IT SMELLS LIKE A BUCKET OF .....

Pork chunks, a little sugar, chilies, and garlic, with lime juice and fish sauce. Not something my apartment mate would touch, being a delicate person of Toishanese ancestry, and at that time appalled by the smell in the kitchen. Which was years ago.
So it's time to cook it again.

魚香燉豬肉片: No actual recipe.
['yü heung duen chü yiuk pin']

Enough pork; plus fish sauce and sugar. Twice as much sugar as fish sauce. And something in the hot pepper category. Today I shall use hot douban sauce (辣豆瓣醬 'laat dau baan jeung'), because I bought a jar of that recently. It isn't very hot, so I need to use plenty of it.

I also have a big bag of small white cabbages.

Lunch should be good.


Come on over to the dark side; we have pork.


Rice takes longer to cook than anything else I've mentioned. Because this is the last day of my weekend, I will make a little bit extra for after work tomorrow or later. On working days lunch is mere subsistence, usually crap from a convenience store. But I can smoke inside, whereas at home I need to mask that odour before the apartment mate (the Cantonese person with delicate sensibilities) comes home.

Currently enjoying the last of the open tin of Tilbury, made for Esoterica Tobacciana by Germain and Son in the Channel Islands. Half a dozen crusty old men in a brick building from the last century who are unreachable by modern communication methods such as e-mail, and rely solely on camel caravans and clipper ships for all news from the outside world.

They're rather old-school. Much of what they make is fruity. But their fame comes mainly from unsauced tobaccos and cult-favourites like Stonehaven, Margate, and Penzance (a leathery pressed Virginia and Burley Flake, the classic English style blend with Latakia, and a pressed full-strength Oriental), as well as Dunbar and Dorchester, Virginias leavened with a slight touch of the condimental leaves. Tilbury was described years ago as having a tin-note remarkably like an unwashed peasant hanging in a mediaeval torture dungeon. It is rather exquisite.


Yes, the door to her room is closed and the windows are open.
I am freezing my butt off.

TOBACCO INDEX


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