A Trip to Hong Kong: Two Versions of Roast Goose

By one of those strange alignment of stars, DC and I were on overlapping business trips to Hong Kong. A bit of canny planning brought us together over the weekend at the achingly modern and very comfortable Langham Place Hotel. The only problem in getting there was that I didn’t realise that there were two “Langhams” in Kowloon, one the Langham Hotel in Tsim Sha Tsui and the other the Langham Place Hotel in Mongkok.

After a bit of confusion, I finally got to the hotel and DC took me to Sham Tseng Chan Kee Roasted Goose Restaurant (深井陳記燒鵝茶餐廳). He informed me that Yung Kee was off the menu for this trip as he’d been and the standard of roast goose was abysmal compared to its price. So this place it was and we proceeded to order the roast goose noodles.

Sure, the soup was full of msg, but the noodles were firm and springy and the goose. Mmm… the first piece of goose I put in my mouth was tender and flavourful. The fatty, savoury juices from the drumstick flowed beautifully with each bite. It’s a pity that not every piece of the drumstick was as tender. The skin was soggy – we couldn’t salvage it in time before it all sank into the soup. Still, for about HK$40 (S$6), this was a fantastic welcome to Hong Kong.

Sham Tseng Chan Kee Roasted Goose Restaurant (深井陳記燒鵝茶餐廳)
Reclamation Street, Mongkok 旺角新填地街427-427A號 – behind Langham Place Hotel

DC promised me something better for dinner, something worth dressing up for. So I changed out of my denim civvies, slipped on a black dress and we headed downstairs to Ming Court Restaurant. It’s fantastic to have a 2-Michelin star restaurant right in the hotel. Disappointingly, it seemed like everyone else was dressed down, so not quite as posh as expected. But that was hardly a downer as the service was friendly and not at all snooty like you’d expect for a starred restaurant. (Yes it helps to speak even a smidgen of Cantonese.)

We dithered a while on which dishes to order. Greedy as we are, we realise that our stomachs nonetheless have finite capacities (sad to say, mine more so than DC’s). It went without saying that we would have the roast goose – chiu-chow style roasted goose (HK$148 or S$25). It’s almost a pity it came first as it was the star of the show. The best roast goose in our combined experience, and that’s saying something. Check out how tender the meat is in the pic below.

One angle not enough? Look at this pic. See how crisp the skin is? And the thin sliver of fat under the skin? It was a sublime experience as each morsel was perfectly tender. I could taste both the slightly gamey flavour of the goose and the spices of the marinade in each bite. Then there was the wonderfully crisp skin; we were so glad that we asked for the drumstick portion with a higher skin to meat ratio. And something most amazing that put this in a class of its own: the marrow was still tender. It’s hard enough to roast a bird so that the meat is tender and the skin crisp, let alone stop the marrow from drying out. This goose scores full marks in our books.

The rest of the meal simply paled in comparison after the goose. The vegetables were on the soggy side. I’m not sure if vegetables in Hong Kong cook down soggier or it’s just the style of cooking. I’ve had better vegetables elsewhere.

And then the lowest point of the dinner. This was a gold award winning dish from 2010 – pan-fried chicken skin filled with minced chicken and black truffles, accompanied with sliced pumpkin (HK$288 or S$50). The first piece was interesting, with crisp pumpkin at the bottom and a very slight hint of black truffle in the sauce. Too bad the chicken skin wasn’t crisp as it was sandwiched between the meat and the pumpkin. My preference was to keep the skin on top to preserve the crispness for longer. There was also way too much for the two of us to work through that dish of maybe eight pieces. We really wanted to like this but it was too cloying and monotonous after the first piece. Next better player please.

And a next better player did indeed step up. The signature fried rice. I hear you readers cry, “What? Fried Rice?! At a Michelin starred restaurant?” Let me explain. This version, fried rice with silky chicken, crispy conpoy and shao xing wine, served in a casserole (HK$198 or S$35) was made with black chicken and pine nuts, fried beautifully together, and placed in a hot claypot to accentuate the wok hei. The chicken was indeed silky as mentioned in the menu description and there was plenty of smokey charred flavour. The best part was the layer of “fan jiu” (飯燋) or burnt rice at the base of the claypot. Beautiful.

By the end of our dinner, I was so stuffed by the rich food that I couldn’t handle any heavy dessert. Very unwisely, we didn’t take any of our friendly waiter’s recommendations. They were mainly fried or incredibly rich, like deep fried egg fritters, birds nest soup, giant longevity bun stuffed with lotus paste and salted egg yolk. And we ordered osmanthus jelly with wolfberry. While it was very pretty, it was nonetheless a foolhardy choice as the jelly was too sweet and rather too firm for my liking.

Altogether, the meal was good with a modest damage done of HK$1000 or S$160 including tip. The downer was the overly oily and too monotonous chicken and pumpkin dish. We would definitely order something more classically Cantonese next time, and maybe save a bit of space for a richer dessert. And the roast goose? I’ll fly to Hong Kong just to eat that again.

Ming Court
Langham Place Hotel
555 Shanghai Street, Mongkok,
Kowloon, Hong Kong
Tel: +852 3552 3300

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Yet Another Quick Pasta Dish – With Pan-Roasted Tomatoes

I know I feature way too many pasta dishes, sorry. I don’t cook as much as I’d like and lately things have been crowding in. I’d love for an entire weekend of leisurely cooking at some point soon. In the mean time, this will have to suffice.

I like chicken baked in the oven plain and simple till the juices flow and the skin is crisp. Poured onto warm pasta, it makes a simple dish incredibly yummy. This time I thought I’d use some cherry tomatoes and roast them over low heat in a frying pan. Slip in some crushed garlic and the juices come out sweet and aromatic. Let the mixture cook slowly over low heat to intensify the juices while the pasta cooks. Pour in the chicken juices, toss in the asparagus spears at the last moment, then mix with the cooked pasta. Season with plenty of freshly grounded black pepper and sea salt and a great lunch is served.

Here’s the recipe if you must.

Ingredients:

1 chicken leg, deboned
2 tbsp olive oil
2 cloves garlic, crushed
8 cherry tomatoes
enough pasta for one person, linguine perhaps
10 mini asparagus spears, cut into short lengths

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 150ºC.
2. Separate the skin from the deboned chicken leg and lay each flat on a baking tray lined with aluminium foil, taking care that they are far apart enough that the juices stay away from the skin. This way the skin becomes nice and crisp. Bake for 20 minutes or until chicken is done. If the skin isn’t crisp yet, grill till it is.
3. Let the chicken sit and cool so the juices ooze out.
4. In the mean time, heat the olive oil gently in a frying pan and then sweat the garlic and tomatoes till just on the verge of brown. This takes a while, so be patient.
5. Cook the pasta in plenty of salt water till al dente.
6. When the pasta is just about ready, pour the chicken juices into the frying pan and turn up the heat. Toss in the asparagus and stir till just cooked, about 30 seconds.
7. Now toss in the pasta and stir till the noodles are completely coated. Season well to taste with salt and pepper.
8. Turn onto plate, top with chicken and crispy skin and dig in!

Serves 1.

DC Cooks to Impress

As mentioned before, DC is a man after my own stomach. He also knows that that’s the obvious path to my heart. Not being someone with a reputation for great culinary skills, he still went ahead to cook a gourmet meal for me without any help. Impressive huh.

First was the starter, poached eggs with smoked trout on toast, topped generously with my favourite ikura. I don’t know how he managed it but the eggs were perfectly poached so that the whites were just set and the yolks runny. (I’ve never had the guts to poach eggs.) They didn’t have even a hint of the vinegary poaching water. Coupled with toasted baguette and store-bought smoked trout and ikura, this was an irresistible combination.

Now the piece de resistance really was the stuffed deboned chicken with truffle and spinach. I think he really outdid himself here as I don’t know how to debone a chicken  while keeping it whole. He had to figure it out all on his own.

He roasted it till just so. The flavour of the truffle stuffing subtley permeated the chicken and the stuffing kept the chicken nicely moist.

He also somehow learned (oh the power of the Internet!) how to “lollilop” a chicken wingstick. Check out the picture below: instead of having to gnaw indelicately away at the wingstick bone, all I needed to do was to pick it up and bite off the meat at the end. Very nice.

DC claims to have forgotten how he made these dishes, so I’ll give you recipes of how I think he made them! Look through the ingredients list carefully, though, as quite a few ingredients come from a gourmet store.

Poached eggs with smoked fish on toast

Ingredients:

4 eggs
4 slices of baguette
1 small pack of smoked fish (trout or salmon is fine)
1 small pack of ikura
1 tbsp raisins, optional
1 handful rocket leaves, optional

Method:

1. Poach the eggs carefully and set aside. (Don’t know how to poach eggs? Try Google.)
2. When just about ready to serve, toast the baguette till crisp.
3. Assemble the toasts by covering each piece of toast with smoked fish, then a poached egg and scatter a teaspoon or more of ikura on top.
4. Garnish with rocket and raisins on the side.

Serves 2.

Stuffed chicken with truffle and spinach

1 chicken, deboned (again, try Google for instructions)
2 small bags baby spinach
1 15g jar truffle pate
1 tsp sea salt
100g wild mushrooms (chanterelles, ceps, etc)
plenty of cracked black pepper
4 pandan leaves
oil for basting
more rocket leaves
2 peaches for a jar of muscat-infused peaches

Ingredients:

1. Season the chicken with salt and pepper, cover and refrigerate.
2. Preheat the oven to 180ºC.
3. Cook the spinach: boil, steam or microwave depending on your preference. Let cool, then squeeze as much water out of the spinach as possible.
4. Make the stuffing by blending the spinach with the truffle pate. Check the seasoning and add the salt and pepper to taste.
5. Roughly chop the mushrooms and mix into the stuffing.
6. Push the stuffing into the cavity of the chicken and tie up the chicken with pandan leaves.
7. Roast the chicken for 100 minutes, basting it regularly with oil and turning about 60 minutes later.
8. Carve and serve with rocket and sliced peaches as garnish.

Serves 4.

Method:

July in Vietnam: A Close Shave in Sapa

My experience in Sapa was definitely head and shoulders above that in Ha Long Bay. Here I experienced something a tad more opportunistic. Although the personal danger was higher, somehow I felt far less upset about this experience, and filed it away under things to watch out for in future.

Here’s what happened. I’d booked my short tours in Sapa through a travel agent recommended by, of all people, my pastor. He’d been on a wonderful trip in a large group from church, enough for the travel agent to personally show them around Sapa. I hadn’t the same luck, which wasn’t a big deal. The tour guide who took me on a group tour to Cat Cat, seemed like a nice enough and friendly guy. Dzong was informative and also very fluent in English. After a very pleasant day trip to Cat Cat, he asked the group to join him for dinner. The rest seemed fairly interested but later backed out because they were all on pre-arranged package tours with dinner included.

Dzong invited me to his place for tea. Eager to make friends with a local, I readily agreed.  Turned out that he shared a room with his brother, one in a row of many little rooms in a building. We sat on little stools drinking green tea and eating lychees. Too bad he was really bad at choosing fruit. He obviously hadn’t spent a great deal of time living on his own. We chatted a while about all sorts of random things and I foolishly set the location a bit too far away when I fibbed to him that I had a boyfriend waiting for me in Ho Chi Minh City.

Later that evening we met for dinner and headed out to one of the local barbecue joints serving grilled black chicken and various glutinous rice specialties.  We sat down at the low wooden benches and enjoyed all the delicious local delicacies. Dzong got a half litre mineral water bottle recharged with the local firewater and I obstinately sipped at it while he exhorted me to scoff it down like the locals. No way for something at about 20% bv!

Soon dinner was over and it was time to retire for the night. I was a little buzzed as we walked back down the path leading to both our places. He asked me to wait outside while he picked up something at the pharmacy. Thank God for my curiosity as I wandered into the shop consisting of a single counter and looked around. Before long I realised to my horror that he was picking some prophylactics. That brought me straight out of my buzz and immediately put me on the alert. I kept my distance from him and true enough, he asked if I wanted to go to his place for a drink. It was my cue to profess exhaustion and head back.

Unfortunately, he insisted on being gentlemanly (whether faux or not I care not to explore) and escorted me back to the hotel. I kept insisting that he needn’t go to my floor or to my door but he did. I unlocked the door, said a quick goodbye and slipped inside, closing and locking the door firmly behind me. I was incredibly lucky that he didn’t try any harder because I later found that the door didn’t shut properly and really needed a chair pushed against it.

Boy did that teach me a lesson. I never told my parents about this, not even now, two years from when it happened. I wonder what Mum would say if she finds out, if she ever gets back to reading this blog again!

Having survived that, I thought I’d go on to more challenging things and hired a motorbike plus driver to take me through hill country the long way. Of course, not without thoroughly haranguing the travel agent who arranged Dzong as a tour guide to make sure that the motorbike driver was a decent chap who wouldn’t try a thing on me.

Braise

DC took me to Braise for our anniversary dinner. It was a lovely place with the best service I’ve experienced in Singapore: warm and attentive yet unobtrusive. They noticed that I was cold and not only gave me a shawl, they also made sure that my hot water was topped up all the time.

It was too bad the tasting menu wasn’t very exciting, so we went a la carte. Still, the chef sent out an amuse bouche of some kind of pate on a sliver of toasted baguette. I don’t remember what it was, all I know that it was rich, very tasty and left us both wanting me. I suspect it’s a fish rillette of sorts. We’ll have to see whether it makes its way to the main menu before telling.

DC’s starter was just his thing: a rich and unctuous pairing of foie gras and sweetbread. I wasn’t sure of the spongey-grainy texture of the sweetbread, but DC loved it. It’s pretty difficult to get parts like pancreas in Singapore.

I had half a dozen fines de claire oysters au naturel. They didn’t even need the lemon, they were so fresh. I loved how the sharp, slightly briny taste mellowed into mouth-filling savour. It was a pity they didn’t have a muscadet to go with it, that pairing is made in heaven. I was so sad when I ate my last one, enjoying the aftertaste for as long as I could. It’ll be a while before I get oysters of that quality again.

Now for the mains. Mine was a straightforward roast beef in jus, paired with braised beef cheek, savoy cabbage and decadent, decadent buttery mash. It was a good dish that tasted far better than it looks in the picture. (The problem with romantic settings is that pictures just don’t come out well at all.) The beef was nicely rare, just as I like it, and the beef cheek the expected melt-in-mouth tender. Coupled with the very buttery mashed potato, it was a tad on the rich side, which DC quite predictably loved. Needless to say, I finished the savoy cabbage quite quickly as it was a good foil to all the butter and fat.

I think DC may have had the more interesting dish. His grilled fish with capellini was quite different as fish and cheese are not commonly paired. The pasta was doused in a very cheesy stock that wasn’t at all stringy. It was as if the essence of cheese had been distilled and used to flavour the pasta, without having any actual cheese in it. I can’t even imagine how they made this. The fish itself was good too, with a nice gratinated crust. It was ordinary in a good way.

Dessert was a bit of a pity. I didn’t understand why they had to deconstruct a trifle. I liked the apple jelly and granite, it was just a pity that the custard was starchy. It showed that either the head chef was off-duty or hadn’t any confidence in his custard-making skills or both. I liked the cinnamon donut, but wasn’t sure of the point of it. Yes yes, I know that it’s the deconstructed trifle sponge, but it didn’t really add anything to the dessert. Braise would do better if they hired a better dessert chef.

In summary, we’ve got outstanding starters and very competent, somewhat creative mains. Avoid the dessert and you’ll have a fabulous dinner.

Braise
60 Palawan Beach Walk
Level 2 Sentosa
Tel: 6271 1929

A Rather Impressive Roast Beef Lunch

I had a joint of beef sitting in the freezer that was crying out to be turned into a lovely Sunday lunch. It’d been a long time since I’d last entertained, so I thought I’d make it slightly more elaborate than normal. I started off with bacon and watercress soup, then served the beef with mushrooms in red wine, roast pumpkin (DC’s helper made it so I don’t have the recipe), green salad and horseradish garlic cream sauce. To top it all off, I served a very successful tropical plate trifle. It was boozy, it had pineapple and passionfruit in it, it had cream, it was amazing.

So let’s start from the beginning. DC and I headed out to Choa Chu Kang the day before in search of fresh ingredients. Too bad about the poor selection at the farmer’s market, as we ended getting most of the stuff from Cold Storage at Jelita in the end. I made the soup, mushrooms and cake base the night before so that there wasn’t much work to do in the morning, just the beef and assembly work.

Here’s the beef just out of the oven, adorned by an afterthought of DC’s Irish breakfast sausages. (The sausages were from Cold Storage, we’re not yet so hardcore that we make our own sausages!)

We reluctantly let it rest till our guests arrived and got on to reheating the soup and checking the flavourings of the sauces. Eeyore, Wei and WW arrived first and we got on with the soup. To our surprise, watercress and bacon soup went incredibly well with some homemade prawn-flavoured keropok lying around. We couldn’t help but mop up jade liquid with coral crisps, proclaiming all the way that there wouldn’t be space for the beef at the rate we were going through the bucket of keropok. By the time Shinta and KK arrived, the bucket had dwindled to half its original.

As KK and Shinta tucked into their soup, the rest of us went ahead with the main course. It was so good we almost didn’t leave enough for the latecomers. Luckily, those two eat fast and soon caught up with us as they bagged their share of the good stuff.

And then came dessert. Oh my was it good. There was the tang of lime and passionfruit, the fragrance of Silver Valley pineapple, soft voluptuous cream and a generous shot of booziness. No one uttered the customary complaint of how fattening dessert was. In fact, Eeyore protested when I suggested waiting a while to digest first before serving dessert.

A testimony to how good it was? There was hardly any talking at the table, only chomping and semi-civilised requests to pass dishes around, followed by satisfied grunts and sighs. We finished lunch in a record half hour, including a Bordeaux and a Spanish dessert wine to round it all off. Then we proceeded upstairs to fall asleep while Shinta and Eeyore battled it out on Wii Super Smash Bros.

Hungry yet? Now for the recipes.

Roast Beef

Ingredients:

1.5 kg joint of ribeye
sea salt
freshly ground black pepper
olive oil
4 good quality sausages (optional)

Method:

1. Slather the thawed beef generously with black pepper and leave to marinate overnight.
2. Remove joint from fridge at least 2 hours before cooking. Preheat the oven to 210 ºC.
3. Rub the outside generously with olive oil and salt, place in a foiled roasting tin. Surround with sausages.
4. Roast for 30 minutes at 210 ºC then turn down to 160 ºC for another 30 minutes. Like this, you’ll get it medium. (See picture.)
5. Remove from oven and allow joint to rest for at least 20 minutes before carving. Serve with the other yummy stuff.

Mushrooms in Red Wine

Ingredients:

80 g butter
6 onions or shallots, sliced
2 punnets brown mushrooms, sliced
200 ml dry red wine

Method:

1. Melt the butter and cook the onions gently till soft.
2. Add the mushrooms and on slightly higher heat, cook till most of the butter is absorbed.
3. Turn up the heat and pour in the red wine.
4. Allow to bubble for about 10 minutes or till mushrooms are nicely tender. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Horseradish Garlic Cream Sauce

Ingredients:

2 heads of garlic
1 pot cream
1 tbsp horseradish powder

Method:

1. Roast the garlic in a pre-heated oven at 120 ºC for an hour or till soft.
2. Cut the base of the garlic head and squeeze out the pulp into a mortar and pestle. Mash till smooth.
3. In a pot, combine the garlic and cream and warm gently. Do not let boil.
4. Mix in the horseradish powder and season to taste.

Tropical Plate Trifle

[syrup-soaked cake]

Bake the cake here using lime zest instead of tangerine. Use the juice from 5 limes and 100 g of icing sugar for the syrup. Add a touch more icing sugar if you like it less sour.

[cream]

Whip the i small tub whipping cream with 2 tbsp icing sugar and 50 ml dark rum till you get soft peaks. Chill in the fridge immediately.

[fruit topping]

Add 2 tbsp of dark brown sugar to 3 pulped passionfruit, stir and chill in the fridge. Chop Silver Valley pineapple into smaller chunks than the photo (I was too lazy to cut them smaller) and chill.

[assembly]

Arrange thick slices of the cake on a suitable plate, scatter with a couple tbsp of dark rum, then dollop the rum cream lavishly over. Pour over sugared passionfruit pulp then sprinkle with pineapple pieces. Serve to oohs and aahs.

All recipes serve 7, with leftovers.

August in China: Guangzhou Goose Galore

I started August in China by crashing at Tortoise’s pad in Guangzhou. She wasn’t too impressed with the food there compared to her native Hong Kong, so I didn’t get many recommendations for where to go for good food. All I knew was that bird flu warnings or not, I was going to get my fill of goose.

And boy did I get my fill. One evening I walked down Beijing Street, a crowded shopping street crammed with tiny shops. Turning into one of the garrets, I found a little eating place like those pseudo-coffeeshops in Far East Plaza. This one had roast goose and I happily tucked into the soft kway tiao and msg-laden soup.

In my last few days in Guangzhou, I was caught by Typhoon Nuri which was given a typhoon warning of 10! Tortoise had already evacuated back to Hong Kong but I had to stay put because of visa issues. I spent two days haunting her apartment, doing nothing but braving the occasional trip out to get food and then watching the Olympics on cable.

Tortoise had the good sense to stay nearby some decent food. There was this Teochew place that had braised goose. Ducking into the shop during lunch time, I asked for just a goose drumstick, but they only sold it by weight. I ended up ordering a jin (500 g) of goose, which worked out to be  about a third of the bird. I went the faux-Atkins route and had it accompanied only by vegetables. Boy was it heavenly.

I ate the rest of it for dinner. And for breakfast the next morning, both in front of the TV watching Typhoon Nuri’s progress.

Another time, I made it to the Chinese fast food chain Zhen Gong Fu (literally: real kungfu), complete with Bruce Lee cartoon image. I’m guessing that they probably just lifted his image from some website and didn’t bother with copyrighting. The restaurant itself, if you can call it that, looked exactly like a McDonalds or KFC. You’ll have to look closely at the picture below to realise that they actually sold steamed dishes.

A typical set meal consisted of a double-boiled soup, some kind of steamed meat and steamed vegetables. The Cantonese in me expected to have something vaguely wholesome and at the very least not too oily, but fast food is fast food and China is China. I had some kind of pork herbal soup covered with a layer of oil, chicken in black bean paste and too much oil, and steamed iceberg lettuce with (no prizes here) way too much oil. I suppose it’s still better in the nutritional scale than McDonalds anyway. Great concept though. I wonder if it’ll fly in Singapore.

Nuri soon fizzled out and it was back to my regular programming of pulling up a stool at a roadside stall.

Guest Post: Champagne Brunch at Equinox

My brother and sis-in-law went to Equinox Restaurant for their champagne brunch. Here’s their report:

Its been a long time since I’ve done brunch, so I was really looking forward to Sunday, especially since I’ve not tried the Equinox brunch before.

The appetisers were a great start. There was the usual range of cold starters and seafood, including two types of oysters, as well as a nice sushi platter with great soba. My dining companions liked the soba so much they had multiple servings. I was happy to see a leg each of Parma and Spanish Iberian ham. I love ham, and it’s great to see the chef taking advantage of the relaxed AVA restrictions on Spanish ham. However, I was a bit puzzled to see it served on its own. Perhaps some sweet melon or crusty bread by the side would do the trick.

There was also something unique – a caviar station, complete with a cook flipping fresh mini-blinis to hold the caviar. The salty caviar was a nice contrast to the buttery blinis, which were good enough to eat by themselves.

The mains were dominated by roast meats – a very impressive display of roast prime rib, roast leg of lamb, roast pork, and a whole turkey, all in a row waiting to be carved up, flanked by a foie gras and poached fish station on either side. The roast beef was good, and was devoured by the end of the buffet. The roast pork also stood out – it’s tough to get pork right, the loin cut was succulent and moist, not at all overcooked.

For most of the meal, I was silently disturbed that the dessert section seemed to be missing! I thought perhaps dessert was an extra-charge ala carte item, or maybe the waiters would suddenly clear the sushi section and roll out the dessert platters. Finally, someone pointed out that the dessert section was tucked in a corner under the staircase, outside of the main dining area. Phew! We excitedly went for a scout – a small spread, especially compared to the mains and starters, with a bored-looking cook flipping pancakes under the stairwell. I had an unusual strawberry and rhubarb mousse (it’s very rare to find rhubarb in Singapore), and some crumbly, chocolate nut cake called “baci baci”, which incidentally tasted nothing like the Italian chocolate kisses.

Equinox serves Moët for its champagne, which definitely makes the experience more premium. Strangely enough, the price difference between the champagne brunch ($128+++) and the virgin brunch was only about $20, definitely making the champagne option much more worthwhile. They also serve a range of cocktails and wine, but most of the mainly local crowd were happy with their champagne.

The biggest downer was the live music, which was too loud and was horribly out of tune at time. (Not just my opinion, but also one of our dining companions who works in the arts/music industry. Quite clearly the duo would never get a gig at her joint!) The bad singing was topped off with a 2 min long finale to Sinatra’s My Waaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyy. Urgh.

What made up for the singing, was of course the fantastic view, which I suppose is the main draw of Equinox. There is something very calming about being on top of the world and having a birds-eye view. It’s also a bit nostalgic – I think the last time I came up during daytime was a decade ago when it was still called Compass Rose. Champagne brunches had not been invented, and the ultimate uppity luxury was going up to Compass Rose for high tea. I wonder if Equinox’s champagne brunch will ever return to those heydays.

Equinox Restaurant
Level 70, Equinox Complex, Swissôtel The Stamford
Tel: 6837 3322
Dress code: Smart casual

Yung Kee Roast Goose

Yung Kee is the possibly the most famous place for goose in Hong Kong. Sure, people with any familiarity with Hong Kong each claims a better place, but who’s willing to schlep it out to some godforsaken out of town location? It’s the cake in the your plate instead of pie in the sky thing again.

In my last trip to Hong Kong, I met a friend for dinner here after an almighty bout of shopping. Even though we got there pretty late at 8.30 pm, we still had to wait half an hour before getting a table for two. It sure did work up an appetite and we ordered up a storm. It was a blessing in disguise that goose web was sold out if not we would probably have burst from the amount of food we ingested that night.

We had of course started with roast goose, then char siew, yau choi (mustard greens in oyster sauce), chau fan (fried rice), and double boiled soup. The pièce de resistance, roast goose, was impeccable. Upon the first bite, my teeth sank into crisp-chewy skin, then oil from the fat oozed onto my tongue and I closed my eyes enjoying the tender piece of smoky, lightly spiced meat.

If you’re reading this I’m guessing you’re probably only interested in the goose, so the rest of the food doesn’t matter that much. The char siew was OK. My friend likes it a lot but I prefer mine to be a bit more charred and not left soaking in sweet sauce. The fried rice was surprisingly good though I was too full to enjoy it much. The best of the other dishes was the double boiled soup. We started with one order of a family-size earthen pot and enjoyed it so much that we had another. The server raised his eyebrows when he took the extra order. Hey, we can’t help being Cantonese girls.

The damage was horrifying, the equivalent of S$160 for both. Very expensive by Singapore standards but it’s not often that one eats at a Michelin one-star restaurant. That this place got a Michelin star means that lots of places I’ve eaten at are worth at least two or three. It’s still a good place though.

Yung Kee Restaurant
32-40 Wellington Street, Central, Hong Kong
Tel: (852) 2522 1624
Fax: (852) 2840 0888
Email: info@yungkee.com.hk

The Hike That Became a Food Trail

I was in Hong Kong at the end of November and having eaten far too much good food, I insisted that Tortoise take me to the islands for a hike. To lose weight. And feel healthy.

We went to Lamma Island where there’s a trail between two ferry points, a good three hours walk. It was the season for lovely weather and this view of the old-fashioned fishing town greeted us on arrival.

It reminded me of 1980s scenes and also vaguely of cheesy HK flicks starring Samo Hung and gang. My mum loved watching those.

I knew that my calorie-burning quest was doomed the moment my friend started rhapsodising on the nibbles she had on her last visit. My interest piqued, I immediately perked up when she mentioned satay of some sort. Up the alley just past the sea-front restaurants, the stall had chicken parts and cuttlefish on sticks. No close-up pictures because I was too busy devouring the spicy morsel. Even though HKers generally aren’t very good with chilli, this one was pretty darn hot and my mouth was on fire.

Tortoise promised succour in the form of taufa (tofu pudding) a bit further down the path. I think I kept whining “are we there yet?” and “can we eat at this stall instead?” as my tongue kept burning. Not long later, we saw this crowd under the tarp. It’s all so charmingly makeshift even the poster advertising its numerous media appearances looks like a primary school project.

Tortoise and I happily sat down to our taufa and wolfed down the silken custard. I contemplated having seconds but desisted because Tortoise reminded me that there was really good pigeon down the road.

True enough, there were plenty of signs on the way beckoning us off the straight and narrow. The hike was not to be.

After turning off the main path, the sign became more explicit. Without a doubt, we were getting warm.

Pigeon… Preciouuusssssssssssssss…

After several false turns,  including one where we found ourselves in someone’s backyard and another where we were followed by someone’s overprotective dog, we finally found the place and got our roast pigeon. It was tender, flavourful and had the crispest skin ever. I would have cried tears of joy if I wasn’t wolfing down my half of the bird. Even though it was 2.30 pm, there were loads of people still coming in. One group of expats ordered a huge mound of at least six pigeons for three people!

We rounded off the afternoon tea session with wak dan ha yun (prawns in lightly scrambled eggs) and ha cheong kai lan (Chinese kale in fermented prawn paste, a specialty of the fishing village). Even though we were quite full from our itinerant snacking, the food was to die for.  My inner Chinawoman would have been delighted to have some rice with the dishes if it were lunch, but we quite craftily saved on calories by skipping it.

We made it to the beach in just under two hours, rather than the 20 minutes we anticipated. Considering the beautiful beaches I’d been to in the past year, this one hardly counted. Some stretches of East Coast Beach in Singapore might possibly be nicer, but it was lovely to (finally) get here just before the sun started setting. Besides, the blue sky, greenery and boats out in the distance formed a pretty setting.

We mucked about for a short while taking photos and complaining how full we were and then decided that it was too late to attempt making for the other ferry terminal.  You see, we had to meet another friend in HK for, um, tea.

We turned back quickly, not because there wasn’t time to catch the ferry, but to get even more food. On the way back we took away a piece of tofu cheesecake and some local sweets. The glutinous rice-based sweets weren’t great, but we nibbled on some anyway. On (literally) the other hand, the tofu cheesecake was really good! Light, yet full of cheese flavour. Of course we devoured that on the ferry, and it was all gone by the time we reached HK. We then hotfooted it to Central to meet our friend for virtuous smoothies at Mix, one of those places so peppy it almost gives you a headache.

A bad day for calorie expenditure but another great day for good food.