Thursday, December 29, 2005
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People in Hong Kong are absolutely crazy about seafood (I'm no exception), not only because it is surrounded by the sea and has itself a rich reserve of great seafood, but also due to the superb Cantonese cooking style that largely enhanced the eating experiences of the dishes. Apart from the local fish market, there is a wide range of seafood imported fresh by plane from Australia, Japan, Canada etc.
This Tuesday, I went with my boyfriend's family to one of my favorite seafood restaurant in Saikung: Tungkee, to celebrate his parents' birthdays. We had a feast of almost every creature from the sea! And as usual, we walked away with a stomach-full of protein and content. ^_^
This Tuesday, I went with my boyfriend's family to one of my favorite seafood restaurant in Saikung: Tungkee, to celebrate his parents' birthdays. We had a feast of almost every creature from the sea! And as usual, we walked away with a stomach-full of protein and content. ^_^
We had of course some Chinese steamed birthday buns for his parents... unfortunately I didn't take the pictures, and can only show one from another website. The cakes are actually rice cakes, with sweet lotus paste fillings. They are shaped and colored to form a peach to symbolise longevity. After a heavy meal of seafood, taking some form of rice is genuinely refreshing! 
Huge clams steamed - its own juice formed the sauce, so it's extremely sweet and fresh. I've never seen such big clams, but the spring onions are superb to take away the taste of fish.
Huge Eastern coral trout cooked with sliced spring onion, ginger slices, and soya sauce - this is a typicall Cantonese style of fish cooking, which preserved all the original taste and flavour of the fish, while making the fish taste milder and sweeter. Eastern coal trout is regarded as the most luxurious fish dish in a seafood restaurant, but with so many seafood in one meal, it doesn't look as grand anymore.... =P
Salt and pepper squilla - my favorite! The squillas are marinated in a generous layer of salt, pepper and chopped garlic, and fried in the really hot wok for a very short period of time, and take out to serve as soon as the squillas are cooked. Doing this at home is very difficult, because the stoves in the resturants are so big and the temperature so high, that once you toss in the squilla it cooks almost immediately. Only with such amount of heat can this dish be delicious.
Pearl snales in chili sauce - the sauce is something like a Sichuan style chili sauce, that covers with a thick red layer of chili oil. It's seriously hot and spicy, definitely not everybody's cup of tea. However interestingly, it seems that the stronger the chili, the more obvious the sweetness of the snales. It's really good and addictive!
Lobsters with cheese: one of the local's favorite! Not sure about what type of cheese is used, but it's interesting that eventhough the taste of the cheese is quite strong, the freshness of the lobster is never fully obscured. Usually the base of the dish is in long noodles, representing longevity, but more importantly to absorb the juices coming out from the lobsters, serving the same function as the Wudong in the crab. Superbly delicious!
Huge calamary slightely chopped and steamed in soya sauce. A bit too salty though, but the calamary is nice and crunchy, extremely fresh.
Steamed crab with beaten eggs and Wudong - one of my favourite! The eggs and Wudong are poached underneath the crabs, and thus absorbing all the juices and freshness of the crabs. The crabs itself is really fleshy and tasty, and the Wudong is superb when coated with eggs and the sauce.
Bavette with Sardin and Mozzarella - easy and light lunch. I've used Sardin canned in Olive oil instead of Tuna in the instruction, simply because of the leftovers for the bread from yesterday. I agree that Tuna might have tasted a lot better because the taste of Sardin with pasta is just a bit too exortic. Nonetheless, I like its simplicity and the blend with the mozzarella, a nice remembrance of my favourite pizza.
Appropriate ingredients are essential to good cooking. It's not always easy to find Western ingredients in a very much Chinese society as Hong Kong, but due to the old British colonial influence and the presence of a multitude of multinational corporations, a large Western community resides in Western Hong Kong Island, Lanma Island, and Discovery Bay. The grocery stores or even local supermarkets in these areas offer a wide range of imported ingredients, from wine vinegar to herbs and spices, from multinational oysters to one of the best Kobe-beef. They not only create a home-like feeling for those who are away from their home country, but also bring variety and interesting experiences to the local cuisine.The Wellcome supermarket next to the what claimed to be the world's longest escalator is my hunting ground this time. With red/white wine vinegars, Balsamic vinegar, mint jelley and a big bottle of lemon concentrate all under hkd20 each, it's very easy to lose a few hours there in complete frantic. I mean CitySupers are great, they have almost everything. But their price tags are great too, and if I can find sth similar at a much lower price, then why not?
I've grown into a nice habbit of buying flowers to my only aunt in Hong Kong (also my only relative here), either on her birthdays or Lunar New Year or Christmas. This Christmas I've bought her a lovely mixture of colors that I like so much: pink (peonies) and purple. The white tulips work so well in bringing out and blending the colors, and those cute little lantern-like flowers (don't know its name) add a tinge of liveliness to the whole basket.Choosing different flowers to fix into one single bunch is a test to your sense of color and style, and watching how individual flowers (always splendid on their own) to fuse and complement each other in a basket is a real joy. I've learnt quite a lot under the guidance of the shop keeper, and thx also to the arranger who brings my vision through.
Wednesday, December 28, 2005
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We wish you a Merry Christmas
We wish you a Merry Christmas
We wish you a Merry Christmas
And a Happy New Year!
We wish you a Merry Christmas
We wish you a Merry Christmas
And a Happy New Year!
Dessert of the evening: Apple Sabayon – Its original Italian name is Zabaglione, and the French refers to this as Sabayon. This is a simple Italian dessert made of egg yolks, sugar, and Marsala wine that cooks in the double boiler. This time I've used the remaining Chinese rice wine plus apple juice to form something like an apple cider. The egg yolks and sugar are beating on the steaming water and whip until foamy. The wine is added and cooked until doubles in volume. Serious cooking will need a thermometer at its 140F. I just serve it immediately when boiled.Zabaglione is said to have been invented in the 16th Century in Florence, Italy in the court of the Medici. This dessert is classified as a "caudle" rather than a custard. A "caudle" is a sauce used as a custard to fill pies or tarts. The original pre-sixteenth century version was a drink made or wine or ale thickened with egg yolks
Baked Fish in bacons – since trout seems to be a very common fish used in this dish, I’ve found some trout in certainly only CitySuper. With some fresh thyme and olive oil tucked in the belly, it makes a perfect blend with the bacons outside. The only drawback is that people in Hong Kong prefer sea fish than fresh water ones, because the large amount of small bones that take ages to pick away before safely placing the fish in the mouth.
Fried lamb sticks (all fried... yes, cos I find it's the easiest) sided with Australia potato and Thai asparagus. Very easy to cook, in just a few minutes it's done.
The 2nd Starter: Fried Scallop in apple sauce. Very easy to make again. Just fry fresh scallops until almost cooked. Using butter, apple cider (I've used some Chinese rice wine and apple juice instead, because apple cider in Hong Kong is exobitant...), and some extra virgin olive oil to make the sauce. Drop in some chopped parsley and make the perfect dish.
The 1st starter: Foi Groi - Fried goose liver with caramel apple slices. It's so fantastially easy to make!! Just dip the sliced apples in sugar, fry them in the pan until soft and golden brown. Take them out on serving dish. Fry the liver on both sides till all the blood residue comes out and brown each side. Serving with sweetish-soury apple helps to reduce the oily feeling of the liver, a perfect match and compromise!Thanks Yves in introducing me to the Angus Prime Food Company! Genuinely fresh frozen food and extremely warm attitude from the keeper! Will definitely buy from there again!
The Soup of the Day - potatoes, turnips, carrots, and onions diced and fried in olive oil and butter. Add some water, bring to the boil and mashed in the blender. The mixture is returned to the stock and bring to the boil. Adding some creme fraiche, a little bit of natural yogurt and some chopped parsley then make it a perfectly thick winter soup.Sunday, December 18, 2005
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Voila! Mini apple pies, with self-made pie skin as well as apple puree!! True, it was quite tiring in spreading the dough and butter over and over again, and it was time consuming waiting for the dough to harden time and again in the frige. But woo~~ so delicious! Not sweet at all, since apart from regular sugar, also added cane sugar and honey. Reasonable amount of cinamon and thyme (quite strange though... hehe) really enhanced the taste of the apple puree. The idea of making the pie into smaller ones is great, as one can have his own pie. About 260g butter is needed to make the skin, so having one is quite enough~ Wednesday, December 14, 2005
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After pouring the sweet corn thickened soup onto the fillets. Nice, crispy, a little bit sweet!! Nothing to complain! Thank you so much Yves!!!
Long-lei fillet, just fried... really crispy and nice!! Love them! That's before pouring the sweet corn puree...
Sweet and sour pork again, but with Chu mom's method this time! Obviously much better and tastier than before!
Friday, December 02, 2005
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Simple carrot soup with sweet corns and sea-coconuts - actually there're other materials as well, like some pig's bone and a little bit of diced pork (to bring out the sweetness of the vegetables), and some Chiese almonds. The trick is to let the whole thing boil for half an hour, so as to bring the flavour out from every ingredients, and then let it simmer for 2.5 hours, so that everything becomes soft and tender, and the soup is reduced to 1/3 of its original volume. This is especially good for the skin, therefore particularly good in winter.
Pomfret with fermented black beans - one of my favourite dish! Extremely easy to handle: boil the water in the wok, place the black beans and sliced ginger on the fish, and steam it for 10 minutes (depending on the size of the fish).I'm a big fan of all kinds of fish and seafood, as well as all sorts of delicacies from the lakes. My other favourite dish is the steamed crabs from Yang Cheng Lake, not everybody's cup of tea. Most of those who don't like it say it's just too much trouble in taking the flesh out, and there's so little flesh in the crab. What I'd say is that the procedure of eating the crab is in fact one of the reasons why so many people enjoy it. The taste is very different from that of the normal sea crabs. It's a kind of fresh water crab and is therefore especially sweet in taste. The serving sauce is a mixture of finely diced ginger, sugar and dark vinegar, which is believed to balance the cold nature of the crab. The male crabs are best served in September of the Lunar Calendar, and the female October. The only problem is that due to its rarity this sort of crab is quite expensive (a few hundred hk each), therefore not so often served at home....
After finishing the bawdy Restoration Comedies with Janis, really felt like having a good breakfast (lusty only in the sense of food!!) Fried eggs with home-made little almond lemon cake. I love the 80% cooked fried eggs topped with a tiny bit of sea salt and freshly grounded black pepper. Served when hot is really a luxury. The Mong-gnaw milk is a good thick kind of milk from Mongolia, very successful and guess it's a sort of joint-venture product (like the Great Wall red wine). The lemon cake is one of the easiest-to-make desserts, with a generous amount of grounded almond, and quite a lot of lemon peels (which tastes really fresh). Very tasty!
Sliced beef fried with onion - a really simple dish that can be done within a minute or so. The trick was that you must only use boiling oil to fry the beef (the oil must be so hot that you can see smoke coming out of the wok) and just stir until the beef changes 70%of its color, which is really quick. The beef must not be marrinated, especially not in corn starch which is normally used. Take up the beef from the wok and use the rest of the oil to fry the onion. When the onion is nice and soft put the beef back into the wok and fry it until totally done/according to your preference. Adding a little bit of Japanese barbeque sauce will definitely enhance its flavor. Unfortunately I do not have the necessary barbeque sauce, but serving with some freshly grounded black pepper made it no less a delicious dish.