叁Table食
A table in the mountains
The kitchen cooks with what the mountains give: free-range chicken, highland yak, mushrooms from the rains. Breakfast whenever you wake, tea on the terrace in the afternoon, and in the evening a hotpot to gather round.
Renan Valley · 3,274 m a.s.l. · Afternoon tea on the terrace
Matsutake and morel chicken hotpot
Evening
A mountain hotpot
Matsutake and morel chicken hotpot: the chicken is raised free-range by a local family for a year, and the broth is clear and savoury, not spicy. There is also a sour-broth yak hotpot. Each comes with four or five side dishes.
Breakfast at the camp
8:00 — 12:00
An unhurried breakfast
No early start for breakfast: come down any time between eight and noon. Chinese and Western both.
The timber dining room
The timber dining room
Pasture outside the window
A dining room of logs, hung with prayer-flag coloured curtains. Eat by the window with the herds on the meadow outside.
From the mountains
You cannot take the valley home, but you can take a little of its taste.
High-mountain Pu’er tea
Pu’er from Yunnan’s high mountains, pressed into a cake that only improves with keeping.
Porcini · termite mushrooms
Mushrooms from the mountains in the rains, kept in jars; good with rice or noodles.
Wild high-plateau honey
Wild wildflower honey from the plateau. There is only a little each year.