Master Chef Kitchen Tasting

Soup featuring dashi, abalone, asparagus, onsen egg and truffles

This afternoon I was lucky to go into the kitchen to watch a Japanese guest chef whose restaurant has two Michelin stars, cook dashi, a stock of kombu or kelp with bonito flakes, from aged tuna.

On the stove was a pot with some water and a very large, thick chunk of kelp. Chef Takagi Kazuo let it simmer for a while before I arrived, and he let me taste it and it was a very weak flavour.

Kelp simmering over the hot stove to extract the flavours

After a few more minutes, he got a big bag of bonito flakes -- they aren't shaved very thinly but instead a bit thicker, and threw two handfuls into the pot. After another minute or two he strained it and let me try the soup again. This time it had lots of umami flavour, and the aroma was a bit smoky too.

The rest of the plate was being constructed on the side -- chunks of abalone that were perfectly steamed and meaty, together with chopped asparagus, an onsen egg, and then garnished with truffle slices.

Finally the dashi was poured into the dish and every spoonful was delicate, succulent and light.

Chef Takagi Kazuo uses bonito flakes in dashi

Takagi explains that while he uses western ingredients in his dishes, they are inherently Japanese, in this case the dashi is the star. He adds that while the dashi takes about 30 minutes to make, it takes over three years to get the kombu and over a year for the bonito flakes.

It is his recognition of how it isn't easy to not only procure the best ingredients, but also that he doesn't put himself before them, that he needs them in order to make the best dishes possible.

This humbleness and passion is probably what makes Takagi's restaurant, Kyoto Cuisine Takagi in Ashiya, a city between Kobe and Kyoto, worth two Michelin stars since 2010.

He says he can cook with ingredients from anywhere, but he must have his kombu and bonito flakes that he brings with him everywhere in order to make dashi.

White Slick HK Beaches

Clumps of congealed palm oil washed up on Hong Kong beaches

There are questions why it took two days for the mainland Chinese authorities to inform Hong Kong about a ship collision that resulted in the leaking of palm oil onto our city's shores.

Congealed palm oil that looked like solid white clumps, washed up on Hong Kong beaches and all 11 of them had to be closed on Sunday. They included Hung Shing Yeh Beach on Lamma Island to Upper and Lower Cheung Sha Beach, as well as those at Repulse Bay and Chung Hom Kok.

All 11 of Hong Kong's beaches were closed on Sunday

Beach workers tried to contain the palm oil with oil-absorbent felts and strips, while witnesses say the contaminated areas smelled like chemicals, or like the odours in alleyways behind fried snack shops.

Dr Tsang Po-keung, an associate professor of science and environmental studies at the Education University of Hong Kong and a member of the government's Advisory Council on the Environment, says a notification mechanism should be modified to specify how many days authorities should be given to report such incidents.

"This time they may think it's fine because it's just palm oil, but what if next time it is gasoline?" he said, but added for some marine life, two days is too late.

When pressed, the palm oil disintegrates like powder

City University chair professor of biology Paul Lam Kwan-sing says the spill did not amount to an environmental disaster, but was "not a good thing".

"Palm oil is a crystallized liquid... which will slowly be decomposed by micro-organisms. The problem is that it is a real eyesore for beachgoers," he said.

It's troubling that China doesn't seem to think this spill warrants any kind of immediate warning -- so much for its supposed priority on the environment, or do they not care about what happens to Hong Kong? Guess not...

Dim Sum Treat

Some of our dim sum dishes, including a half eaten malai goh on the left

This morning a friend took us to a traditional place in Kowloon for dim sum. It's called Fung Shing Restaurant which is run by two brothers, with the original location in North Point, and the other in Prince Edward. Any other Fung Shing Restaurant is a "fake" one, according to my friend...

Deep-fried dumplings with chicken broth

We got there at 10.30am and we were very lucky to find a table for the three of us in the small dining area on the first floor of the building so we didn't have to share.

The clientele is middle aged, so we were the youngest ones there. No matter -- we were all there to enjoy the food.

The first dish to come out were deep-fried dumplings with a bowl of chicken broth. Even when dunked in the broth, the dumplings were still crispy and soft inside. Next came the steaming hot malai goh or Malaysian steamed cake, and it was stellar. The steamed cake was so fluffy and not too sweet that we enjoyed every bite.

The prized malai goh that was so fluffy and not too sweet

Then in quick succession came several dishes. Har gao, or steamed shrimp dumplings that were quite large and full of shrimp meat, though the skin was on the sticky side. The chicken feet were delicious, and weren't steamed too long, making them more flavourful, while the fluffy char siu baos were not cloyingly sweet.

An interesting dish we also tried was goose webs and taro wrapped with tofu skin. The skin was so thin, while the combination of the goose webs with the starchy taro was really interesting and not sitting in oil either.

We also ordered tripe in a light curry sauce, and the last dish to come was cheung fun, or pan fried rice rolls with scallions, in a thin mixture of peanut, sesame and sweet plum sauce with a generous sprinkling of sesame seeds.

We waited a long time for these pan-fried rice rolls

Needless to say we were so full afterwards and the bill was so reasonable too -- HK$263 for three!

My friend tells me dinner here is very good too and I hope we can try it sometime!

Fung Shing Restaurant

1/F-2/F, European Asian Bank Building

749 Nathan Road

Prince Edward
2381 5261

Zhang Daqian's Dunhuang Years

Mother and Daughter donors of five dynasties (1941-43)

A colleague told me about an exhibition of Chinese artist Zhang Daqian's work in Macau -- and by the way it would end on Sunday -- and so I made an effort this morning to check it out.

When I got to Shun Tak Ferry Terminal just after 10am, it was a zoo, with long queues for the Jetfoil. My only hope was to get tickets from a subcontracted ticket office and after quickly going through Immigration, I was able to get on the 10.30am ferry. Phew!

Yaksha Demons of Northern Wai Dynasty (1941-43)

After I arrived I took the MGM shuttle bus to the hotel, where I then walked a few blocks to the Macao Museum of Art.

The exhibition was located on the fourth floor and free admission too!

Some 100 works were borrowed from the Sichuan Museum, with a particular focus on his drawings during and after his visits to the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang, Gansu province.

He spent almost three years there, from 1941 to 1944, reproducing 309 cave paintings that feature Buddhist figures. Experts believe that his style of painting, particularly figurative changed significantly, making his visit to Dunhuang an important milestone in his career.

The Mogao Caves are known as the Thousand Buddha Grottoes, made up of 492 temples located along the silk road. The caves have the best example of Buddhist art that spans 1,000 years.

Detail of Manjushri Boddhisttva (1941-43)

When he exhibited his work in 1944 in Chengdu and Chongqing, many of the viewers had never seen this kind of art before, as it wasn't even mentioned in the bible of Chinese painting, Painting Manual of the Mustard Seed Garden of the Qing dynasty.

Afterwards Zhang became interested in doing more research on the history of Chinese painting, looking at works from the Six Dynasties to the Sui and Tang dynasties.

The preface of the exhibition explains he learned painting from his mother, and that Zhang once said copying others is the first step to learning how to paint. He admired Shi Tao's paintings and they were copied so well that it was hard to tell the duplicate from the original.

Zhang is considered one of the grand masters in Chinese art because he excelled in painting works from the Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, and could paint in various styles: gongli (meticulous brushwork), xieyi (freehand brushwork), ink wash painting, blue and green landscapes, and jinbi (landscapes with gold outlines).

He believed learning painting is 70 percent hard work and 30 percent in born gifts and abilities.

Detail of Su Shi in bamboo hat and clogs (1947)

The collection of paintings shown at the museum range from sketches to unfinished and finished paintings painted before, during or after his visit to Dunhuang. Some of the sketches are so detailed, it's hard to imagine they are just line drawings and have yet to be filled in. He made those drawings when he was in the caves, copying them. There are some on paper, others on silk.

Others have the figures drawn and painted in, and the only thing missing are the eyes, or the figures are drawn out in thick brushstrokes and sadly won't be finished at all.

One can see the progression he makes after having drawn over 300 works at Dunhuang and then seeing his subsequent paintings -- the figures seem more confident and allow the brush to freely express itself instead of being tightly controlled.

Also in the exhibition are other paintings around the same time or before, some of women looking wistfully outside the window or holding a plum blossom branch looking very elegant and serene.

As if excelling in painting wasn't enough, Zhang also carved his own seals, two of which are presented in this show. He apparently made many friends who were seal carvers, and they gave him seals as a sign of their alliance, and some of those are shown in the exhibition.

For me, it was an eyeopener to see what Zhang had done in the early 1940s, before he became known for his ink splash paintings, and to see that he had such a keen interest in Buddhist art.

It also helps me better appreciate the Mogao cave paintings -- as I will see some of them in person very soon...

The Art of Zhang Daqian

Macao Museum of Art

Avenue Xian Xing Hai

Macau

www.mam.gov.mo