fried and think of the nicest Kentucky fried chicken you’ve ever had with the bones crunchy enough to eat and you get the idea.

The total cost of the meal for 5 including several beers was about €70. The whole duck, served as described cost 258 rmb or about €28. I’ve had Peking Duck before in Beijing and this was on par or better than the best of it. It rivals Da Dong which is the one that features most often in guidebooks and is considerably better value than many of the restaurants geared to foreign tourists. It’s definitely worth seeking out a branch near you if you get the chance to visit Beijing. There are about 6 branches in all.

By the way, if you are visiting Beijing and need easy access to the airport and the business districts in the north east of the city, I strongly recommend East, near the 4^th ring road, as a base. It is a beautiful modern hotel which opened just a few months ago not far from the 798 Art District. It has a bright and airy design and designed with the needs of the business traveller in mind. There is fast free wifi throughout the hotel and rooms feature everything an Apple addict like me could need with, several USB charging points, electric sockets that don’t require adaptors, classy Sony TVs and Bose sound systems and an iTouch in each room which even tells you what’s available from room service – Wagyu burger anyone? Well it will only cost you about €14.

Room rates are very reasonable for a capital city and by Beijing standards, perhaps reflecting the greater distance from the tourist heart of the city. It’s well worth booking on a bed and breakfast basis as the buffet breakfast in the main restaurant Feast is as good as it gets and will set you up for the day. There is also an excellent bar “Xian” with live music and a Japanese restaurant Hagaki which I have yet to try but gets good recommendations. A casual coffee spot, well-equipped gym, swimming pool and business lounge complete the offering.

This is a hotel with style, great art work and a lovely informal but polished service ethos. The staff, dressed casually in sweat shirts and hoodies for the most part, are the friendliest I have encountered in China or anywhere else for that matter.

For first time visitors to Beijing, good Chinese chain restaurants offer an opportunity to have reliable and authentic Chinese regional food at reaonable prices. Others to watch out for are:

• Yuxiang Kitchen where we dined on our very first night in Beijing last year which is one of a chain of Sichuan restaurants. You can read about our experience here.
• Din Tai Fung where Claire had the amazing XiaoLongBao soup dumplings in Shanghai recently, now has at least two outlets in Beijing. Go there early for dim sum. You will even get instructions on how to eat them.
• Hotpot is another “must do” while in Beijing but it works better if you have at least 6 people to share the fun of the experience.

Yunnan Cusine is one of my favourites. It is lighter than Sichuan and Hunan as the region is closer in style and geography to Laos, Vietnam and Thailand. A great place to try Yunnan food in Beijing is at Dali Courtyard down near Nanluoguxiang and Drum and Bell Tower. A set menu is served to every table. It doesn’t change but is consistently good. You can read about my visit to the hutong of Beijing and Dali Courtyard last summer here.

If like my friend Majella you are going to Beijing anytime soon and want a few more insider tips, please do get in touch.

There’s beginning to be a rhythm to Sunday mornings since I came back from China. With the arrival of summer time, it’s the best time of the week to catch Claire and Shane on Skype. Today one is returning from a Sunday afternoon swim in Icebergs at Bondi in temperatures of 28 degrees, the other is out catching some fresh air in his local Beijing park in the early Spring sunshine.  Hurry up Shane as Sunday morning is also the time for my weekly glimpse of Dermot, noting the changes I cant pick up in photos, watching him react to the sound of our voices and focus on an iPad screen with interest and hoping he still remembers us.

While I wait for my Skype “slot”, I reflect on the week gone past, revisit notes, photos and memories of China and Australia and write.

Today I’m thinking about the way the chefs in a Chinese kitchen sing out cong, jiang, suan - spring onion, ginger, garlic - like a rhythmic hymn throughout the day, so fundamental are these three ingredients to many Chinese dishes.

When I grew up in Wexford in the 1960s, we used to call salad “lettuce and leeks”. I was embarrassed when I got to Dublin in the early 70s to discover that  I was officially a “culchie” and what I knew as “leeks” were actually scallions or spring onions. Leeks were a different thing entirely and a vegetable I had not come across before. (Yes, our vegetable selection was that limited in those years. The most exotic vegetables I knew were carrots, parsnips and cabbage.)

I was amused to discover that in Beijing the terms leeks and spring onions are also used interchangeably. That’s because, until transport systems improved, the colder north had a very limited range and supply of vegetables for most of the year and finely chopped leek works as a good substitute for the more seasonal spring onions used further south – a very handy discovery if, like me, you find spring onions hard to keep fresh at this time of the year. The frugal Chinese will always use the cheapest substitute readily available.

One of the recipes I learnt at Hutong Cuisine which uses this trinity of  cong, jiang, suan is duo jiao zheng yu, a simple, healthy way of steaming fish with an added kick from pickled chillies. In Hunan the dish is made with enormous fish heads from a river fish such as bighead carp – yong yu – because these are regarded as a delicacy and the tastiest part of the fish with lots of interesting textures. In her Revolutionary Cookbook, that bible of Hunan Cuisine, Fuchsia Dunlop talks about how this dish was all the rage in Changsha when she lived there. Waiters would emerge from kitchens bearing enormous steaming platters of fish heads flecked with scarlet chilli, black bean and spring onion.

Our cookery teacher in Beijing, Chunyi who trained in Chengdu in Sichuan province, despairs of westerners who throw the fish heads away but she did allow us to make the dish at cookery class with a river fish fillet.

The magic ingredient is chopped salted chillies - duo la jiao – which has a hot, sour, salty taste and a beautiful red colour. I brought some back from Beijing but the good news is that the same brand is available in the Asia Market for just a few euro.

Last weekend we were in Duncannon on one of those rare pet spring Saturdays. We detoured from an 11 km walk to pick up some fish, fresh from the sea, at Fish Ahoy in Arthurstown. Late in the day beautiful, firm cod fillet  and haddock was what they had left. I tried the recipe below on the cod  and loved the way it enhanced rather than smothered the flavour of the fish. I served it with Sichuan fried green beans and salt and pepper cauliflower.

I baked the fresh haddock fillets on Monday brushed with homemade chilli oil and served them scattered with a little ginger and spring onion. Simple and delicious.

The Hunan steamed fish recipe below is from Hutong Cuisine. Fuchsia Dunlop’s version of this dish is on page 167 of Revolutionary Cookbook and uses whole lemon sole, gutted.

Steamed fish with minced chilli - duo jiao zheng yu

Ingredients:

• 250 g fillet of fish

Marinade

• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp sugar
• 1 tsp rice wine
• 1 tsp light soy sauce

Seasoning

• 4tbs Hunan minced chilli - hu nan duo la jiao
• 2 spring onions finely chopped, white part only – cong
• 1 tsp minced ginger - jiang
• 2 tsp minced garlic - suan
• 1 tsp fermented black beans, rinsed (optional)
• 1 tbs oil 

Method:

1.  Place the fish in the marinade.
2. Mix the seasonings then coat the fish and leave for about half an hour at room temperature, turning half way through to make sure both sides can absorb the flavours.
3. Bring a wok or large pot of water on to boil and when boiling place the fish on a plate in a steamer (I use a bamboo steamer but a metal one will also work).
4. Steam, covered, for just six minutes over a high flame.
5. Heat about a tablespoon of hot oil over a high flame and, when smoking, drizzle over the steamed fish.
6. Serve immediately.