Northern Dishes in Macau

Guests can watch their food being prepared in Beijing Kitchen

Beijing Kitchen in the Grand Hyatt Macau is a consistent restaurant in terms of food quality, pity about the service being sporadic. Nevertheless we had a good lunch here sampling several dishes before I went back to Hong Kong.

Green bean noodle with shredded chicken and sesame sauce

Some highlights: The jellyfish with sliced cucumber, grated garlic and aged malt vinegar was crunchy and refreshing, and we quite liked the green bean noodle with shredded chicken, chilli and sesame sauce, or at least I liked it and finished the leftovers.

The main event, the Peking Duck was presented table side and the chef immediately launched into carving it. He first gave us a small plate of just the skin that you dip into sugar and boy does that melt in the mouth! Quite amazing to try, but one piece is enough.

Then came the duck slices, some with a bit of the skin with visible fat underneath, some just meat. The steamed pancakes were thin, but stuck together and required some dexterity with the chopsticks to be able to daintily extract them from the bamboo steamer without ripping them.

Deep-fried chicken with chillis and peanuts

Condiments included pureed garlic, thinly sliced scallions and cucumbers with the sweet plum sauce. But overall the verdict was the duck was "too ducky", a bit too gamey for some people's tastes. I felt it didn't have much taste and needed the condiments to perk it up.

I suggested we order the panfried pork dumplings with yellow chives and they arrived in a delicate formation, bottom up with a web-like connection holding them all together. The dumplings themselves were crispy on the outside, and very juicy inside. So good.

Pretty presentation of panfried dumplings with yellow chives

For a spicy kick, the deep-fried chicken with chilli and peanut hit the spot. This is not gong bao ji ding, but small pieces of chicken that are deep-fried and then stir-fried again with dried chillis and Sichuan peppercorns for that numbing feeling.

Another impressive-looking dish is the crispy mandarin fish in sweet and sour sauce. It was covered in small mango cubes that were a nice complement to the thick sauce. The fish was very meaty, but didn't have much flavour, hence the sweet and slightly tart sauce. We really did finish every part of the fish in the end.

The last time I ate here was a year ago for a quick lunch just before the announcement of who got stars in the Michelin Guide Hong Kong and Macau. I just might do the same thing again in a few weeks' time. And having just eaten here, I already have in mind what I'd like to eat next time.

Peking duck, anyone?

Beijing Kitchen
1/F, Grand Hyatt Macau
City of Dreams
Estrada do Istmo, Cotai
Macau
(853) 8868 1930

Burmese Noodles in Old Macau

A bowl of Burmese rice noodles with fish balls in Macau's old district

When I met my Singapore friend who used to work in Macau, her husband's first order of business was to go to the Three Lamps District in old Macau. It's called "Three Lamps" because there's a roundabout with three lamp posts there.

On one side is a mini open wet market where you can buy flowers, get keys cut, or simple electronic gadgets fixed, and of course buy food. There's fresh produce like vegetables, homemade tofu and noodles, lemongrass and chillis, and also snacks like banh mi, and large chunks of char siu and roast goose ready to be taken home and eaten.

Soy chickens and quails for sale at this shop in the wet market

Directly opposite the wet market area and going up a few steps from the roundabout is Resturante Birmanes Nga Heong, a Burmese noodle shop.

There are apparently a few thousand Burmese living in the former Portuguese enclave and there are a handful of Burmese restaurants in Macau. Restaurante Birmanes Nga Heong is cheap, though the staff aren't very cheerful.

We got there just before the lunchtime rush and perused through the menu. My friend and her husband both got noodles marinated in a soy sauce and topped with shredded roast chicken and chopped scallions. They also ordered a dish of pork chop that came in a thin slice and cut up into strips.

Thin strips of pork chop that are slightly sweet

I ordered a spicy and sour noodle soup that has fish cakes in it, but I asked them to substitute them with fish balls instead.

Soon my order arrived piping hot and thank goodness not too spicy though it looks quite red! I enjoyed the sourness of the soup base, the rice noodles soaking in the flavour along with the springy fish balls.

We also ordered a plate of choi sum, the vegetables very tender and in season.

Despite us enjoying the meal, it was a bit of a challenge dealing with a waitress who was hardly patient with us. But really we came for the food.

The Burmese noodle shop at Three Lamps District

Apparently this place is also known for its creamy chicken curry and black soy bean milk.

Restaurante Birmanes Nga Heong
27F-GF Rua de Fernao Mendes Pinto R/C
Macau
(853) 2852 8129

BBQ in Aberdeen Country Park

Meats roasted in various stages including my char siu about to be cooked

We take a break from protest programming to describe an outing we had last Saturday.

Now that the weather has cooled down considerably, my relatives came up with the brilliant plan of having a barbecue -- at 10am.

We all met at Aberdeen Centre and from there took a short mini bus or a taxi ride up to Aberdeen Country Park where there are barbecue pits free of charge. For me it was the first time taking the no. 58 mini bus from Kennedy Town to Aberdeen Centre, which took about 20 minutes.

The country park has a nice (developed) setting for barbecues

One of my uncles who lives near there went ahead earlier and occupied one of the pits which is the perfect spot: under the trees for shade protection and next to a picnic bench. Nearby are public toilets and even a commissary should you need extra snacks and drinks to supplement your barbecue.

This uncle had already placed newspapers on top of the picnic bench, then a big plastic sheet over the table top and held it down with string in three places. So professional.

My other uncle and his son started the fire by arranging the charcoal bricks like a Jenga tower but with spaces in between. This turned out to be completely unnecessary once the fire started going and the charcoal became white and the tower collapsed.

They had also brought marinated meats along, like chicken wings (two kinds), thin pork fillets in a char siu marinade, and a selection of offal, like liver. There were also processed meats like sausages and even fish balls and squid balls. And being Chinese, we also had a container of pickled vegetables, fresh cabbage leaves, corn, and sweet potatoes that we placed in the pit to roast.

Walking along the path to the Upper Aberdeen Reservoir

Once the fire toned down and the charcoal started turning white, that's when the real barbecuing began and it was quite fun sitting around shooting the breeze and slowly cooking our food. In the background I knew there were clashes going on at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, but this was a good way to get our minds elsewhere.

When I was pretty full, I asked my relatives where I could go for a walk and they gave me directions to walk to the Upper Aberdeen Reservoir. 

It was about a 15 minute walk up a gentle slope, where there are more barbecue pits. However they seemed to have attracted a family of wild pigs! The mother led her five piglets away from the barbecue pits and into the hillside and for me it was my first encounter with wild pigs so close up. The mother didn't seem to mind us humans, otherwise she would have been defensive in protecting her piglets.

A family of wild pigs near a barbecue site!

I walked passed them and kept going until I hit the upper reservoir, and it was quite an impressive sight. There were also lots of butterflies everywhere, enjoying the sun.

The Upper and Lower reservoirs were built to supply water to the west side of Hong Kong Island. The project began in 1929 and finished two years later. The Upper Reservoir stores up to 820,000 cubit metres of water, and together with the Lower Reservoir have a total capacity of 1.23 million cubic metres that served 850,000 residents.

From here I turned around to go back and again encountered the same wild pig family, that seemed to like to linger in the area... I wonder why...

When I came back the fire was perfect for roasting marshmallows and helped my cousins get that golden brown, slightly crunchy on the outside, and wobbly gooey inside. I couldn't help eating a few myself!

A scenic view of the Upper Aberdeen Reservoir

We finished in the late afternoon and needless to say there was no need for dinner except for some fruit! But it was also a good mini escape from the stress of the protests and enjoy a bit of nature (and food).

Old School Chiu Chow Cuisine

The decor in Lok Hau Fook hasn't changed in over six decades!

This evening my relatives and I headed to Kowloon City to eat at one of their favourite haunts, Lok Hau Fook, a Chiu Chow restaurant that dates back 65 years. The decor inside has hardly changed, one of the walls features a giant dragon and phoenix, with a double happiness sign in between them for weddings, though probably no one celebrates their nuptials here anymore.

I heard some Hong Kong films have used this restaurant as a setting for scenes involving triads -- who knew they liked to hang out in old school Chiu Chow restaurants?

In front deep-fried crab mousse and shrimp balls in rear

On a Friday night, the restaurant is almost full and we take our seat -- we get cold very fast from the air conditioning and the fans blowing the cold air.

There's a lot of dishes to choose from, and my uncle already has in mind what he'd like to eat. He hasn't been here for many years and reels off some of his favourites to the waiter.

Pretty soon the lo sui duck arrives with some vinegar and it looks overcooked by it's not -- very tender and juicy, and flavourful from the master sauce. Underneath the thin slices of marinated duck are pieces of tofu that are equally delicious.

We also order some seasonal vegetables and choose chun choi, a Chiu Chow vegetable that is a skinny version of choi sum that was cooked in a broth together with chunks of radish and pork rib bits and ginger for flavour.

Super plump baby oysters in a rice soup with pork

Then came some deep-fried items -- a ball that was a combination of shrimp mousse mixed with finely diced water chestnut, and the a rectangular package of crab meat mousse. Both were so lightly deep-fried that their texture was very soft inside, the hot oil obviously fresh.

Probably one of my favourites is the baby oyster congee. The plump oysters are practically poached in the rice soup along with chunks of minced pork, Chinese ham and mushroom. We each had seconds of this giant tureen.

Another interesting Chiu Chow specialty are dumplings where the wrapper is actually made of a very thin fried egg white, and inside the filling is diced chicken, mushrooms, and bamboo shoots, and tied  together by a thin piece of chive topped with shrimp roe. This is such an interesting dish especially in terms of execution; interestingly it tastes of butter, and the bamboo shoots inside are a nice textural highlight.

Dumpling wrappers made of fried egg white are impressive

We were almost full -- but not before we tried some desserts. First up was wok-fried taro covered in sugar -- this is very difficult to execute, as the taro needs to be constantly moving in the hot wok otherwise the sugar on top will burn. Here the slices of taro were practically white with some scallion bits.

Another was a soup of green beans with some translucent jelly cubes. Not a favourite, but a fantastic finish was a taro pudding, again constantly stirred in the wok which is challenging because the grounded taro is so sticky. The end result is a very smooth and sweet hot pudding that's practically screaming to be called comfort food. The small bowl looks deceiving, but really one or two spoonfuls are all you need to satisfy your sweet tooth.

In the end our bill came to just under HK$1,000 for four. We will surely be back again as my uncle already began thinking about what to order next time...

Stir-fried slices of taro covered in sugar is difficult to make

Lok Hau Fook
1-3 Hau Wong Road
Kowloon City
2382 7408

Fact of the Day: Hongkongers Love Oil and Butter

This Hong Kong-style French toast can have as much as 420 calories

OK finally a blog post something not extradition bill related!

Did you know Hongkongers eat enough French toast to cover the Earth's circumference every year?

It's quite the shocking statistic that has nutritionists worried.

Chicken thighs -- as big as your hand are a HK favourite

It comes from an online survey by a health platform called HealthyD.

Other popular snacks? French fries, fried chicken thighs, egg tarts, and pineapple buns with butter, the usual oily and buttery stuff that taste so good but clog your arteries.

"Hong Kong's favourite foods are deep-fried with a lot of oil and usually served with butter and syrup. Excessive consumption could lead to obesity, high blood pressure and heart disease," said Cynthia Wong Oi-se, a senior nutritionist at NutraCare Consultancy.

It's scary to hear Hongkongers eat 320 million servings of French toast annually -- basically bread soaked in a batter of eggs and milk (sometimes with peanut butter slathered in between) and then deep-fried and served with syrup. In case you were calorie counting it has 420 calories. That means you'd have to run 5K to burn that off.

Egg tarts are another favourite snack in Hong Kong

While French toast was the number one favourite for 57 percent of people surveyed, the second most preferred snack was French fries which have 539 calories, followed by fried chicken thighs (431 calories), toast with condensed milk and peanut butter (405 calories), egg tarts (230 calories), and pineapple buns (421 calories).

In terms of drinks, 55 percent like to have milk tea, which can have 140 calories. This was followed by lemon tea and lemon water. Wong warned one glass of lemon tea can have as much as 6 teaspoons of sugar in it. Yikes!

Which all probably explains why in a citywide health survey released by the government in 2017 that half of Hongkongers aged 15 and above were overweight or obese.

Milk tea can have as many as 140 calories because of sugar

The online survey also found Hongkongers typically visit cha chaan tengs (where all these tempting snacks can be ordered) on alternate days, with 88 percent of those surveyed saying they eat there 3.6 times a week.

People either really have a hankering for these snacks or they are very keen to show they are proud of the local food!

Chicken Broth from Scratch

Just before turning the heat on, the local chicken is nestled with vegetables

These days I'm cooking more; even though our office is in Causeway Bay where there is a plethora of dining options, they aren't easy on the wallet, nor are they satisfying.

In the past year I have resorted to cooking my own lunches, usually large batches of soups that I scoop into boxes and put in the freezer before re-heating one in the morning and putting the hot soup in a thermos that will keep it warm for lunchtime. Then I splurge on bread at Eric Kayser to accompany my lunch.

Earlier this week I was given a local chicken from Tai On farm in the New Territories, and since my toaster oven is too small to roast it, I decided to make chicken broth from it last night.

Through research online I discovered chicken broth is different from stock -- the former is making a soup with the meat and bones, while the latter is only the bones; I thought the two words were interchangeable!

In any event I placed the chicken (minus the head and organs) into the large wok I have, together with onions, leeks, garlic, celery, carrots, bay leaves, black peppercorns and salt. I did add a sprig of coriander that turned the broth slightly green. Also forget using dried oregano -- stick to fresh parsley, and fill the pot up with water and turn on the heat.

I should have chopped up the chicken, and ended up having to cut the feet off as the broth was already steaming hot... not smart, but oh well. The broth simmered for about an hour and a half, when the meat was falling off the bone. I took the chicken out of the pot and let the broth simmer a bit longer.

The chicken meat was delicious -- what I tried without devouring the whole thing. It had a chicken taste that's not found in North American birds. It's also much smaller in size too.

After the broth was taken off the heat and cooled down, I first poured the broth into a colander and then a fine sieve strainer that didn't let oil molecules through -- there was a lot of oil. Then the broth went into the refrigerator overnight as well as the chicken meat that I pulled off the carcass and placed in another container in the fridge.

This morning I made chicken vegetable soup with onions, garlic, leeks, carrots and celery, barley and corn. When I put the broth in, it was gelatinous from the carcass, bones and skin. Amazing! When it was heated up again it became a broth again. I managed to make four servings' worth of soup and included some of the chicken meat too.

Lunch this week is going to be delish!