Sham Shui Po - wah, amazing!

I actually grew up on Kowloon side, once a proud resident of Mei Foo near the end of the red line of the MTR, but a mere 6 months of living in Central made me a firm Hong Kong Islander. For those of you who don't come from Hong Kong, this may seem absurd; Kowloon is about 5 minutes boat ride away from the Hong Kong Island side, and that is probably the most time consuming way to travel between the two. It is another one of these Honkie neuroses.

We all know though that Kowloon is actually better in many ways, especially if you want to see Hong Kong as it is to most locals, rather than just the shopping malls and skyscrapers. Caris and I headed to Sham Shui Po (深水埗), apparently a bit of a foodie heaven, furnished with some of Juliana's rather thorough research.

We were actually looking for a noodle shop when we stumbled across 添好運, probably one of the most famous dim sum places in Hong Kong now after the Michelin bods decided to award it one star. Sceptics have all said it was Michelin's attempt to rid itself of its French- and fine dining-centric tastes, that these Frenchies know nothing about Asian food really. To be fair, the owner is the ex-executive chef at 龍景軒, the only Chinese restaurant in the world with 3 stars. He wanted to start an egalitarian dim sum places, serving the best food at decent prices, an aspiration I can only applaud.

Rumours have it that queues can be up to 4 hours at the original Mong Kok branch, but the second branch in Sham Shui Po is much bigger, and at 3pm we literally walked straight in. So did not plan on having dim sum, but oh well! The decor isn't much to look at, the tea is attractively served in plastic jugs on your table:

The menu is refreshingly small, especially as it seems to be the trend for restaurants to have new frang-dangled modern varieties. There are about 25 items, with a mainly traditional slant. They didn't have my favourite 牛柏葉 (tripe, mmmm!), so we decided to stick to everyone's family favourites. The compulsory 蝦餃 prawn dumplings had very fresh prawns, but the skin was 麻麻地:

The 牛腸粉 beef cheung fun was a huge let down, to the point of being really very bland. Avoid.

I forgot to take a picture of the 蘿蔔糕 turnip cake, but it didn't look that much out of the ordinary. But it tasted much more refined than your usual dim sum restaurant version, with clear shreds of turnip, very little flour, very good. And at $10 a portion, a complete bargain.

I guess their signature dish is their 酥皮叉燒包, basically a 叉燒包 with a 菠蘿包 topping (I have given up trying to translate at this point - basically a very sophisticated pork bun!). We saw them being ferried to almost every table, to the extent that a 4-top right near us had about 4 portions to themselves (3 buns per portion!). Not only do they look pretty, blushing slightly from their time in the oven, they tasted AMAZING. Just the right balance of sweet and savoury, the bun wasn't heavy, so so moreish. And this is $12 a portion, yes, about a quid for 3 buns!

Knowing Honkies, I'm sure the place is packed more for the prices (cheap even by Hong Kong's normal standards) rather than having a consistently wow menu. Thankfully though, the Sham Shui Po branch also allows you to book, even for a private room where there is an additional book-in-advance menu, featuring more funky stuff, like fried foie gras dumpling and abalone with chicken puff. The minimum spend for the private room is $1000 though, even with 10 people, it'd be hard to spend that much at these prices! Definitely worth a trip mid-afternoon just for the pork bun.

The place that stole our hearts though in Sham Shui Po was the humble little 公和荳品廠, literally a factory specialising in tofu and tofu related products. Non-Chinese just don't get tofu, but it has a very special place in all Chinese hearts, and at 4pm this place was packed. It is exactly what we mean by local local, this place probably hasn't changed for about 50 years. There was a hilarious sello-taped sign advertising 'new products', the sello-tape so yellow it is probably older than me.

Check out the mega old school tap for the soy milk!! You can also just about make out the uber-dirty looking factory floor to the right of the photo:

Now, my mum makes the best 豆腐花 in the world. She only ever makes it at home (from scratch!!!) back in Ipswich, which means I haven't eaten it in well over 2 years now, but even so, I almost never bother with this yummy dessert when I go out. It was clearly the speciality at this place though, check out their container!!!

In case I upset my mum, I will say that their 豆腐花 is definitely on par with that I have at home. The hot version which we both had was impossibly 滑, the sugar syrup just sweet enough.

We also sampled their stuffed tofu, the frying and the 鯉魚 fish stuffing took away from the taste of the tofu itself in my opinion. We still lapped it all up though :p

I have been looking into trademarks and IP a little this week, and I was thoroughly impressed that they had a certificate on the wall listing their trademark, which is from 1909!!!!! We did leave this place a little worried for its future, the staff looks like they work so hard for their cash, we're pretty sure the next generation will not want to carry this kind of thing on :(

Thoroughly fortified with dim sum and tofu, we nevertheless continued to eat more. We saw a big crowd outside this shop, so we decided it had to be good, and it turned out to be on Juliana's original list. 八仙餅家 specialises in traditional biscuits, things like 皮蛋酥 century-egg puff and 杏仁餅 almond biscuits. There was a non-stop stream of people stopping and picking up a little something:

Caris got a 核桃酥 walnut biscuit, something I have probably not eaten for literally 25 years. But once it entered my mouth I immediately got that familiar feeling of rich butter and sugar, yet impossibly 鬆 at the same time. Probably the second best thing I ate today after that pork bun.

We kept eating sugary snacks of yesteryear, including something from a shop that specialises in 糕. Now, the word 糕 really is hard to translate. A lot of people use 'cake', but it really doesn't get there. 糕 is normally steamed rather than baked, and can come in many varieties, some of which are more 'cake' like, but others, especially those made of rice flour rather than wheat flour, are more wobbly and tight in texture. 坤記糕品 only sells the wobbly variety:

There was 紅豆糕 red bean 'cake', 芝麻糕 sesame seed 'cake', 白糖糕 literally white sugar 'cake', but I went for a 砵仔糕 little basin cake (no photo, sorry!), made of yellow sugar and rice flour, mainly as I know my dad has been looking for a place with good 砵仔糕. Unfortunately, it wasn't really that wow, and pretty expensive at $4.50 (aren't I cheap, that isn't even 40p!).

I will round off this rather long post with something even more unhealthy. I somehow managed to avoid getting fish balls or 雞蛋仔 egg waffles on the street, but Caris couldn't quite resist getting some 炸大腸. I won't translate, but look at the picture. What does it look like? Gross? Well, think about the body part after that :D

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?!:

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...

Expensive shades of beige

As blasphemous as it sounds, I don't know an awful lot about Pierre Koffmann. I was still an impoverished student when La Tante Claire closed down in 2003, when he almost disappeared from the London restaurant scene. But he is now back (to quite a lot of fanfare which I don't quite understand), in where the Boxwood Cafe used to be at the Berkeley Hotel.

I must say, the sign outside announcing Koffmann's is a bit retro for me. I know he's going for the hearty and simple fare, but it looks a bit rustic for the smart Knightsbridge location. Inside, the space is still a bit awkward, with the dining room divided by a tiny bar in the middle; I had wanted a little drink before I sat at the table, but alas, no room for little me.

The impeccable service started before I had even walked in the door. When I called up to book, I wanted to hire their reservations girl immediately. She did all she needed to do, but so much more: asked about allergies, any special requests, do I need information about the hotel, all done efficiently and politely. Exactly what you want.

And inside, the only fault I can give to the service is that it is at times a little overattentive. Our waitress (who used to be at the Connaught and then at Petrus it turns out) was faultless. She not only knew the dishes inside out, but seemed to be very enthused with the food, something that is so rare in this country unfortunately. I will as a result excuse her rather twee mentions of Chef Koffmann "this is a special Chef Koffmann thought of during his break today". Hmm...

The menu is exceedingly boring, loads of French classics you would expect, with only one or two really interesting sounding dishes. Unfortunately, I had had a big lunch, and the famed pig's trotters just sounded too heavy. I started with one of the specials, a salmon tartare with cucumbers and chive cream:

Fraser went for the mackerel terrine - which turned out to be a very clever dish actually, layers of vinegared mackerel wrapped in wafer-thin slices of cucumber:

Fraser went for the braised beef cheeks as his main:

With skate with morels pour moi:

Chips and vegetables were served with all main courses for free (extra points for not trying to charge for sides); the chips charming presented in yesterday's French newspaper:

Overall, the savoury dishes were all impeccably done. The flavours were very clean, ingredients very fresh, I thoroughly enjoyed my rather boring dishes. The only small fault was that my skate was a little raw in the middle, but it was one of the best skate dishes I've eaten in a restaurant.

Fraser somehow talked me into dessert, and the only thing I really fancied was the pistachio souffle, the price of which made me a choke a little at £12 a portion! It was enormous, swimming pool sized, way way too much. I didn't think the souffle itself was that amazing, a bit too sweet and repetitive for me, but the pistachio ice cream it came with was gorgeously smooth, not too sweet, very nutty:

Fraser went for his usual chocolate mousse and tried to be artistic when he was taking the picture. He loved it:

There was a good selection of wines by the carafe (good given it was a school night), and the bill came to £120 for two. Toilets were confusing as there were too many mirrors, beige carpets. Pierre Koffmann could be seen through the glass panel looking into the kitchen!

It is one of those restaurants when if you ask me whether I would go again, I would hesitate to say yes, even though the food was thoroughly excellent, served by one of the best waitresses I've had in a long time. Maybe it is just the location: I'm rarely in Knightsbridge and it always seems like a long trek even though it's only really round the corner from one of my workplaces. Fraser made a fair comment that it is just a bit weird going to restaurants in hotels. The menu and/or the decor always seems a bit compromised, and you are always surrounded by some odd mix of people. But you should definitely go once, if only to steal their rather cute pig cloakroom tickets.

Let's start again

It has been an age since I blogged, there is a huge backlog of photos I've collected over the last few months, but I have been a thoroughly busy bee.

So busy that I can't remember the last time I really cooked at home. So when on Monday I found myself heading home at 9:30pm, even though it's late, I decided to attempt something not particularly complicated but still a little new. I was visiting Cerys and her lovely new baby Eira in Cardiff and was reading Jamie's Italy whilst playing with baby, and found a nice recipe which you can do in the time it takes to boil the pasta. Always my kind of recipe.

Spaghetti with kind of pesto (or spaghetti alla Trapanese according to JO) (serves 1)

125g of spaghetti or linguine

Handful of whole almonds

2 handfuls of fresh basil, leaves picked

1/2 clove garlic

Extra virgin olive oil

Coarse sea salt

Freshly ground pepper

Handful of cherry tomatoes

Handful of freshly grated parmesan

1. Put the pasta on the boil

2. Dry roast the almonds until it is just coloured. Meanwhile, in a pestle and mortar, smash up the garlic with a little salt, and slowly grind in the basil. Once the almonds are roasted, put in the basil mix and smash up until pretty fine.

3. Lug enough olive oil in the mortar to make it wet enough to coat all of the pasta. Add in the parmesan and mix well.

4. Cut the cherry tomatoes in half and squish a little with your hands.

5. Drain the pasta. Using the same pan, add in the tomatoes, pesto, and spaghetti, mix well.

6. Scoff in front of the telly.

Starting to be a bit obsessed now

Someone really needs to remove that 1-click purchase facility on Amazon, as I am already impulsive enough about buying cookbooks as it is. I am still feeling quite inspired by vegetables recently, and treated myself to two Ottolenghi cookbooks. His most recent book Plenty is particularly inspiring: it is entirely vegetarian, but his recipes are consistently interesting. I love the fact that he is introducing me to new ways with new ingredients: definitely stock up on limes, coriander and cumin before you try his recipes, and get used to going to Middle Eastern supermarkets to look for frozen okras.

I snipped this recipe from the Guardian back in March 2008, but have only just managed to make it now that it is also in the cookbook. It is really moreish, and I would add even more chilli next time.

Green Pancakes with Lime Butter (serves 3-4 as brunch)

For the lime butter:

100g unsalted butter, at room temperature

Zest of 1 lime plus 2 tbsp lime huice

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp white pepper

1 tbsp coriander leaves

1/2 garlic clove, finely chopped

1/2 tsp chilli flakes

For the pancakes:

110g self-raising flour

1 tbsp baking powder

1 egg

50g unsalted butter, melted

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp ground cumin

150ml milk

10 spring onions, finely sliced

2 green chillies, finely sliced

250g baby spinach

1 egg white

Olive oil, for frying

1. First, make the lime butter. Put the butter in a medium-sized bowl and beat with a wooden spoon until it turns soft and creamy. Stir in the remaining ingredients. Tip everything out onto a sheet of clingfilm and roll into a sausage shape. Twist the ends to seal, then chill until firm.

2. Put the spinach in a pan with a splash of water, cook until wiltered, drain and let it cool. Once cooled, squeeze hard to expel all the excess water. Roughly chop.

3. Make the pancake batter by putting the flour, baking powder, whole egg, butter, salt, cumin and milk in a mixing bowl, and whisk until smooth. Fold in the onion, chilli, and spinach into the batter mix.

4. Whisk the egg white to soft peaks and then carefully fold this into the batter.

5. Pour a little oil into a heavy frying pan and place on medium-high heat. For each pancake, ladle two tablespoons of batter into the pan and press down gently. You should get smallish pancakes (definitely not American style), about 7cm in diameter and 1cm thick. Cook for a minute each side, until a nice golden-green colour. Transfer to paper towels and keep warm.

6. Serve three pancakes per person and place a disc of the flavoured butter on top to melt. Serve with salad, or like me, some lovely smoked mackerel: