Banquet wheel.

This is a composite of the seven dishes that Sarah and I cooked tonight for a Chinese banquet.
Clockwise from top-left they are:

Wood-ear mushrooms with garlic and vinegar
A cold dish made from rehydrated black fungus, as they are labelled on the chinese packaging. Lovely rubbery texture.

'Strange-flavour' chicken
Also known as bang-bang chicken, because the cooked chicken is torn into shreds after being loosened with the edge of a cleaver. The cold chicken is covered with a sauce of sesame, chilli, soy, sugar, vinegar and sichuan pepper. Really delicious!

Smacked cucumbers with garlicky sauce
A very simple concoction, and the final of the three cold dishes in the meal. Again, the side of a cleaver is utilised to smack the whole cucumber before slicing it and pouring on a spicy sauce.

Stir-fried peppers with fermented black beans and garlic
This tasty dish of peppers was somewhat drowned out by the others. the salty black beans are an essential Chinese ingredient.

Spinach and chard with fermented bean curd
This was very good, although fermented tofu is an acquired taste.

Twice cooked pork belly
A whole piece of pork is first boiled until tender then slathered with soy and honey and roasted. I love pork belly. Amazing!

Beef with cumin
This is a dependable dish I have prepared many times before. Succulent spicy beef.

All but one of the recipes for this meal came from the three cookbooks of Fuchsia Dunlop (http://www.fuchsiadunlop.com/books/). She is brilliant, a real inspiration.

The odd one out was a cutting that my elderly uncle requested me to cook, by Gok Wan. I was skeptical at first as I merely know him as some sort of TV personality, not something I have much respect for, but it was very good once cooked.

There was one less dish than diner but we were able to share and everyone seemed to enjoy the ensemble.

PS
Is it not possible to insert url tags in the same way that bold etc can be used?