rarerollingobject

Well, I'm now here in Hong Kong for a week and despite having been here less than 15 hours so far, haven taken in some pretty good eating: 1. Post flight refuel at Dim Sum Square in Sheung Wan. 2. Typhoon shelter mantis shrimp and chilli garlic razor clams at one of the many crab places of Causeway Bay. Touristy, yes but the true nostalgic taste of my HK childhood. 3. A post-dinner chaser of HK curry fishballs (too busy putting hot balls in my mouth to actually take a photo) 4. My angsty, just-about-to-land-and-I-need-food plane face; can you see the hunger and need in my eyes??

From here on, I'll post on the Hong Kong board, because I know this is Cooking and all, but this WAS my lunch (am in HK for a week and then moving onto Seoul):

Apple/butter puff pastry roses. They're stupidly simple, but the ladies at work lost their motherfreaking minds. So I was pleased.

Only moderately hypocritical Melbourne Cup workplace strategy: I will bake for your race-watching afternoon tea because you made a big deal of inviting me to it even though I'm not in your team, so that was kind of you, and I will come along and eat a canapé and say a few choice things about the cruelty and inhumanity of horse racing in UNNERVINGLY pleasant and conversational tones, but then I will leave and not watch the race and depart the room with a loud cheery, "Welp, I'm off to not participate in the ritualistic beating and killing of animals for fun, see yas!" This is why I'm very popular.

Because I can't really see a "wares of the Chinese kitchen" thread in this sub-forum, which seems a crying shame, I'll start this as a paeon to the indispensable tools of the Chinese cook (of which I consider myself a disciple, long story.) So, behold - my beautiful new hand-forged, rough-hewn carbon steel knife from Chengdu, Sichuan. Carefully ordered, personally transported across the seas and sweetly delivered to my hands by a dear Chinese friend and her friends. I'm going to do what the Chinese do with these knives, and wind hessian cord around the handle for grip. Isn't she a beauty?

Nothing rose about my vie.

Thanks both. I'm likely going to end up hitting some old favourites like Yat Lok for goose and Fu Sing for yum cha. For something new, I've also booked at the Chairman and Mott 32, even though decidedly non fancy is my preference by nature. Will report back.

Bought a beautiful piece of Australian yellowfin tuna belly at the fish market so made sushi.

I finally found..oyster leaves. Mertensia maritima; they're crunchy, juicy, and taste nearly exactly like oysters!! So weird, quite wonderful. I've been looking for them for YEARS. I even bought some seeds once to try and grow them myself, but nay. And sea bananas, which burst in the mouth with an ocean, ozoney explosion of umami. Gonna sauté both in a little butter, with sous vide salmon and wasabi leaf pesto. Oyster leaves!!

Thanks @JohnT; believe me, I'm not a cupcake fan either. I just like making them because I can zen out as a form of relaxation and distraction, and then I spend the next day or so palming them off on any random person who'll take them!

Cupcakes.

I don't always drink before 10am in the morning, but when I do, it's fresh yuzu syrup, yuzu-shu and champagne cocktails, with butter-poached lobster tails stuffed into toasted, buttery brioche hot dog rolls and topped with smoked salt, white pepper and grated yuzu zest.

An incredible meal at Sepia in Sydney for my birthday. With the matching sake course I chose rather than the wine, it was pretty mind blowing. Dishes shown in order per the menu.

I like things to taste the most like themselves as they possibly can - for example, if I'm making a lemon cake, I want it to be the most IN YOUR FACE LEMONY lemon cake you've ever lemoned. And so - lemon loaf, soaked in lemon syrup, with an extra lemon/sugar crust, topped with crystallised lemon peels and a dusting of icing sugar mixed with citric acid (derived from lemon). Recipe called for two lemons; I used nine. Lemon party.

So what are the best bets for HK: Dim sum Char siu Roast goose Fancypants Cantonese these days? There for 5 days in November 2016.

Labour intense breakfast; mille feuille with deeply caramelised butter puff pastry (made crunchy with sugar and then brûléed on both sides), raspberry crème pâtissière lightened with soft whipped cream, freeze dried raspberry powder and roasted pistachios. And the aftermath.

Baking and gold-leafing fresh raspberry, whipped dark chocolate ganache, raspberry jam and freeze-dried raspberry macarons at 11pm on a Tuesday night. As you do.

Ooh, I accidentally posted this in the dinner thread..it was breakfast. But never mind.

Korean bul ssamgyeopsal, or fire pork. With cheese and ramyun noodles, which is a very common variation and the breakfast of champions, if you ask me. You make a sauce of Korean chili paste, chili flakes, Korean hot curry powder (which I keep in that old MSG tin), garlic, soy sauce, sesame oil, black pepper, honey and soju and sauté the pork belly (leftover, marinated in ginseng) in it with some cabbage, carrot, onion and perilla leaf, add blanched ramen and their flavoring packets (more chilli), chopped fresh Korean green chillis, sprinkle with toasted sesame seaweed and then pour over a blanket of melted cheese. See cheese in action hither: Fire pork.

Oh, I didn't think you doubted me, I was just surprised as I'd found them pretty ubiquitous in China. But yes, there's no better way to spend a Saturday than up your elbows in pork fat!

Must be a very Jiangsu regional thing, @liuzhou; I ate about a billion of these in Shanghai, and they're the only kind of mooncakes I saw in Suzhou, I didn't see any Cantonese ones.. https://www.google.com.au/search?q=苏式鲜肉月饼&client=safari&hl=en-au&prmd=ivn&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi0g8f_36fPAhUQtJQKHd4HD38Q_AUIBygB&biw=375&bih=559

@Anna N, most su-style mooncakes traditionally have some kind of red stamp on top, usually just the logo of the bakery. Here's one from the bakery next to my office:

Exquisite as ever, @dcarch. Here's what I ended up making today; mooncakes. Suzhou-style, savoury, with a pork, white pepper and ginger filling and flaky, buttery pork lard pastry. You have to make two kinds of dough, a water dough and a lard dough, but it's much easier than European puff pastry and much tastier, too.

Um, invite your good friend RRO to jump a plane to the GC and come help you eat them? But seriously, I'd do some combination of classic chilli/black pepper/white pepper. Maybe a few of each kind, if it's manageable. I've made this white pepper crab recipe before and it was sooooo delicious. I did have scallop sauce in my pantry, but if you don't, I don't think it'd suffer too much. A splash of fish sauce is a good substitute. http://themeatmen.sg/recipe-chili-and-white-pepper-butter-crab/ Other than that - at that scale? Roast em or get a clean kettle drum and boil.

Sunday breakfast of champions; chao tom, Vietnamese sugarcane prawns. You make a paste of the prawns, garlic, white pepper and egg white and then shape it around fresh sugarcane sticks and steam them briefly to set and then crisp them to brown in a pan. Eaten with banh hoi steamed rice noodle mats, little crispy spring rolls I made out of some of the prawn paste and the banh hoi, lettuce, mint, coriander, shallot oil and nuoc cham dipping sauce. Good for what ails ye.