Cajun GameNight!

Katherine and I decided to host another GameNight this week (we'll be attempting to have one every month while school is in session) and, this time, I thought it would be nice to also expose our residents to an American cuisine that they had likely never experienced: cajun! (The only restaurant in Hong Kong that serves cajun/creole dishes is Magnolia, a private dining room with very limited seating which requires reservations. Not entirely dissimilar from our GameNight, actually. ;>) Choosing which signature cajun dish to make wasn't easy (I considered red beans and rice, gumbo, étouffée, and jambalya), but in the end I decided that gumbo would make for the best introductory experience.

Let me walk you through the whole day...

Our advertisement

On our way to buy fresh shrimp, I noticed this sign and found it quite funny
(perhaps because of its redundancy and rather 1950s-like naiveté)

Buying 6lbs of still-hoppin' shrimp at the Kennedy Town wet market

Dumping the shrimp into a pot of boiling water. Poor fellows.

Getting those shrimp fully cooked (while also starting
the shrimp stock that is so critical to gumbo)

Two very kind residents offered to help in the preparations!

Peeling the shrimp (making sure to keep
the heads and skin for use in the stock)

The stock (the water used to cook the shrimp, the shrimp heads and skin,
green bell peppers, celery, and onions) as it begins its hour-long simmer.

The stock, finished and fully strained

Most of the ingredients which will be sautéd and added to the strained stock:
a blend of ten spices, onions, garlic, celery, green bell pepper,
and andouille sausage (sliced along the bias)

The soup thickening agent: baked roux. The most traditional way to make
roux is by frying one part oil and one part flour in a cast iron skillet, but
baking the flour instead is healthier, less dangerous, less time consuming,
and provides the exact same effect. To me, there's really no reason to do it
any other way (unless you are without an oven).

Activating the roux by rapidly stirring it into a few cups of boiling stock

The finished product!

(Before being ladled over rice and garnished with scallions)

The first batch of students hit the soup line

Folks hunker down wherever they can and dig in
(I also made a pan of cornbread, visible at the center of the table)

Let the games begin! Here we have some playing
Settlers of Catan and others playing on the XBox 360.

Pictionary gets rolling

We had about 25 folks involved in the evening and everyone had a grand time. I made about three gallons of gumbo, enough for about 30 servings, and it was all gobbled up (I think we might have a few more fans of cajun food in the world). As everyone was leaving, I was asked when the next GameNight would be and what I would be cooking. Very kind and flattering questions, but ones that indicate we may have set a dangerous precedent. ;> No matter, it was worth it, and perhaps cajun-themed gamenights will become a hallmark of our time here.

The dim sum drought ends...

Recently I realized that it had been nearly a year since we last had dim sum, a cornerstone of Cantonese cuisine and easily one of my favorite ways of eating. I was appalled and requested that we correct the problem on Saturday, which we happily did. Katherine's father had to be in Central on Saturday morning, so we met up with him and ate together...

Note the acute lack of people in the seats behind us. On any Saturday (or Sunday) at a dim sum restaurant, this is almost unheard of. People wait in line for hours to eat dim sum and you never expect to find a place that actually has empty tables. The secret? Go to a district where very few people live! Central is dominated by commercial buildings and has very few residences, so weekends are very much low-tide for the restaurants. This is something we will definitely remember in the future when we get a hankering for weekend dim sum.

On to the obligatory food portraits!

Steamed BBQ pork buns

Steamed rice roll filled with fresh shrimp

Absolutely huge shrimp dumplings (perhaps the best I've ever had)

Chiu Chow "fan gwo" dumplings

Minced veggies wrapped in tofu skin

My old favorite, Shanghainese "little steamer buns"

It was really quite fantastic - perhaps the best dim sum I've had in Hong Kong and without the normally noisy environment. You can bet that I've burned the location of this place in my brain. :> To help you do the same, here's a view looking out the front door of the building where the restaurant is located (at the intersection of Wyndham Street and Queen's Road Central).

It's nice to feel dim-sum-satisfied again!

A trip to Whampoa!

On Friday we decided to take a little excursion to Whampoa Garden, a housing complex located in Hung Hom (a district on the east side of Kowloon). I've been wanting to visit Whampoa for quite some time, actually, because of its central landmark...

A shopping center built to mimic a small cruise ship! We didn't really do any shopping, but we did climb to the top...

Across from the shopship, we found dinner inside Whampoa Gourmet Place, which can be best described as a shopping mall for restaurants. Instead of being filled with clothing, electronics, and accessories, Gourmet Place is filled with floor after floor of eateries. We chose Shanghainese...

Their menu of special drinks, two of which tried

"Five Green Juices", a mixture of green apple,
cucumber, celery, green bell pepper, and bitter melon

"Lemon Rice Water" (delicious!)

One of my favorite foods: siu lung baau ("little steamer buns")

Chilled cuts of chicken in a sesame-chili sauce

Steamed buns stuffed with pork and Chinese yams

Freshly made "almond tofu" for dessert

All-in-all, Whampoa was lots of fun, but perhaps not a place we'll regularly go (it is a bit out of the way).

Brook sneaks through Hong Kong

On Monday, Brook (a Michigan buddy of ours) stayed the night with us while returning to the States from his research field site in Kunming, China. We didn't get much time with him, but at least we were able to take him to a dessert shop...

He and I both had my favorite mango masterpiece (yeung zi gam lou)...

...and Katherine had a chocolate fondant cake with fresh whipped cream and a scoop of vanilla ice cream...

Not a bad reason to stay in Hong Kong for a night!

Hong Kong in 1938

Katherine found this little video about a month ago, but I thought I would share it with you guys as a little historical curiosity...



Its only about 10 minutes long and easily worth that amount of time. Some observations of mine (from the perspective of someone who lives in "Today's Hong Kong")...

• Very odd music score. Like stereotypical Chinese meets stereotypical Native American meets 1930s Hollywood.
• "Fragrant harbor" has now become the standard translation for "Hong Kong", interesting to hear it called "Fragrant Lagoon" here instead
• Love hearing about the "New Territories" when they were much newer than they are now ;>
• Interesting to hear Kowloon being referred to as a city (instead of a collection of districts) and also interesting to hear the north part of HK island referred to as the city of "Victoria" (no longer used)
• A shot from a ride on Star Ferry! This is something that is still very much a part of Hong Kong life.
• Victoria Harbor was so much wider/bigger then than it is now! (I wonder how long that Star Ferry ride took in 1938 - perhaps twice the time it does now.)
• Sounds like, in 70 years, Hong Kong has gone from ~1million people to ~7million people. I wonder how that growth compares to other large cities around the world.
• A series of jaw-dropping quotes that came in rapid succession...
  "Under tolerant and wise British rule, with willing Oriental assistance..."
  "More than a million contented Chinese dwell in harmony..."
  "...merging their ancient civilization, culture, and manners with those of the 20,000 Europeans who guide or minister to them"
  Somehow I don't think the native population of the time would have had the same perspective. ;>
• Cool seeing the Legislative Council building (or, as the video calls it, the "Supreme Court building") look exactly the same as it does now
  
• Ooh! The Hong Kong Shanghai Bank is air-conditioned! And while I'm sure its "imposing, 17-stories" stood out in "architectural beauty" then, things are a little nicer now. Incidentally, that building is still there, but it has had quite a number of structural changes since 1938.
• Love seeing the Ding Ding trolleys zip around much as they do now.
• I was a bit surprised at the "modern Chinese women" and their form-fitting garments!
• "Che Wing Gum" is a really cool example of what appears to be a borrowing restranslated back into English...or it could just be a clever advertising gimmick.
• Lots of rickshaws and "sedan chairs" (those must have been absolutely grueling, even though the Chinese are contented and dwell in harmony ;>).
• "An always bountiful supply of cheap-yet-highly-skilled labor"! I bet!
• Those "crowded Oriental streets" sure are fascinating, and so is the "paradise of bargains"!
• Whoa. That is a MASSIVE didgeridoo-like pipe! I'm pretty sure it couldn't be for opium, though - I wonder what he was smoking. (Katherine thinks it might be a "water pipe", which is a form of smoking that no longer exists here.)
• Clothes drying outside of apartment windows / balconies similar to the way they still do today.
• Happy Valley race track! Wow - that certainly has been built up over the last 70 years.
• Loved seeing the Peak Tram. It really looks pretty much identical these days, and some of the bridges you see it pass under are probably still here.
• Bamboo scaffolding is cool to see virtually unchanged as well.
• I had no idea the Repulse Bay had already been developed into a resort-like area by 1938. It is still one of the most popular resorts in Hong Kong.
• Junk boats have definitely changed, except for the one that the tourism association uses - it looks much like what they show at the end of the film.

I hope you enjoyed this little historical comparative. ;>

Happy Valentine's Day!

Not everyone in Hong Kong celebrates Valentine's Day on February 14th, but it is still quite popular (lots of restaurants advertising special V-Day meals, massive price hikes on flowers, etc), and we were only too happy to partake. Ours was more of an all-weekend celebration, though, so let's start on February 13th (ignoring the fact that it was Friday the 13th!).

Note: I've noticed an acute drop-off in the amount of food pictures I've been posting of late, so I'll try to compensate for that a bit today. ;>

We kicked off the weekend with an additional reason to celebrate: the approval of my Hong Kong visa renewal!

Inside "Immigration Tower", immediately after picking up the goods.

Outside Immigration Tower, showing my true feelings.

Normally visas are given one year at a time, but the kind people in the Immigration Department decided that I've been a good boy, so they gave me a two year visa that won't need renewing until 2011 (which, perhaps not coincidentally, is when I'll also need to renew my US passport).

After grabbing the visa, we went to our favorite theater and caught a showing of "Valkyrie", which I found to be quite enjoyable and noble in intent, but perhaps not a film easily seen more than once. Admittedly, though, it might not have been the best choice for Valentine's. ;>

After the movie, we ran up to SoHo and chose a restaurant that we'd often passed by on the mid-levels escalator, but never tried: Duke's Burger. It's a high-end, gourmet...well, burger joint that was absolutely delicious.

Duke's vegetarian portobello burger

Duke's "Classic" (with a glass of fresh lemonade)

Given that hamburgers aren't part of my normal diet, I wouldn't say that I'm a burger connoisseur, but these were easily the best I've had in Hong Kong. Also the most expensive, though, which is a reflection of Duke's location just as much as it is a reflection of their quality.

On Valentine's Day itself, Katherine and I took a long (just over a mile) stroll along Queen's Road West, ambling from the middle of Sai Ying Pun to the middle of Sheung Wan. When we arrived, we surveyed the scene and decided to try the Grande Stage restaurant inside the Western Market. As we rode the one-way escalator up into the restaurant, we began to see lots and lots of formal wear, making us feel fabulously underdressed (particularly me, in a bright orange VT t-shirt and jeans). Once we crested the top of the incline and stepped off, the reality hit us: we had just inadvertently become wedding crashers. (In our defense, there were no wedding announcements or signs indicating that the restaurent was reserved.) Since the escalator only went up, and we couldn't see any stairs down, there was no obviously graceful way to slip out. So, instead, we found the closest waiter, confirmed that we were treading where we shouldn't be, and asked how to leave. We had to sneak through the crowd to a side stairway exit on the other side of the room, but we did it, and perhaps gave the guests who noticed a fun little story.

Back to the dinner drawing board. About a block east of the Western Market, we found a nice-looking Vietnamese restaurant which very much did not have a wedding banquet inside. Perfect.

Our appetizer: flower-shaped niblets made with layers of
rice noodle, mung bean paste, fried garlic, and dried pork

Two absolutely gargantuan "Tiger Prawns" (with claws!)

Fried slices of grouper in a tasty lime sauce

A lovely dinner that capped a lovely weekend Valentine's celebration. Happy Valentine's, everyone!