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...

Fusion Food & Me

Fusion food or cuisine is a general term for combination of various forms of cookery (eg. Chinese, Indian, Thais, Malays, Westerns and etc). The concept can take several forms which are:

• regional fusion that combines the cuisine of a region or sub-region into a single eating experience.
  
• featuring original dishes using varieties of ingredients from various cuisines and regions and combining them.
• uses foods with a form based on one cuisine, but prepared using ingredients and flavours
  inherent to another cuisine or cuisines.
  

It was 2003 when I had a total understanding on this term. I was in Hong Kong then. There were lots of contemporary fusion restaurants over this small island when I was there for more than half a year. After trying out some of those fusion foods I realised that I was a fusion person!! I meant cooking fusion person! I've been cooking those food since very young and I didn't realise that it was fusion foods! To me, is just blending all kinds of ingredients and cook your 'special' meals and I thought it was creative!!

Apparently, I need to cook since I was a 11 year old girl due to some reasons. Since then, cooking daily dinner for my family had been my second responsibility besides studying hard. I learnt how to cook meals from my parents and discovered more and more about the food textures, colours, taste, freshness, etc. To me, cooking is interesting and fun and I started to fell in love with it since then and created some 'funny' recipes after receiving some compliments from my family on my dishes. Not bad one!

During my varsity days, I have been stopped cooking for few years and I thought maybe I won't like to cook anymore. Fortunately the cooking blood is still with me and I found it along my self discovery journey and this is also the reason I started this blog.

I wish that I can share with all the visitors of this blog my experience/way of cooking by mixing and matching some of the ingredients. Everyone can do this as it can be real easy and fun too!! You will feel good especially when your loved ones are raising their thumbs up after tasting your cooking.