Eating in Hong Kong 2 - Updated Sichuan and nostalgic food

We hardly ever ate Sichuan at home but the day after we arrived in Hong Kong, a friend took us to Yun Yan, reputedly the best Sichuan food place in Hong Kong.  The updated Sichuan style food was indeed very tasty and there were a couple of things that were new to us.

This is a famous traditional dish  燈影牛肉 "Light filtering beef" being a rough translation and self-explanatory.  The beef was so thin light filtered through.   It must have been baked and fried among other things but it was delicious - crisp, crunchy but still retaining the meat texture and flavour, a real treat and a great start to the excellent lunch. 

We've had pork dumplings before of course but never had them "injected" with soup at the table.  A fun novelty dish but also quite "sensational" - I guess the "injection" ensured the meat was swimming in soup and the first bite into the dumpling was an explosion of sensations.

It was a bonus too that the restaurant is in a glitzy mall in Times Square, Causeway Bay - us country bumpkins were gawking at the longest mall escalator ever and the curved escalator, another first for us.

This visit to Hong Kong was partly a nostalgia trip with the accompanying search for nostalgic food.  One of my childhood memories was weekend trips to the New Territories, Fanling in particular where one of my dad's friends owned a photo studio.  This is where we regularly took our family photos.  On the way to Fanling, we always stopped at Luen Wo market and ate at a food stall there that served supposedly the best fish balls.  The old Luen Wo Hui market was no longer open but we found this fish ball place which had a name close to the one in the old market - 水上人魚蛋粉 "Boat Dwellers Fish Balls"   The fish balls were very good,  fluffy but with texture, and the fried fish skin was so crunchy and tasty  we couldn't stop at one order - afterall, fish skin is healthy food, discounting the oil it's fried in...  It's also surprisingly not greasy!

After we finished the fish balls, we crossed the street to the famous 群記 Beef Balls and Pork Knuckles Shop.   It was jam packed with both locals and non and there was quite a lineup.  We were lucky to get a table.  I didn't find the pork knuckles particularly flavourful but it's possibly because we were already full with the fish balls and skin. 

Pork Knuckles

I believe I'm not the only one chasing nostalgia.  The restaurants must be catering to a whole generation of boomers who are at that stage of their lives.  Deep-fried shrimp toast, which used to be popular on restaurant menus when we were growing up but disappeared with the healthier food trend, reappeared on some restaurant menus.  Twice on this trip, we were invited to try this "unhealthy" but yummy dish. - the challenge was of course in deep-frying the toast without allowing it to get soggy with oil.  Dish below was served at the Securities Institute Club House, members only.  And like the rest of the food there, well-prepared and tasty.

This brought up another trend I noticed - "club" dining.  Different institutions run thriving clubhouse members only restaurants downtown, usually with excellent food and attentive service, which together with their exclusivity made them special for their regular customers. The two we were invited to were both packed on weekday evenings.  The other one was the Ning Po Residence Club restaurant, exclusive to members whose ancestors were from Ning Po, China.  

The pork aspic and the "drunken" chicken were two of my favourite dishes.  The pork aspic, in particular, was reminiscent of the ones my mom used to make for Chinese New Year.

The search for the past continued with a trip to Lamma Island, where I used to hike with my dad always finishing up with a good seafood meal on one side of the island or the other.  The memory of  poached fresh shrimp remained vivid all these years, including what fresh shrimp should look like (see below).  It was also an interesting process, the search for the right restaurant to eat at.  They all posted their prices on the tanks of seafood but when you started talking to them, they would offer special deals depending on how busy they were.  We had crab, shrimp, abalone and squid - all fresh-tasting as we were eating beside the fishing boats.

Fresh shrimp, with the head shell removed should have the skin over the "neck" in tact.  It was quite a sensation biting into this almost slightly bitter part of the shrimp when it's fresh.

We also headed to the south side of Hong Kong island to check out old haunt Stanley and was pleasantly surprised to see the beautiful Blake Pier moved here from old Central.  Even more of a surprise was the King Ludwig Beerhall in Murray House where we had lunch.  The pork trotters here tasted even better than the ones in Berlin - and they were huge.  

One trotter was more than enough for two and tasted great with German Bier.  

Next post:  Eating in Hong Kong 3 - Private Room Dining, this time, it's the real thing!

Eating in Hong Kong 1 - Stumbling into Michelin

I am a little leery of talking about eating in Hong Kong because it is almost impossible to do justice to the topic in a few lines or even a few posts.  But I would just approach it from my own limited experience in the two weeks we were there.  There were restaurants at every corner and they could go from very cheap to very expensive within that block, with not necessarily corresponding quality.  In general though, the food was good but not cheap. This was particularly noticeable after we've spent the previous two weeks eating in Vietnam, one of the most incredibly inexpensive travel destinations we've ever been to apart from Cambodia.

According to Open Rice, the 2014 Michelin Guide to Hong Kong restaurants listed 62 starred restaurants, including five 3 stars and thirteen 2 starred restaurants.  In addition, there are 69 "Bib Gourmand" restaurants listed and explained as "good value" restaurants.  We were quite surprised when without looking for any, we stumbled into three of these on our last weekend in Hong Kong when we stayed in Sheung Wan, just west of the Central district.  Since we only had three meals that weekend, we could say we dined Michelin at every meal.  What a scoop!

The Sun Yuen BBQ Restaurant (新園燒臘店) - hardly a restaurant, rather a takeout place with a few tables.  I had scouted out the place in a walkabout earlier in the afternoon and tempted by the BBQ goose in the window had thought we'd come back for dinner.   Unfortunately by the time we showed up for dinner, they were sold out of both geese and ducks.  It seemed that you have to book ahead if you really wanted one - that's how busy they were.  We had to settle instead for soy sauce chicken (done just right) and booked half a goose for the following evening.  

It would have been interesting to compare it to the one we tried at Yung Kee Restaurant which we visited the day we arrived.  The Yung Kee goose did not disappoint - it was very juicy and tasty with crispy skin (you can see the evidence below).  But the price was exorbitant and that may be one reason why the restaurant had been dropped from the Michelin list - no longer a "good value".  It had also reportedly fallen out of favour with the locals.  

Yung Kee goose (half) served on a white plate...

Brunch the following day was at nearby Lin Heung Tea House (蓮香居). I remembered this restaurant from my childhood and thought I'd just visit to see what is was like.  I was surprised to see it on the Michelin list.  While it was a bit of a novelty for me to see how they have maintained the old style restaurant with communal tables, a separate big bowl at the table for customers to rinse their cups in hot water, waiters walking around with a large kettle of hot water - the food was not particularly good.

Be prepared to share a table, no questions asked

Interesting table with shelf underneath for the cup rinsing bowl and newspapers.  The man we shared the table with was a regular who came for brunch every day.  It was an interesting cultural lesson to hear his social commentary, but I wouldn't do that every day...

A short block from Sun Yuen, we came across Chan Kan Kee Chiu Chow Restaurant (陳勤記) famous for its brine-cooked goose and yet another Michelin recommendation.  Since it was slightly more comfortable than Sun Yuen, we cancelled our BBQ goose reservation at Sun Yuen and ate here instead.  The goose was very good as was the fried oyster pancake, the latter a little on the greasy side.  It was a good enough meal for our last day in Hong Kong.

Earlier on our trip, we were wandering around Mong Kok district in Kowloon at lunch time and found ourselves looking into the window of this one specialty restaurant, likely a gentrified former street food stall - Superior Rice Roll Pro Shop (第一腸粉專賣店) - another Michelin recommendation although that was in 2012.  

The steamed turnip pudding, one of maybe ten items on the menu, was very "turnipy" and tasty

The rice rolls, their specialty, were perfect - just the right thickness and texture.  They came with different kinds of stuffings, some of them quite unusual.  Their house specialty, preserved vegetables and pork stuffing was a little too salty.  But the greens and mushroom stuffing was very good. 

And here's the chef!   

Each roll individually steamed, rolled and stuffed.

We didn't try the Three Stars L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon but checked out their café.  The almond croissant was marginally better than the one at the Mandarin café but still not as good as the one at the Patisserie la Cigogne in Toronto.  The Patisserie has the distinct advantage of being only a 20 minute drive from my house and I could time my arrival with the almond croissant's emergence from the oven - you've guessed it, I made a special trip this morning to get mine, and was it ever the best!

Pastries at the Café Robuchon

Next post:  Eating in Hong Kong 2 

Eating in Saigon

Our first morning in Saigon started with a trip to the market with our last cooking class on the tour (Saigon Cooking School).  The huge Cho Binh Tay market in Saigon was a bigger version of all those other Vietnamese markets we saw in Hanoi, Hue and Hoi An, and obviously with more selection. The instructors pointed out basically similar things so I will not repeat myself.   Please check the Travels with rarecat blog post on Saigon Streetscape for photos from this market.  We were at the tail end of our tour and by then, the cooking class seemed more like a practice session on spring roll rolling - nothing new.

What was new was the Lotus leaf fried rice.  The new ingredient I noticed was the lotus seed.  I have never seen that in a fried rice dish and it's something to keep in mind.  I've never used a fresh lotus leaf either although this dish is also Chinese.

Fried rice ingredients:  chicken, shrimp, lotus seed, carrots, peas

Giant paddle for stir-frying and look at the neat way it was served.  The rice was put on the lotus leaf which was used to line a bowl.  The sides of the leaf were then folded over the rice and then inverted onto a dish.

The lotus leaf was given a cross-shaped cut across the top and voilà - fried rice in fragrant lotus leaf flower!    

That was our lunch.  For dinner, we tried three different styles.  The first night we arrived in Saigon, we were too tired to go further than a block from our hotel.  This restaurant, possibly a chain, looked like it was visited by locals and the food was quite good, the prices reasonable.  We were seated beside the window and noticed customers who had finished their dinners were waiting outside for the jockey to bring in their scooters from the parking lot. There was valet parking for scooters!

One of our dishes - an excellent mushroom hotpot

Our second night, we ate at a restaurant recommended by our guide:  Nha Hang Ngon. This was a little like the Market Restaurant in Hoi An with one arcade lined with street food style stalls.  Customers ate in an open courtyard inside a two-storied yellow colonial building.   Of course it's not street food - it just created a street food ambiance which was really nothing like the real thing, but tourists loved it and the place was packed.  You can check out the rave reviews on Tripadvisor if you are planning a trip.  I thought our meal was good and I liked the open air courtyard.  But it was not my idea of authentic Vietnamese street food.

Excellent steamed Vietnamese crab

The colonial courtyard

Our last night in Saigon, we ventured out in a cab to an area where we were told we could find Vietnamese street food.   We were not even sure if this was the real thing even though the entire kitchen was on a street near the market, and all the tables were out on the street. It just looked too organized and on too large a scale - nothing like the street food stalls we visited in Hanoi.

The outdoor kitchen

Communal tables on the street

Our neighbours were cooking strips of meat on a piece of brick over a coal fire in a bucket - looked like too much work for too little return!

We opted for something easier, seafood wrapped in foil and a hotpot of morning glory and pho.

It was good - we were hungry!  
That marked the end of our Vietnamese culinary experience.  Looking forward to more food in Hong Kong.   

Fiori di Zucca Fritti (Fried Zucchini Blossoms)

Zucchini seeds are usually planted in the beginning to the middle of July.  By early August there would be lots of blossoms, male flowers on long stalks and female flowers carrying baby squashes at their ends.  Upscale produce shops usually carry only the female flowers because of the eye-appeal of their cute little zucchinis.  Farmer’s markets also sell the much more inexpensive male flowers.  Mr. A bought a big bundle of them for just a dollar (about 100 Japanese yen).

     

$1 worth of male zucchini flowers

Male zucchini flowers with stems removed

The usual way to cook zucchini blossoms is to fry them after removing the stamens (male) or the pistils (female).  Mr. A followed a Fiori di Zucca Fritti recipe from Cucina Giuseppina, a cooking school in Certaldo that “rarecat” attended during her trip to Tuscany, Italy.  Here is the gist of the recipe:

1.       Crack 3 eggs into a bowl; add 2 heaping tablespoons of flour per egg.   

2.       Add 2 ice cubes into the mix.  Stir to combine.  Add water if necessary till the batter has the consistency of whipping cream.

3.       Heat an inch or less of oil in a frying pan (there is no need to use as much oil as for deep frying).  Test the temperature by dripping a little bit of batter into the oil.  It should cook reasonably fast but should not turn brown right away.

4.       Dip the flowers into the batter one at a time.  Wipe flower along the side of bowl; turn flower 180 degrees and wipe again to remove as much of the batter as possible.  The flower should have a very thin coating of batter.

5.       Fry them in oil till done, cooking time should be 4 or 5 minutes per side.

6.       Salt flowers while they are still hot.

Mr. A followed the recipe with two minor changes.  Instead of getting a smooth consistency, he stirred the ingredients just enough to incorporate them into a lumpy batter.  He did it deliberately to mimic the way chefs at high-end tempura restaurants in Japan made tempura batter.  Mr. A also used much less than an inch of oil so his fried blossoms turned out rather flat instead of fluffy.  Mr. A tasted the batter and salt when he ate the fried plain flowers but not much else.  He found out later that he was supposed to eat the fritto right out of the pan while it was super hot.  Mr. A also used some of the blossoms as a topping for a bowl of Japanese somen noodle. 

Frying male zucchini flowers

Somen noodle with fried zucchini blossoms and pork

A few days later, Mr. A fried some stuffed female zucchini blossoms.  He blended fresh ricotta (about one tablespoon per flower), some fresh Mozzarella and a small amount of Parmigiano-Reggiano in a food processor until they form a smooth paste.  He stuffed the flowers and fried them in a cast iron frying pan with about half an inch of oil.

Fried female zucchini blossoms with cheese stuffing

The fried blossoms looked much better this time.  They also tasted better.  The stuffing was soft and fluffy (ricotta) with some creaminess (Mozzarella) and nutty (Parmigiano).  The baby zucchinis were delicious. 

The flowers themselves were still bland.  Mr. A wondered whether stuffing them with a paste of rock fish and white shrimp would help.  That would be a future project.

Mekong Delta Lunch

After a few hours going up a Mekong tributary on a small boat, we were happy to be walking on land to what looked like a very rustic restaurant in the middle of nowhere.  Of course when we sat down in the open air dining room with a thatched roof, we noticed there were other tourists there and it was obviously a restaurant created for foreigners.  

But still the food served was local and we were pleasantly surprised by the main course - an elephant ear fish that was crunchy through and through.  It's not often that we are able to taste a fish that has been fried and still remain crisp on every side right to the end of the meal.   The way it was served obviously had something to do with that.  The four of us were almost bickering (in a friendly way) over who will have that last crunchy fin!  That's what rational civilized adults were reduced to when it came to good food.

Starter spring rolls with the see-through wrapping - my favourite

The elephant ear fish served on a stand.  I've since noticed other restaurants in town serving fish the same way but it's odd that the first time I'd noticed it was in a restaurant in the middle of nowhere in the Mekong delta.

The server scraped off both sides of the fish which remained crunchy throughout

Other less memorable dishes 

Shrimps were of course very fresh

Part of the restaurant - quite rustic, isn't it?