I arrived at Kunyun International hotel late in the evening, after a ten hour flight from London to Beijing, dawdling in the airport between flights,

drinking beer and eating pickled vegetables, then an hour and a half in the air to Yantai. Driving to the hotel seemed endless (we later realized the distance was not great at all, the length of the drive was due to fixing/building/improving the road. A week later, when we left, the ride to the airport was swift and easy on a brand new motorway) and when we arrived at the hotel, finally, all I wanted to do was settle into a nice quiet room

The Hotel was not far but not too close to the airport, the beach, pretty far (an hours drive) from the center of Yantai and a 18 yuan taxi ride from the activities of Gourmand Cookbook AWards and Cookbook Fair. Everything seemed far far away from everything else.

My room, on the 14th story, was large and airy. I unpacked, tried to check my email to no avail–not even with a VPN–which I had had high hopes would keep me connected to the outside world and perhaps even to Facebook, then, without my worldwide connection I was at a loss for what to do.

The constant motion that took me across continents, from Europe to Asia, to this hotel room, had left me full of nervous energy but exhausted: I brewed a large mug of tea–wonderful green leaves and stems, I think DragonWell–then slept fitfully for a few hours until daybreak. At the first sign of the sun I flung the curtains open, wide, to see where all of this traveling had taken me.

A hazy early morning sea fog hung over the area; a shadow of mountains lay ahead of me and to my left, the sea. To the right was the center of Yantai, which might sound like a small town but in fact has about 8 million citizens. Inbetween the mountains and sea, the outer reaches of my vision, were wide straight city streets with high rises sprouting out of the land like bamboo: everywhere. A large square building flying the red flag of China with its golden yellow star/s; next to it a large playing field and track looked mysterious: when I saw children pouring out of the building, I knew: a school.

But it was directly downwards, 14 stories, that caught my eye. A large plot of land, strewn with stones and rubble, bordered by sidings and what appeared from the outside to be billboards. Soon, I thought, it will probably be a construction site for another high rise.

I was transfixed though: such a large area of rubble. And were my eyes playing tricks on me? Something about the field of rubble and rocks, weeds and small hills of dirt, there was something that kept pulling at my attention: was there order to this plot of land? Was this space more than just an empty lot in the stage between tearing down one building and putting up another? I looked as closely as I could from my 14th story vantage point: there was no one there, no movement; nothing gave any indication that there was more to it. I couldn’t see any entrance or exit. If this WAS anything more to this place, how did people get in? And WHERE were they?

I went down to the breakfast buffet and began my first day in China–at the Cookbook Fair and centre of the Gourmand Awards events. But that afternoon, I returned: and as I gazed out at the area 14 floor down, it began to take on some organization!

I love a good breakfast buffet: tables resplendant with the specialities of the region: things you might or might not find either at a home breakfast or at a restaurant table, the things the country offers: please taste us! and of course, there is also a selection of breakfast fare and foods to appeal to foreigners. For instance: bacon–which changes depending on which country you are in: salty, smoky, crispy, soft, fatty, and so forth. In places with large Muslim or Jewish populations the bacon might be beef or turkey instead of pork. And in many places, lush gorgeous lands with the most amazing foods, I’m thinking Sorrento, Italy, at this moment: you might just find the British baked beans on the breakfast buffet. Once in Spain I fell in love with the toasted bread, olive oil, ripe tomatoes and whole cloves of garlic: rub the garlic on the toast, splash with olive oil and top with juicy tomatoes. Best breakfast in the world, and one I’ve taken, during tomato season, as my own in the years since.

However: please don’t judge me, but i AM a little judgemental about other people at a breakfast buffet. Since its such a wonderful time to try the local yogurt or dumplings, the breads and noodles, cured meats, if you’re doing the song and dance of being the food adventurer and you’re eating boxed cereal or packaged yogurt when there is fresh homemade: i’m soooo sorry. Gonna judge you. Can’t help myself. If we’re in, say, Turkey and you pass up the chance to have handmade katmer in order to eat cornflakes, so sorry. Judged.

But in China, at the breakfast buffet the array of foods is usually so Eastern, even when they try to do western

, that really: you would have to work hard to eat breakfast as you do back home. For one thing, the lovely little cakes are topped not with cherries, but with tomatoes?

There was broccoli of the day (organic said the label; speaking with the manager he said: yes, we grow it nearby). Each day it was slightly different: always stir-fried with garlic–tons of garlic, pretty sure we were in the epicenter of China garlic-eating which made me very happy–and fresh ginger. Besides that, it was up for grabs: one day: strands of rich meat, another day shrimp, another day red peppers–both mild and spicy-hot; sometimes instead or in addition to the broccoli, there were lovely green beans: braised in a similar ever-changing way:

Because we were just across the water from North Korea with South Korea a ferry ride away, there was a selection of kimchee each morning: There was a station with a woman cooking delicate, delicious noodles, serving them in broth with local vegetables–that garden again! and really: if you think of Chinese/Napa Cabbage/Chinese leaves as kind of boring, thats because you’ve never had them in this wonderful soup! Just a few little bits of cabbage in the soup, along with the noodles and tons of green onions, seaweed, an amazement!

Next to the noodles was a man stretching dough and making crisp deliciously, oily, filled with garlic, flatbreads.

and tea eggs

There was a selection of salads, some with incredibly amusing titles such as this: cucumber of the burning flesh: with cured meat and hot chillies. And often chewy tofu salads, translucent preserved egg with vegetables, and almost always a strange jellied meat substance whose texture I just couldn’t warm up to.

There were eggs scrambled with tomatoes–a simple everyday dish throughout China, but the tomatoes were sooooo sweet and wonderful. One day the scrambled eggs and tomatoes were studded with the shellfish conch. There were simmering vats of congee with assorted pickles to perk up each bowlful, and always braised mushrooms: with bok choy, broccoli, whatever green vegetable was available. There was a big container of chow mein, and another of egg-fried rice, but even better was the rice cooker filled with fragrant, freshly cooked rice. Such a treat: hot, ready, delicious.

and the dumplings!!!!! how could i forget the dumplings?????

Chinese breakfast is an array, a parade, a veritable celebration of dumplings! there were pork and chive dumplings, seafood dumplings, pork and prawn dumplings, vegetable dumplings and my favourite: dumplings filled with black rice (Forbidden Rice).

When the unicorns come to town……
Wherever we–our little band of international food writers and broadcasters, in Yantai, China for the Gourmand Cookbook Awards–went, we were met with wonder, with awe, with cameras! Everyone we came upon, everyone who saw us, right away wanted to be snapped with us in a photo; it was as if we were creatures of wonder and there was no mistaking it: we were welcome, we were beyond welcome.
But we did not understand it at all: why would anyone want photos of US? James McIntosh was used to it, being a celeb chef in China due to his television series The Silk Road and introducing Aga to China. as was Cyril Rouquet-Prevost, world ambassador for Masterchef. But Bruna VS, Michelle Brachet, and myself asked Simon, our guardian angel in China, “Why? Why do they want OUR photos?”. “You look so different, like no one else they have ever seen” replied Simon. “Your hair, your clothes, your skin, its all so different……can you imagine: it is as if a vehicle filled with wonderful unicorns were to land in your town: you’d come out to snap pictures, right? Well, to the people of Yantai, Penglai, and other parts of less travelled China: YOU are like unicorns. And people want to remember you with pictures, especially ones that include themselves!”

I’ve never felt so loved.

Yantai, China, where the Gourmand Book Awards were held, is just across the water from Korea, both North and South–so near in fact, that if you look closely you can see its shadow just over my shoulder on this not very flattering selfie. The event itself took place away from the center of town, in a charming complex of buildings, gardens, artisan workshops, restaurants and bars, leading down a hill to the beach. The area so swiftly being developed that skyscrapers with cranes on top mark the landscape and in the course of the week we were there, we noticed huge changes. It was kind of staggering how quickly things sprang up: one day the road was dirt, the next day the cranes and diggers were at work, and by the time we left it was a super smooth roadway. Buildings were springing up, starting with a dry emply plot of dirt. Halfway through finishing the landscapers came in with gardeners and trees, bushes, grass, suddenly appeared; before the buildings were even finished the area was livable. Areas of run down huts were being replaced by high rises and luxury. I nearly cried when we drove to the airport and across from the terminals, in a triangle surrounded by motorways/freeways, a weather-beaten cowherd watched his small herd.

With tradition life disappearing so quickly, there is the sadness of bye-bye charm. On the other hand: for the people who live there, hello more comfortable life.

One afternoon I set out with Barcelona’s Laura Gosalbo–her book of food memories of her mother and grandmother had won a Gourmand Award–searching for lunch. We turned towards the beach and found a little strip of shops and restaurants: I had heard there was some wonderful food here but had no further clues as to where. Unable to read the Chinese signs, we had little idea of what was going on inside or even which storefronts were restaurants. We decided to pop into each and see, then make our decision after we had visited them all.

The first was a laundry. The second a sort of convenience shop. The third was an empty room with formica tables, a sign advertising cherries (it was the season in Yantai). It looked grim but it smelled FABULOUS. We next found our pottery master, the resident artisan in the complex, who had been teaching us to throw clay on his wheel; he ushered us into a stark and rustic-elegant room with a long low table and a zillion teas. It was the most zen place I’ve ever been to. Our pottery master stayed for tea but we mimed eating and set out to continue our search for food. One restaurant looked perky and clean and promising, with photos of the enticing things we could eat. The last restaurant on the row was appealing, brightly coloured, and Korean. It was such a difficult decision, they all looked promising.

In the end we chose the one that smelled wonderful, that had been empty first time around. Now, 20 minutes later when we returned, it was packed. And it smelled even better with bowl after bowl of noodles and stir-fries, soups and huge sesame-flatbreads on each table. A woman–the owner?– sat at a corner table peeling a mountain of garlic. She took a break for a bowl of noodles, and I noticed her eating a clove or two of the garlic as she slurped her noodles and soup.

First we ate a big crisp sesame-coated flatbread with chilli sauce and a plate of spicy crunchy potato salad. I have eaten this salad in Flushing, New York, and wondered how the potatoes stayed so crunchy yet shoestring thin. We they cut and then par boiled or were they par boiled and then cooked? or possibly, were they stir fried gently? Yantai seemed to be the epicenter of this particular dish: it was on every table and menu, every meal from breakfast to dinner. And yet: I still don’t know how to make it. On my next visit to New York food writer Tia Keenan and myself are going to look ourselves in her kitchen with the largest bag of potatoes we can find, and not emerge until we have cracked the code. We drank cooling local beer–Tsingtao beer is made nearby, in the town of Quingdao, introduced by the Germans, and has spawned a whole industry of refreshing local light lagers: good with the crisp sesame flatbreads and chilli paste. Somewhere along the way there were chewy, hand-rolled thick noodles in soup.

But clearly, the winner of the day, possible the whole trip, was the mystery dish we had just pointed to or were we told by the waiter that this was what we were having? It was hard to tell. In any event, its the big platter in the large photo above: chicken and potatoes, long simmered, tasting of spices, golden with turmeric, and spunky with hot chilli and studded with long strips of fresh ginger. There was, unsurprisingly, garlic galore. It was divine.

So, when I stepped off the plane, and hours later found myself in my own kitchen with a hungry self and husband as well as a package of chicken breasts, I whipped up my own version of the dish. It wasn’t the same, exactly, I used chicken breasts instead of a whole chicken’s worth of parts, so my version cooked for less time. Other than that, it was wonderful. So wonderful I really want you to make it. I know I want to make it again. and probably again.

Chicken and Potatoes from Yantai, China
Serves about 4
PS: I used olive oil instead of whichever oil the restaurant used: chicken shmaltz/fat would also be delicious instead.

2 tablespoons oil of choice, less (or more) as desired
2 onions peeled and cut into chunks
8 cloves of garlic, thickly sliced or in chunks
1 carrot, coarsely diced
1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
3 medium large waxy potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks
1/2 green pepper, cut into thin strips
About 1 inch length peeled ginger, cut lengthwise into paperthin slices/strips
1 fresh not too hot red chilli pepper, sliced (seeded if you wish it milder, keep the seeds and add more chilli if you want it hotter)
3 plump boned chicken breasts, cut into large chunks–say, each breast cut into 3 or 4 pieces
Salt and black pepper to taste
5-6 black cardomom pods, whole
2-3 tablespoons paprika, preferably smoked but not hot, paprika
20-25 cherry/grape tomatoes, halves
Pinch Chinese five spice
1/2-1 teaspoon turmeric powder or about a teaspoon or more, finely chopped/shredded peeled fresh turmeric root
Juice of 1/2 to one lemon, to taste
Water or mixture water and chicken stock/broth, to cover
Fresh coriander leaves/cilantro to serve
Thinly sliced green/spring onions
Extra lemon if desired

In a wok or other heavy frying pan, heat the oil to medium hot, then add the onions, garlic, carrots and cumin seeds; lower the heat to low, and cook for a few minutes slowly until the vegetables soften and are gilded with the oil. Add the potatoes, green pepper, ginger, chilli pepper, and chicken, raise the heat slightly, and stir-cook (not so hot as to stir-fry) until the potatoes are coated with the spices. Season with salt and pepper. Chicken should not be cooked through.

Add the black cardomom pods, paprika, cherry/grape tomatoes Chinese five-spice, turmeric, and half the lemon Cook together, stirring, a few minutes then remove the chicken to a plate. The chicken should not be cooked through at all. It should still be mostly raw.

Add the water or water+broth mixture, cover with lid, and raise the heat. Bring to a boil, lower the heat and simmer for 15-20 minutes or long enough to cook the potatoes almost through.

Return chicken to pot, cover and continue simmering, stirring once or twice, until chicken is done. You want the potatoes–truely the best part of this dish–you want the potatoes to be cooked through but not falling apart.

Serve garnished with green/spring onions and coriander leaves/cilantro; if desired, squirt in a little extra lemon.