Dinner Parties @ Home - my first time cooking a Chinese meal!

What could possibly be better than sharing food, wine and conversation with good friends? Ok, maybe a great many things, but as far as dinner parties go, we and four friends have something pretty fantastic going on.

Auvergne, France

Chinese/Indonesian/English

The idea was sprung from a casual plan to have dinner together. I realised that we all come from different places and that trying each of our cuisines would be a great way to not only get to know each other better, but also each others cultures and backgrounds. 

Martinique

Korea

Three couples. 

Six Foodies.
Six different cuisines.
Lots of good food! 

Belgium

Alsace, France

JCL volunteered to go first, brave man! He hails from Martinique, where food culture is characterised by a blend of French and Creole cooking. Much is prepared with seafood, such as salted cod, crab and langoustine, and the local markets supply tropical fruits and veggies.

I initially thought that we would just go to restaurants, and so JCL would be the most challenged to find a decent Caribbean restaurant in Hong Kong. And true enough, apparently he doesn't think there are any, so he decided that he was going to cook it all, by himself! He set the bar high, and we had to follow.

And so our dinner party circuit started and evolved. I was Number Two, and was really nervous because I have never truly cooked a full Chinese or Indonesian dinner in my life. It turns out that in getting to know friends' cultures better, I was actually learning more about my own! It was also my first time buying most of my ingredients at the wet market, it was smelly noisy, crowded, and downright fun! All in all, the meal  involved 3 hours at the Wan Chai wet market, 4 hours of cooking, and 2 hours of talking to my grandmother!


While I was cooking, PB set up the flat - he did a pretty darn good job, didn't he?

We bought new table mats and new wine glasses for the evening (hey, we needed them anyway - and JCL had done such a great job of his dinner that we in turn had to get everything just right!)  


 
At the market, we found little Chinese zodiac charms and thought they would be a nice alternative for place setting name tags, and they were nice souvenirs of the evening too.
 
I have always admired the pretty place settings in glossy magazines, and yet I am usually so busy and rushed (because more often than not, I start cooking too late), and the table is set in a very random manner, cutlery, glasses and napkins strewn haphazardly across the table. This time, with the help of a very able PB, everything was just perfect!

I decided to focus on my Indonesian Chinese heritage for this meal, and the only thing English about it was how much we were going to drink!

I had to raid my mother's recipe book for most of these (secret) family recipes, and thus many of them cannot be divulged on this blog. However, if you are really interested in trying these recipes out, please email me and maybe we can sort something out :-)

A Duo of Starters: Indonesian Perkedel & Chinese Spring Rolls 

My Oma's Perkedel

The recipe is one that I have put together after chasing my grandmother around the kitchen and trying to decipher her method of cooking. Like all grans who make exceptional food, her recipe book is in her head. It's in her hands as she feels for consistency, and in her taste buds as she adjusts the seasoning. Hence, there is no rhyme or reason behind it, but I think I managed to get this one down correctly:


You'll need (to make around 20 patties):
4 potatoes
3/4lb/340g minced beef
1 1/2 tbsp butter
1 tsp nutmeg powder
1 1/2 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
pepper
1/2 of a beef stock cube
3 heaped tbsp berambang goreng (fried shallots)
1 egg (whole yolk and half the white), plus 1 egg (beaten) for frying




1. Peel and chop the potatoes in large pieces, then boil them until they are soft, but not disintegrating, about 15 minutes. Mash them and then continue to cook over low heat with the butter so it dries out a bit.

Note: if you boil the potatoes too long, they will absorb too much water and the patties will be soggy and fall apart)


2. Mix the minced beef with the rest of the ingredients, then shape into round, flat patties.

Note: As a little trick to keep these babies from falling apart when frying, my Oma then steams them or cooks them in the microwave first.


3. Heat some oil in the frying pan, dip each patty in the beaten egg, the fry until crispy.

Berambang Goreng (fried shallot)

Kecap Manis

 



SAUCE: Finely sliced raw Chinese shallots mixed with kecap manis (sweet soya sauce) make a wicked dipping sauce. 

My Mum's Spring Rolls:

A photo of the spring roll filing - guess away!

This is one of those 'secret' recipes, but really you can put whatever the heck you want inside them. I almost considered making an egg white and Cumberland sausage spring roll (to try and represent the English half of me), but that idea was poo-pooed by PB!


The main seasoning elements are light/dark soya sauce, sesame oil, shao xing cooking wine, and that stuff that my helper very aptly calls "Magic Powder" (a.k.a chicken powder, a healthier substitution for MSG). A little bit goes a long way! Use white pepper rather than black, and less salt as there is a lot of sodium in soya sauce already. 


For the spring rolls, fry each of the individual elements together, then mix them all up. It's cooked, so all you have to do is a taste test, and if you feel it's not flavorful enough, adjust the sauces until you think it tastes good! :-)

Wrap your filling in wrappers - you'll find them easier to roll if the wrappers are still cold (don't defrost them completely), and they'll hold better when frying. Serve with Thai sweet chili dipping sauce.

Spring roll wrapper

Thai Sweet Chili Sauce

"Magic Powder"

2nd Course: Fried & Steamed Chinese Dummplings

("Jiaozi", or 饺子)

For special dates on the Chinese calendar, whether it's Chinese New Year or mid-autumn festival, we make jiaozi! We all sit at the kitchen counter and wrap at least a few each. Usually my mum and I do most of them, but it's a good chance for everyone to gather and have fun.

Serving them is said to bring luck, as they resemble the yuanbao golden ingots used as currency during the Ming Dynasty. The name also sounds like the word for the first paper money in China, the jiao 角.


I prepared this for our second course, and everyone had a go at wrapping. The boys lost patience with it quickly, whereas the girls saw it as a challenge to make the prettiest ones. They say the most beautiful jiaozi are those with 5 perfect pleats. JC got it pretty much the first time around, I think they were even better than mine! 

I've found this recipe which is pretty darn close to my mum's, you can click here to check it out.

Of course, as with the spring rolls, you can fill these little gems with whatever you want (the more popular fillings being pork/Chinese cabbage, pork/chive, mutton/spring onion etc.), but I like my jiaozi packed with veggies, so I used both chives and small white cabbage (小白菜）.

If, like me, you had no idea what Chinese chives look like, here you go.

Boil 'em...

Or fry 'em up pot sticker/guotie/锅贴 style!

Spiced Carrot Soup & Cheese-y Onion Toast

It's March, and it's getting warmer, but there's still time enough to squeeze in one or two more rounds of comfort soup!

I cooked this one up Tazmanian devil-style last night, having come home from hot yoga and wanting to hold onto that feeling of lightness and limberness. I cooked it super quick so I'm sorry that I have no photos of the cooking process for you...I was HUNGRY!!


This would work really well as a healthy D-tox recipe if you omit the coconut milk, add more stock/water and play more with the spices.


Spiced Carrot Soup
You'll need (to serve 6 as a starter):


Olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
1 clove of garlic, finely chopped
1 1" knob of fresh ginger, grated
(OR if you're lazy, 1 tsp ginger powder)
1kg carrots, washed, peeled and sliced 
1 tsp curry powder
1 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp coriander powder
Peel of 1/2 a lemon (in two strips)
850ml stock (vegetable or chicken stock)
300ml coconut milk


1. Heat the 1 tbsp of olive oil in a large pot, add the onions, garlic and ginger and cook until soft for a few minutes, don't let them brown. Now add all of the seasoning and carrots to the pot, cover and cook over low heat for 10 minutes, to let the vegetables 'sweat'.


2. Add the coconut milk (shake before pouring) and the stock, bring to the boil then turn down heat and simmer for 15 minutes, until the carrots are completely soft.


3. Remove the lemon peel, then whizz it into a soup. Enjoy hot, and with a slice of cheese-y onion toast! :-) Yummmmm


Cheese-y Onion Toast
You'll need (for 3 toasts):

A nice slice of farmers bread or sour dough
(or any ol' bread really!)
1/2 an onion, thinly sliced
A nice mature cheddar, grated
Pepper


Very simply, soften the onions by frying them in a pan with a little bit of olive oil, then add a thin layer of them on top of the toasted bread. Cover with grated cheese and bung it under the grill until the cheese is melted. 

We ♥♥ !

This is the only cheese other than French that you'll see in my Frenchman's fridge!:) He's actually the one who bought it first, it's like he has a radar for good cheese! It's nutty and flavourful - a real treat, and even better that it's conveniently available at our local Wellcome.

Cooking the Books: Hollandaise Sauce

La Cuisine - the latest edition

It was Sunday night, and we were chilling on the sofa, watching an episode of French "Top Chef". The skill is on another level, and shoves Masterchef onto the sidelines. In the episode we were watching, the contestants are given caviar, and need to create a dish around it. One makes a shot of egg yolk, cheese foam and caviar. I was inspired, and even though it was 11pm, I felt the need to get up and make it. We hadn't eaten dinner yet, so why not?


I came up with something that I like to call a "Refrigerator Jambalaya" dish - I look in my fridge, and see what I can make with the contents. I always have eggs, and I have lumpfish caviar left over from Valentine's Day. I also wanted to make a sauce to balance out my creation, so I referred to my bookshelf and picked up "La Cuisine - 1000 Recettes Facile" by Françoise Bernard. 

The retro version :-)

This is considered the Bible of French Cooking, and Bernard is famous for making everyday French classic recipes accessible and simple. PB's mother showed me her retro 1965 edition, it's pages falling out, it's corners dog-eared and it's cover splotched from years of use.


I was given the latest edition as a Christmas present, but it is in French so I need a little bit of time to translate it before I cook. It is available from Amazon in the English edition, if you're interested.

I decided to make a "Poached egg with Hollandaise Sauce and Caviar Martini", using the recipe from "La Cuisine" for my hollandaise sauce. The recipe calls for you to used a thick bottomed pan to make it - I don't have one so I cooked it in a bain marie.

The only thing 'martini' about it was the glass. But I imagine that replacing one of the tablespoons of water with vodka might work ... it's always worth a try!

Cooking the Books: Osso Bucco Milanese & Saffron Risotto

Every time I step into a bookstore I end up buying a cookbook. I collect them, look upon them lovingly and admire how great they all look on my shelf. Whenever I buy a new one, I immediately go through it and post-it the heck out of it. Colour-coded of course, blue for easy, pink for hard, green for desserts...by the time I'm though with them they look a bit ridiculous really...


And then I hardly even cook from them! The other day, I was determined to start doing so, and picked up one of the larger ones on the shelf - The Silver Spoon. I asked for it (and received it) for Christmas 4 years ago, and haven't used it ONCE.


Considered to be the Bible of authentic Italian home cooking, it has over 2,000 recipes, weighs 1.5kg (I checked it on my scale!), and has nice coloured pictures scattered throughout. Since I had some osso bucco (veal shank) in the freezer, I chose to make a Milanese Osso Bucco (Ossibuchi alla Milanese), and a Tarte Tatin - not an Italian dessert and so a bit out of place, but I've always wanted to try it.

Milanese Osso Bucco 
You'll need (serves 4):

40g (80g/3oz.) butter
1.2 an onion, chopped
4 pieces of osso bucco
5 tbls dry white wine
175ml meat stock
1 celery stick, chopped
1 carrot, diced
2 tbls tomato pureé
Salt and pepper, to taste
Plain flour, for dusting
Optional: I added some pancetta cubes for extra flavour
Parsley, for colour

Brasserie de l’île - quel dommage!

Photo from weekendhk.com

I went to Brasserie de L'île last Friday for lunch with AB. I was panicking because I hadn't made a reservation and of course all of the lunch favorites were booked. A quick search on some of my go-to sites on my blogroll led me to recall the new French bistro on Arbuthnot Road - one mentioned "the best mussels in Hong Kong so far...". A bold statement indeed, but was it true? 

Don't you just love a good bistro?  They are really popping up all over the place, aren't they? Did you know that 'the French community in Hong Kong has grown more than 60% since 2006, and now numbers more than 10,000?'.  I was so relieved to find that they could make room for us, and anticipated a nice French lunch.

 

That was, sadly, not to be. First of all, I always judge a French restaurant by the quality of it's bread - if they can't get that right, then your meal is doomed from the start. 

The 'baguette' looked as if it had been bought in a bag at Costco (sold in a pack of two, buy three get one free), and bunged in the oven.  

Poached egg with bechamel sauce and spinach

Even my beautiful camera could not make this starter look appetising, and it would be very unladylike of me to tell you what I think it resembles!  It was unseasoned, bland, unattractive, unremarkable, and I didn't finish it. That is a rare thing for me.

TBLS - The Best Lasagne, Seriously!

Photo courtesy of www.luxecityguides.com

There are many a 'private kitchen' in Hong Kong, a city that is quite special for it's abundance of unique, hideaway restaurants which are affordable yet (not always, but many a time) a real culinary experience. It's like biting into a Cadbury cream egg - looks pretty nondescript from the outside, but when bitten into it oozes sweet,sweet goodness!

TBLS sets itself apart from the "Private Kitchen" moniker, describing itself instead as a "Kitchen Studio" - which really, is pretty spot on. I mean look at it, the kitchen dominates this space, and we 18 people at the tables are spectators (and eaters) of the art that is created.

Many private kitchens were borne from the desires of Hong Kong chefs who wanted to share their culinary vision in their own kitchen but were limited by high rents, lower budgets and stringent licensing. The newer private kitchens are becoming more innovative, more original, more intimate and more international. There is a long list of them that I have been wanting to try for some time now, Ta Pantry, Liberty Private Works, Commune Lab, Zone-D and Yin Yang to name a few. 

Last week I was able to cross one off my list. Our friends, The JCs, asked if we wanted to join them for dinner the following evening at TBLS - it was last minute plan as they had in turn been given the reservation by a friend who ended up not being able to make it.  Despite the fact that I had indulged in a degustation menu two days before, and would have another the day after (more on that in posts to come!), TBLS is always booked up for months in advance and it was an invitation that simply couldn't be refused.

The Amuse Bouche : Carrot Puree, Harissa Lamb and Toasted Almonds

Served bistro-style in a terrine jar, this certainly amused our bouches! It was warm, the sweetness of the carrot together with the spiced lamb and the crunchy almonds awakened all the taste buds to prepare us for the (huge) meal to come.

Round 1: A Soup and a Sandwich