In Tongling, as in the whole of China, lunch is the main meal of the day. Now that it's Autumn and the sun is setting earlier, my high school has adjusted the schedule of afternoon classes which now end at 5:15pm. This means the lunch break is now 30 minutes shorter, from 11:45am to 2:00pm. With a break of merely 2 hours and 15 minutes in the middle of the day, I'm enjoying the chance to take note of the local ingredients, make something tasty for dinner, with plenty of leftovers for the next day's lunch. Here's what I are today: stir fried eggplant in Guizhou black bean chili sauce with ground pork, leeks, garlic, ginger, bean sprouts and coriander. Now, it's not that I can suddenly read Chinese. It's just that in Tesco, in the mindbogglingly extensive sauce aisle, I recognised a familiar brand, Lee Kum Kee, a Hong Kong based company that prints some English and a nice photo of the ingredients on the label. Sold!
Guizhou is a province inland and well southwest of Anhui. It's close to the chili epicure's favorite, Sichuan province.
All this dish needed was about a teaspoon of whole bean chili sauce to kick the flavor up a notch or two. I serve it with brown rice. Sure, I like polished white rice, but if I'm going to eat a stomach filling carbohydrate, I want to get all the nutrients in the husk.
Now, some of my Chinese acquaintances look at me oddly, thinking: "Why is she eating that when you can get lovely white rice? Only peasants eat brown rice."
Peasants for sure. I prefer the nutty flavor and it's a nice foil to the spicy main course. Also, because I followed a vegan diet in Seattle this past summer, I've stripped off a few kilos I could well afford to lose.
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