Friday, September 10, 2010

Back to Hong Kong: eating for under £3

Yes, I have made my triumphant return to Hong Kong! I never really planned on coming back here to live, to be absolutely honest, but when my boss offered me an unbelievable job, I didn't have much of a choice. I've been back for a few days now, and remain very excited about being back so far, mainly because I still haven't quite moved into my lovely flat in Pok Fu Lam yet.

I have been spending a bucket of money so far, so thank goodness that I'm rediscovering how cheap it can be to eat out. Today I finished all my stuff in town relatively early, and the thought did cross my mind to go home and cook. But then I figured that it would not only be less hassle, but a lot cheaper, to actually eat out. That is rather depressing actually. All of the meals below cost me less than £3 or HK$36. I bought a tub of Greek yoghurt the other day, which went over this threshold :(

Cafe de Coral is the McDonald's of Hong Kong, cooking a huge variety of Cantonese classics. The food is pretty meh, specialising in being cheap and quick rather than culinary, but one dish has captured my heart, their 一哥焗豬排飯, or 'big brother's baked pork chop rice'. This is very typical of the Cantonese dishes which try to be slightly Westernised, and is sometimes accompanied by creamy chicken with sweetcorn. For a mere $31, how on earth do they make that pork chop so soft? Dave loves his so much that he has left time at Hong Kong airport to make sure he can have a last portion before he flies back to London. Note the token broccoli to try and counter the million calories:

The other classic I have already found myself eating is 南記, which has the honour of being on my list of favourite Hong Kong restaurants. Sophisticated cooking it ain't, but I adore their hot and sour soup noodle, served with their signature fish sticks 春卷 and fish skin dumplings 魚皮餃, yours for a mere $27 (they put their prices up!):

Believe it or not, I have made myself try some new things rather than going back to all my old haunts. After yoga class today, I really fancied some congee, but stumbled across this place when I was walking around Causeway Bay. There was a long queue outside, so I'm not sure how good this place is supposed to be, but who can argue with a two course meal plus drink for $28? First course was Taiwanese soup noodles with pig intestines and oysters (yes, squeamish beings should look away now), served with some too-sweet soy milk:

This was accompanied by fried dumplings with chives, wrapped in a funny way to maximise the ease of cooking. Not the best dumplings I've ever eaten, but the wrappers were very thin, a little factory-made tasting. The best thing about the place was that they kept spelling dumplings as 'dumpings'. Don't come here after you're feeling a bit emotionally vulnerable!

On the other end of the scale, I heard that a new coffee shop in Central that had a roaster in the actual shop itself, so off I went to Holly Brown on Stanley Street to try and find a decent cup of coffee (yes, I succumbed to Starbuck's the second day I was here when I was dying of jetlag, and it took me 20 minutes to find one!!).

There is indeed a roaster inside the cafe, which also specialises in gelato, which seems to be the thing that is pulling in the crowds rather than the coffee. Some Italian dude called Domenico was doing lots of fiddling about with the roaster, but I'm not really sure why. Only espresso based drinks are offered, although they do also do the more unusual flat whites, marocchinos, but even though a variety of different beans are on offer to buy, only the 'house blend' is offered. So no interesting drip filters, no cafetieres, I'm guessing the 'simple coffee' movement that is so hip in Soho London hasn't quite hit Soho Hong Kong.

Whilst I was happy to see a flat white on the menu, I did choke at the idea of paying $34 for a small one. Even more alarming was the fact that the two gentlemen in front of me ordered a cappuccino and a latte, and the dude made all three drinks at the same time. There was absolutely no notable difference between the three! So as a result, my flat white had a little too much milk, and I have no idea why they serve it with a little blue straw?!:


Saturday, September 4, 2010

Habitat build 2010 - back to Kenya

This year's Habitat for Humanity saw me returning to Kenya, where I built in 2008. Even though I've been to all sorts of far flung places with Habitat now, East Africa does have a very special place in my heart, and I'm always looking froward to returning there.

Despite the fact that Kenya is probably one of the richest countries on the continent, levels of poverty remain dire, particularly in the countryside. This has not been helped by the civil unrest in 2008, when 800 people died and a further 600,000 were displaced. While peace has now been restored, and a new constitution ratified without further violence, the future still remains in the balance for most Kenyan citizens.

This year, we were building in the Maua region near Mount Kenya. This region is generally populated by the Meru tribe, and is particularly famous for the cultivation of 'miraa' or 'khat', a mild amphetamine that is legal in Kenya. It is the drug that is used to produce 'legal highs' in the UK, in particular mephedrone or MCAT or Meow Meow, which have now been outlawed following several cases of misuse. Nevertheless, chewing the branches of the miraa plant is the way of life, and builders all happily had little twigs hanging out of their mouths. It does taste rather rank, and you have to chew an awful lot to get any effect, so none of us really understood what the fuss was about. I'll stick with just a cuppa next time.

We built for two families. Julius and his wife Rosita had 10 children, and a growing tribe of grandchildren, and currently lived in a basic 2 room wooden house. We were helping them to build another wooden structure, as they had just received the first part of the loan from Habitat. This was a relatively straightforward house, with us helping to dig the foundations, mixing cement, the usual jazz.

The second house was a little more challenging. Mithika and his wife Helen had 6 kids, and made most of their living from growing miraa in their acre plot of land. Yes, we were building the house for the local drug baron! Mr M, as we liked to call him, had rather grand renovation plans for his existing 3 room wooden house. Apparently he wanted to cut off the bottom half, lift up the house, and then put the foundations in underneath. And somehow that was exactly what we did.

Here is the builder, sawing off the bottom half:

The house was literally floating in mid-air when he was finished, propped up with only wooden beams placed strategically around the sides. I was already panicking at the whole surrealness of the situation. Definitely the oddest house I've ever built:

I was used to Kenyan time, and the general relaxed way in which Kenyans do not really have a plan. But when you are building a house backwards, everything makes no sense. All the debris from inside the house had to be removed through the only door at the front, and there was so little of the original house left by the end. Even the wardrobe was floating at one point:

The idea of it all was to have a stronger house, with brick work complementing the existing wooden structure. It was pretty difficult to work in these conditions, absolute health and safety nightmare:

By the final day, we had finished adding the main block work, and also managed to give it all a fresh lick of paint. However, Kenya being Kenya, nothing is straightforward! Mr M went and got the paint, and came back with only yellow and green. Then he told us to start painting then promptly disappeared. The house started to look a bit Jamaican to be honest, and all the builders kept worrying us, telling us it should be blue. Hmmm... anyway, I thought it looked quite nice!

Aside from the work in Maua, we also visited an Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp on the outskirts of Nairobi. This is a camp where some of the displaced people ended up after the events of 2008. Each displaced family were awarded funds by the government to try and rebuild their lives, and with the help of Habitat, 335 families are currently building a safe shelter to live in this new place. Unlike the traditional Habitat model, the families only pay sweat equity, acknowledging the fact that many of these families are female-led households without a steady income, but this also means that they are much more reliant on donations. Read more about it here. We spent only about 30 minutes in the camp, but seeing families still living in leaky tents left a profound effect on all of us.

Goatiness in Kenya

Whilst Kenya isn't exactly renowned for its cuisine, I hadn't quite expected the level of revolt from my team when it came to the food. This was all made worse by the fact that nearly everyone on the trip was sick at one point (yes, imagine being sick when all you have access to is a pit latrine), and even a week after we're all back home, some of us are still recovering from sore tummies and knowing a bit too much information about everyone's bowel movements.

Given that we were in the middle of the countryside, it was no surprise that the food was repetitive and pretty simple. A typical breakfast looked like some space-age creation with my malaria tablet being the main event, accompanied by a boiled egg, a mandazi (sort of Kenyan doughnut) and a cuppa (no milk please):

Lunch and dinner were pretty much the same everyday, a combination of rice, chapattis, goat meat, spinach/cabbage/peas, avocado and banana and oranges for afters. The chapattis in particular were very yummy, slightly sweet, but not quite so yummy after having them for 2 meals 7 days in a row. I actually quite liked the goat, particularly with a bit of gravy, but unfortunately it was what made most of my team's stomachs turn.

I have often heard horror stories of families asking the team leader to kill a chicken, which is a big honour. Thankfully it has never happened. Until I remembered that Julius owned a poultry farm, and until Rosita came to dedication with a chicken in her arms. Yes, I started panicking now, and backing away!!!! Thankfully, the team were all attuned to the fact that I am sooooo scared of chickens by now, and Martin chivalrously stepped in to accept the gift. And thankfully we didn't need to kill it there and then:

We named it Kiev, and ate her for dinner that night! Unfortunately Kiev was a tough old bird, wasn't really very tasty. Here she is!:

As is usual with all my Habitat trips, I usually take a few extra days after everyone's gone home for my own little R&R. Both Clare and Caris, who have spent more time in East Africa, advised me that Lamu Island was the place to go, so off I went!

Lamu is little known compared to its very developed cousins Mombasa and Zanzibar, but I think it was better for it. We stayed in Shela, with 12km of unlimited beach, and there were relatively few white faces to be seen. This may have explained the amount we got hassled for business everywhere we went, but the place remained charming nevertheless. Just look at the view from our guest house:

We stayed at a place called Banana House owned by a man who claimed he was called Banana. His wife is Dutch, and it was clear the couple understood what Western service is, unlike much of the Kenyan tourist market. The rooms were simple but stylishly done, hammocks swung everywhere. One of the other good things they offered was the use of their chef; give the chef some money to go to the market, tell him what you wanted to eat, and he'll cook it for you. So we gave the chef a tenner each and this is what he came up with:

Ellie who came with me had the simple criteria for our food in Lamu: only fish and vegetables. Ok, we probably broke it a little by having lobster and vegetables that night, but oh bliss it was. Can someone marry soon please just so I can go back to this place for my honeymoon? Anyone will do! Haha...