Dragon eel? 盤龍鱔

Eating eel can be an acquired taste.  I can remember being repulsed by the thought of this slithery worm like creature - why would I want to eat it?  And I didn't, not when I was growing up.  The eel my family had was usually served in a hot pot and was considered a specialty dish.  I have since outgrown this distaste and really enjoyed the eel I've tried in sushi houses (not the same kind of eel) and also in Chinese restaurants.  In fact, the highlight of our private room dinner at Delicious was for me, the steamed dragon eel with orange peel 陳皮蒸盤龍鱔.   It was the first time I have tried this dish and it was superb!  The eel meat was tender and tasty, not at all fishy or slithery and the black bean sauce lightly flavoured with orange peel enhanced the eel without overpowering the taste.  I loved it!

So then I became curious - what is this thing?  I'd seen live river eels on our trip to New Zealand when we visited one of the conservation parks near Wellington (Mt. Bruce Wildlife Centre).  As you can see below - these were huge!  I never thought then I'd be eating them!

 I found this video on Youtube that shows you how to cook a dragon eel.  It seems that the most difficult part was slicing up the eel into rings and still managing to keep it whole.  The chef in the video only showed the cut up eel but didn't demonstrate how to do it.  He did emphasize that the stomach should not be cut open in order to maintain the taste.  So the tricky part then is cleaning the stomach without opening it up and not cut through the spine so that the eel remains in one piece.  The rest seems really quite easy to do.

Prepare the sauce (basic ingredients of salt, sugar, oyster sauce, black bean sauce, sesame oil, pepper, etc.), roll the eel in it then arrange the eel curled up on the plate and steam.  The chef in the video also said that the best eel came from Australia near the river estuary as that's where there is a mix of freshwater and salt water giving the eel a distinct flavour and texture.  Have a look:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDCBK4142ww

A Custom Non-traditional Chinese banquet (私房菜)

Typically, banquets at Chinese restaurants have set courses that are pretty standard - two first courses with seafood, shark's fin or other seafood soup, chicken, lobster, fish, rice and noodles.  Some restaurants are willing to prepare custom dinners made up of non-traditional courses with special orders.  And you would order that if you want to try some specialty dishes that you wouldn't normally be able to try if you don't have enough people at the table.  So you organize a group (ten is the magic number) and place a special order for a 私房菜, literally translated as "private room/home dinner".  Historically, the "private home" would sometimes be the home of the cook and not necessarily in a restaurant.*  We did this at Delicious Restaurant, a very small restaurant with only 6 - 7 tables.  All ten courses were prepared by chef Patrick Chuang and they were all consistently excellent! 

We started with a tasty soup that was steamed in a ceramic pot.  There were goji berries, conch, chicken feet, mushrooms and other Chinese herbs in the soup.  Next came the appetizer, three different kinds of fish and taro deep-fried in a light batter.  My favourite was the taro.

This is nappa cooked with Chinese ham - the vegetables soaked up the taste from the ham

Deep-fried prawns and squash - almost like a tempura - cooked just right and so crispy you can eat the shell

Shanghai bokchoy with abalone mushrooms - lots of greens to balance off the fried foods

My all time favourite - the best Hainan chicken in town - even the breast meat is tender

HIghlight of the evening - steamed dragon eel - a really special dish done to perfection (more on this in the next post)

Braised pork trotters with dried vegetables served with Chinese steamed buns (see an earlier post on this melt-in-your-mouth specialty)

Fried dungeness crab - flavoured with lots of fried garlic and shallots

All these followed by home made red bean sweet soup (not the gooey kind standard in most restaurants) and the house special chrysanthemum gelatin.  The most amazing thing was there was hardly anything left over at the end of this - just some rice!

*A contact in Hong Kong indicated that this type of dinner was very trendy when there was an economic downturn in the late 1990's.  Some operate illegally in residential buildings but not much was done about them due to the economy.  They came in different grades, ranging from reasonable to pricey but it was not easy to keep up and many did not last very long.  

This was typical of the traditional 私房菜 which, according to the Chinese Wikipaedia originated from the late Ching Dynasty, again resulting from people falling on hard times and trying to make a living from their home.  Many of these were not chefs by profession (and in fact often came from formerly well off families with high positions in court) but were obviously good enough at it to make a name for themselves.  

Braised Pork Trotters 紅燒元蹄

With the approach of Chinese New Year, the talk of braised whole pork trotters brought back memories of the festival in the "old country".  Typically a winter dish because of the high fat content and the relatively long cooking time, it is also a Chinese New Year dish because of the "wholeness" and the lucky symbolism of the pork trotters (supposed to bring unexpected lucky money).  Done properly, pork trotters melt in your mouth and don't taste greasy at all - which could also be a problem as you throw your cholesterol count to the wind and dig in.

My mother made the best braised pork, whether she made it with trotters or with the shoulder.  I mentioned in a previous post her recipe called for browning of the whole trotter with skin on all sides in a heavy pot, then adding the red fermented soy bean curd (南乳) with onions, anise and pepper.  The braising took a couple of hours.   By the time the pork was done, the sauce would be reduced to the right consistency, the skin and the fat would have attained an almost translucent texture that would give you that melt-in-your-mouth sensation.

One of the best braised whole pork trotters I tasted in a restaurant was again made by chef Patrick Chuang at Delicious 好清香 (see my earlier post on Pork belly buns).  We made a return visit just to try this special dish which had to be ordered in advance.  It was worth the trouble of preordering.   While the trotter was done just right, the dried vegetables on which it was served was even better.  It was tasty but not salty and it had taken in all the flavours of the braised pork.  A whole pork trotter was obviously too much for two but it tasted even better the following day so we took half home and ordered another dish just to save our arteries.

Pork belly in Richmond Hill 肉夾包

We're on a roll here!  After Akujiki took us from 18th century Yangzhou, China via his Le Creuset pork belly in California to noodle shop in a Shanghai alley, I got into a frenzy over the mere talk of pork belly.  We had lunch at Delicious 好清香, a Fukien style restaurant in Richmond Hill, just north of Toronto.  It is usually my destination for Hainan chicken.  But as we were finishing, I noticed the table beside us packing up one of the signature dishes of chef Patrick Chuang - braised pork trotters 红烧元蹄.   It was too late to order one to take home for dinner - Patrick said it would take an hour to make another one but he offered me his own  肉夾包 (Pork belly bun) which would only take a few minutes.   What a treat it was!

The melt in your mouth pork belly was topped with orange day lily and cilantro in between a mildly sweet bun.  What a wonderful contrast in textures and taste!  It's authentic Fukienese flavour - and you don't have to go all the way to downtown Toronto to Momofuku (or pay the much steeper price) to taste the now trendy pork belly bun.

After lunch, I found an unbelievably lean piece of pork belly at the butcher's.  Guess what's for dinner tonight!  I plan to try Akijiki's Le Creuset pork belly without the Le Creuset pot.  Sacrilegious, I know, but worth a try...

Addendum

Pork belly made with Circulon pot - not having tasted the one made in the Le Creuset, can't really compare.  But I think next time, I'll make this with the fermented red bean paste my mom used to braise pork with.  She would brown the pork (trotter or belly) with chopped onion, add the red fermented bean paste with sugar, then braise it on the stove on low heat.  This would result in a naturally reduced sauce at the end of the 2 hour cooking.  In the dutch oven, there is very little liquid reduction.  So what do you do with the sauce?!  I'm sure Akijiki would have a creative response.