Indian wedding vegetarians

I attended a friend's wedding last weekend. She is a Chinese Indian and married to an Indian husband. The beautiful wedding ceremony was held in one of the Hindu temples in town. The ceremony last for 2 hours and we were served with Indian style vegetarian buffet.

I would like to mention about this buffet because I still can't forget the taste of it. This vegetarian buffet served all vegetarian foods consist of vegetarian fish curry, vegetarian mutton curry, vegetarian chicken curry, potatoes in curry and many more. As curry is the main dish and very famous in our Indian food culture, it is very normal that they served curry in most of the dishes. Curry was cooked using many types of spices, different curry has different spices in it. The texture of the curry was very smooth, taste really delicious and not very spicy that night. This will suit the taste of most of the guests as some people might not able to take very spicy food. I love the potatoes so much when blend with the curry, I think they braised the potatoes with the curry and the curry taste all been absorb into the potatoes.

You must be thinking why vegetarian foods have fish, mutton and all kinds of meat there. In our country, it is very normal the find vegetarian meats. The ingredients of the meat are actually made of all the vegetarian eg. mushroom, beans, nuts, flours, etc. Of course the taste of the vegetarian meat is very near to the actual meat!! but less the fat or cholesterol (maybe). You must try it!!

I almost forgot about the drink. Initially I thought it was just plain water as I understand that after eating some spicy food it's normal to drink some plain cold water. I was quite surprise that some friends gave good remarks to this plain water. Finally we found out it was actually lime juice. We can't see it but we feel it when we drink it. It just so refreshing and not so sweet, I like it!

Hong Kong trip

I've been staying in this place for almost a year in 2003/2004. I enjoyed staying here as the public transportation is so convenient till we can easily hop in and hop off from one stop to another to reach our destiny. Hong Kong(HK) is a wonderful and beautiful city graced with the traditional, oriental and modern colours within. There is a beautiful name after this city which called 'Oriental Pearl'.

From traditional or modern Hong Kong style food to other continental cuisines and new fusion food can be found easily in this metropolitan city.

In this blog I would like to share with you some of my favourite foods in Hong Kong. Dim Sum is my first recommendation. 'Yum cha' literally translated means drinking tea and it is an important culture in HK. It has been practised since so long ago to maintain good relationship between family members and also friends while enjoying the 'yum cha' session. You can found Dim Sum in any 'yum cha' place in HK. The ingredients used are fresh and 'generous', for example you can find 2 fresh, big and complete prawns inside the 'har gau'. Compared with what I ate in my country before, the prawn was chopped into small pieces and some are not that fresh.

You will eat till you drop if you are a dim sum lover. If you want so save some money, you can choose to 'yum cha' after 2pm during weekdays at most of the 'yum cha' place as there will be some discounts on the dim sum. Some of my favourite dim sums are 'har gau', 'siew mai' (pork filling) and the sweet one would be egg tart. Yeah! Yum Yum... delicious! I'll prefer to drink Jasmine Tea to go along with my favourite Dim Sums. Maybe you would like to try that too!

Few years back there are some independent chefs cum entrepreneurs had opened some concept restaurants which they called 'Si Fong Choi' (means ownself unique recipes). Those restaurants will charged a fixed price per head and they will cook according to their daily menu. Customers have no chance to choose their dishes but the chef will determine it based on what are fresh and available in the market of the day.

I had been to those restaurant once in 2004 and I tried Shanghainese dishes for the first time that day. I had something like stew potatoes slices, some lotus root, and some other steam based food. I can't remember much but I think is a good experience for me ! I never have any Shanghainese food since then. Heard from some of my friends in HK saying that there are not many 'Si Fong Choi' restaurants left in HK nowaday. Maybe the demand is not as much as before.

Many more HK food I wanted to mentioned. There are Wanton noodles, Beef noodles, 'Cha Siew' (roasted pork)/'Siew Yok' (roasted pork with skin) to go with noodles or rice, various type of congee, various type of nicchin noodles, 'Yong Chow' (a place in China) fried rice, various type of claypot rice, 'Polo' bun (literally translated means pineapple bun), various egg tarts, steamed egg, steamed milk, various 'Tong Sui' (sweet soups), steam boats, milk tea and many many more for you to discover...

Unforgettable Hong Kong..... food...