Palate-cleansing pickles

Sichuan-style Vegetable Pickles

This is an easy recipe which we often prepare at home. Once you have the starter batch fully matured, you can keep adding more ingredients to the jar for a continuing supply of crisp pickles.

・ 1 round cabbage, hard core removed and cut into wedges

・ 2 carrots and 1 whole radish, peeled and cut into batons

・ Celery stalks, cut into sticks

Pickling mix:

・ 1 star anise, 1 stick cinnamon and 1 tbsp Sichuan peppercorns

・ 3 or 4 small bird's eye chili peppers

Hot boiling water

・ Salt

・ Prepare a large pickling jar by sterilizing it with boiling water.

・ Allow more hot water to cool and then add to the jar.

・ Add some salt to make a very light brine,

・ When the liquid is completely cool, add the prepared vegetables.

・ Keep the jar in a dark, relatively warm place to allow the fermentation to start.

・ During summer, all it takes is a couple of days for the liquid to sour.

・ You will see tiny bubbles around the edge of the jar.

・ Taste, and if you think the vegetables are tart enough, transfer the jar into the fridge to slow further fermentation. The pickles also taste better cold.

Easy Cucumber Pickles

This is especially good in summer when cucumbers are plentiful. The pickles keep for about a week in the fridge but should be best eaten fresh.

・ Two or three dark green cucumbers

・ Salt

・ 1 apple or pear, skinned and grated

・ 1 small carrot, grated

・ 1 tbsp fish sauce

・ 1 tbsp chili powder

・ 2 cloves garlic, minced

・ Scatter a generous amount of salt on a cutting board and roll the cucumbers around on top of the salt, pressing down as you roll.

・ Place the cucumbers aside for 30 minutes. Then rinse and dry and cut into 5 cm chunks.

・ Cut a cross on one end of the cucumber chunk. This is where the pickling mix will be stuffed into.

・ Combine grated apple or pear, grated carrot, fish sauce, minced garlic and chili powder together. Season to taste with a little salt and sugar. Allow to rest for 10 minutes.

・ Spread open the cut end of the cucumber and fill with pickling mix. Set aside in the fridge for an hour or two, and the pickle is ready.

Domestic traveling brought a total of 5.13 trillion yuan ($761 billion) in revenue to the tourism sector last year, registering a 12-percent increase compared with 2017, according to the ministry.

Between Feb 4 and 10, China recorded 415 million trips made by tourists and grossed nearly 514 billion yuan in tourism revenue, up 7.6 percent and 8.2 percent, respectively, year-on-year, the Chinese Tourism Academy said.

The Ministry of Commerce said last week the country's retail and catering industries garnered more than 1 trillion yuan in sales during the week-long Spring Festival holiday, an increase of 8.5 percent from the same period of last year.

With growing cultural consumption demand by residents, China saw its per-capita expenditure on consumption of educational, cultural and entertainment products increase 6.7 percent to 2,226 yuan in 2018, accounting for 11 percent of per-capita consumption expenditure, said the Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

People's cultural and tourism consumption expenditure continued to increase and has evolved to become a new economic growth area, according to ministry officials.

They told media the supply of quality cultural and tourism products during the holiday has improved a lot, and called for efforts to promote winter sports and springwater tours.