Today, the only “leave my room” activity of note was to cook dinner for my host lady. I made my specialty mashed sweet potato, steamed broccoli with cheese, and frying panned (?) boneless chicken breast.
Obviously, this involved going to the grocery store with my handy electronic dictionary because not only is the selection quite different, if the package is written in Chinese, it could be anything. You could wind up with pickled and fermented tofu (awful) instead of…I guess there really isn’t anything that could be mistaken for. Anyway, the store is only a block away, so I am able to walk. It was a beautiful day, if maybe a little hot. The stuff I thought was going to be the most tricky ended up being quite simple. It was the details that took a little exploring. There was no cinnamon for the potatoes, but I did find butter, cheese and plain black pepper. The easy, and cheap part was two big chicken breasts (9 rmb), broccoli (0.7 rmb), and large sweet potato (2.5 rmb). I was concerned specifically about the boneless nature of the chicken because I believe it is quite rare to go boneless in traditional Chinese dishes. They have a respect for using all parts of the animal, so the head, beak, feet, etc are usually bobbing around somewhere if you order a chicken soup. I don’t know why anyone would prefer to pick the bones out of you mouth and then also have to dispose of them after. I let the butcher take care of that.
The vegetables were good, but the chickens were so thick that I burned the edges a little getting the middle cooked through. I used lemon to flavor. The melted cheese over the broccoli was the best part for sure.
Tags: cooking, Food, housing, land-lady, shuangchuanpu
Pan fried or sautéed