Fuchsia Dunlop presents a short segment on the various techniques Yu Bo uses that are very common in fine Chinese cooking.

The one thing that stands out most is probably Dai Shuang’s (Yu Bo’s wife) porcupine buns, where each spike is carefully cut out of the dough using small metal shears.

Watch how intricate the preparation of such a delicate dim sum can be! Each bean paste filled bun is then steamed and served individually in lacquered bowls.

Another small highlight was Yu Bo’s demonstration on the “lucky shaped” potatoes in one of his appetizers:

The potatoes are then deep fried and arranged on a small plate.

Yu Bo does not cook with a fancy set of chef’s knives. They all use the standard meat cleavers in all their preparation and his skills to manipulate the one knife versatilely is quite impressive.

Other dishes that sparked interest included:

Braided “hair pin” garlic shoots, Knotted gourd slivers, and fanned broccoli steams

“Anyone can make a delicacy out of lobster of abalone. But I like to show it can be done with the most common ingredients” – Yu Bo

I was very glad that people in Sydney could be exposed to the a side of Chinese food that was unknown. There are years and years of culinary history that are still undiscovered and unexplored with the Western palate, and it’s only a matter of time before everyone realizes that it’s just not all about Golden Century! The Chinese eating culture is incredibly refined, but a lot of the techniques and rituals have yet to travel into Western countries.

(Excuse that horrible shot of Matt Preston) Inside the blue and white jar is filled with what appears to be Chinese calligraphy brushes, but the bristles at the end of the bamboo handles are actually made from a fine flaky pastry with hair like folds that conceal a minced beef filling. You dip one into the “ink dish” of sauce, and eat the “brush” part. Yu said he chose a red sauce as the “ink” because only in the old days, only the Emperor was allowed to write with red ink.

Dai Shuang, Matt Preston, Yu Bo

Matt Preston: tender enough for Yu Bo to braise and devour

I improvised on the recipe, and it turns out I used waaay too little sugar. I have a bad habit of making all my recipes low cal. What’s the fun in that?

Filling: Using a mortar and pestle, grind seasame seeds to a powder. Add sugar (add a lot more than I did!) and continue grinding. Then I added sesame powder – at this point you can add a little water to make the filling ‘pastey’.

The perfect glutinous rice flour to water ratio is around 3 cups rice flour to 1.5 (and a little bit more) water. I boiled my water with a few pieces of chinese rock sugar to sweeten it first. (you can also add food colouring as well, if you want, say, pink tang yuens) Pour the hot water into the flour and start stirring until it starts to stick together loosely. At this point, dust your hands with flour and start kneading. Knead for about 5 mins – continually dusting with flour. Glutinous rice flour is very sticky to work with. Pack it into a large ball and leave for 20 minutes under a damp tea towel.

Pinch a small ball of dough, roll between your palms to form a ball and flatten it into a disk around .8cm thick. Poke the centre slightly with your index finger, and spoon your sesame filling in the middle. Pinch the dough back together evenly with the filling in the middle, and re-roll into a ball between your palms.

Now repeat it a gazillion times – if you have a large family to feed. Store each finished tangyuen under a damp tea towel so it doesn’t dry up. You have to work very quickly as the dough will not be smooth as soon as it starts to dry.

Boil half a pot of water, add glutinous rice wine and rock sugar to taste, and add your tongyuen. It will all sink to the bottom at first, but as soon as they float up to the top, it is ready to serve!

The result? The tangyuen was amazing – but the filling could be sweeter! We forgot to take photos… so here is one I found which is very similar:

You can be creative with your fillings – red bean, green tea, choc peanut, cherry blossom?
Instead of serving them in a sweet soup, you can also roll them in seasame powder to make mochi.

This is how the duck was served by the master chef, each piece perfectly sliced and layered. It is cooked in a such a way that there is no extra grease (they called it “Superlean” actually, i think it’s a lie) but the skin of the duck is glistening like it is glazed with honey, purely from the natural fat and oil of the duck. The condiments served below are (clockwise from top): Cucumber and pink radish, sweet sauce and scallion, crystal sugar and garlic puree, olive paste and pickled ginger.

The waiter gave us an introduction to how this is to be eaten traditionally. You eat the duck skin first, by dipping it in sugar. It tastes amazing – cripsy with a moist juicy centre, it is fat but there is no excess oil. Then you place the rest of the meat on your pancake. You either use a mixture of sweet sauce and scallions (you don’t use the cucumber or radish when you have it with the dark sauce), or you wrap it with a thin layer of garlic puree (“it is important to spread it very thin, evenly across the pancake so it isn’t too overpowering or spicy” she teaches us), and garnish with cucumber and radish. In between each flavour, the chinese olive and the pickled ginger serves as a palatte cleanser. And we all learnt how to assemble our pancakes using chopsticks only – without touching anything with our hands until eating.

Another amazing highlight – Braised Black Tip Shark’s Fin with Saffron Sauce

The signature dish. At a whooping 500+ yuan a bowl (a year’s salary for some people), we shared this delicacy with a few people. The saffron is aromatic and creamy with an amazing golden color, and somewhat French influenced, in my opinion. The sweetness is so delicately balanced against the smooth glassiness of the shark’s fin with a glutinous bite. It is a signature dish that has been award gold medals in the National Cooking Competitions and an amazing spin on the classic Shark Fin’s soup.

This dish is also one of my favorites, not only for the presentation of the two love birds made from bok choy.

It looks like a hard boiled egg, but in fact, the egg white was steamed in the shape of an egg – and inside, is a delectible concoction of braised golden crab roe and crab meat with flavours that explode in your mouth. It would take some skill to create something as special as this!

Drunken Chicken topped with Bamboo Fungus

There is also an amazing choice of vegetarian dishes, each one presented so beautifully.


Top: Lotus root (where each little hole is stuffed with glutinous rice), Iced asparagus (which were the sweetest, freshest without that asparagus smell that some people find offputting)
Bottom: Bolete with Burgundy, Aubergine, and young bamboo shoots

And who can say no to Fois Gras?

One with mushroom sauce, the one on the right was infused with green apple and Haw. (Remember haw flakes as a kid?)

Stuffed tofu on spoons – spicy mince, and pickled vegetables on the bottom (Xue Cai).
 

On the left, Sea Cucumber fried rice – It was delicious. And on the right, Diced fois gras fried rice.

It got to the point where I was so full, I could only try two bites of each flavour of fried rice. I didn’t even try the Matsutake fried rice.

And finally, the complimentry dessert included chilled Perssimon puree in I think an almond milk…

If you ever visit Beijing, I highly recommend this place! Oh, and the Olympics were great too… I burnt all my calories walking in the Olympic park – there was hardly any transport available in and out of the games. You think you’re really close to the Bird’s Nest because you can see it…. but that was another 30 mins away!

Much love x

Cooking Directions

We arrived on a Sunday night at 8pm and almost instantly got a table without waiting (my Aussie attempt at broken Mandarin included). The staff are trained to be almost too enthusiatic, and each one bows and says “ni hao” to every customer entering the restaurant, possibly imitating the Japanese ritual. The kitchen is in full visible view from both the outside and the inside of the restuarant, dumpings and buns piled high in their bamboo steamers on some sort of sophisticated industrial steamer.

You order by writing the quantity of your dishs onto an order form. And no joke, within 60 seconds of our order put through, the drinks arrived. By the 2nd minute, our first food plate arrived. In such a high turn-over restaurant I was blown away by the lead time.

First the drunken chicken arrived (unpictured) which was very fragrant, the Chinese wine flavours perfectly soaked into smooth, tender chicken flesh.

I then ordered the Tofu with Pork Floss and Thousand year old egg – which I loved!

Their specialty – Xiao Long Baos (I ordered the one with the crab meat and pork) was consistently nice, although not nearly as good as the one I had in Hong Kong, still a very high standard for Australia. Nice and soupy on the inside, though the dumpling skin could be a tad thinner.

Shrimp and pork wonton noodle soup

Other dishes ordered that were unpictured: the Snakebeans with mince (四季豆) which was just slightly undercooked – with great flavours, the garlic Spinach was nicely made though it’s hard to get that wrong; the fried rice was fluffy and tactile which contrasted with the pork chop beautifully; and another order of wontons that were in a spicy sauce, which adds another layer of appeal to the usual soup wontons.

Great place for a quick meal – although I can’t help but feel extremely rushed. That’s Fast Food at its best, I suppose! You’ll walk out with a food coma and 15 people smiling with “Xie xie“.

I think the trick is to remove most of the blood from the ribs - I soaked the ribs in water for a few hours, then pre-boiled it twice to remove all impurities, so that the broth runs clear. I did the same to the white radish, which was actually a tip from my mother used for Chinese cooking – always pre boil white radish twice before cooking (if you have time) to release the excess moisture, and allowing it to readily absorb more flavours later.

So 1 kilo of beef ribs, cut in 5cm cubes, one whole garlic (yikes!) and salt to taste, bring to the boil in a pot and then simmer for 2 hours. Add the radishes and Korean soup mix (I bought it at the store, because the box had a picture of the dish I was trying to make). The meat gently fell off the bone (but it wasn’t mushy), and the radishes were perfect. Serve garnished with chopped green onions. It was a variation of Dorothy’s recipe – without it, I’d be clueless. Thank you!

My 2nd dish to attempt was the Pajeon. Very easy to prepare, except that I would add a few more tablespoons full of rice flour to the recipe to give it a bit more texture. I bought fresh Australian seafood (clams, squid, scallops) which made the flavours very fragrant against the pan fried green onions. And then the third and final dish, Gamja jorim (Potato in sweet soy) Talk about high fat, High sugar, High calorie, High carb…

I’m looking for a good, tried and tested 花素餃 (vegetarian dumping) recipe… can anyone help?
It cannot contain meat, fish, egg, garlic, or anything in the onion family (shallots, chives, 韭菜 etc).

What did Miss Salloum do next? I DON’T KNOW!!!!

Last week it was “Stolen”, and this week, it’s missing a whole corner! I’M ONTO YOU! Grr…

Ingredients:
Vegetable oil
2 tbsp dried shrimp (soaked, then finely minced with a knife)

Sauce:
1 tsp XO sauce
1 tsp grated fresh garlic
1 tsp yuzu
1 tsp tamari
1/2 tsp fish sauce
dash of seasame oil
dash of xiaoxing wine

Heat wok with vegetable oil, add dried shrimp, and 30 seconds later add vegetables. Toss.
Add sauce, mix it evenly and cover for 2 minutes.

The minced dried shrimps give it a great texture, different from when shrimp paste is used. Other suggestions: Snake beans, baby bok choy…

I have a spare moment at work (mind you, it’s already 8pm Thursday evening before the Easter long weekend) to blog about some of the amazing Chinese food that I dearly miss so much in Sydney. It doesn’t even compare – not even close!

Wonton noodles at 何洪記 (Ho Hung Kee) 2 Sharp St, Causeway Bay
It’s all about the extremely thin, but super “springy” noodle texture. Established in 1946, the quality has not changed. In fact, my parents used to go here on dates when they were still in high school. How adorable!

Dim Sum at 富聲 (Fu Sing) 1/F, 353 Lockhart Rd, Wanchai
The siao long baos are very soupy with an extremely thin wrapping that’s not supposed to burst because of it’s elasticity; crumbed turnip pudding with prawn ’stuffing’ on top; flakey pastry cha-siew pork buns (soooo good), and roast pork – the way it’s supposed to be, with a very crispy skin, minimal grease and dipped in yellow mustard and caster sugar. Oh, and who can forget my favorite dessert 楊枝金露 – cold sago soup with pomelo pulp!

My favorite delicacies – 花膠 (fish stomach?) with goose webb, and stuffed sea cucumber

We took the boat out to this island – I totally forgot the name, but there is only one restaurant on that island:


The island is known for producing great sea vegetables and other dried seafood goods. Where else can you get dried shrimp that is gutted, and the size of your index finger? Too bad customs would never let me take those back to Sydney. Some of the dishes we ate included giant clams with garlic vermicelli, and scallops with chilli bean sauce. They do a mean lobster noodle (伊麪) too!

Who can forget the classic Hong Kong styled diners, I went to one in Happy Valley for breakfast:

Deep fried HK style french toast, with butter on top, and peanut butter in the centre. Crispy on the outside, warm and fluffy on the inside. Pour that maple syrup all over it!

Will update during the long weekend on my favorite non-chinese dishes…. mmm
NOW you know why I had been dieting for 4 weeks prior to my trip, during the first 48 hours I had already gained 8lbs!

Hairy Cucumber (節瓜) and White Turnip Soup

1 Hairy Cucumber
1 Chinese white turnip
8 dried scallops
3 dried figs
4 dried chestnuts
1/4 Leek
Handful of skinned almonds
1 corn, halved
1/2 cup Cloud ear fungus
1/2 kg Pork bone
Handful of chinese roots which I can’t describe at the moment

Hairy cucumber is known to be rich in potassium, beta-carotene, calcium, phosphorus, iron, vitamin C and AB. It is a great diuretic and has slimming properties. Chinese white turnips are low in calories and high in nutrients – and like allcruciferous vegetables, loaded with cancer-fighting phytochemicals. Double score! (pics to come later)