» beef The Traveling Wallflower.

Blogging is not for sissies. It takes a massive amount of time and dedication, neither of which I have in excess right now. It also requires the ability to switch your creativity on at will when you do actually find yourself with thirty minutes to spare. I really suck at that too. One solution, they say, is to write drunk and edit sober, and frankly I can’t afford to be inebriated that often. This means that I have a draft folder positively brimming with unfinished posts. A little reminder, whenever I log into WordPress, of my ability to cling, hoard, procrastinate and just hope for the best when I know nothing will change. Every now and then I will go back to it, and listlessly page through the articles, knowing that I will never get round to sharing them with you because they either no longer seem relevant, or I’ve forgotten what I wanted to say in the first place, or in one sad case, the restaurant in question had inexplicably shut down before I could tell everyone why they absolutely had to go there. And yet, I hang on to them, even though I know that it is over and that they will never be written.

I know I will never get round to showing you the Qipu clothing market in Shanghai, with its mind-boggling selection of clothing stores, where the items get more expensive and the sales ladies get less pushy as the escalator goes up.

See? Start low, finish high.

Or the street-food-vendor-packed alley behind said clothing market, where I finally came across sanxian doupi with its delicate tofu skin encasing shrimp flavoured rice, and jiān bǐng with the fried pastry center that the my local Qingpu lady never added and I had been obsessing about since first hearing it was missing from mine.

No really. If you’re in Shanghai, and you love shopping and eating, then this is a must-add for your trip list!

In order to tell you about the massive Tianshan Tea City that we visited, I learnt more about tea than any sane person should be expected to.

But now you’ll never know the difference between the tea on the left and the tea on the right. (There, there now. You’ll get over the disappointment soon enough.)

I have a slew of posts on Shanghainese street food waiting to be written. For example, bet you didn’t know that Shanghai has more than 10,000 mobile food stalls? Or that in a government survey it was found that of 650 vendors surveyed, 609 had no business license? Or that sometimes your lamb skewer might be rat? Possibly poisoned rat. But that wasn’t going to stop me from encouraging you to try fire roasted sweet potatoes.

Or warm, cumin-y, delicious shao kao (street barbeque). “Lamb” and all. Read the rest of this entry →

What is it about boerewors that makes it one of the first things South Africans abroad would list when asked what they miss most about home? Like maple syrup, mushy peas and rice noodles, this coriander spiced sausage is one of those dishes that evokes instant images of a nation while simultaneously getting a “meh” from the rest of the world. But for us, boerewors is short winters and long summers, relaxed braais in the sunshine, friends around a fire, cheering for the Boks (or lately, crying together about them) and tapping our feet to “Spirit of the great heart” playing on a loop in our heads. It’s on our whittled down list of 100 reasons why we stay despite the crooks, crime and corruption. Like Africa, it’s in my blood and impossible to forget when I leave it behind. And weirdly, when I am away from home I even start missing things I never even liked at home! Like pap tert. I can’t stand pap tert. But suddenly I really, really wanted pap tert & wors. In China. Needless to say, it’s not big there. But I could easily get everything I needed to create a close approximation without having to try and explain pig intestines to the butcher. That would’ve been fun. This was the result: A kind of posher version of pap en wors (or at least as posh as meatballs can be). Our Tanzanian correspondent believes that this dish is an abomination. Pap should always be pap and should not be poshed up. I can only think of two reasons why she feels this way: a) she hasn’t tried it and b) her mother’s pap lasagne has ruined fusion South African cuisine for her forever. If it helps, then think of it as meatballs and cornbread. Better now, isn’t it? When done this way, the cornbread is very light and crumbly and the bottom bit soaks up the tomato and onion sauce. It’s like krummel pap en sous and that lovely little crunchy bit you get at the bottom of a pot of mieliepap that everyone fights over at the end of a meal! Personally, I thought it was genius.

Serves 4 with ease

Ingredients:

For the Ishibo (tomato and onion sauce)

If you can get your hands on a tin of Ishibo then, well, then you’re probably in SA and your car is being stolen from the supermarket parking lot. But chin up because at least you don’t have to chop up onions! If you don’t have Ishibo, fry a chopped onion until translucent, add a tin of chopped tomatoes, salt and pepper and simmer for thirty minutes. If the mixture become too dry, just add a little water. Set aside. Read the rest of this entry →

The Traveling Wallflower.

Missives from an out and about homebody.

Tag Archives: beef

Fillet of beef with Dijon tarragon sauce

“Pap & Wors”