A. Wong

Last autumn we went to a cookbook festival. Cookbook Confidential had a bunch of talks, demonstrations and panel discussions, and it was brilliant. Diana Henry and Kay Plunkett-Hogge talked about how to write a cookbook, in such an inspiring way we immediately went home and pre-ordered Kay's book Heat (which has now been released and is wonderful. Diana didn't have a new book out). And Richard Turner, Dan Doherty and Andrew Wong talked about their food heroes.

Paul fell a little bit in love with Andrew Wong. Something about the way he talked about his approach to food really captured Paul's imagination, and he's been keen to get to A. Wong ever since, but somehow dinner in Victoria has never quite been the right thing. But on Friday night we did it.

Harbin

I started with a Harbin cocktail, which was a take on a margarita - absolutely divine. I ended up having two, because the bottle of Gewurztraminer Paul ordered was so nice he didn't want to share...

We couldn't be bothered with menu reading or decision making, so we ordered the ten course "Tastes of China" menu. Which was, I think, an absolutely brilliant idea.

smoked halibut

Before the ten courses began, we were served a couple of snacks. A little bite of something crisp, with smoked halibut and crunchy jellyfish, and a prawn cracker. It's the first time I've had a prawn cracker that actually tasted of prawn.

Not your average prawn cracker.

Chilli sauces

We were also given a pair of chilli sauces - one made with fermented bean curd, one made with shrimps - but the prawn crackers had so much flavour we only tasted these out of curiosity.

Then the menu proper began. The (completely charming and lovely) waiter introduced each course explaining where the original dish came from and some information about that region of China. Tastiest geography lesson ever.

點心

Dim sum duo.

Dim sum duo

The menu began in Hong Kong, with an incredibly delicate har gau and delicious siu mai. I am not generally a fan of foams, but the light citrus foam on the har gau was a very good friend to the sweet, bouncy prawns. The siu mai was firm and very porky. Neither one bore a lot of resemblance to the dim sum we buy frozen in Asian supermarkets.

The second course was listed as 茶叶蛋 63 degree ‘tea egg’ with shredded filo and satay powder but we were told that Andrew wasn't happy with his eggs and so something else would be served. I'm always absolutely delighted to be told that - even if it is something I am looking forward to, and to be honest, this was the course I had my doubts about because of Paul's known soft egg aversion - it just shows that the chef really cares about the quality of what they are sending out.

Instead, we were served 成都豆腐花 - Chengdu street tofu, soy chilli, peanuts, preserved vegetables. 

Chengdu street tofu

The waiter told us how when he was growing up, little old ladies would travel through the streets with a yoke over their shoulders: fresh soft tofu on one side and a variety of tasty toppings on the other. This was so delicious. This was the dish that tofu naysayers should be offered to cure them of their heresy. The tofu was a light, soft curd, the preserved vegetables gave a toothsome crunch and deep savour, and the peanuts added another level of crunch, fat and flavour. I committed my first crime against table manners for the evening and drank the remaining juice from the little bowl. It was so good I almost wept. I did actually comment to the waitress who cleared our plates that I didn't see how the meal could get any better after a dish like that. It did.

上海小籠包 

Shanghai steamed dumplings, ginger infused vinegar. 

Shanghai soup dumplings

I have never had a xiao long bao like these. Never made quite as much mess with one either. The "caviar" on top was a spherification of something delicious, I think. Ginger maybe? And in picking mine up I ruptured the silky fine skin and ended up having to drink the broth off my plate. I like to think that the staff viewed it as an appreciation of their skill and not me being a complete pig.

红烧臭鳜鱼, 蝦醬什菜 

Anhui province red braised fermented fish belly with mixed vegetables and dried shrimps

Apparently the thing in Anhui province is fermenting fish for days. Which sounds a bit like Surströmming - so I wasn't at all disappointed when the waiter told us that this was an interpretation of the dish, with the fermented flavour present in the sauce, to be dabbed on the shatteringly crisp fish skin and delicate braised flesh. It was very good, but the best thing about the dish was the accompanying vegetables, cooked with dried shrimp butter. I want to eat those vegetables again and again and again.

What the dish really needed was a bit of bread so we could fare la scarpetta - the sauces were so good and it was sad seeing so much go back to the kitchen. Even a spoon would have helped.

白灵菇扒鲍片

Braised abalone, shitake mushroom, sea cucumber and abalone butter

Braised abalone

I like to think I am a pretty open-minded sort of eater, but  sea cucumber... When I was a child, we had a holiday in the Cook Islands and I am still traumatised by standing on sea cucumbers in the sea around Rarotonga. I was not a bit sure about this dish! But everything else had been so delicious, and the story of how abalone is prized in China for its resemblance to old Chinese gold coins lulled me into taking a bite. And it was very nice. I think the small brown squares were the sea cucumber, but I couldn't really tell. They certainly weren't horrifying. The slices of braised abalone and the slices of shiitake mushroom were very well matched for flavour and texture - tender with a subtle chewiness - the crisp shreds of deep fried greenery added a lovely extra dimension, and the buttery abalone juice was just wonderful. You don't tend to taste much butter in Western Chinese restaurant food, but it's a very nice addition.

肉夹馍

Shaanxi pulled lamb ‘burger’ with Xinjiang pomegranate salad

The Muslim population of Shaanxi have contributed lamb dishes, fragrant with cumin, to the cuisine. I've tried it in a couple of different forms: as tender slices of fillet, crusted with cumin; as a murky hotpot with firey sauce and luscious chunks of meat to be sucked from the bones. 

This version - pulled lamb in a rich sauce, with lots of lovely accompaniments, to be stuffed into little buns - was the nicest take on the pulled meat trend that is swamping London restaurants, and a really enticing interpretation of the flavours.

薄荷牛肉卷

Yunnan seared beef with mint, chilli and lemongrass served with a pulled noodle cracker and truffle

Technology came to the party for this course. Our waiter had an ipad and showed us a short clip of Andrew pulling the noodles for these crackers. Mesmerising. Mine lacked structural integrity (or Paul had a knack that I lacked) and crumbled all over the table and my face, but the flavours and the crunchy noodles topped with soft mushrooms were excellent. If the Yunnan black truffles on top were not augmented with truffle oil, they are the most intensely flavoured truffles I've ever had, I think.

The seared beef with mint, chilli and lemongrass was a tribute to Yunnan's proximity to Vietnam, and the exchange of flavours along that border. It tasted very much like a combination of Chinese and Vietnamese food, with a sweet-ish but not gloopy chilli sauce and the freshness of mint (both raw and fried to crisps) and cucumber.

四川香辣手撕茄子, 宫保雞丁

 Sichuanese aubergine with Gong Bao chicken, roasted peanuts and ‘hot pot’ essence

Gong Bao chicken

I'd lost track of the number of courses we'd had at this point, but as soon as I saw the bowl of rice I knew that this was the last of the savoury dishes. We were instructed to eat the Gong Bao chicken (and told that it was very definitely not Kung Pao or Hong Bao) first, with our fingers, and then the aubergine. Which was most certainly the right way around. The aubergine, perfectly silky and luscious, had so much of the málà numbing fire sensation that I wouldn't have been able to taste the chicken. The plain rice was very welcome as a bit of a palate cleanser before the desserts.

北京 酸奶, 菠蘿

Chilli barbequed pineapple with Beijing street yoghurt

Apparently the reputation that China has for not using dairy products isn't entirely accurate - in Beijing, yoghurt is a very popular street food. This was a very nice one. Tangy but not too sour, a little gingery syrup and a chunk of warm, sweet, spicy pineapple.

雪圓子, 荔枝, 檸檬雪酪

Poached meringue, lychee granite, mango puree and orange sorbet

The final dessert was a cheffy play on the idea that the Chinese finish a banquet with a fruit platter. An orange made from two hemispheres of poached meringue, filled with a blood orange sorbet and coated in a crisp sugar shell. A fresh, perfumed mango mousse, a crunchy lychee granita (definitely to my taste - the aroma of the lychee without the excessive sweetness or slimy eyeball resemblance) and a red envelope of sugared lotus root crisps. We were told that when lotus roots are pulled up they are very long and keep coming and coming, so they are seen as a symbol of longevity. And as oranges are seen as symbolic of wealth, it was a wish for us to be long-lived and prosperous. Which is just about the nicest thing a waiter has ever said to me.

Sugared lotus root crisps

There was one more little treat in store though. A white chocolate mah jong tile, filled with strawberry ice cream. So pretty and just the right touch to end a very memorable meal. 

Kung hei fat choi and farewell Megan

Megan and Ellen

Over the last couple of years, many of my culinary adventures have involved Megan. She's commented a couple of times that my blog has been a useful record of her time in the UK, as we've eaten Lebanese food, had a weekend in Bath, met Nigella Lawson and generally eaten and drunk enjoyably together. But now, as they say, the end is near. Megan's visa is expiring and she has been inexplicably unable to find a man to marry, an unexpectedly British parent or an employer to sponsor her to stay.

Last Sunday we met to send her off in the appropriate manner, with food followed by booze.

Megan has made Soho and Bloomsbury her own and has been responsible for introducing many people (including me) to the extremely delicious xiao long bao served by Dumplings Legend. It seemed only fair that we should have one last dumpling feast. Somehow, I've never previously photographed our dumpling meals, even though they are terribly pretty, but this one obviously had to be commemorated.

China Town was dressed for festivities, preparing for Chinese New Year and welcoming the Year of the Snake. I think red is a particularly joyful colour placed against a miserably dull sky.


My previous visits to Dumplings Legend have all been in the evening, so I was really excited to see that they do a proper dim sum menu for lunch. No trolley aunties of course, but you can't have everything. The Australians at the table got all nostalgic about yum cha at The Marigold and East Ocean.

We had several baskets of xiao long bao, initiating Megan's housemate into the technique for biting them so you can suck the soup out of the dumplings. These were a bit more fragile than I've had there previously - several tore and spilled their soup while I tried to get them off the paper.

We also had a couple of different types of prawn dumplings, with lovely fresh crunchy prawns in them. And I ordered some barbecued pork pastries, although apparently I didn't take a picture of them.

A platter of barbecued meats, some salt and pepper aubergine and some choi sum rounded out the savoury selections.

To order the dim sum you have to tick boxes on a card. I knew it was only a matter of time before I ticked the wrong box (the cards are a bit confusing - I was going cross-eyed trying to see which box lined up with which menu item). And so it was - instead of the custard tarts which are for me an absolute essential, I managed to tick the box for Green tea and smoked plum pudding. As it was my mistake, the waiter quite reasonably showed no inclination to take the green tea and plum pudding away, or take it off the bill. So we ate it.

Turns out to have been quite a happy accident - I would never have ordered it intentionally, but it was delicious and I would have it again. It's one of those cubed layered agar jelly affairs (there's a picture on the Dumplings Legend menu page). A bottom layer of green tea jelly, a middle layer of vanilla-y custard-y substance and a top layer of fruity (one assumes smoked plum). The gelatinous texture isn't my favourite but the combination of creamy and fruity and smoky with an edge of green tea was very nice.

And the egg tarts were worth the wait.

Happy travels, Megsie darling!

Edited to add: Ellen got a picture of the aubergine and the green tea pudding and very kindly let me use them

Superstar Seafood

One of the things we have really missed being in the UK was yum cha. In Sydney, it was a very regular Sunday brunch or lunch destination. In London, they serve dim sum at dinner, and you don't even get the trolleys trundling past - you order from a menu.

So we were very keen to have some good dim sum in Hong Kong. We ended up back in Times Square (10th floor this time) at Superstar Seafood, a pretty well-known dim sum restaurant chain. Isn't the decor amazing? It looks like someone decorated the Fortress of Solitude for a hooker's hen night.

Disappointingly, while there were a couple of waitresses carrying trays and pushing trolleys, most of the ordering was done off a menu.

The har gau were pretty good, the char siu bao fluffy and well-filled, the "golden crispy platter" of tofu, pork and some other stuff was golden and crispy and not at all greasy. The spring onion pancakes were excellent, but I didn't like the curry sauce that came with them. For me, the pick of the dishes was the green beans in spicy pork sauce. We've had something similar at our local Chinese place but never done as well.

On balance, I would have to say that I prefer both the food and the atmosphere at Marigold in Sydney! But maybe we were just there a little late in the day (about 2pm).

Dim Sum

Yesterday afternoon my husband came home with a bottle of Bollinger. Which was very nice, but I was very hungry and it totally scuttled my plans of going for a late lunch to the pub.

So I ferreted around for something quick to eat. A friend on a forum had posted a recipe for her lup cheong omelette and since I had eggs, lup cheong and spring onions, I threw it together.

Bob's Lup Cheong Omelette

Slice your lap cheong finely on the diagonal, chop the spring onions (including the green parts, do NOT discard!). Beat the eggs, season with fish sauce, soy sauce and pepper (I like white but you could use ground black). Get the wok smoking hot (yeah baby), quickly stirfry the lap cheong and onions but don't let them burn. Then add the eggs, swirl them around the pan so that they don't get thick, move the edges into the middle and the middle to the edges so that it's nice and wrinkly and thin, and the sausage gets distributed evenly. Roll it/fold it over when the top is still slightly runny so that the centre will be soft. Serve. It all takes about 2 minutes.

The only variations I made were mixing the sliced spring onions with the eggs, so they stayed quite raw and fresh-tasting, and added a couple of sliced green chillies. It didn't roll particularly well because I used loads of sausage, but it tasted brilliant.

But after hoovering down the omelette, we were both still hungry, so I stayed with the dim sum theme (can't really call it yum cha, since we were drinking champagne) and put some frozen dumplings in the steamer. We had prawn har gau and pork shao mai left from the last Wing Yip visit, so even though there were more than we really needed, it would have been rude not to finish them. I did my usual soy, red vinegar and sesame oil dipping sauce, but instead of adding chilli sauce for heat I added a spoonful of roasted chilli oil. It added a wonderful smokey flavour.

As you can imagine, the planned BBQ chicken dinner did not take place.