Dangers of a shared table

When it comes to nabbing a bowl of HK's best noodles, I've got the tai tai advantage: a flexible schedule.

Everyone else in HK (7.0 million people) goes to lunch at 1 o-clock. Which means there's no way on earth I could ever get a seat at lunchtime at tiny Lee Yuen Noodles & Congee, located directly behind the Japanese megastore SOGO in Causeway Bay.

Strategically, I roll in at 2:30 to find the place still jam-packed, but with one tiny stool free at a table in the front. "English menu?" No English menu, baby. Are you kidding? What do you want? Beef soup. Ok. Five seconds later, it's there. This place runs really fast, and for HKD 27/bowl (US $3.50) they have to churn a ton of people through this place to make any money.

There's a guy at the front, barely visible through the steamy window, sitting in tank top, shorts, slippers, pushing pork filling into wonton wrappers at 10x the pace I could do it.

So, the soup. Yellow noodles, very fine, a big tangled mass of them in a tiny bowl topped with beef brisket and a little bit of choi sum. Really good noodles. Just chewy enough and with a pleasant aroma, not too pungent (sometimes the smell of fresh noodles can be almost stomach-turning).

Then the brisket is melt-in-your mouth. Really. You just have to get used to putting large pieces of fat in your mouth in this town and not caring. But it's so good. The flavor has a subtle five-spice-edge to it, not too strong.

The broth is so fattening. I can see the golden rivulets of fat floating on the surface. It's slightly sweet, salty, mellow, and then mmm I catch a bit of something that tastes distinctively of orange peel. And just, just as I'm savoring that...

Whammo. Head-to-toe black, long hair flying, iPhone ringing, and -- no, no, no -- a big gust of cloying, heavy French perfume. Not even a floral or plant-based scent, but one of those heavy-duty wear-in-the-winter-in-front-of-a-fireplace kinds of scents. Undoubtedly flying across the street from the SOGO cosmetics counter, but why-oh-why at my table?

I console myself by buying an intriguing rice dumpling, wrapped in lotus leaves (?), hanging from the ceiling to enjoy in the non-perfumed privacy of my own home.

Yunnan 101

One of the reasons I love Yunnan Rainbow restaurant in Causeway Bay is that the head waitress critiques my choice of dishes.

The dish above -- Mixed Vegetable with Yunnan Sauce -- she told us at the end of the meal was not so hou sik (good eating).

The dish below -- Sauteed Chicken in Sesame Sauce -- was very hou sik.



Mind you, I chose the first dish while she stridently intervened in my ordering to recommend the second. All of this is took place in our tiny shared language of the 20 Chinese words I know and the 20 English words she knows, plus lots of eyebrow-raising and gesturing.

Ordering a Chinese meal is serious business. You need to take into account so many things: the weather (claypot rice in July, for example, is totally weird), a balance of hot and cold dishes, soup or no, noodles or no, a balance of meats (actually in Cantonese, the word "meat" is often used in lieu of "beef" so let's just say animal protein), the health and preferences of other diners... And forget about symbolic foods like noodles for longevity on your birthday!

This intro on banqueting (another class of dining in and of itself) from Scott Seligman's Chinese Business Etiquette gives you a sense of how complicated ordering can get:

"After the cold platter come two to four stir-fried dishes, followed by a soup and then three or four larger, hot dishes that are considered the main courses. Look for considerable variety in ingredients, methods of preparation, and tastes in these courses. Likely as not there will be some red meat, some poultry, some fish, and some vegetables; something steamed, something roasted, something stewed, and something deep-fried; and something sweet, salty, sour, and spicy."

Then...

"The signal that the meal is coming to an end is usually the presentation of a whole fish, the last of the main courses. This is sometimes followed by a starch, either rice -- a symbolic gesture, since people are seldom hungry for it at this point -- or noodles or buns."

Yikes, definitely advanced topics for me. Back to the not-so-hou-sik dish... It was salty and brine-y and intense. E thought it tasted like olives and seaweed. For him, yuk. For me, yum.

Meanwhile the hou-sik chicken was so hou sik that E, who generally boycotts bone-in dishes, piled up a small tower of bird parts on the edge of his dish. The chicken, in fact, was not sauteed. It was fried. But perfectly fried. Not at all greasy. The meat had a slightly tart flavor -- was this added in the cooking process or was it from a marinade? In any case, delicious. And contrary to indications, there was no sesame oil flavor at all, just a few sesame seeds tossed in for confetti-like visual appeal. Then a wonderful heap of green onion and coriander added a fresh, savory complement to the juicy meat. Hou hou sik.

We also ordered Cold Pork with Chili Sauce again. Thin slices of pork belly (I think), poached so the meat was very delicate, each slice looking like a cross-section of the earth: one stripe of fat, one stripe of meat, one stripe of fat. Back and forth. Intrigue for the tongue and teeth. E, who loves to dip, was excited by the large bowl of soy, coriander, green onion, vinegar, sugar, and who knows what other yummy things. A sauce to light up our taste buds while our teeth were occupied.



We should have been full at this point, but I had overzealously ordered Mushroom Dumpling with Rice Vermicelli.



Big, beautiful dumplings filled with little cubes of smoky black Chinese mushrooms and a whole variety of other vegetables. A fresh and chewy mouthful. There were also thin strips of beancurd sheet, which looked like the tortilla strips you find in tortilla soup. This is apparently distinctive of a Yunnan dish called Over-the-Bridge-Noodle. (Yunnan is famous for wild mushrooms, ham, and steampot chicken, among other things.)

Have you noticed how Vietnamese these dishes sound?

Here's why... Yunnan Province is one of the southernmost provinces in China, bordering on Vietnam, Burma, and Tibet. According to Lonely Planet, which I hope did its research, Yunnan is "home to a third of all China's ethnic minorities (nearly 50% of the province is non-Han)," which helps to explain why the food (and attitude?) is so different.

Stir-fried mixed pig's innards with scallions and ginger

Those Chowhound guys think they're so tough, rattling off dishes like blah blah blah pig's windpipe, blah blah blah pig's innards... Well, I can eat pig's innards too!

Actually, I was culling recommendations for less-obvious HK destinations from the China & Southeast Asia Chowhound board and was moved by the following post from Charles Yu:

"Their 'Stirred fry mixed pig's innards with scallions and ginger' is one of the most delicious dish I have ever tasted. The pig's liver was simply out of this world! After having eaten great food in numerous Michelin stars restaurants all over Europe, Japan and America, that speaks a lot!!!"

The restaurant in question is Tso Choi -- or "rough food" -- a pretty ordinary-seeming place near the Jordan MTR stop in Kowloon. Tso Choi supposedly belongs to Chua Lam, a famous HK food critic. Its specialty: all parts pig.

So off I went to test Charles Yu's favorite dish.

I was by myself, so I ate it straight-up, with a small bowl of white rice. It was an appetizing looking stir-fry with long pieces of spring onion and glossy brown bits of all shapes and sizes. The sauce itself had a strong wok flavor, similar to a flame-grilled flavor, with a straightforward soy note and a lingering meaty base. The spring onions had nice bits of blackness from where they'd been hit with the high heat from the wok. The sauce was lightly applied and not at all greasy.

So what about the meat? A texture shmorgasbord. There were very chewy long curly things (think this must be stomach lining or something), then slices of pig's liver, which were less chewy, but still quite firm, and then there were more delicate tubes of some sort. Only the liver had a distinct organ-y flavor. Eating all of these different textures, I felt like I was kind of rambling through the dish. Wonderful wok-y meaty flavor, bits of spring onion delicacy, and then this landscape of texture. Very interesting.

Wok ritual

In 2006 I went to an exhibition at the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) in San Francisco featuring artworks made by African slaves in America.

There were exquisite quilts with repeating patterns (similar to the one above) and also recordings of songs with lots of repetition. Something about the rhythmic-ness of it all suddenly struck me as being not particularly African but instead fundamentally about suffering.

When people are in deep emotional pain they sometimes keen, or rock back and forth, to comfort themselves. There is a way in which rhythm and predictability are soothing.

I wondered, Would people from a different continent have turned to the rhythms and patterns from their culture to cope as well? The patterns were clearly African patterns, but the fact that the art work was patterned or rhythmic may have had more to do with the *circumstances* than with the slaves' ethnicity. Maybe.

What does this have to do with Chinese food?

Last week I bought a wok and E asked me, "So, are you becoming Chinese?"

Of course not. One does not become Chinese. Neither is my desire to use a wok motivated by Sinophilia. A wok is simply the best tool for cooking the freshest produce available to me. There are many more (Chinese) stir-fry recipes for angled loofas and bitter melons than there are Western ones. Does the analogy make sense? I'm not trying to be Chinese, I'm trying to cook fresh food (while in China).

So, I bought a beautiful Japanese (ha!) carbon steel wok. At least I think I did -- had to count on the 20-something shop attendant to translate for me. If you can read the label below, please let me know what it says...





As soon as I saw the wok I felt deep affection for it. I love the idea of a wok. You may already know, but...you don't get a good wok by spending lots of money. A good wok is like a cast-iron pan: the initial product is cheap ($6-$40 USD), but what makes it a fantastic tool is years of regular use.

Eventually the surface takes on a brown-black patina that is naturally non-stick (or low-stick) and imparts a recognizable wok-flavor to food. It also gives off a little wisp of smoke when it is hot. Grace Young (from SF, by the way) has written extensively about woks in her Breath of a Wok and Stir-Frying to the Sky's Edge cookbooks. A picture of Young's wok (next to two other young woks) below, courtesy of Culinate:



So, you season a wok by either baking oil onto its surface in a hot oven or over a hot flame. When this is done, traditionalists (ahem) "open the wok" by stir-frying Chinese chives, spring onions, or yellow onions, and ginger, and sometimes pork fat, in order to remove the "metal" taste from of the wok.







I love this ritual. It's like you are baptizing the wok or breathing life into it with these foundational seasonings. Teaching it a few basic words before it learns to speak. Out of respect for my wok, I didn't use the wilted spring onions and shriveled ginger hunkered down in my refrigerator. Instead I went out to the markets and bought a beautiful, robust chunk of ginger and some feisty spring onions. Then I opened my wok...

Towngas delivers

You know how rare it is to be longing for something and then to actually have the experience you've been longing for?

Well, I went to my first Chinese cooking class at Towngas Cooking Centre yesterday, and it was really like someone had answered my prayers. I was feeling all hallelujah afterward.

Towngas is the gas company in Hong Kong. At first I thought it was funny that they have a cooking school there. Funny because what, are they encouraging you to use more gas? But it's really just fantastic community relations, as far as I can tell.

The Cooking Centre is on the lower floor of a big shopping complex in Causeway Bay. There is a nice, round reception space when you walk in filled with all sorts of cooking goodies (enamel-coated woks, fancy blenders, cookbooks...).

The teaching space itself is awesome. It's a big, long room with a U-shaped bar at the center and perfect little workstations distributed throughout the rest of the space. Each workstation has two gas burners, a wok, a counter with cutting board and cleaver, and a seasonings setup (e.g., salt, sugar, soy sauces, oil, etc.). There is also a nice, broad wooden stool and plenty of drawers to store your things.

The teacher had an amplified headset and spoke rapid-fire, alternating between English and Cantonese, with an assistant standing by. She was incredibly fast. There were 20-25 students there on a Tues between 2-4:30pm, six of which were male! (In fact, two were wearing matching necklaces and looked like gangster tough guys.) Everyone else: Chinese tai tais, helpers, a few young couples cooking together. And me, the only cracker in the place. Everyone was interested and enthusiastic and friendly.



In 1.5 hours, the teacher unraveled the mysteries of three basic Chinese dishes:

• Steamed Meat Cake with Dried Squid
• Stir-Fried Chicken with Green Pepper
• Thickened Beef Soup

To a Westerner, these probably don't sound terribly appetizing. What they are is the most basic version of dishes from which you can make endless variations. For me, perfect! These are building blocks.

"Have you noticed that when you eat a meat cake at a restaurant, it's juicy and delicious, but when you cook it at home it's dry and doesn't have much flavor?" Yes, I have. What's the secret? Water. You have to put water in *every* meat marinade. The meat absorbs water. If you add 1/8 tsp baking soda to 250g diced pork, it will make it softer and more absorbent. Those 250g of pork absorbed 5-6 tbls of water during the cooking demo. Also, you don't want to chop the pork too finely, otherwise, when you steam it, all of the juices will come out. The butcher can dice the pork for you. (Wow, really?)

Oh my gosh, so many fabulous tips answering all of these questions that come up when I cook Chinese food from cookbooks. Here are more:

• Ginger wine & cooking wines -- Ginger wine = ginger juice + cooking wine. There are three varieties cooking wine: white, shao hsing, and rose wine. White is for fish, shao hsing is sweeter like sherry and has many uses, rose is for roast meats. Ginger wine is used broadly in Chinese cooking to take the pungency out of things like steamed dried squid or to reduce the "bloody flavor" of bone-in chicken.
• Cleaver technique -- There's one basic knife for Chinese cooking: a monster cleaver. When you're shredding something, like a reconstituted mushroom, you should hold the opposite tip of the cleaver to keep it anchored. It gives you much more control.
  
• Soy sauceS -- Most Americans don't know there are two varieties: dark and light. You use both in Chinese cooking. Light is saltier. I think the "lightness" refers to the appearance. Light is more transparent and dark is opaque and a deeper color. In practice, light soy is the workhorse, goes in marinades, etc. Dark is used for color.
• Buying pork -- For the meat cakes, you want pork with 30% fat or "semi-fat pork." If you go to the butcher, you can ask for pork loin (10% fat) or pork belly (20% fat) or you can try "semi-fat" (never asked for anything like that in my life, but I'll give it a go).
• Sugar vs. salt -- If you have two pots in front of you and wonder which is which, remember that sugar is shinier.
• Triangles -- A common cut you'll see in stir-fries is a triangle. It's visually more interesting than plain old chunks. To make triangles, alternate the angle of your knife back and forth as you chop a strip of something. You can also cut your ginger into triangles too. (My diagrams below.)
  

• Chicken filets -- You can buy different types of chicken filets at frozen food stores in wet markets. One cut in particular has the drumstick and thigh meat removed from the bone in one piece. Much tastier than a chicken breast. But when you cut it, you should even out the thickness of the filet by cutting a flap into the thick part and folding out. It makes things cook more evenly.
• Oil in marinades -- Always add the oil at the very end, after you've let the meat soak in the other seasonings. Why? Otherwise the oil will coat the meat and prevent it from absorbing the other flavors. Aha!
• Sauces for stir-fries -- Stir-fries are quick (speak for yourself!), which is convenient, but the meat usually only marinates for 15-30 mins, which doesn't give it enough flavor. In addition to the marinade, you always make a little sauce to finish the dish that integrates everything. Add this bit by bit at the very end while tossing the wok so that it thickens. But finish quickly!
• Waterchestnut flour -- All these different flours get used in Chinese cooking. The most common are corn flour (the lightest), potato flour (more glutinous), and waterchestnut flour (4x as strong as corn flour). Waterchestnut flour gets used in a lot of thick soups because it is clear. But you must give it some time to dissolve because it has big grains.
• Salt on beef -- Don't do it! If you put salt on beef while cooking, it will make it hard.
• Meat soup -- Put the diced meat in a strainer and blanch briefly in boiling water while stirring with chopsticks, which will draw out the cloudy meat juice. There's enough flavor in the stock you're putting the meat into, so don't worry about losing the cloudy stuff. A thickened soup is ready when the ingredients float evenly rather than sinking to the bottom.

Oh boy, this is way too long. But I want these tips here for my records too.

Anyway, after all of that, we went to our stations and cooked as fast as we could in the remaining 45 mins to produce the stir-fry and the beef cake. Then we ate some samples. I'd never used a wok before, but mine came out beautifully -- but of course, I forgot to take a picture. Argh! Next time...

Hordes at Food Expo

Quick photo post...

Monday I wound up at the Food Expo at Wanchai Convention Center by accident. I'd read about it earlier, but decided not to go because it sounded like a trade show with everyday packaged foods.

Well, turns out you can get DEALS on everyday packaged foods, so everybody and their mother-in-law was there. Everybody.







Something that takes getting used to in HK is that there is *no stock* because there is *no space.* Any type of furniture, for example, takes six weeks or more for delivery. No place to store it. Never mind large quantities of cheap food. So no Costco or Wal-Mart or BevMo.

Instead there is a mad frenzy wheelie carts stuffed with mooncakes and XO sauce at the Convention Center.

Perhaps next year when my passion for Lee Kum Kee and other staple brands has intensified, I'll be there with my wheelie cart too.

By the book (Yan-kit So's book)

"Maybe you should relax..." my friend C-- says, her voice trailing off uncertainly.

Perfectionist that I am, I've learned over the years that this is code for "Your intensity is freaking me out, lady."

I've been describing, over a dinner of vegetarian Shanghainese at Kung Tak Lam, how I've been meticulously following recipes from Yan-kit's Classic Chinese Cookbook:



I carefully selected this book after pouring over dozens of others at PageOne bookstore, a statusy megaplex of books in the massive megaplex of retail that is Harbour City shopping mall in TST.

This book stood out from the others because if its detailed instructions on the ingredients, techniques, and traditions that make up Chinese cuisine. With photographs...including one showing a very proper-looking lady balancing a rice bowl on her lower lip.

So, in my efforts to propel myself out of a sink-hole of culture shock, I've been throwing myself at her recipes with the full force of my perfectionism. If I can't learn to speak the d*** language at the very least I will become fluent in the food. And, as with most things, I believe that the fast track to literacy isn't just memorizing by rote (or eating in this case) -- it's constructing my own sentences (cooking the dishes myself).

So...the moment of great intensity. After learning my way around Yan-kit's Kung Pao Chicken and Hoisin Chicken, I've learned that her dainty recipes need to be doubled to feed our American appetites.

Now, I am embarking on Willow Chicken, which is long and skinny, rather than square and chunky. As I stand poised with my rice cooking, greens prepped, everything in bowls in the order they'll be stir-fried, only the garlic left to chop...

I read that I will not be chopping. Instead, I'll be turning 6 (x2 = 12) garlic cloves into "silken threads," which entails carefully slicing into thin chips and then again into miniature matchsticks. I am a slow cook -- defrocking 12 cloves and turning them into silken threads is not a two-minute enterprise. F***.



But I do turn garlic into silk because, while C-- may think I'm nuts I believe that Yan-kit So would appreciate my interest in creating the perfect textures and mouth-feel of a medley of long and slender ingredients rather than a mish-mash of cubes and strips and spheres.

(I hope she will also appreciate that I pulled a measuring tool out of my sewing kit to ensure that my 1/5" strips of chicken were exactly that.)

Beautiful food

It was a big birthday last week. I won't tell you how big, but big enough to make me want to run and hide, despite having saturated myself with inspirational stories from Vogue's "The Age Issue" about sixty year-old women taking thirty year-old lovers.

E, who is 10 years older, was very sweet. He showered me in flowers: a rose for every year, lilies, hydrangeas, orchids, other things I couldn't identify. We accidentally intercepted the flower delivery in our lobby and I've never seen such a tiny woman carry so many flowers at once. There almost wasn't room for us in the elevator.

Then, despite my protestations that I really just wanted a bowl of pho, E transported me through an HK downpour to one of the toniest restaurants in town: Michelin 2-Star L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon. (NYTimes'2006 review)

We ate in the Jardin, rather than L'Atelier, one of the most sumptuous dining environments I have ever experienced. Glossy black lacquer everywhere, a wall of purple orchids, exquisite crystal and silver. And to top it off, a small *live* ensemble singing numbers from my seventies and eighties childhood (plus they did Sinatra's "My Way" at the end of our meal, to which I sang along quietly in my seat).

The food was seamlessly connected with the environment, its presentation and polish coordinated aesthetically with the walls, carpet, glass and servers' uniforms. The most remarkable example from our eight course tasting menu was LA SPHÈRE, a golden orb of sugar filled with panna cotta that looked more like a door nob in a luxury hotel than something to put in your mouth.

But, in fact, it cracked like a soft-boiled egg (echoing the actual egg with caviar we ate earlier in the meal). For me, the result was a pleasant mouthful of dreamy mousse with melting sugar shavings on my tongue. For E, who dove in with less contemplation, it was an unpleasantly sharp shard in his mouth. Ouch!

Connected

The sensual highlight of my trip to Oregon and California recently was this: Standing very close to a beautiful tall pine tree just off of Ridge Road in Ashland, Oregon and breathing in the faint scent of vanilla emanating from its bark.

It was wonderful and delicious and intimate. In that moment I was briefly stunned by my vulnerability, my unthinking faith in the goodwill of nature. Even as we engineer the world to be as efficient as possible for our uses, we count on plants and animals to express their essential nature in a forthright and healthy way. Trees continue wanting to be straight and strong even as we harvest them for lumber; animals continue wanting to be fat and happy, even as we raise them for meat.

At my parents’ house we say a non-religious grace:

Earth who gives to us this food,

Sun who makes it ripe and good,

Dear Earth,

Dear Sun,

By you we live. To you our loving thanks we give.

I have said this grace for *years* and thought about what it meant too, but never have I really gotten it like that.

(My mom’s beautiful glossy green Meyer lemon tree waiting to ripen, on the patio with her herbs)

Five and a half consecutive months in Hong Kong shifted my perspective on the world. All food and water is shipped or flown in. Everything of value is monetized. Financial interests are intertwined with every other type of human impulse. Having gradually adjusted my expectations to this, I found myself most moved by the sense of connection to the world and other people that I experienced through food during my visit. For example…

One night for dinner at my parents’ house I made chicken breasts with sage, lemon, olive oil, and butter over a lemon risotto that was seasoned with fresh thyme and rosemary from my mom’s garden. The flavor of the herbs was truly marvelous. It was an amazing sort of collaboration of growing and cooking; and making something for my parents that actually tasted good made *me* feel good.

(The table at G’s house before our Thanksgiving feast)

In San Francisco I was then treated to a wonderful Thanksgiving in July, prepared by my friend G--. Roasted turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, green salad, beets, and goat cheese, followed by strawberry shortcake. Hooray! But it’s not just G--'s generosity in providing such a beautiful spread. She uses the highest quality ingredients and customizes truly yummy dishes to the diets of everyone who comes so that we all have a good time (e.g., gluten-free stuffing, mashed potatoes with goat’s milk). Anticipating the meal, my friend B—enthused, “I love how you cook.” I do too. When you eat at G--'s house you feel truly cared for.

(A Café Gratitude dessert, courtesy of the raw seed blog)

And then, some of you will guffaw, but B—and I made our regular pilgrimage to Café Gratitude for exquisite raw vegan desserts and…well, for some attitude. After months of HK “service,” where waiters focus solely on delivering food, collecting cash, and turning tables, it was mind-blowing to get full on eye-contact, a sincere, warm smile, and a “question of the day” from our Gratitude server: What do you love about the world?

I love that the world is vast and mysterious. I love that we can travel *together* through the world – and life – even though our experiences are so radically different.