Hanoi is, as I've already mentioned, an utterly charming city, and one of these many charms is it's rich cafe culture. I'm not talking about the (often lovely) kind of cafe aimed towards foreign tourists; but rather the countless unfussy establishments that cater to the local's seemingly unquenchable thirst for coffee and tea, both hot and cold.

I've been hugely enjoying this cafe culture over the past week, especially when with my great friend Karin, who was also in Hanoi until just the other day. The cafes we've been frequenting are not the sort of places to linger on one's own with a book or a newspaper, but they are perfect for a quick drink and chat with a buddy.

One particular joint Karin and I went to several times was a rather characterful place near the apartment where we were staying. This area, far away from the touristy centre, was nonetheless full of great eateries, and at midday the streets were full and bustling with office workers on their lunch break. Karin and I would often come to this area for a breakfast bowl of pho or bun, followed by a glass of this cafe's excellent coffee - black for Karin, white for me.

I actually don't usually drink coffee, but the way there serve it here in Vietnam, ice-cold and with a generous dollop of sweet condensed milk, turns it closer to chocolate milk-shake than espresso - which, luckily, suits me all the better.

104 Ngoc Khanh
Ba Dinh district
Hanoi

Today as I was showering in my local municipal pool after a swim, my nostrils caught the unmistakable whiff of vinegar. I'd smelt vinegar here before, and had always assumed that it was being used to clean the drains or something. Today though, when I looked around for the source of the smell, I noticed a tiny old lady pouring capfuls of a dark liquid from an old soft drink bottle onto her hair.

'Is that vinegar?' I asked her, to which she answered 'Yes, it's very good for your hair!'

After a little Google sleuthing I came across this article, which states that rinsing with vinegar leaves your hair 'shinier, smoother, and easier to manage'.

Seeing as I'm heading off to Langzhong, Sichuan's vinegar capital, tomorrow morning, maybe I should try it out for myself; unlike some other alternative uses for food that I've seen...

UPDATE: My very own mother has just emailed me saying that when she was 'a young lass' (her words not mine!), she frequently used vinegar in her hair to help it shine - so there you go.

Chinese is a richly idiomatic language, so perhaps it’s no surprise, seeing that the Chinese are also such great eaters, that there are many idioms and expressions that involve food. Inspired by the wonderful Chocolate and Zucchini’s Edible Idioms series, I have decided to start my own series of posts, entitled ‘Eating Chinese’, on commonly used food-related idioms and expressions in Mandarin.

In each ‘Eating Chinese’ post, I will look at one idiom or expression. I will include the idiom and the example sentence in both Chinese characters and pinyin (go to this site to download Chinese Perakun, a brilliant add-on that allows you to view the pinyin and English translation when you hold your cursor over a Chinese character). Each post will also include literal and figurative English translations for the idiom or expression, and an example sentence with an English translation. Lastly, there will be a sound file attached to each post, with a recording of a native Chinese speaker saying the idiom or expression and the example sentence (thanks Pablo!)

My hope for this series is that it will prove both useful for students of Chinese, and interesting for anyone curious about the crossover between food, culture and language.

So, without further ado, let’s kick things off with 吃醋 (pinyin: chī cù). Literally meaning ‘to eat vinegar’, this idiom figuratively means to be jealous of something or someone, because, I guess, being jealous and eating vinegar tend to result in a similarly pained facial expression! Here is the example sentence:

她吃醋了, 因为她看到她男朋友和别的女孩子在一起 Pinyin: tā chī cù le, yīnwéi tā kàndào tā nánpéngyou hé bié de nǚ háizi zài yìqǐ. English translation: She was jealous, because she saw her boyfriend with another girl.

In the recording (at the top of this post), first you will hear 吃醋 on its own, and then the example sentence. If you're having any problems with playing the recording, you can open it in an external window by clicking here.

PS. For the full story of this idiom, go to this website.

Here is the second installment of my monthly column in Chengdoo Citylife Magazine, 'Your Chuancai Cupboard'. This month: Sichuan Pepper.

Sichuan pepper, or huājiāo （花椒） in Chinese, is one of the most loved, and simultaneously, one of the most hated of Chinese spices. Some people abhor its ‘soapy’ aroma, and pick out the peppercorns from a dish with distaste; others positively seek them out to enjoy their characteristic numbing flavour to the fullest.

Sichuan pepper appears in many of the most famous Sichuanese dishes, and its flavour is perhaps the most characteristic aspect of the region’s cooking – others, such as Hunan and Guizhou, use just as much chilli, but none use huajiao with such a liberal hand as the Sichuanese. It is also worth noting that huajiao’s appearance in Sichuan cuisine far predates that of chillies.

Today, Sichuan pepper is most frequently fried with dried chillies, a method that brings out its smoky tones (for example in Kung Pao Chicken), but it is also dry-fried and ground to a powder (as in Mapo Tofu), and even occasionally used raw (as in Jiao Ma Ji Pian – chicken slices in a Sichuan pepper sauce). Sichuan pepper is also one of the ingredients in the famous (and highly variable) Chinese ‘five-spice’ mixture, and is also used in various other Asian cuisines, including Japanese, Korean and Indonesian.

In spite of its name, Sichuan pepper is in fact related neither to black pepper nor chilli, but is the outer husk of the fruit of the prickly ash tree, Zanthoxylum. This somewhat stunted tree (thorny branches bare in the winter, covered by dark green, pale-edged leaves in the summer), produces its harvest in August: slightly knobbly, dusky pink balls, gathered in busy clusters – a stunning contrast to their surrounding dark leaves.

Qingxi village in Hanyuan County (about 300km south-west of Chengdu) is where the most prized and famous Sichuan pepper is grown. Its history here is long and illustrious; it is mentioned in the foundational Book of Songs, thought to be compiled by Confucius himself, and Qingxi’s Sichuan pepper was for many centuries sent in tribute to the imperial court of China’s emperors.

When I visited Qingxi, only a few weeks before the harvest, the trees were positively dripping with the peppercorns, and their lemony aroma reached me before I was even close enough to touch them. I learnt from villagers that once picked, some of the peppercorns would be used fresh to make huajiao-flavoured oil; the rest would be left to dry in the sun, laid out in bamboo baskets, until the skin has cracked to reveal the shiny black seeds within.

The seeds would then be shaken from the husks and discarded, and the leftover husks are thus ready for use in cooking.

You too can make the arduous journey to buy Sichuan pepper from the very village where it is produced, but for those not quite as huajiao-obsessed as me, just try to buy a brand from Hanyuan County. I also recommend buying Sichuan pepper in pre-sealed packets, not loose, as its flavour diminishes rapidly if not kept in a sealed container. For those not in China, Sichuan pepper can be bought online from specialist suppliers (such as the Cool Chile Company), and for British readers, is available in most supermarkets in the Bart’s spices range.

As mentioned earlier, Sichuan pepper is delicious fried with dried chillies; this method, called qiang in Chinese, can be used in combination with all manner of fresh vegetables – I like it particularly with slithers of round courgette (zucchini). But perhaps the most famous of Sichuanese dishes that uses Sichuan pepper is Mapo Tofu, a recipe for which I’ve adapted from Fuchsia Dunlop’s Sichuan Cookery and which you can find below.

Mapo Tofu 麻婆豆腐

1 block of tofu
3-4 spring onions (scallions)
Vegetable or peanut oil
150g minced beef (optional)
2 tablespoons chilli-bean paste (doubanjiang)
1 tablespoon fermented soy beans (dou chi), rinsed and drained
200ml water
1 teaspoon sugar
2 teaspoons light soy sauce
1 teaspoon of cornstarch mixed with 1 tablespoon of water
1 teaspoon Sichuan pepper

1. Cut the tofu into 2cm cubes and leave to steep in very hot, salted water. Slice the spring onions into 3cm-long chunks. Dry-fry the Sichuan pepper in a hot wok until smoking, tip out into a pestle-and-mortar and then grind to a fine powder (you can use pre-ground Sichuan pepper, but it won’t taste as good).
2. If using the beef, pour about 2 tablespoons of oil into a wok and heat. Once smoking, add the minced beef and fry until a little brown and set aside.
3. Add another tablespoon or so of oil, heat and add the chilli-bean paste. Fry for about 30 seconds, taking care not to let it burn, and then add the fermented soy beans and cook for another 30 seconds.
4. Pour in the water, add the sugar, soy sauce and salt to taste and now add the drained tofu cubes. Simmer for about 5 minutes, to allow the tofu to absorb the flavours.
5. Add the spring onions (scallions) and gently stir in. Once they are just cooked, add the starch-and-water mixture to thicken the sauce. Finally, pour everything into a serving dish, scatter with the cooked minced beef and the ground Sichuan pepper and serve.

Of course, I was expecting to eat well in France on my trip there this summer, but perhaps I wasn’t expecting to eat quite as well as I did. Not only was there the stupendous vegetarian cuisine at the singing course that I helped out on, but there were also plenty of other meals and foodie experiences that raised the bar too. The photograph above is from a rather memorable lunch with my mother in Capdenac-en-Haut in the Lot, but what I really got excited about on this trip was the food of the Hautes-Pyrenees.

I went there to visit my old friend Eva, who lives in the regional capital Tarbes. It was my first time in the area, and like across the whole of France, the area has its own unique culinary tradition. Food in France is almost as localised as it is in China – Eva told me that cheese from the region she grew up in, only about a 4 hour drive away, is difficult to find in Tarbes and expensive to boot. Though I sadly wasn’t there on a Thursday to witness the huge weekly market, I did get to try a few local delicacies via a small, road-side produce shop that we passed while Eva took me on a mini-tour of the nearby countryside.

This was the scene that greeted us upon jumping out of Eva’s van: row upon row of different flavours of saucisson – air-dried sausage.

Though I’m not that much of a carnivore, I was soon salivating as I read the names of the flavours – duck, wild boar, at least five mixtures of pork and various different cheeses, and all made on-site. Though Eva told me that the same saucisson are sold for almost half the price elsewhere, I couldn’t resist buying one, and after a lengthy process of umming-and-ahhing, I finally decided on the pork and hazelnut variety. It was fantastic – richly meaty, studded with nuts, and so peppery it was almost spicy.

At the same shop I also bought what is known locally as Gateau a la Broche – or in English, rather less glamorously, Spit Cake.

This is how it is described on the packet label:

‘Gateau a la Broche, patiently cooked on a spit, layer by layer, before a wood fire; our company continues the tradition of these valleys, where neither baptism nor marriage nor convivial meeting would be a day of celebration without this authentic recipe of our region.’

And here is the ingredients list:

Butter, 25% (!!!)
Sugar
Flour
Eggs
Rum
Vanilla
Ground almonds

How can something so simple be so delicious? Believe me, dear reader, it can, and is mainly down, I would guess, to the unique cooking method. As the label so eloquently describes, the cake mixture is poured over a metal spit, about 5 centimetres in diameter, which is rotated over a wood fire. Here’s a photo of the illustration on the label to give you a better idea.

So, once each layer is cooked to golden perfection, another layer is poured on top, meaning that the finished product, when broken open, not only has pretty swirls of light brown running through it, but also, with its drip-induced spikes, looks rather a medieval weapon. I have a theory that this cake is inspired by the local architecture, which has its own characteristic spiky edges.

We drove back to Tarbes that evening laden with these goodies, and I suppose it's no surprise that said goodies didn't last beyond said evening.

Oh dear. Writing this now and looking at the photos, I’m itching to go back there. Ah well, at least I have the wonderful world of Chinese cuisine to comfort myself with, and as a man who I met in Tarbes told me, there are really only two important schools of cuisine in this world – Chinese, and French.