Meaty bliss

It's Easter morning and I am sitting in McDonalds in London in my pajamas.

It's what we glorious global travelers do when our handsome sweethearts catch a miserable cold on the 15-hour flight from Hong Kong to London and spend the night rocking our tiny hotel room with deep, chesty coughs. We eat all of the chocolate in the hotel lobby and then take ourselves over to McDonalds on Edgware Road to write about mind-bending meat.

Despite the fact that the McDonalds coffee machine is broken, I feel extraordinarily lucky. Twice in the past week on two different continents I've found myself saying,

"THIS is why we came to..."

Last Saturday it was "THIS is why we came to Hong Kong!"

We were sitting in a curtained booth at Sun Tung Lok, one of the two Michelin 3* Chinese restaurants in Hong Kong (the other is Lung King Heen at the Four Seasons) -- surrounded by steamer baskets and plates.

If you don't live in Hong Kong, you may not know that most upscale Chinese restaurants have two chefs: a regular chef and a dim sum chef. Being a dim sum chef is kind of like being a pastry chef -- it's a very specialized, punishing kind of training that used to include eating all of one's "outtakes." Most young chefs won't subject themselves to this kind of misery for such low pay, so the best dim sum comes from older hands. I don't actually know if it was the dim sum chef at STL who won their 3*, but when I caught a glimpse of the 70-ish gentleman handling steamer baskets behind the counter I felt very optimistic about our meal.

Holy cow (or should I say holy pig?)! The highlight of our meal was a pork bun with preserved vegetable. I wanted to cry this thing was so good: a gorgeous little square of fatty pork that flaked gently apart between my teeth, the rich flavor perfectly balanced with a complex preserved vegetable accent (not too much) in a luxurious, pillowy steamed bun. You just don't get pork that tastes like this in the USA. The porkiness is much more concentrated here. My friends over at Chowhound say that some restaurants here, like Din Tai Fung use black pork that's similar to Japanese Kurobuta pork (also called Berkshire pork?). Maybe that's why this thing tasted so good, but clearly the chef at STL also knew how to coax the best flavors out of this meat. Glorious, glorious pork bliss!





And then the pork bliss took another form: baked green onion and pork buns with sesame. Think about the cakiness and shortness of a fresh, well-made scone. These things had that wonderful texture, created undoubtedly with lard, not butter. In the midst of which was an intense burst of oniony flavor that reminded me of the yummy buns I ate while in Beijing last spring. Richness surrounding an intense, earthy core. Hooray!



(Apologies for this photo...)

After the pork? Beef, of course! Did they start this wonderful beef with enoki mushroom rice roll with dried beef? The flavor was so intense and complex and roasty I asked E to be quiet for a minute so that I could give it my full attention ;-)



After that came this texture miracle: scallop and shrimp dumplings with crab roe. The roe sat on top of the scallop which itself sat on top of a shrimp that was plumper and crisper than any shrimp I've ever sunk my teeth into before. I don't mean crispy like it was fried...no, the texture of the meat was just delightfully crunchy. My friend C says they do this by refrigerating the shrimp meat before steaming. I am not convinced that that could really yield such an amazing result. However they do it, the result is glorious...



And finally, rounding things off, my first bite of shark's fin. I know it's wrong. I know it's bad, but I had to try it at least once...didn't I? And where better to try it than a 3* restaurant that specializes in dried seafood. You'll see below that I ordered a very large shark's fin dumpling that came with a little saucer of vinegar. What was it like? The shark's fin itself comes in chewy-ish strands. They almost reminded me of the cells that make up the flesh of a grapefruit. The flavor itself is very light, with a complex subtle fishiness.



Before this meal I hadn't ever been so conscious of the dynamics of flavor. Like music...if you think of a flavor like shark's fin as the note (e.g., middle-G) and the intensity (light or subtle) as the dynamics (e.g., pianissimo), how do you compose the overall experience for the taste buds? Do you start with a pianissimo flavor and then startle the taste buds with something that tastes forte? Do you build things up from a very quiet start to a powerful ending? Hmmm...

A week later I find myself on a different continent, in a totally different type of environment, transfixed by a totally different preparation of meat.

"THIS is why we came to London!"

There's a good chance you've heard of St. John Restaurant in London. It was started by the chef Fergus Henderson, who wrote the catchilly-titled cookbook The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating. St. John's specialty is, of course, meat. The restaurant environment is basically white, but not fussy white. There's butcher paper on the tables and gray-painted-wood floors. Nothing to distract from the baroque smells of roasted meat wafting all over the restaurant. I have a particularly sensitive nose, so my senses were lit up as if I were a golden retriever. If I had a tail, it would have been wagging as we walked into this place. And then a waitress walked by with an entire roasted pig on her shoulder. Oh my goodness. I want some of that! But I couldn't have it -- it was special ordered for a party in the next room ;-(

What I did have was...

The sweetest, freshest butter I have ever tasted in my life. What was that Chinese gastronomy term that I just learned to describe the sweet, fresh natural taste of something? I've got to look it up, but this butter was really wonderful. It felt criminal not to eat all of it...



And then, wonderful roasty-meaty-rich rabbit offal accompanied by mellow white beans cooked with sage and onions (shallots?). Man, this is so *my kind of food*. Why do people have to put so many ingredients in their cooking? I'm not an advocate of hands-off cooking where you put a bunch of raw ingredients on the plate. I do believe in the art of cooking to enhance and celebrate the food. But that said, there's no need to overwhelm the diner with too many flavors and obscure the artistry of the chef. Rabbit, beans, onions, sage -- yeah, baby!



And then there was this strange inky-plate of cuttlefish topped with a pile of shaved, intensely vinegary onions. The only way you can get away with this strange fishiness is by knocking the palate back into shape with intense acid. Kind of a bracing dish for me.



And then...pickled meat accompanied by a little pile of celeriac in more of that brilliant fresh cream. Salty-sour complexity and tender texture washed away by cool, diffused sweet flavor and a slight crispiness. Brilliant.



And then my main arrived...roast beef with chard. Oh God, this was so beautiful. Presentation-wise, it doesn't get any better than this for me. Save your stupid towers and Jenga-like constructions. Real food is beautiful just the way it is. A perfect slice of roast beef? It's gorgeous. And the amount of food was also perfect. Enough to satisfy my appetite. Not a gigantic mount or an artistic piddle. This is exactly how much of this meat I wanted to eat -- and the serving of intensely- mustardy chard was the perfect amount needed to balance the wonderful irony-roasty flavor of the meat. In my mind, this was perfect food.



And how weird is life, writing about these food experiences while downing a bitter cup of black tea and a rubbery blueberry McDonalds muffin in the company of a clutch of teenage boys waiting out the night, an old man with smear of blood on his forehead, and a homeless guy who asks for the sticker on my drink cup (6 = a cup of free coffee).

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...