Mushroom memories

This is a recipe for stir-fried mixed mushrooms.

No picture.

I state right away that I just finished Charlotte Wood’s brilliant and brutal and devastating book, The Natural Way of Things and perhaps mushrooms and all they offer via sustenance and illumination and potential death, are on my mind.

I ate a similar dish to the one I’ve listed below (recipe by Fuchsia Dunlop), as a guest in a poor country home in China’s Zhejiang province, way back in 2001.

That home is now underwater and its inhabitants relocated somewhere else.

I believe, but am not sure because it is very difficult to pinpoint what happened to small villages flooded by China’s massive development, that this village disappeared as a result of the TanKeng dam.

It may have been another dam, but I think this was it.  I’ll be sure to confirm soon.

In any case, the TanKeng dam took ten towns and eighty villages in Zhejiang province.

The people were relocated, for sure.  The Chinese government ensured that their needs in relation to housing and compensation were met. I hope all those thousands of people are now thriving and enjoying modern life.

But, oh, what they must miss: community, nature, a largely outdoor life, simple pleasures, old traditions . . . I’m sure the privacy of the individual toilet is celebrated, but I reckon there might be some beauty from the old life that is very much longed for.

My dad grew up in Yallourn, Victoria, Australia – a 20th century power station town that disappeared in the 1980s – so I know a very tiny bit about the vortex that is left when you lose the place you grew up in.

There’s nothing left but a void.

The memories of your childhood are yours alone, shared with siblings and ancient friends.

As those friends and siblings pass on, you realise that this will also be your passage and that your future life is left via your production and your family/children.

But also that your past life, the life that made and defined you, is gone.

So here are my diary reflections on an experience of a small country outpost in Zhejiang in 2001. (I kept all my China diaries and I am so grateful I recorded those moments and experiences.)

A note: I was, for a few short days, a celebrity in the town described. This was because a) I was clearly not Chinese and b) because my Chinese (and Chinese-Canadian) travelling companions made certain experiences possible that would not have been otherwise. It was a phenomenal few days, and the mushrooms were a part of that. Recipe at end of post.  x

“Diary, May 2001

The day we slouched into Yinchuan, backpacks slung over greasy shoulders, hands stretched out to touch the rain, we raised some smiles and caused a rabble of curiosity that blocked the midday bus from its passage down main street.

 In the morning previous, on the mini-bus from the previous town, I’d watched an elderly man drop a cigarette from between his toothless gums. His eyes stayed fixed on me, as he leaned forward and then scrabbled with fingers, to pick it up.

 The township of Yinchuan is decided by the flow of the river. On the south side of an ancient stone bridge lie the white-tiled homes of twentieth century China. These are contrasted against the densely forested bamboo groves and layered green of mountains on the other. On the mountain side you can see new bamboo shoots and fresh raspberries and carefully tended gardens producing cabbages and tomatoes, while fruiting trees bend under the weight of peaches, loquats and green cherries that are not yet ripe.

 A seven-hundred-year-old tree shares living space with hazelnuts and pine; children scurry barefoot over tracks and forest floor and, in white-sheathed greenhouses, there is fungi, mixed from wood and water, growing surely.”

Stir-Fried Mixed Mushrooms (chao za jun) via Fuchsia Dunlop from Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook

according to Fuchsia, you can use a variety of mushrooms in this dish, including buttons, fields, oysters, enoki, shiitake and others of your selection;

100g bacon

500g mixed mushrooms

2 garlic cloves, sliced

a knob fresh ginger, sliced

dried chilli flakes

4 TBSP stock

S&P

garnish (spring onion)

cooking oil

1. Slice and dice mushrooms

2. Slice bacon into squares

3. Wok-fry bacon squares until changing colour.

4. Add garlic and ginger and stir-fry until aromatic,

5. Scatter chilli flakes and add mushrooms.  Stir-fry for a few minutes until cooked. Add stock and salt. Stir until a happy consistency is reached.  Season with S&P as needed and garnish with spring onions to serve.  

Welcome 2016

final proofs of the Ghost Girls manuscript (November 2015).

It’s a new year and a big one for me.  Ghost Girls, my first novel, will be out on March 1. Already, I feel the rumblings of this via internet mentions from strangers in possession of advanced proof copies of the book. No opinions yet, but the feeling of knowing my book is out there on somebody’s summer reading or 2016 review pile is a curious one.

I think I expected to feel terror.

Instead, I feel an odd sense of calm and a slightly more understandable impatient anticipation.

My book, following an exhilarating editing process (yes, I do chose the word ‘exhilarating’: I found the editing of Ghost Girls to be a profoundly satisfying experience and I’ll write more on this later) is at the point it was always supposed to come to.

It’s ready.

A writer friend of mine said recently that ‘a writer’s first book is the book that has taken their whole lifetime up to that point to write.’ She didn’t mean this literally, in a time frame sense, but that the ideas, themes, character traits and tone of a first novel have often been shaped by the author’s lifetime of ‘wanting to say something’.

This is true for me in that so much of what is in Ghost Girls has been influenced by personal experiences and journeys going back decades. 

For starters, there's an attraction to dark and mysterious stories and strong female characters that goes back to my childhood, as well as a lifetime’s interest in relationships developed across cultures and distances.

In writing this novel I was inspired also by my deep 20-year love affair with the work of Hong Kong auteur Wan Kar Wai, whose film Chungking Express influenced the book's visual style.

As well, my long interest and connection with China and its food and people was also instrumental in the writing of this book.

So, yes, Ghost Girls is a novel that contains many threads and experiences and ideas from the seams of my life thus lived.

I think it’s also a great story.

I’m ready and pleased that 2016 has ticked around and that Ghost Girls is starting its journey into the world. I’m very much looking forward to all this year has to offer and to sharing more of this journey with you.

See you soon!  Cath.