Pork Belly - Popo's way

Pork belly has become increasingly popular in recent years particularly with the new generation of youthful foodies who are not cholesterol shy.   I recall from when I was growing up in Hong Kong that the best kind of pork belly was the "five layered belly" (五花腩) and this was especially a treat when you saw this cut on the roast pig sitting in the BBQ shop window.  These days, it's not as difficult to find this cut in North American supermarkets as it was 30 years ago.  When my mother (my children called her Popo) made braised pork then, she was stuck with pork shoulder if she wanted skin.  Now we have the luxury of choice.

I was thrilled to find a perfect sample of this "five layered belly" at the supermarket the other day - skin, fat, meat, fat, meat in five thin layers.  The way I cooked it is a combination of my mother's method and Mr. A's method of using Le Creuset in the oven.  My mother would let the pork braise on the stove for a couple of hours, turning it every half hour or so and in general fussing over it.  Mr. A's use of Le Creuset is more streamlined.

Start by dipping the pork in dark soy to colour the skin.  Then brown the skin in a heavy pan over medium high heat. Remove from heat when slightly brown.  Pour off any pork fat that has been rendered.  Heat up a tablespoon of vegetable oil in the Le Creuset pot and sauté garlic and a large chopped up onion.  Add red bean curd for flavour.  

Red bean curd comes in a ceramic jar as you can see below and easily available in Chinese markets in North America (and yes, even in San Jose). One and a half squares of this red bean curd, mashed up with a little bit of sugar added would be sufficient for this piece of pork belly.  Finally add high quality fermented soy sauce, dark soy and rock sugar. When the mixture is boiling add pork belly. Put the covered pot in a 300 degree oven for approximately two hours.  Flip over the pork belly at the half way mark.  It's done when you can easily insert a chopstick.  

For cholesterol shy people, cook the pork belly the day before so you can peel off that solid layer of fat over the sauce the following day.  Like most braised meat, the pork belly tastes better overnight.

"Five-layered" pork belly

Dipped in dark soy

Red bean curd

Braised in Le Creuset pot

The finished pork belly - five layers still visible

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.  

Japan Has Good Chinese Food

One expects the best Chinese food in Hong Kong, China and Taiwan.  Would one be surprised that Japan has excellent Chinese food as well?  

I hope my photographs, taken in some restaurants in the Tokyo and Osaka areas, will convince you that it is indeed the case.  The five dishes, in order, are whole crispy skin chicken 炸子鷄, braised abalone 蚝皇鮑魚, scrambled egg with shark fin and crab meat 蟹肉桂花翅, roasted pork belly 焼腩, and braised suppon (soft shell turtle) 红焼国產山瑞.  

           

 Not all Chinese restaurants in Japan deliver such refined dishes.  Most places serve up Japanese-Chinese cuisine that has been modified to suit the Japanese palate.  Some dishes are particularly popular – shumai 焼売 and shouronpou 小籠包 for dim-sum; banbanji 棒棒鶏 and kurage (海蜇頭 jellyfish) for appetizers; mabo-doufu 麻婆豆腐 for main dish; and of course chahan 炒飯.  Champon ちゃんぽん, a noodle soup topped with stir-fried seafood, pork, vegetable, is also well liked.  Ramen 拉麵, another version of Chinese inspired noodle soup, together with gyoza 餃子, are probably the most popular cheap fast food around Japan.  Yes, Chinese restaurants are everywhere and Japanese likes them.

On the 2012 World’s 50 Best Restaurants List

The 2012 edition of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants List was released at the end of April (see www.theworlds50best.com/awards/1-50-winners/).  The annual list was first published by the Restaurant Magazine in the U.K. in 2002 and has since been expanded to 100 despite its name.  

There is no doubt that the restaurants on the list are good.  Noma (#1) deserves to be congratulated for popularizing the foraged food trend.  But one may argue whether these 100 restaurants are really the best (I doubt), and whether their ranking makes sense (I doubt that as well).  Let me illustrate with a few observations.

The U.S. has the most number of restaurants on the list: 8 of the Best 50 and 14 of the Best 100.   On the other hand, Japan has only two.  This is curious given Japan has been awarded more Michelin 3 stars than any other country in the world.  So much is clear: the Best 50 List panelists and the Michelin inspectors use different methodologies.  

Another observation: Thomas Keller has two restaurants on the list.  His flagship, The French Laundry, is ranked #43 while its sibling, Per Se in NYC, is #6.  The two serve similar, if not identical, dishes.  They do have different ambience – Big Apple chic versus rustic wine country charm.  Can that explain the huge difference in their ranking?  

The Restaurant Magazine states that it has no hand in the making of the list.  It just tallies up the entries of 837 panelists from around the world.  It further details the rules which seem fair and objective.  But the Devil is in the details.  

For 2012, the world was divided up into 27 regions to “fairly represent the global restaurant scene at the current time”. One country, the U.S., has three of the 27 regions (that is 11%).  That explains the high number of U.S. restaurants on the list. 

Asian cuisines are heavily under-represented.  Only six of the Best 100 serves “Asian” food if one includes teppan-yaki, which is an U.S. invention, and non-Asian operations.  The six are #28 Ryugin (Japanese, Tokyo), #39 Waku Ghin (teppan-yaki, Singapore), #50 Nahm (Thai, Bangkok, Australian owner/chef), #84 Bukhara (Indian, New Delhi), #93 Lung King Heen (Cantonese, Hong Kong) and #100 Hakkasan Mayfair (Chinese, London, Abu Dhabi owner).  In his own words, David Chang’s #37 Momofuku Ssam Bar and #79 Momofuku Ko are not Asian.  China has six restaurants on the list, and five of them are western.  Most likely this is because all but one of the 27 regional chairpersons were westerners, and they influenced the make-up of their panels..

Despite its built-in systemic bias, I enjoy reading the list every year.  It is fun to see who has moved up, or down, or get dropped.  Just don’t take the list too seriously.  

Food in Taipei

Our first stop after we checked into our hotel in Taipei was the famous Din Tai Fung.  We've tried the famous pork dumplings at the Toronto branch before it closed and found it mediocre at best.  But we were told we have to try it at the Michelin starred original flagship store on Yong Kang Street in Taipei, and so we did.  It was indeed excellent.  I subsequently learned that each dumpling had to have exactly 18 folds at the top to give it the right consistency when one bit into it.  I just counted the folds on the dumplings in my photo - there were indeed 18 folds!

We also ordered drunken chicken and braised pork but we were most impressed with the noodles in meat sauce (炸槳麪), a dish that I remembered from childhood and thought I would never find a place that could duplicate what I had, having ordered them wherever I visited in North America and Hong Kong.  But I found it here in Din Tai Fung.  It was worth the wait!

Al dente noodles in meat sauce that tasted "just right"!

The Din Tai Fung main branch - a very busy main floor that didn't look like a restaurant, with takeout orders and kitchen - guests waited outside on the street; waiting time was noted on an LED board; ushers organized and assigned tables on the upper floors with military precision.

As we were just around the corner from the night market, we decided to explore it right after dinner, which was a mistake as we were really too full to try anything.  But it was an eye-opener at least to see the night market in action.  

What were these people lining up for?

                                                                         

                                                                Scallion pancakes!  

I tried one the following day - layers of flakiness...mmm...

Local oysters ready for making into oyster pancakes (below)

Street dinner...looked yummy!

Restaurant dinner - even yummier!  (Thanks to my cousin for this delicious meal at the Howard Plaza which started with crispy Peking duck)

Grilled yams!  They tasted even better when eaten on the street!

Charcoal grilled dried squid on the way to Golden Falls outside Taipei

More street food on our last day in Taiwan when we travelled to Jiufen, an old town about an hour from Taipei.    Coming up on Travelswithrarecat

Awesome Vegetarian Banquet

I visited the Chi Lin Nunnery in Hong Kong on a recent trip and had one of the best vegetarian feast I've tasted at its restaurant Chi Lin Vegetarian. What made it so exceptional is that there was no "pretend" food - there was no "vegetarian duck" or "vegetarian bbq pork"  kind of dish - no fake stuff made with soy or artificial ingredients. Most of the dishes were fresh vegetables in combination with innumerable varieties of fungi.  Lunch was an amazing ten courses (for our group of ten) beautifully presented and prepared. The meal was the crowning glory in the visit to this awe-inspiring temple complex - the ambiance was sublime, to say the least.  It is no wonder the restaurant is packed, with reservations made months in advance.

Mini baby zucchinis with fungus - love the contrast in textures between the crunchy baby zucchinis and the fungus!

Beet salad

Golden tremell (yellow fungus) broth

Mushroom stew

Mushroom dumplings with broccoli - the dumplings were delicious pockets of chopped mushrooms and bamboo shoots

Pumpkin and cheese tempura

Asparagus fungus stir fry

  

Tofu dish with fungus

Choy sum with fungus

Fried rice with white beech mushrooms

Healthy fruit dessert

Menu

Nan Lian Gardens is part of the Chi Lin Nunnery temple complex

Chinese New Year dish 蠔士髮菜 or 好事發財

The signature Chinese New Year dish is named after two of its ingredients: oysters and dried seaweed,  in Chinese 蠔士髮菜 (pronounced "ho see fat choi") and in fact, it's just the sound of the dish that made it "lucky" for Chinese New Year, where a good name is everything.  The oyster and sea weed sounds like "good things and prosperity" 好事發財 ("ho see fat choi") making it the key dish in any Chinese New Year dinner (for the Cantonese speaking at least).

Traditionally at my home, my mom would make this dish for Chinese New Year's eve, serve half of it and have the other half for the second day of the new year, when we have the first real dinner to mark the beginning of the year.  While the two key ingredients gave the dish its name, it is in fact made with quite a few more things, all of which have their own significance.  I emphasized "at my home" because every family has its own interpretation of tradition and I'm sure if we were to ask 10 Chinese families what they put in their Chinese New Year dish, you'll get 10 different answers.

Dried oysters (as opposed to fresh) are the best for this dish.  These need to be soaked for a few hours or overnight in just enough water to cover.  The seaweed is not just any seaweed.   It has to be "fat choi".   See picture below - and for origin, check out this wikipedia article, it may come up in Chinese, just click translate.  It is black and looks like human hair, hence its name translates as "hair veggie".  It is quite expensive and there are fakes around.  I've never bought it in Toronto.  The supply I had was given to me more than 10 years ago.  It's dried, it will last forever in the fridge but it won't last long on the table.  Alas, this is the last of my supply - I will have to start looking for it, maybe in Hong Kong...

Dried seaweed or "fat choi"

dried oysters

Other ingredients:  quail's eggs (birth, new life), dried mushrooms, bamboo shoots (spring, new life), lotus root (for meeting the right companion), dried scallops, enoki, dried bean curd can all be included.
Sometimes pig's tongue is also added for more luck (tongue in Chinese is "lei", sounds like luck).

Quail's eggs

dried mushrooms

Lotus root, bamboo shoot

Enoki mushrooms

All ingredients are stir fried in a bit of oil and ginger, garlic, starting with the oysters and mushrooms. Add some stock and simmer for a few minutes before adding the other ingredients, leaving the seaweed last because they soak up the sauce.  I usually leave them in one lump as they tend to split up otherwise and would be hard to find.  The boiled and peeled quail's eggs are best browned in a separate pan so they don't break up as easily.   Add these after everything else is cooked.

發財好事