#dearinnerfatkid

I cannot fully recall how I came across Li Ziqi’s YouTube channel other than that it wasn’t at all what I was looking for. She (alongside her partner, I believe) make videos that center around cooking and sometimes handicraft with traditional ingredients and techniques to the Sichuan province of China. Their home, kitchen area, tools and container are in majority traditional stuff and non-plastic which really plays into the *LARP:er side of me. Quality and editing is top notch and the music most of the time really adds to the ambiance. It gives me the feeling of majestic or tranquil nature movies, so even worth a watch if you’re not gonna try a recipe or technique out.

*I’d totally pay money to go to a LARP set in such a kitchen/house with similar stock and just cook for a weekend. One-and-a-half or so years ago when I first watched her content none of the videos had subtitles and the Chinese characters were most often so complex I had no chance to try and find a translation. Sometimes some kind people in the comments would clarify things, like what some ingredient was. Today, however, over half of Li Ziqi’s videos have been subtitled (with varying accuracy I suspect) that actually makes it possible to at least mimic her cooking.

So far I’ve only ever tried 3-4 dishes based on her videos, but cooked some of them several times in attempts to make them more genuine to the source material (with some hard-to-get ingredients) or just because I really like food. The list of things I want to try my hands on is long and grows longer with almost every video she releases, so expect to see her mentioned more in the future.

Nostalgic joy! I’m from the northern part of Sweden and grew up on various products from Norrmejerier, which is the big local producer of dairy in the area. Since I moved to the West Coast I can’t get my hands on stuff from Norrmejerier anymore which hasn’t been hard to cope but I do miss drinking real milk and baking with proper butter every now and then. And then one day, suddenly... there it was! CHEESE!

I’ve mentioned before that I’m working on clearing out my freezer of stuff so what little space I got in there is mainly filled with prepped food. I had some pre-cooked and diced chicken that I fried up canned chanterelles, fresh champignons, white onion, garlic and fresh thyme. Two quickly whisked eggs became the wrapping for this mixture along with some nice northern cheese (not the mammoth kind).

My first ever encounter ginger preserve was as a condiment on vanilla ice cream and I felt like I had to go back to those roots. (And I miss my friend who I learned the recipe from.)

A really dear friend of mine, that I first met at Uni. when studying nursing, used to make a ginger preserve that was very syrup-y and it was extraordinary to have both the ginger and syrup on some ice cream or a cup of tea. I also wanted to try and make candied ginger (also called crystallized ginger) so I decided to make both at the same time!

I peeled a lot of fresh ginger, most I chopped julienne while some I made into chunky coins. Then I covered it all in lightly salted water in a pot, cooked it up to a boil and then let it simmer for roughly an hour. I separated the water from the ginger, added sugar equal to grams of sugar and then returned the ginger to the syrup. Put the pot back on the stove and let it cook until the ginger was tender and the syrup darkened in colour and get sticky.

At this point I removed the ginger coins, let them dry briefly on a paper towel and then covered with sugar. The syrup and shredded ginger was put into jars. Both are sweet and still recognizably fiery with a hint of salt to balance it all out. (I should have let the candied ginger linger in the sugar and dry further before storing and cook the preserve a bit less because the final product is quite “muscular” when pried from the jar.)

Growing up my mother used to cook pork chops in the oven with sambal oelek, crème fraîche and soy sauce, served with rice. Tender and salty meat with a slight kick and a water sauce perfect to get soaked up with the rice. I made it myself for the first time in half a decade with some leftover chops in the freezer and that inspired me to make a vegetarian variation.

I mixed fatty crème fraîche with Japanese soy sauce and sambal oelek that I then dolloped onto a pork chop and dressed with some thinly sliced champignons. You have to go with fatty crème fraîche because the low-fat alternatives won’t set when cooked. I prefer Japanese soy for this recipe since it’s watery and less concentrated, because it requires quite a lot. My mom wouldn’t have mushrooms on but I find it pairs well with the heavy soy flavour. (I’ve also made a vegetarian variant of the recipe where I filled portobello hats with some canned pineapple and the same mixture.)

I’ve been on a ginger-kick lately! And it kinda started before Corona broke out so can’t really blame the on-going pandemic. For one, it’s used in a lot of Chinese cooking so there’s been quite a few knobs of it my kitchen because of that. And second, it’s just a flavour and ingredient that works well during this time of year as part of various flu remedies or just imbuing a sense of warmth in winter. Not that we’ve actually had winter yet where I reside...

This recipe was heavily influenced by Maangchi’s recipe of saenggangcha, or Korean ginger tea. From what I’ve gathered I think the term tea is used solely in this case, merely denoting something steeped in water for taste and not including actual tea leaves. (Maangchi’s video)

Simple and quick. Some peeled fresh ginger, either grated or cut, with equal amount of honey. I added the zest of one lemon as well. Either pour on hot water or let steep in cold water, garnish with some pine nuts. Not sure what the nuts are meant to add, because I can’t really make a big difference with or without them and often opt for without because I’ve made some pulp-y tea. I had used a light and floral honey so not to be too sweet but it’s too light, next time I’ll go for a more sweet and flavourful honey, some molasses-y notes.