aprilmei
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Posts posted by aprilmei
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This place is excellent for Macanese food: Restaurante Espacio Lisboa. I don't have the address but the phone is (853) 88 22 26. It's on Coloane. Really good suckling pig (served with homemade potato chips), blood sausage, African chicken (very different from other versions of African chicken)... actually, everything we've tried here is good. If it's a sunny, not-too-hot day, ask for a table on the balcony. It's inexpensive.
If you want a luxurious French meal, try Robuchon a Galera in the Hotel Lisboa (on the main island) It's not a very nice hotel - full of Russian 'hos. And the decor of the restaurant is OTT. But the food is amazing. Joel Robuchon comes several times a year but even when he's not there, the food is excellent - probably the best French food in Asia (my French chef friends also think this). It's expensive, especially if you order things like the caviar with lobster jelly and cauliflower cream (I believe it's one of Robuchon's signature dishes from long ago) and sea urchin with fennel cream. But they have a very reasonable set lunch deal - three courses (about six choices for each course) for something like HK$250 plus 10 per cent. The tete de veau is excellent, and next time I go I hope the steak tartare is an option. Oh, and the wine list is truly astonishing and the mark-up is not that much.
While you're in Macau, you should definitely try Portuguese egg tarts. There are two famous place, Lord Stow's, which is right near Restaurante Espacio Lisboa, and Margaret's, which is a few blocks from the Hotel Lisboa. Both are very good. The owners of each were originally husband-and-wife but they got divorced - not amicably - and she opened Margaret's.
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Yum, this is one of my favourite dishes. the only thing I do differently is to use chicken thigh, rather than breast.
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This puff pastry is more difficult to make but it tends to be more delicate and flaky than regular basic puff pastry. One other advantage is that it can be used immediately after cutting to size i.e. you can omit the final resting period. There is also not as much shrinkage as regular puff pastry.
Do you know why it doesn't shrink as much and you don't have to give it a final rest??
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I've never seen it cooked whole; it's usually cut into separate "parts" - the ears, snout, cheeks, etc. I've had the different bits simmered in dark sauce (I guess it would be a master sauce) and my grandmother used to cook the ears just simply boiled and we would eat it dipped in pepper/salt with fresh lemon juice or other very simple sauces.
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Look, I've had it, and it ain't so bad, so by all means, knock yourself out! But I don't like CKT with breast meat. In fact, I don't like chicken breast at all... except in drunken chicken...
In my opinion, dark meat from chicken works better in CKT. There was like a chain restaurant in KL, Mungo Jerry's... can't believe I remembered that!!!... that sold CKT.
With CKT, the soup is only subtly different from a pork based soup. Less fatty I think and less meaty in taste, but the gist of it is there... I guess...
And Starbucks.... oh... empire of evil....
Is CKT cooked for as long as BKT? Because I would think that if it were, the chicken would be so overcooked it would be inedible, even the dark meat.
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Is this the same thing as kaya?
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Bakuteh is one of my favourite foods. It used to be hard to find in Hong Kong - could only fill my cravings when visiting Malaysia or Singapore. But a Malaysian bakuteh maker (Yeoh's, from Klang) opened a branch in Hong Kong and then quickly opened two more. It's quite successful.
The Malaysian bakuteh seems to be more herby than the Singaporean version, which seems more peppery. My Malaysian friends prefer their version, my Singaporean friends like theirs best. I am happy with whatever is put in front of me.
The soup/meat (whichever cuts you choose) are served in a bowl or small sand pot with a plate of rice and a small dish of dark soy, to which you add chillies and/or garlic. I usually eat it Malaysian/Singaporean style and pour a ladleful of soup with some meat onto the plate to soak a small amount of rice then spoon a little soy/chilli onto a mouthful of meat then use my spoon to eat it.
In Hong Kong, many people call bakuteh pai gwat cha (literally pork rib tea in Cantonese) which I believe is also the meaning of bakuteh in another dialect (is it Hokkien?)
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I once ate fried ham yu at a Vietnamese place in SF - it was fabulous. It was served with lemon and pepper-salt. Does anybody know how it's made and what type of salted fish to use?
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Wow, Tepee, these look amazing! Yes, please post the recipe!
I'm game on making sausages but I can't do it for a couple of weeks because I'm off to Korea tomorrow and after this trip I'll be in Singapore for a friend's wedding. So the earliest I can make them is the weekend of October 22 - and who knows what's going to happen between now and then?
I actually tried to make the fresh pork sausages over the weekend (no pix I'm afraid - I'm pathetic). Used pork belly because I figured it would have enough fat and it did - I picked out the leaner pieces. I think my grandmother must have hand-chopped the pork because even using the largest setting on my mincer, it was too fine (and yes, HKDave - who taught me how to make sausages a couple weeks ago - I had semi-frozen the meat and fat). I used about 600 grams of pork belly, 1/4 tsp five-spice (not freshly ground, as muichoi suggested), 2 tsp salt, about 2 tsp soy and 1 tbsp rice wine... oh, and a little sugar. They were slightly too salty.
Next time, I'm going to increase the amounts of rice wine and five spice, and maybe use honey instead of sugar - my grandmother's had a lovely sweetness. She also must have used saltpetre because hers were pink-ish, not brown-gray, as mine were. They were okay but didn't have enough texture; next time I'll hand-slice some of the meat and hand-chop the fat, as you did, Tepee - seems like a LOT more work.
My guests who tried the sausages - all English - liked them a lot - but what the heck do English people know about good sausages?
and a note to HKDave: I have to 'fess up - I used half of one of your casings!
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I wonder if harvesting bird's nest is any less cruel. Recently, we've seen a lot of people jumping on this bandwagon. Some people convert their property (prime property, mind you), usually shophouses fronting seasides where swiftlets thrive, to make an environment to encourage the building of nests. I visited one such converted building last year - my BIL's uncle's. The building has to be high, and holes are built inside a room. Small window holes are left opened for the swifts to fly in and a sound device is constructed on top of the building to attract the birds. The thing is, when the nests are harvested, won't the chicks be without a nest?
Okay, I might be wrong about this but I believe (and I might be wrong) that the birds build a nest and it's harvested so then they build another. That one is also harvested - and it's considered to be inferior in quality to the first nest (people who know about these things can tell). Then the birds build a third nest and that's what they eventually lay the eggs in.
At least that's how it used to be (if I was right in the first place). The harvesters wouldn't take nests with eggs in them because they wanted the "cycle of life" (or whatever) to continue - if they destroyed the eggs, no new birds would hatch so they wouldn't have as many nests to harvest in the future, after the baby birds grew up. But now (I believe - might be wrong yet again) unscrupulous people are taking over the industry and just dumping out the eggs and taking the nests. It's not always like that, just some stupid rogue harvesters who are only in it to make money as fast as they can without thought for the future.
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Good point, but this hamster is indestructible and can escape from anything . Last time she gnawed through the water main.
Oh dear. Maybe you shouldn't let that hamster out of its cage.
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I'm not sure that I am!
Ugh, the smell would have been pretty awful. And how would you explain to your daughter that little Sparky went to the big running wheel in the sky.
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Computer's working again, my daughter's hamster had chewed the cable!
Glad it didn't choose to chew the electrical cord!
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Come to Hong Kong and fill your luggage! (although you could probably only bring back bottled stuff). You can find a lot of this stuff here. In the States, it would be considered "artisinal" and it would cost much more.
When I come back to HK for a visit, I would like to load up on dried conpoy, dried squid, ham yu, ... and most importantly... snacks! Olives and plums! Those are available in SF but the quality is so-so and the prices are $$$.
And... of course, load up my stomach while I am over there.
Are you good at sneaking things in? because they frequently stop me when I go back to the States (I think they target Chinese faces). I don't know if you're allowed to bring some of this stuff you just mentioned: I have successfully brought in conpoy and dried mushrooms but then another time, they wouldn't let me bring in some prawn crackers (yes, they were cooked). And they're also confused about meat products: some inspection drones will let you in with it, others will not. I heard another time (but perhaps I wrong) that they weren't letting people bring in mooncakes but I've never been stopped with them.
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My dear, you're not the only one....and I've not even tried it before!!
Well, in the meantime, there's YOUR fresh pork sausage wrapped in soybean skin to look forward to! Pix, please, when you make them.
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Yeah, me too.
To me, I always like to find different ways to (or to improve on) use different sauces (just the means) to cook different dishes (that's the end results). I have not spent any energy to try to make the raw ingredients or sauces myself. As that would take too much effort (cooking dinner everyday is exhaustive enough as it is...).
Imagine that you would need to make your own:
soy sauce
tofu
soy milk
foo yu
rice wine
vinegar
bean sauce
(etc..)
Dry your own oysters, dry your own shrimps, scallops. Grow your own mushrooms? Make your own cheese? Brew your own wine? ...
Come to Hong Kong and fill your luggage! (although you could probably only bring back bottled stuff). You can find a lot of this stuff here. In the States, it would be considered "artisinal" and it would cost much more. The stuff can be a little more expensive than what you get at supermarkets but it's not unreasonable and besides, I'd rather give the smaller producers my business. Lee Kum Kee does not need my money.
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Several observations: I have N E V E R eaten lap cheong that was smoked, do they really smoke the sausages? I know that we make dishes like tea-smoked duck, but I need to be reminded that there are preserved foods that are smoked.
Lean to fat ratio for lap cheong is usually somewhere around 3/1 or at a cheaper price, 3/2. In Old Chinatown in Toronto there are at least two specialty meat shops which among other things, make lap cheong, lap yuk, lap ap, etc. In the front of the store they sell the ready to eat cooked stuff; bbq meats, loo mee, joongs, stews, trotters, etc.etc.
So do you know about the fresh (not air-dried) pork sausages I was originally enquiring about?
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I'm almost positive my grandmother or grandfather didn't smoke their laap cheung, and I'm pretty sure the vendors here don't smoke it either. I remember my grandmother hanging laap cheung and laap ngap (salted duck) on strings in a little homemade cage made of chicken wire so the animals couldn't get to the meat.
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If you use natural casings for sausages, the skin gets very crackly when it's cooked slow enough the the fat from inside bastes the outside and long enough that the water is driven from the casing. Even plain old hotdogs done by one of the 'wurst' masters here in Portland get a wonderful crackly skin when they're grilled low and slow. Hope that helps.
regards,
trillium
You're right about the slow cooking, here's what my mother said:
"I do remember she used some wine and sugar. No water chestnut. Maybe cilantro. They were roasted in the oven to cook. The meat was coarsely ground or chopped--at least 1/4" diameter and fat was smaller. It didn't keep well because of the fat content."
Not very helpful as far as a recipe. But I do know my grandmother used natural casings.
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I think I know the kind of fresh sausage aprilmei is talking about... I've had them at the Dollar Meat Store in Vancouver, where they sell them warm and sliced so you can wolf them down before you even get back to the car. They make them in larger, keilbasa-size casings, I guess about twice the diameter of laap cheung. I don't have a recipe for those, but they taste like ground pork, fat, salt, sugar, soy, and a 5-spice or similar note. No water chestnut or cilantro.
Here's a laap cheung recipe, not tested yet:
http://recipeusa.org/Ethnic/Oriental%20Chi...age%2070832.htm
Hi Dave, these are the ingredients I was thinking of - it had a hint of five-spice but it wasn't strong. My grandmother's were especially good because of the skin - it was glossy and crackly. I'm wondering if she coated it with maltose or something.
And that's how she served them - sliced.
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I don't suppose you have a digital camera for a demo??
Huh?
Like Dejah said: Have you seen her website???
No, I didn't see that site. Thanks!
Wow, those joong look wonderful...
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Aprilmei, I called my mother and was told there's no waterchestnut in the lobak...I confused it with choen geun. Targeted to make it next week; will buy the ingredients this weekend. Then, only will I list down a more precise list of ingredients, OK? I'm another one of those 'a pinch here and there' cook.
Don't worry, that's how I cook too: a bit of this and a bit of that. Thanks, looking forward to hearing more about it; it sounds really good and easier than stuffing the sausages into casings.
I don't suppose you have a digital camera for a demo??
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True, but I'm sure the original is a thin greyish liquid, more akin to fish sauce than what we now buy.
The real stuff IS a thin, greyish (actually, greyish-brown) liquid. I have a bottle of "real" oyster sauce that's made right by the pond where the oysters are harvested. Unfortunately, they only sell it where the oyster sauce is made - which means you have to take a long trip out there (it's in New Territories). There are no retail shops selling it.
Macau Food/Restaurant Recommendations
in China: Dining
Posted
Some people I REALLY respect (as far as food goes) love Fernando's but the one time I went there, I didn't like it much. Maybe we ordered the wrong things. It should be noted that they don't take bookings so if you go during prime time, you'll have to wait - sometimes for a couple of hours.