Over the last two of days I've been out shopping. Yesterday I went out a couple of times to stock up on food and today was a bits and pieces shopping adventure at the Yu Gardens Bazaar.
Following on from my Dim Sum cookery lesson I decided that we needed some more ingredients and pieces of equipment for our kitchen, so that when Richard and I have had a few more lessons we can put our new found knowledge to the test. We took over our apartment from someone in Richard's company and although it has sufficient furniture we found that it didn't really have very much in the way of kitchen equipment. So I went off to Carrefour yesterday and found some weighing scales and a measuring jug, along with some other general ingredients for our meals. We are finding that we cook a mixture of western and Chinese food - the latter mainly for our evening meal and making do with more western foods for the rest of the day. Somehow I can't get my head round having the same type of food for breakfast as for the evening meal, which is what is normal in China.
Although the local Carrefour is fine for packaged and dairy goods, we have found it really difficult to want to buy any meat there. They are not very good at keeping what should be chilled food, cold and the meat and fish doesn't look very good. However we are very fortunate in living in a mainly Japanese and Korean ex-pat area. The Japanese especially are very particular about the quality of their food and it is to Korean and Japanese supermarkets that we turn for non-dairy protein or fresh vegetables.
- Enoki Mushrooms
If we are going to end up making dim sum back in the apartment I not only need weighing scales and other equipment for the kitchen, I also need some store cupboard items like rice flour, sticky rice flour (apparently they are different), wheat starch, red bean paste, lard etc. etc. which is going to be an exercise in itself to acquire. The Carrefour has shelf upon shelf of different types of rice, but we have no idea what makes them all different. And although I could find wheat flour, I couldn't find wheat starch. We already
- Fresh Cloud Ear Mushrooms
have a stash of Hoisin sauce, soy sauce and rice wine and vinegar for our Chinese meals, but red bean paste? Give me a break.
So, whoever has the next Dim Sum lesson will have to ask some searching questions of the tutors, or Richard is going to have to ask at work, where we can go to buy the various flours and pastes we need to practise what we have learnt.
Today, after the supermarket shops of yesterday I went to the Yuyuan Bazaar. I'm not talking about the fancy touristy souvenir shops in the mock rebuilt buildings surrounding the gardens, but the penny bazaar just to the north of it. This is a five storey local market filled with stalls of all kinds of goods from lingerie to bright red Spring Festival decorations from android phone covers to toothpicks. The UK equivalent would, I expect, be the Penny Bazaar in Leeds covered market where Michael Marks and Tom Spencer first set up their business. I found some of the things I was looking for - tape to mend the cuffs
- Mini Dim Sum rolling pin
of my coat, but not bias binding, which would've been better for the curves, and a dim sum rolling pin (with additional wooden spatulas) tiny, but perfect for the job. If you need knitting needles and wool, hats, glue guns, silk scarves, combs, felt, Chinese tapestry kits (not to my taste - why would I want a stitched picture of a ferrari on my wall?), pegs etc. this is the place to come. It's not a place to get a camera out whilst trying to shop - there is too much life going on in the gangways: the unpacking of goods, the eating of lunch, a game of cards - with pretty high stakes if the money they were holding in their hands was anything to go by, the eating of nuts and the spitting out of their shells on the floor, the spitting; full stop. Now that is something to which I still find it hard to adjust. In Hong Kong in the 1980s there were signs up everywhere saying no spitting. No such signs appear to exist in mainland China. And whenever we are out, the clearing of the throat and subsequent spit, usually just behind your shoulder is almost a bit too much to take. That and standing over a bin with a finger keeping one nostril closed whilst emptying the other. It's all there in the penny bazaar. Chinese life as she is lived.
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