Your Local Chinese Supermarket Needs YOU

Ok, it probably doesn't need you. It'll do fine without you. Rick Stein is always banging on about how you can find tamarind at 'your local Chinese supermarket'. I always think 'what a dick'. Yeah, because he lives in Padstow and I suspect, from my experience of eating Chinese food twice in Exeter and once in Warminster, that wherever the Chinese population is low, that's where there are no Chinese supermarkets. It's pretty mean of Rick to advise people from counties as white as his to guzzle loads of gas getting to a Chinese supermarket 40 miles away. Especially when Chinese food is referred to under the umbrella term of 'ethnic foodstuffs'. Mr. and Mrs. Whitebread will get all the way to Swindon and then discover they're in a Japanese shop. I'm not even talking about Chinese food. I'm talking about Cantonese food, but I'm not about to split hairs when every Bamboo Garden and Golden China I've encountered outside the M25 has had deep-fried saveloy on the menu.

My local Chinese supermarket is a cash and carry, and it's actually closer than my local Sainsbury's. I haven't been in it for years, but I went back two days ago and it's better than I remembered. It's as disorienting and as smelly as just the department store in Singapore's Chinatown, which is, I'm ashamed to say, the closest I've got to China. AND they were playing Lionel Richie's 'Dancing on the Ceiling' as I was there. And outside, there were little speakers playing...Lionel Richie's 'Dancing on the Ceiling'. How brilliant is that? Especially when you consider how Sainsbury's and Tesco don't play any music, and Co-Op radio is pretty much Radio 1.

It's remarkable to see how cheaply speciality food can be imported for these days. Of course, all restaurant fare is more expensive than home-made grub, but speciality food takes it to ridiculous levels. For the same price I'd buy two gyoza in Gerrard Street, or five gyoza in any Wagamama, I bought FIFTY at See Woo. I also bought some Nasi Goreng paste and some chili oil. I've eaten pretty much nothing else since.

1. Dumplings with soup noodles (keeping it casual, this was minimum effort, bit of chili, garlic paste, ginger and lemongrass in with packet noodles, dumplings on top)

2. Nasi Goreng (egg on top, fried shallots - Rick Stein's recipe, except I didn't use spring onions/shallots in the rice and I used this hectic MSG-laden curry paste and substituted sugar and soy for kecap manis)

3. Dumplings on Nasi Goreng (the 'Best of Both Worlds' - check the sp00n)

The cure for swine flu

It's pretty simple. I'm not entirely sure if it works yet but anything that sets your sweat glands going and your nose streaming at such a high rate is bound to clear a cold.

I don't really know what I'll call it, except 'an alternative to packet Jewish chicken noodle soup', as it's what I had instead of packet Jewish chicken noodle soup.



1x small clove of garlic
1/2 red chili
a thumb-sized piece of ginger
1 small spring onion
600ml boiling water
1/2 cube chicken stock or packet noodle soup powder.
1 1/2 tablespoons of sesame oil
1 nest of rice noodles
5 kaffir lime leaves
a handful of dried seaweed
3 tablespoons of fish sauce
a handful of frozen peas
a small handful of peanuts
a tablespoon of dried chili flakes
1 medium egg
some soy sauce

In retrospect, the seaweed was fucking weird. And the whole thing needed some lime. So don't put seaweed in, put lime in instead. Egg should be optional really.

A fairly simple recipe: Finely chop the ginger, garlic, chili and spring onion. Heat a tablespoon of sesame oil. Chuck in the ginger and garlic. Fry it off for a bit, then chuck in the spring onion. Pour in the boiling water. If you want to use seaweed, put it in here. Wait for it to absorb some water and soften before putting in the noodles peas, lime leaves and some fish sauce. After a minute and a half, pour it into a bowl. Put some more fish sauce in the bowl.

Slightly unnessecary behaviour: Pour some sesame oil and chili flakes into the pan, fry them off for half a minute then add in some boiling water. Pour this over the noodles in the bowl.

Unnessecary behaviour: Then toast some crushed peanuts and chuck them on the noodles.

Indecent ruining of a nice meal: Fry an egg, chuck that on top of all the noodles and use the fresh chili, fish sauce and lime to garnish.

All of this was inspired by Rick Stein's 'Far Eastern Odyssey' which is perfect viewing when you feel ill. All the garlic, ginger and chili made me not know if my nose was running or my philtrum sweating. Sweating helps to rid your body of unhealthy viruses as it encourages your cells to work in overdrive. Apparently. Chili gets the metabolism going, too, so all the vegging out and eating biscuits whilst ill won't catch up on you if you get this soup in your face hole.

And if all this fails to cure you, the egg, which will inevitably be undercooked in a mad effort to not make the noodles too soggy, will send you straight to the hospital, where you'll be safe.