My Hong Kong trip: notable eats! (Part 2)

Okay, here's Part 2 of this series of posts on the foods I saw and ate during my recent trip to Hong Kong.

A trio of roast ducks at Maxim's MX.

On our very first morning spent in Hong Kong, we opted for breakfast at Maxim's MX. Listed as a "fast food outlet", the dining environment here was very orderly (read: lacking in personality) in comparison to the less-modernised breakfast stalls and restaurants in the area. I hate to sound like a snobby foodist, but I personally would have preferred to eat at one of those more authentic (and chaotic places), if only to soak up some of the local flavour and atmosphere. However, MX was chosen in concession to the younger children we were travelling with, who baulked at the idea of perching on cracked stools eating beef liver and pork intestines for brekkie. Their loss!

Picture perfect siu mei...to the point of looking too perfect.

I ordered a 'tasting bowl' of the siu mei on offer. There was roast goose, roast duck, char siu pork, red sausage, and half a salted duck egg, served with cabbage and rice. Let's just say it looked better on the picture menu. The amount of food given was paltry, and the various animal proteins quite shrivelled and, um, pathetic looking.

The 'six meats' combo.

My fellow diners opted for spaghetti bolognese. Kids being kids :D

I swear I was not this picky as a child; the little person who ordered this dish wouldn't even touch the egg! I ate it for her, since I was still hungry after my own meal. Urgh.

An eating opportunity wasted! This sentiment was felt particularly keenly when I later spotted some of the real siu mei places. Check out the gorgeous flesh on offer:

For $25 HK, this quarter of a roast duck is yours!

Beautifully plump birds. 

Not to worry - shortly after parting ways with the rest of my travelling companions (they wanted to go shopping; I preferred sight-seeing), I went looking for alternative means of filling my stomach. There was much to choose from! 

Lookee, it's Tony Bourdain! Or, an article featuring him, at least. These days, I travel with at least one Bourdain text tucked in my backpack.

A selection of take-away hot meals.

Various casserole-style dishes.

Deep-fried goodies for those who like to start off the day with a hefty dose of grease and carbs.

Perhaps a few egg tarts? Or...a whole pizza.

I eventually stumbled upon a stall selling the usual variety of Hong Kong hawker snack foods - skewers of beef and fish balls, deep-fried vegetables, animal entrails, etc. 

Skewers! So many of them!

Also available were waffles, both in the traditional "waffle iron" grid pattern, as well as the Hong Kong style egg waffle (known as the "eggette". Which I decided to try!

The HK style egg waffle (eggette) is made using a special mould.

I ate this with a sense of child-like glee. It was fun breaking off the individual balls of waffle, and then eating it one by one. The best thing about this kind of waffle, in my opinion, is the still-soft interiors of the crispy spheres. 

Crispy exterior. (Excuse my gross-looking hand).

Fluffy interior!

I also had a skewer of jellied pig ears. The crunch from the cartilage was delightful. As was the thick, sweet and salty sauce. Which dripped on my shoe, of course.

Pig ear skewer.

I finished off my second breakfast with a bowl of beef offal and turnip in broth. I think what I was eating was liver, lung, intestine and tripe. 

Eating this was like exploring a treasure trove. I kept uncovering different bits of offal.

Fatty, delicious intestine.

After this...I finally felt full :D

It was time to go exploring!

A Toblerone double-decker bus!!! Why don't we have these in Sydney? :D

For Part 1 of my Hong Kong adventures, click here.

My Hong Kong trip: notable eats! (Part 1)

Happy New Year, everyone! I do realise it's the 2nd already, but I happen to have spent the 1st of January aboard a plane bound for Sydney. And before that, I was doing some last-minute shopping and eating in Hong Kong!

Indulging in some Ben & Jerry's at the Times Square Hong Kong shopping mall.

My HK trip was absolutely perfect - the sights, sounds, smells, and atmosphere...all of it left my yearning to return there someday soon, and continue my gastronomic tour of her fine-dining restaurants, her back-alley street food, and, yes, those terrible-for-your-waistline snacks that are somehow okay to eat because you're on vacation!

Chinese savoury donuts/crullers

One such waistline-endangering but oh-so-addictive food item is the youtiao (油条). It's yeast-risen dough that has been deep-fried. It is golden and crunchy on the outside, but soft within...like a donut! My grandmother makes it for us at home all the time, and these particular ones are denser than the ones I'm used to. Which made it all the more interesting to try!

The paler, soft insides of the donut.

[At this point, I should apologise for any potential mistakes made in naming the foods that appear in this post. I neither speak nor understand Cantonese, so all the names are ones that I've found on the Internet, or the Mandarin-equivalents.]

The amazing view from my hotel room window.

There was so much to eat in Hong Kong. And eat I did! All the while trying to capture the glorious experience with my unwieldy iPhone. I attracted quite a few stares (not to mention under-the-breath mutters) with my tendency to stop in the middle of the pedestrian walkway and take pictures of whatever it was that I happened to be chowing down at that very moment. It was probably a bit antisocial of me to obstruct the flow of human traffic like that, but I simply had to document everything.

In the midst of the throng of humanity.

Over the course of the next few posts, I will attempt to convey to you a recount of my adventures in Hong Kong. I stayed there for only three days, and my travels were limited to Causeway Bay (銅鑼灣; Tong Lo Wan). My senses were overwhelmed as it was - next time, I will aim for a longer stay, in order to more fully appreciate the place and its wonders.

A deflated fried glutinous rice sesame-coated ball

Another ubiquitous edible is the matuan (麻糰). The one pictured above was bought from the same breakfast stall as the Chinese donut, but they also happen to be a popular dim sum dish at yum cha. The skin is made from glutinous rice flour, and encases a variety of fillings. We came across ones containing red bean paste and black sesame paste.

Smaller and more refined-looking matuan at yum cha.

Speaking of yum cha - we went to Cheers Restaurant (迎囍大酒樓), a dim sum restaurant located in Windsor House in Causeway Bay for brunch, and the ones we tried were pretty good. The matuan pictured above are from there. The price for the dishes was relatively cheap, but the range was quite limited. And service wasn't exactly stellar either. Still, we got a good feed. Here are some of the dishes we ordered:

Braised pork knuckle.

'Pineapple' or Polo buns. Named for the pineapple skin-like crust on top. It doesn't actually contain any pineapple.

These otherwise sweet polo buns were filled with a savoury BBQ/char siew pork filling. Interesting flavour combo!

Roast goose.

Pig's blood.

 Deep-fried tofu.

 Tofu skin roll, filled with bamboo shoot and other goodies

Xiao long bao - Shanghai steamed buns

Steamed beef mince meatballs.

Steamed spare ribs with fermented black beans.

Mushroom with duck feet.

Beef tripes.

Shrimp dumplings (ha gaau)

Shaomai/siu maai: steamed dumplings filled with pork and minced shrimp.

"Phoenix claws" (fung zao): steamed chicken feet.

Duck egg and pork congee (皮蛋瘦肉粥)

Braised mushrooms with vegetables.

And that concludes Part 1 of this series of posts on Hong Kong. Keep an eye out over the next few days for the write-up of the rest of my trip!

For Part 2 of my Hong Kong adventures, click here.

Using up that pesky bag of almond meal

ETA: Guess what I spent the morning doing! If you look along the top the page, just under the banner, I've added a tab "About BeyondBourkeStreet", which links to an 'About Me' page. Feel free to check it out, and hope you like the pictures! :D

In this post, I shall share two dessert recipes that I recently employed in order to use up my stash of almond meal. I'm sure this isn't a commonly-occurring problem for most people, since no one goes out of their way buying almond meal in bulk, especially considering how expensive the stuff is. Unless you had plans on making macarons until you developed carpal tunnel syndrome. Too bad I fell out of love with macarons after I'd bought the 1kg bag of almond meal. Something to do with eating so many over a limited period of time that my teeth hurt, my throat smoked, and my sinuses seized up from the overwhelming sweetness. I need to learn moderation.

Orange and poppyseed frangipane tart

The first of the recipes - the orange and poppyseed frangipane tart - is an innovation of my very own. Why orange and poppyseed? Well, why not? :D Haha, actually, it was because I had a bag of poppyseed that also needed to be used up. The flavour combination is such a classic one that I was quite confident it would turn out well in this form. Like for my pound cake, I utilised orange extract instead of orange juice and zest.  I would like to try this with the real stuff some day. Flavour extract notwithstanding, this tart turned out really well. As you can see from the photos, the top was crusty while the insides remained gooey and yielding. Kinda like a macaron, actually! 

All the frangipane tarts I came across on the Internet included some sort of fruity component, whether it be pears poached in white wine, sliced and layered on top, or apple pieces spiced with cinnamon, and the whole thing resembling a postmodernist take on the humble apple pie. Since I was to be taking this to a dinner party the next day, I wanted a recipe that didn't consist of easily-perishable ingredients. Gourmet Traveller to the rescue! The magazine had an online recipe for a Galician almond tart which I used as a reference point for ingredient ratios.  Had I substituted almond meal or some other kind of gluten-free flour for the shortcrust pastry dough, the whole tart would have been gluten-free.

The second recipe is one we're all familiar with: the Flourless Chocolate Cake. Again, a classic. You can't go wrong with classics. I also brought this along to the same dinner party, and the guests were absolutely enamoured with the cake. There were moans upon tasting. One taster commented: "This is the best chocolate cake I've ever eaten. Perfect balance of sweetness." No doubt this was largely due the use of my precious Callebaut bittersweet chocolate, with a 60% cocoa mass.

Flourless chocolate cake

There are literally thousands of recipes for flourless chocolate cakes, some using nut flours as a substitute for wheat flour, while others using only eggs for structural integrity. Since the whole point of this exercise (apart from getting chocolate cake out of it, of course) was to use up my almond meal, I went with the recipe from The Cake Mistress. And I am so glad I did, because this was the best chocolate cake I myself have ever tasted. 

Fudgy, incredibly moist and so intensely chocolatey, I may very well never experiment with another flourless chocolate cake recipe.

Recipe for Orange and Poppyseed Frangipane tart

Ingredients

For the shortcrust pastry:

200g plain flour

75g white, granulated sugar

100g cold butter, coarsely chopped

1 egg

1-2 tablespoons cold water

For the tart filling:

4 eggs

250g white, granulated sugar

250g almond meal

3 tablespoons poppyseeds

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 teaspoons orange extract

To serve: icing sugar

Method

1. To make the shortcrust pastry, combine flour, sugar and butter in a food processor and pulse until the mixture has the consistency of coarse breadcrumbs. Add the egg and 1-2 tablespoons of cold water and pulse until the pastry just comes together. Alternatively, if you don't have a food processor, you can combined everything by hand. Just put the flour, sugar and butter in a bowel and rub together with (clean) finger tips. Add the egg, and cold water if necessary, and rub some more. Don't knead the dough, otherwise the crust will turn out tough.

2. Press the pastry into a 25cm-diameter tart or flan tin, pushing the pastry up the edges. Don't worry about trimming overhanging dough at this point. Cover with cling wrap, and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

3. To make the filling, whisk eggs and sugar until pale and frothy (mixture reaching the 'ribbon stage'), and the mixture has doubled in volume. Fold in the almond meal, vanilla and orange extracts, and poppy seeds.

4. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius (or 350 degrees Fahrenheit). Remove pastry from fridge, and trim the edges. Prick the base all over with a fork, and spoon the almond mixture into the tart tin lined with the pastry. Smooth top. Bake for 45 minutes or until top is golden, crusty, and hard to touch. Remove from oven, cool tart in pan. Once tart is completely cool, remove from pan and serve dusted with icing sugar.

Recipe for Flourless Chocolate Cake

Adapted from The Cake Mistress

Ingredients

200g good quality bittersweet chocolate, chopped

125g unsalted butter, chopped

225g brown sugar

100g almond meal

5 large eggs, separated

1 pinch of cream of tartar

To serve: 1 tablespoon cocoa powder.

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius (or 360 degrees Fahrenheit). Line the base and sides of a 20cm-diameter cake tin with non-stick baking paper.

2. Combine the chocolate and butter in a microwave-safe bowl and melt in microwave by heating in 10-second bursts for the first two times, then 5-second bursts subsequently. Stir in between heating. Be careful not to burn the chocolate! Alternatively, you can melt the chocolate and butter over a double-boiler. Bring a large saucepan of water to the boil. Combine chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl and place that bowl over the saucepan of boiling water. Stir while ingredients melt.

3. Once butter and chocolate have completely melted, stir in the brown sugar and almond meal until the mixture is smooth. Allow the mixture to cool slightly, then add the egg yolks one by one, stirring after each addition.

4. In a dry, clean bowl, combine the egg whites and cream of tartar. Beat with a hand-held mixture until frothy, then gradually add the white, granulated sugar. Continue beating until firm peaks form. 

5. Fold one-third of the beaten egg whites into the cooled chocolate mixture. Mix well to make the chocolate mixture more liquid-y. Pour the chocolate mixture into the remaining two-thirds of the beaten egg whites, and fold together carefully with a rubber spatula, being careful not to deflate the mixture. Fold until the mixtures are just incorporated.

6. Pour into the lined cake tin, and bake for 45-50 minutes until a firm crusts forms on top. Remove from oven, and allow cake to cool in tin completely before removing. Once cake is completely cool, sift cocoa powder over the top.

Yay, FINALLY!

Look what this lucky duck bought for herself as an early Christmas present today!

I found this brand new copy at a local discount bookshop for slightly more than half its RRP. Still quite an expensive purchase, but 1) it's Christmas! and 2) it's educational!

And anyway, Mr. Heston Blumenthal swears by it, and that alone makes it a worthy purchase ;D