Back in Hong Kong: Day 2 spicefest

For the reunion with the Uncle B/no-longer-Uncle B crowd, we had to go have Sichuan food, which still gives me some of the fondest food memories from my transfer to Hong Kong. The 麻辣 ma-la numbness is just too addictive, and there is always the spectacle of seeing Nic sweat so much he needs to bring a towel.

We decided to defect from our usual Sijie Private Kitchen though, and go to a rival place set up by one of Sijie's relatives who used to work at Sijie's, but had a fight with her (this is what Nic claims anyway :p). The decor is definitely interesting - so many soft furnishings around you do feel like you're invading someone's front room, plus there are a few useless sister-like waitresses hanging around.

The place is 渝川菜館, also at Lockhart Road in Wan Chai. Overall, everything was nowhere near as spicy as Sijie's, but this actually made most things edible!! Part of why we love Sijie's I guess is the challenge of seeing how long you can last before you lost all feeling in your mouth, and this was somewhat lacking here.

Nevertheless, some excellent food to be had. My favourite dish of the night was 夫妻肺片, literally translated as husband and wife pork lungs. I think this might be the first time I've ever eaten it, but so so good. The texture is slightly chewy, but moreishly so, and I liked the level of spicing to give a little warmth:

We also had my favourite 麻婆豆腐, mapo tofu, which made us all reach for that bowl of plain rice:

The chilli chicken lacked any noticeable evidence of actual chicken pieces:

We were also not so impressed with the squid with lychees, which just tasted weird:

But we loved the cold spicy noodles - this dish is normally the one that kills us at Sijie's, but this version was lightly spiced, and the noodles had just the right amount of chew. I could have eaten the whole plate of this had this not arrived right at the end.

It was supposedly the coldest night of winter so far in Hong Kong, so was good to eat some spicy food, but not sure we are in that much of a rush to go back to this place.

Back in Hong Kong: Day 2 Kau Kee fest

After all that juk, it was amazing I still had room for lunch, but I really did have to make room because we were going to 九記牛腩 Kau Kee on Gough Street!!! This is probably one of the most famous noodle shops in Hong Kong, and apparently frequented by Tony Leung (although I haven't had the very good luck of bumping into him yet). Expect to queue to get in - Brian and I arrived at 12:15 for opening at 12:30, and look at the queue by 12:25 (with Brian looking smug at the start of the line!):

I literally do regularly have dreams about this place, mainly of me being in a taxi and not being quite able to go there. And every time I go, I have 2 bowls. This time though, I decided to experiment and try the curried beef brisket e-noodles:

Hmmm - this was my second bowl, and I regretted deviating from what I knew (profit from the core and all that :p)!!! I agree with Edwin that the curry at 九記 leaves a bit of a funny, almost stinging taste in your mouth - the curry one last night was definitely better. And the brisket in this bowl was ridiculously fatty :(

But it just cements the fact that their clear soup brisket e-noodle is just ammmmmmaaaaazzzzing. Just such a fab combination, and just small enough a portion to make you want that extra bowl. Although I am getting swayed by Wes' idea of just having the soup and noodles instead - maybe when I am back in March. Anyway, here is my stuff of dreams!!!:

Gah, this has made me hungry now!!

Back in Hong Kong: Day 2 jukfest

This post is mainly for Dave's benefit, as I know it will drive him nuts

Still on my quest to find a congee breakfast, I had a good google session last night and found somewhere nearby, and it's apparently quite famous! I quite like the fact that these little places get a bit notorious in Hong Kong and people flock to them clutching their food magazines. Anyway, the place was 生記 (Sang Kee) on Burd Street in Sheung Wan, which also has a few other branches including one in Yau Ma Tei.

The menu was really quite tremendous - you can basically get any combination of congee (or juk) containing fish belly (their specialty), beef, Chinese mud carp fish balls (鯪魚球), fish bones, pork liver, lean pork, preserved egg, chicken, pork heart, and probably some other things too. I wasn't really quite brave enough to try the fish belly, so I opted for a 'ping' of beef, fish balls, and preserved egg:

I was in juk heaven!!! Exactly exactly what I was after. The juk itself was very soft, very 綿, and didn't really taste that MSG-fied, although they did give you a very tasty dish of soy with spring onions which definitely was just MSG and soy!! The ingredients were also rather fine. The fish balls were just perfect - favourful, bouncy, with a nice bit of coriander through them. The beef was silky smooth, and the portion more than generous.

Given that I will only have this one time there, obviously I had to try some of the side dishes, which quite disturbed the waitress I think!!! I ordered both the fried fish cake (basically the fish ball but fried to give some crunch) and dough stick:

It probably was too much in the end, but the waitress just kept asking me 'are you sure??!!' when I kept ordering more things. Certainly not the behaviour of a normal Hong Kong girl to ask for so much food! But they were both just perfect accompaniments to the juk, I scoffed it all! All this came to HK$50, a little expensive perhaps for a juk breakfast, but very good it was.

The waitress herself deserves a comedy sketch! She practically runs the place, and it's amazing to see her memorise every single order in her head, shouting at anyone getting in her way. She also likes to burst into song at random intervals. This place illustrates exactly why I love Hong Kong cafes - there may be a guy right behind you slicing up the pork livers, and the place really isn't that clean, but it's all about the food. And you can have little giggle to yourself about the waitress too :)

Back in Hong Kong: Day 1 noodlefest

I am back in Hong Kong for a few days en route to Kunming, where I shall be stationed for 2 months in my ever attempt to learn some Mandarin.

I am really like a child whenever I am back in Hong Kong. I was born here, and grew up here until I moved to the UK when I was 7 years old, so all my tastebuds are geared towards the things I used to snack on as a little kid. My poor friends have to put up with me as I eat the most unsophisticated things :)

First up, I really really wanted congee this morning when I woke up, but after the demise of Ho Ho Congee Shop on Des Voeux Road, it looks almost impossible to get a decent bowl before 11am in Central anymore. So I had to settle for a real childhood favourite - plain cheung fun (or rice noodle sticks I guess is the nearest translation) with sesame, soy, and sweet sauce, or what I affectionately call dok-dok cheung fun (because you are given a stick to poke or 'dok' it) - it took me a looooong time to find a place that does it in Central, but there is one on Lyndhurst Terrace:

This actually got me thinking about how onomatopaeic Cantonese is, and how childish it actually sounds. In an average day, as well as the dok-dok, you will also encounter doot-doot on the underground, can ride on a ding-ding, and if you live in my house, you fight over the gum-gum. I obviously need to get out more.

For lunch, I went to the place I went to most often when I lived here for 6 months in 2006/7, and it is very dear to my heart mainly as none of my friends really quite get why I'm so obsessed with it. 南記粉麵 (Nam Kee) on Stanley Street is a typical Hong Kong cafe serving noodles with dumplings, fish balls, beef balls etc., but specialises in what they call 春卷 or spring rolls, but are really the Chinese version of fish fingers. Laden with MSG, they are really addictive. Today, I had what my usual, a chilli broth with fish-skin dumplings (top left corner), spring rolls (top right corner), and beef brisket (the brown lumpy things), served with ho fun, Chinese chives, beanshoots, dried beancurd, and spicy minced pork - HEAVEN in a bowl, and all for less than 3 quid:

And if you think the stuff above is weird enough, I would stop reading now!! I suggested to Edwin that we go to 九記牛腩 (Kau Kee Beef Brisket), which is the place I have repeatedly dreamt about for dinner tonight, and he actually (somewhat blasphemously) suggested there was somewhere better for beef brisket in Wan Chai!!! So I couldn't resist the challenge.

Similar to Kau Kee, this place was tucked away on a side street off Wan Chai Road. I will probably never find it again, but I did cleverly take a picture of the name in case my dad wants to go sometime:

The menu is pretty similar to Kau Kee's, specialising in beef brisket in clear soup, or beef brisket in curry, but it is a bit more extensive in offering some other beef bits and bobs. First up was the curry - I've never had the curry at Kau Kee's actually, mainly as I have normally already scoffed 2 bowls of the clear soup to fit anything in, but this version has encouraged me to branch out. Only criticism was that the brisket was a bit on the fatty side, with large lumps of yellow fat that I had to pick off - and you know how much I like my fat!

For the clear soup, we actually had beef brisket as well as honeycomb tripe, or 金銀肚, which easily became my favourite thing I ate today. I love love love tripe, it is by far my favourite dim sum dish, and this was just a revelation! People say that Chinese food is all about the texture, and this is just the perfect example. The outside is nice and soft, but once you bite in, there is just a little bit of chewy give. More please!

Of course, whether this is better than Kau Kee really is still up for questioning. Good job I'm going there tomorrow to revisit how good it is then!!! :D

First pud of 2009

I realised what a horrendously sweet tooth Drew had when I visited him in Brighton, and I’m very proud of his resolution for 2009 to cut down the 3 sugars he takes in his tea. As return for his kind hospitality therefore, I attempted to make him one of his favourites, a cheesecake. The problem was that I had not made one for a good few years (probably since school!!), so I kind of made it up as I went along, but it turned out really good!

Raspberry and passion fruit cheesecake (serves 1 hungry, greedy Drew, who refused to let me take any for Kath and James to try!)
150g digestive biscuits
125g butter
Half a large tub of raspberry yoghurt
1 small packet of cream cheese
4 tablespoons sugar
Some fresh raspberries
Some passion fruit

1. Crush the digestive biscuits – the method I used was to wrap them in some paper towels and bash them with an empty wine bottle, but might be safer to use a rolling pin and clean tea towel if available!
2. Melt the butter, and let it cool. Once cool, mix in the crushed biscuits, and press into the bottom of your cake tin
3. Mix together the yoghurt, sugar and cheese and add more/less sugar to taste. I think the version I did at school actually also had some whipping cream in it, but I guess this is a slightly less fat version, hee hee
4. Pour the cheese mixture on top of the biscuit base, and return to the fridge to set for at least 30 minutes
5. To serve, either cover the above cake decoratively with your raspberries and passion fruit. But the trick I learnt from Come Dine With Me is to actually serve it in little glasses – layering both the biscuity/cheesey mixture with raspberry and then topping with passion fruit.

So simple, and really quite yummy! And of course, we were Loving It!!!

Finally, dan dan mein in London!!

Somewhat on a whim, I ended up in Bar Shu (巴山) in Chinatown with Simon and his lovely girlfriend Lisa the other week. I’ve heard so many good things about Bar Shu, tauted as one of the first genuinely good Sichuan (or Szechuan) restaurants in London, but had never managed to make it there given that most of my friends would be massively scared, and you really do need a crowd for this kind of food. But Simon’s girlfriend is Chinese too, and when they invited me, I was straight on the phone booking a table.

I got addicted to Sichuan food in Hong Kong, after Nic introduced us all to the magical Sijie (四姐) Private Kitchen in Wanchai. I can’t get enough of the immense spiciness coupled with completely numbed lips from the Sichuan peppercorns, it just raises your heartbeat a little. And the dish I am most addicted to is dan dan mein (擔擔麵) - noodles in a spiced soup, with some more spiced minced pork on top. Surprisingly, it was difficult to get a good version of this even in Hong Kong, and I regularly got into trouble by going to 小南國 in Central, a pretty posh place, and only ordering a HK$20 bowl of noodles, so I have given up even looking for it in London. Until now of course!!!

So, the Bar Shu dan dan mein. The very first impression is that it is ridiculously expensive - £4.50 per serving, and the serving is absolutely tiny!!! About the size of a normal Chinese rice bowl!!! This was made worse by the fact that the noodles were really actually pretty good – lovely flavour in the soup, lovely topping with a little sautéed garlic, the noodles themselves just the right side of chewy – you just had to eat it really really slowly to make it last the whole meal! If the serving was about 4 times bigger, I would definitely be a regular.

We did try some other dishes there. Simon’s choice was a not so spicy Fish Fragrant Aubergine (魚香茄子), which was not particularly fragrant with fish, but the aubergines were lovely and smooth:), which was not particularly fragrant with fish, but the aubergines were lovely and smooth:

We also had the very traditional Boiled Sea Bass in Chilli Oil (水煮魚), which is as tasty as the Sijie version which I love so much. But the waiter was in somewhat of a hurry to fish out (no pun intended!!) the chilli and peppercorns that I didn’t have time to take a picture, so I substitute one from Sijie instead!! It really isn’t as spicy as it looks, bonus is if they put any beansprouts or glass noodles at the bottom. Mmmm!

The verdict? Really very authentic stuff, and really very tasty, but oh is it expensive!! The fish itself was £28 by itself!! Time to book in some time with Sijie for my little visit in Hong Kong methinks…

Crisis Open Christmas 2008

This is the second year I have volunteered at the Crisis Open Christmas in London. Last year, I was dragged in on one of the days to help out in the kitchen, and I was so addicted to the experience that this year, I chose to be a catering assistant for all 4 days I was there.

For those of you unfamiliar with COC, Crisis is a homeless charity which opens up free homeless shelters all around London for a week over Christmas. As well as celebrating Christmas, the centres also provide services from podiatry to library resources to hot showers for homeless guests, in hope that it will help them to start the new year. It is a wonderful, empowering idea, and I am starting to not be able to imagine a Christmas without volunteering there. Feel free to let me drag you along next year if you fancy doing it yourself!

Anyway, onto the food! The job of catering assistants is to help prepare the 3 meals a day served to guests, and the most exciting thing about cooking at COC is that it is a bit like Ready Steady Cook. The charity relies on donations from supermarkets and catering companies for a lot of the food, and you are not really sure what you’d get each day. And then there is the added challenge of preparing 200-250 meals each day to feed all the guests and volunteers!

So what did we manage to make? The first 2 days, we actually had deliveries of lots of fresh meat and vegetables, and respectively made a beef stew and Thai chicken curry. However, on the 3rd and 4th nights, there was much more of a challenge. The charity was seriously low on fresh food, and unfortunately, supermarkets had the tendency to donate a lot of ready meals. We made the best of it though – for example, we took apart a chicken saltimbocca with risotto Air Berlin ready meal to turn it into a chicken and mashed potato pie, saving the risotto to be served on another day. The food is certainly not gourmet, but it fed lots of cold and hungry mouths. Here is the beef stew, pasta, with a lot of mushrooms we had on the first day (I was way too exhausted to take photos after that! Haha):

Some highlights from my 4 days there:

1. Peeling and prepping what felt like 500 Brussels sprouts
2. Working with chef Norman, how do you stay so calm?
3. Working with chef Lauren, who works for Gordon Ramsay in LA!
4. The experimental apple crumble with Scottish shortbread topping, will definitely try that again