“When yellow croaker graces the table, it’s worth its weight in gold.” In Zhejiang and Shanghai, wild large yellow croaker has long been a traditional banquet centrepiece, chosen as much for its auspicious symbolism as its flavour. Along China’s coastline, perhaps no other fish has experienced a fate so fraught…
Foodthink Says While at the Harvest Celebration in Guangzhou, our editorial team will host a panel on pre-prepared meals and local produce at 10:30 on Sunday, 3 December. One of our guests, Doudou, is a kitchen enthusiast renowned for her homemade pre-prepared dishes. She shared her journey and a meticulous,…
Have you ever tried sourdough? Commercial sourdough typically relies on isolated, high-purity yeast strains. This approach speeds up production and delivers a more consistent loaf, but it comes at the expense of the distinctive flavour, texture and mouthfeel that traditional mixed cultures offer. In truth, wild yeast is everywhere in…
The 28th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP28) has opened in Dubai. While humanity continues to squabble over how to shoulder the burden of saving the planet—over who should bear the costs, and who must step outside their comfort zones to transform entrenched…
Power generation above the panels, crop cultivation below: a single plot of land yields two streams of income. “Agrivoltaics” claims to deliver multiple benefits—including clean electricity, efficient land use, agricultural modernisation, and rural development—and is frequently hailed as a win-win technological innovation that simultaneously addresses food, energy, and climate challenges.…
Over the past few years, media reports have frequently highlighted cases of street traders being fined for selling leeks, celery and other produce with pesticide residues exceeding permitted levels. Fines have ranged from as little as 5,000 to tens of thousands. High-end supermarkets and mid-to-upmarket online grocers, upon which both…
This episode of Food Talk marks our first crossover with a partner podcast, *Da Xiao Dian Bo*. We’ll join the show’s host Gu Si and regular guest Nan Shan to explore the imaginative and delicious world of fermented foods. As the founder of the chocolate brand Qiaoli Ke, Nan Shan…
I. The Beginning In 2018, in a scattered village in Hong Kong’s New Territories that was slated for demolition at any moment, I baked my very first sourdough loaf using a jar of fermented dough I had just received from a friend. Looking back, it barely fermented at all. It…
Torrential rain, flooding, typhoons, droughts… Under the threat of climate change, farmers are invariably the first to bear the brunt of the damage. Yet what is often overlooked is that, in seeking to avert these losses, they are also the most proactive in taking adaptive measures. Last year, the International…
Those who have studied permaculture will likely be familiar with the name Sepp Holzer. As a pioneer in the field, Holzer is almost a household name in Austria, and his book *Holzer’s Permaculture* has long served as a foundational guide for enthusiasts worldwide. This June, I travelled to Krameterhof, the…
