June 2, 2014: Chengdu, China

After blogging for 7 years – sometimes every day and sometimes not for months – I often wonder if I ever have anything else to say, especially about food. And here in China I’m understandably hesitant to say anything too critical, not only because I don’t want to come off as an ugly American, but also because I don’t want to upset any authorities for any reason. I’ve already been followed. I can only imagine what the powers that be here think of my ramblings on Facebook (which they block) and my searches on Google (ditto). The internet censorship has been particularly strong the past few days since we are on the eve of the twenty fifth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square incident, which the Chinese authorities would love to simply erase from history, the way they have tried to do with all of the darker aspects of the Middle Kingdom in the twentieth century. Lord knows there’s plenty to write about here. I just wish I liked the food more.

Not that that is a change from my life anywhere. I’ve always preferred my own cooking. I realize that sounds presumptuous and boastful, but it’s not meant to be. In fact, I am awed by the culinary wizardry, the stamina, and the consistently elegant, delicious foods that good chefs produce day after day, week after week, year after year. I’m even more amazed when those chefs are older men like me. How they stand on their feet all day long blows my mind. My own cooking is rarely creative. It is not always “simple,” but I do strive to respect the ingredients, and to keep their flavors pure. I am loath to add an item to a dish unless it will either be discernible itself or enhance a featured ingredient. My cooking is much closer to the simple Ligurian fare I embraced when I lived in Italy than the haute cuisine that I found myself writing about when I first became a food writer (for a French magazine!) back in the 80s. My roots are southern American; I have always shopped first, bought what appealed to me, then cooked. As I have written many times in these pages, I seldom plan a meal before shopping – especially when living in a foreign country.

My millers ship me whole-grain grits and cornmeal, so I can make my skillet cornbread and shrimp and grits (or gamberetti con polenta). And, by traveling across “town” (it seems funny to use that word for a city of 15 million!), I can usually find some basic western ingredients in the French, Japanese, and German supermarkets here: butter, some cheeses, and prosciutto. But I’ve yet to find yogurt that isn’t sweetened, so my buttermilk substitute makes my cornbread taste positively Yankee. It took me 7 months to find bulgur. I also just found a fresh leg of lamb, so I’ve invited some friends to come over this weekend and we’ll all cook together. One of them is Syrian, and I’ve got pots of parsley growing on the balcony (because I can’t find it anywhere), so I’m going to make tabbouleh! I’m also going to surprise her and make pita bread (I also just found some organic whole-wheat flour), because even the flatbreads peddled by the Muslims here is made with the tasteless white flour that has been ground to smithereens. (I’ve posted recipes for both tabbouleh and pita bread on this blog page; you’ll have to scroll down on the page to find them.) Yesterday I found nice, juicy limes, bigger than the ones I’ve been having friends order me from Yunnan province. Limes have just begun to appear here in the markets, alongside the lychees, mangosteens, and peaches, but they are the size of large cherries! I keep reading that limes in the US are extremely expensive there now. I paid less than $3/pound for some of the freshest, juiciest limes I’ve ever had. That seems awfully reasonable to me. Of course, I can eat in any number of restaurants here a perfectly delicious, satisfying meal, for less than that. But I tire of stir-fries.

The limes were part of my inspiration for a soup I made yesterday. My sister Sue likes to say that I’m at my best in the kitchen when I improvise – she swears that I can open anyone’s refrigerator and cabinets and make a meal out of seemingly nothing. That’s not how I prefer to cook. I’d rather go find gorgeous ingredients and let them speak for themselves. I try to cook so that there are no leftovers. And I’m a bit of a lazy cook: I throw nearly everything on the grill, as I recently confessed on the blog. And those insanely delicious peaches I bought yesterday? Do I really want to make a cobbler or just stand over the sink and let the juice run down my arms? The limes reminded me that I had saved the outer ribs and bottoms of both some celery and fennel (neither of which – even the celery! – is easy to find here), and that I had in the fridge some coconut milk that I had opened a month or more ago (it was fine, in a Mason jar). So I sautéed the celery and fennel with some onions and medium hot long green peppers (in a break from my traditional olive oil, I used grapeseed oil; it is virtually flavorless). I added shrimp stock (I buy live shrimp, use the heads to make stock, and freeze it. I also freeze shrimp and keep them on hand) and some freshly grated ginger, and let it simmer for a while until all the vegetables were soft and the flavors mingled. I then added coconut milk and some fresh basil leaves (also from the balcony), pureed it, and chilled it. I thawed some shrimp, sprinkled them with lime juice and cayenne, and steamed them in a small pot until they were just barely done, then plunged the pot down in an ice-water bath. I added the cooled shrimp to the cold soup, garnished it with parsley, and served it with that brown bread. It’s delicious. I think I’ll have some for lunch!