See You When I SeeWoo - Instant Jellyfish Head and Other Stories

If you think you know Chinese food, the first lesson of the SeeWoo Cash & Carry is that you probably don't. Within ten yards of the front door of this vast warehouse I encounter several vegetables I've never seen before, a dozen types of dried fungi, only a few of them recognisable as mushrooms, and packets of strange things like Instant Jellyfish Head and Dried Fish Maw. Like most of us I'm pretty fluent in Mediterranean food, and I know the basic grammar of Indian, but I quickly realise that with Chinese food I barely know my ABC.

The cookery of China, like its history, is a vast subject of which most of us have only a vague understanding. Eating sweet and sour chicken and watching Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon are very poor introductions. So, for the price of a local bus ticket, shopping at the SeeWoo is like travelling in an unfamiliar country – row after row of bottles and tins with garish labels, lines of freezers filled with tripe dumplings, pink steam buns shaped like little rabbits, sea cucumbers, ducks' tongues and much more. One deserted aisle is fragrant with the sweet aroma of star anise; this gives way to the the pungent scent of tiny, hot dried chillies that make the eyes prickle and throat catch, as if the riot police had just passed through.

Now this is the point when, overwhelmed by it all, I usually purchase a couple of bottles of Korean beer, some instant noodles (“Hot Tingle Flavour” - the thermonuclear option), an unusually shaped item of confectionery, and a low plastic stool (it's a long story). But this time I'm determined to buy and cook real food. I have nothing to fear but fear itself, I tell myself.

I approach the fish counter. In large tanks crabs and lobsters grapple, eels hover, and turbot lie like carpet tiles on the bottom, their eyes pulled to one side of their head as if designed by Picasso. Local produce is present in the form of bunches of razor clams, bony tubes with semi-animate snot oozing out of them. I've cooked these before and they always end up like unpleasant lumps of rubber.

At the butcher's counter are all the unusual, economical cuts of meat that are often recommended in cookbooks but rarely found at Tesco. I warm up by asking for a chunk of pork belly, which I'll braise with soy and wine. I up the stakes with a pig's foot to add richness to a soup, before deciding to skip the pig's tails. They aren't curly. And they disturb me. I ask for a couple of pig's ears. The butcher looks at me:

“Pig ears?” he asks.

“Yes. Pig Ears … a pair … two, I mean … they don't have to be from the same pig,” I say.

“Where are you from?” he says

“Here. Glasgow.”

“But Scottish people don't buy these. Only Chinese people.” He seems pleased with me.

My smugness is quickly punctured by a glance in a nearby freezer which contains such delicacies as Beef Manifold, Pig's Maw, and Pig Fat End. If, like me, you find that five frozen Pig's Uteri are always one too many, or that that packet of Beef Tendon always gets forgotten behind the fish fingers in the freezer, the SeeWoo's deli counter offers many of these delights ready-cooked and in smaller, more convenient quantities.

I decide on some salted chicken feet because I remember seeing people eat them as bar snacks in Africa. Bar snacks are always good, I reason. I choose some hot and sour pig's tongue because it's been sliced and doesn't look like a pig's tongue. Finally, in a moment of bravado, I ask for pig's intestine. The guy serving finds it hard to conceal his distaste as he crams these fleshy, rubbery telephone cords into a small bag. Holding this last purchase between two fingers, I finish up with some all-too-necessary bottles of beer.

Back home, after giving the ears a good scrub and a short, cleansing boil, I simmer them with stock vegetables and the pig's foot. After an hour, I remove the ears and strain the resulting broth which I use to make congee, the blandly warming rice porridge. I braise the pork belly, and slice the ears and fry them until they're crisp. I eat the congee with some of the chewy, savoury pork belly stirred in and spring onions and slivers of crunchy ear sprinkled on top. It's actually terrific. The tongue is also good; soft and unctuous, but with a sharp heat.

I look at the bowls of chickens' feet and intestines; they look like the products of an alien autopsy. I nibble at the chickens' feet. They're OK, in a chewy and cartilaginous way. I drink some beer. I consider the intestines. More beer. I throw the intestines in the bin. Shopping at the SeeWoo is a wonderful experience; just be careful what you ask for.