So its raining, and i’m thinking: what to eat for lunch, and really when i say raining I mean miserable has summer left us forever raining…..and I’m hungry, and of course there is no good bread in the house…..not much of anything really. And i’m trying to watch my weight, always so annoying when thinking about the next delicious thing to eat.

But on my shelf I have dried ramen: the kind from natural foods shops which promises decent noodles (and seems to have delivered) and a not too awful powdered soup mix to go with it. Also: one good thing about using the packaged ramen: you do have a calorie count and can’t help yourself to seconds unless you want to open up a new package. With all the cabbage and seaweed and miso, all of the uber-umami liquid, those 200-ish calories worth of noodles go quite far in your bowl.

so: here is how it goes, at least today. For lunch. I boil a quarter of a shredded cabbage for a few minutes until it softens, add the ramen noodles until they are half tender, then shake in the soup powder along with a little ginger.

When its all tender-ish, a few minutes no longer, I stir in a tablespoon miso (i used white) and 2 tablespoons seaweed bits; I used the kind seasoned with green tea and sesame. Oh and a drizzle of sesame oil at the end.

Then i heated it all up with a big fat splosh of hot fragrant chile oil.

1’/4 white/green cabbage thinly sliced
3 cups water
1 packet of ramen, noodles
the accompanying sachet of soup powder
2 tablespoons white miso
a little bit of shredded ginger
1/2 teaspoon sesame oil
1-2 tablespoons seaweed bits, the kind meant to be sprinkled onto salads or soups
hot fragrant ( i like homemade) chile oil

Combine the cabbage and water and bring to the oil; add the noodles and cook until noodles are half tender.
Add the soup powder and cook a minute or two longer or until the noodles are just tender.
Stir in the miso, taking care it all dissolves; you can thin it down before you stir it in if you like.
Stir in the ginger, sesame oil, seaweed bits and ladle into bowls. If you like, add a spoonful of the hot chile oil to taste.

Okay: right this moment I can’t get the oh-so-appealing photo of this oh-so-delicious dish up on this blog, but I want you to have the recipe before I wait for it to work out. It could be awhile, right? And really: when you have such a luscious dish of pasta–linguine or spaghetti–with a lusty sauce of fish, tomatoes, peppers and capers, really: you don’t want to wait. And I don’t want you to wait.

So here is the recipe: And, I hasten to add, its my own reflection on sauces of fish and flashy aromatics I’ve eaten in Napoli and its surrounding areas as well as Sicilyq1.

Linguine con il gusto della mare (okay: linguine with the taste of the sea, really: i’m reaching for a name here). (but it is so very Neapolitan, Italian, Mediterranean…..) (giving it an Italian name seems very important at the moment). To be honest: I am sure I used far more garlic than any Italian ever would!

Serves 4 (halve it for two)
3-4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, plus extra if and as needed
1 medium sized red onion, cut into thin strips/slices/or diced
5 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped or thinly sliced
About 12 ounces fish, in chunks: I used a mixture of cod, haddock, and a little bit of cold smoked haddock; any sort of sturdy but mildish white fish should be great; if you feel like a hit of smokey flavour and don’t have the smoked fish, add a pinch of smoked salt or diced bacon/sausage
1 small-medium sized jar of roasted/lightly pickled red and yellow peppers, drained and rinsed, cut into strips
2 small (350g/13 ish oz) tins/cans tomatoes, or one large one, including its juices
1 tablepsoon capers, including a little bit of the juice
3-4 whole (6-8 halves) sun-dried tomatoes, thinly slices/chopped
1-2 tablespoons coarsely chopped flat leaf parsley
Pinch sugar to taste
Pinch black pepper to taste
Large pinch or two dried oregano leaves, crushed in your hand as you add it to the pot
Optional: a pinch of dried chile flakes or Chinese chile oil (not too desperately hot; i use homemade)
12 ounces linguine or spaghetti
Salt for cooking water, or as needed

Put up a large pot of water to the boil for the pasta.

Meanwhile, in a large frying pan lightly heat the olive oil and gently saute the onion until its softened; add the garlic and fish, stir-fry together a few minutes until the fish is growing opaque, then with a slotted spoon remove the fish to a plate, keeping as many onions in the pan as you can.

Into the pan add the peppers and tomatoes. Raise the heat and cook together, stirring, a few minutes, then add the capers, sun-dried tomatoes,T parsley, sugar, black pepper and oregano. Cook until it condenses a bit and grows thicker, less saucey, then return the fish and its juices to the pan and heat together. Set aside while you cook the pasta.

Add a tablespoon of salt to the boiling water then add the linguine; if it bubbles over lower the heat slightly but keep it basically rolling, the pasta cooking in the boiling water. When it is just barely al dente, drain, reserving about a coffee mug full of the cooking water.

Place the fish pan on the heat, add the drained pasta to it, and a quarter or so of the liquid from the mug. Toss together on the heat, and when the liquid has evaporated add a little bit more. The linguine you added to the pan was ALMOST al dente; you want to cook it with the sauce until it is JUST al dente.

Continue cooking, tossing, and adding a little of the liquid as you do; this whole thing will only take a few minutes.

Taste for seasoning, add a pinch of dried chile flakes if desired, then serve, with an extra drizzle of olive oil over it, or a small amount of chile oil to taste. Eat right away!

i’ll never complain again about the difficulty watering my own garden, in the UK without a good hosepipe or watering system. Lugging water in my big orange-coloured plastic watering can, filling it up from the kitchen faucet then carrying it to the front of the house, watering the tomatoes, basil, cucumbers, nastrurtiums, geraniums, lavender, and peppers. The whole process of watering takes about an hour–depending on the heat and dryness or cool moisture of the day; some days take more water, some days less. But after watching the Chinese gardeners in my Rear Window, 14 floors down, using bowls and buckets without handles, drawing the water from one of several scary wells–uncovered and oh so easy to fall into–climbing down a dodgy flight of homemade stone steps to dunk the bowl into the water, then climbing the stones and walking down the path to their little plot of greenery. No, I will never complain about watering MY garden, again.

5 am: daybreak. No email from the other side of the world to check, so when I wake up–jetlag time dawn–I go directly to the window. Unlike yesterday which was overcast qnd drizzly, today the sun is already shining; as i look out from my 14th story window I can see the entire area more clearly. The hills, the sea, the school next door, the Chinese red flag with its golden stars already flying in the breeze.

Then I look down at the empty lot. Yes, I am convinced without a doubt: there is order to this patch of land. I think it is possible that the stones are actually delineating pathways. And the various parcels of land the stones lead around, could those be gardens? Is there organization to the greenery? Are they gardens for salady and cabbagy leaves, poles supporting green beans, rows of broccoli?

I make a tea, pull up a chair, and when I glance back at the window there is no doubt: It is a garden, being tended purposefully. I can’t see their ages or sexes from my height, but there is someone wandering along a stone path, with buckets and large bowls of water, pouring the water gently on the growing greenery, then returning to get more water. But where is the source of the water, and with no opening in the walls where do the people come from?

One by one more people arrive, working separately, no stopping for chitchat, working steadily, determindedly, and then: by 7 am everyone was gone.

I ran downstairs in an effort to find the opening to this mysterious garden, but even though I walked along the huge area, I didn’t see a doorway or a gate.

So I went to the breakfast buffet. I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you that I ate: garlic-chile braised celeriac with black beans, julienned cucumber with chillies and ham (“cucumber of the burning flesh” the sign labeling the dish read), black rice filled bao, green beans braised with salted soy beans and chile oil, chewy black rice “cakes”, and a portion of simple chow mein that I garnished with pickled vegetables, the pickled vegetables that accompany almost every meal though i think there are meant to be eaten with the congee, or simple rice soup. Here is what I love about the food of this corner of China, Yantai (Shandong): garlic, masses, tons, piles, of garlic. Everything has garlic. I am so happy.

Late that afternoon, early evening, I returned to my big window. It had been sunny all day and the garden needed more water. everywhere people were scurrying:pPlastic buckets and bowls being filled in large holes in the ground: scary scarey uncovered wells, big holes that were lined with stones; a few stairs led into them where the gardeners would dip a bucket or bowl, fill with water, then climb out carefully on the stones, and head toward the area they were cultivating.

Knowing that these stone-lined holes were wells, each day I surveyed the garden; by the end I had counted three wells with a fourth possible well.

Each morning I see something new, form created from the piles of rubbles and stones. A small gardeners shack took shape one day inbetween my visits to the window; One evening as the sun set and all of the gardners had left, I spied a large white cat–it would have to have been very large as I was 14 floors up, a large white cat slink through the garden, leaping onto bushes, trees, patches of greenery. I was convinced then it was a white panther or other large cat. I still don’t know. Have I googled to find out if they exist in that area? I haven’t; in part because this large white cat was so magical in his movements I hate to meet with the reality of an ordinary answer. He was a big cat, lets leave it at that. (a big MAGICAL cat).

In the midst of mega-metropolis (Yantai, of which we were on the outskirts, has a population of about 8 million) and all of the money-making industry taking place all around us, it was soothing to see hand-made, hard-working, earth-garden, being coaxed from the debris of the destruction of one building, in place of what would inevitably become the site of another. One of these days.

Meanwhile, the garden grows. I never figured out how people got in, yet each day there they were, appearing at the crack of dawn, and each evening as the sun got ready to set. Weeding, watering, hoisting bowls and buckets onto their heads, climbing down into the wells then up again with the water, splashing it onto the thirsty earth.

And each day it grew: beans climbed the poles, leafy, heavier each day. Tiny dots of lettucey greens appeared, then grew larger, and larger: the tiny dots from 14 stories up became recognizable as leaves, vegetables, even flowers.

My Version of Braised Celeriac from the Kunlun International Hotel, Yantai, Shandong, China

2 tablespoons Chinese salted black beans
About 1 tablespoon oil–I always use extra virgin olive oil, in Yantai they used some sort of vegetable or peanut oil
1/2 medium or 1 smallish celeriac/celeryroot, peeled, sliced in half, then cut into 1/8 inch thick slices
3 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
3 mild green or green and red chillies–I used pimentos de Padron; you could use ordinary green bell pepper, diced
1/2 teaspoon shredded or chopped ginger root or several pinches dry ginger powder
Ladleful of stock/broth such as vegetable or chicken
Sea salt to taste
Small pinch sugar to taste
Optional, to taste: garlic-chile hot sauce (I used homemade; storebought is delicious too

Place black beans in a small bowl and cover with warm water; leave to soak while you cook the celeriac/celery root

In a wok, heat the oil until it begins to smoke then add the celerica/celery root slices; stir fry a few moments until they are golden and turning bown in a few places, then sprinkle on the garlic, chillies/peppers, and ginger. Continue to stir fry a few minutes.

Ladle in the broth, stir fry until the liquid evaporates, then drain the soaking beans, lightly crush with a spoon or your fingers, then add to the celeriac/celery root along with sea salt to taste, aa pinch of sugar. Continue stir frying a few minutes til the vegetables are tender, then add garlic-chile sauce to taste.

Serve right away, though i have to say that even left to room temperature its still pretty wonderful.