The blog is back...again.

The blog is finally back, and this time, it's here to stay. I'm determined. My departure from the land of the online diary was not enirely intentional, of course; Chinese internet restirctions prohibited me from either accessing or posting from around May onwards. I have since returned from Shanghainese paradise back to the kingdom of the unexciting (the UK) and have been hindered by work constraints, tiredness and a serious dose of 'i'll do it later' syndrome.

My plan was to update the world on my gastronomic highlights since I last posted, from the last few months of Shanghai through to our amazing adventures beyond. We started in Southwest China and the Tibetan borderlands, where our tastebuds were treated to Yunnanese fried goats cheese, the forgotten dishes of Chinese minority tribes, and anything made out of yak (butter, cheese, meat, you name it) and then travelled into the heartland of one of China's most renowned cuisines, spicy Sichuan, where we savoured fiery Sichuanese street food, dared to try a mind blowingly hot-hot-hotpot, and feasted on so many of the amazing dishes I had tried to recreate at home, but of course here, they were much better.

The mouthwatering spicy-sweet Tian Shui noodles in Chengdu

...their fiery hotpot on the other hand will leave you positively gasping for water

A tibetan speciality- salty sweet yak butter cheese, not dissimilar to parmesan in taste, and delicious spread on steamed breads

After a farewell stopoff in Shanghai we continued to nomadic Mongolia, where our diet basically consisted of mutton, and maybe the odd potato here and there (if you were really lucky, a carrot). There was so much mutton in fact, that by the end of our 7-day trip to the Gobi desert, our clothes stank of the stuff. Still, thousands of years of living off the same staples have allowed the Mongolians to perfect their cuisine, and the simple, hearty food of stews and dumplings always went down a treat and left us hungry for more.

Mongolian buuz- steamed mutton dumplings

We then continued by train through to Russia, which saw us living off sausage, bread, chocolate and ketchup for 5 days and landed in Moscow, our first taste of Europe for over a year, which I celebrated by gorging myself on the continental breakfast buffet in our hotel, and reading the Financial Times. In Russia, we stuck to what Russia knows, sampling pancake after pancake of various fillings (goat's cheese, ham, beef...all were delicious) and borscht.

Russia's unmistakable borscht- beetroot soup topped with sour cream and dill

That's pretty much a summary (at least in cuisine terms) of what we did on our travels until we returned home. I intended to document this all with shit loads of pictures and a notebook almost full of yet-to-be-typed-up posts to bore you all with, but alas, a thieving imbecile nicked it all in Mongolia (along with passports, money, etc.) so you've gotten off lightly! So instead, I will fill the world in on what I have been upto food-wise since I've got back, and update with previous posts when I feel like it. Ooh, and I obviously didn't take these pictures, they are all thanks to flickr and creative commons.

Enjoy!