Roadblock: Perfection is unattainable

When you aim for perfection, you discover it's a moving target.
 

George Fisher

  

Seven years old and dressed in seersucker flares, sporting a London accent and the latest bowl cut hair fashion, I waited quietly as the adults chatted. I knew the mantra "children should be seen and not heard" so busied my mind by observing all around me. '

Planting my hands under my chin, I rested my elbows on the linen clad table in a restaurant nearby my little Chinese Grandfather's favourite Macau casino, The Lisboa. I observed the porcelain teapot and cups were trimmed in pink and the walls, a gaudy lemon. I smelt the heady combination of spices in the Portuguese influenced Chinese food.

Waiters in white jackets with brass buttons flew by us with plates of Meccanese food. The din of Cantonese chatter seemed to fade into the background as mesmerised, I watched their balletic movements as they burst in from the kitchen doorway into service, ricocheting haphazardly between the tables around me. It was human pinball without the benefit of levers.

The night ahead would see me witness Pelota (Jai Alai) for the first time in that casino – a fast, adrenaline filled sport where balls were hurled at a wall via a cane cage attached to the arms of the players. While I didn't see the point of the machismo and the danger, luckily I had the wherewithal to realize that this spectacle was part of the slowly eroding Portuguese heritage that infuses Macao. 

The players in their white garb and long sashes certainly captivated my mother as she hastily went to bet on the outcome of the game. After a relatively short time I tired of the testosterone fueled display and was returned to our hotel room.

Was it boredom or biliousness that drove me to ask to go to bed? I do not recall. What is etched into my mind was the fried rice that grandfather had ordered at the restaurant. It wasn't usual for him to order fried rice, but he made an exception for this one. And I had astounded everyone at the table by eating eight small rice bowls of it. So as a result, everything else paled into insignificance. 

I recall my parents' embarassment of my gluttony. My grandfather: proud. And I've yet to live it down. Even now, as a middle aged woman, my father likes to recount the story of his greedy little girl. 

My retort has become that it was the best I'd eaten. And from that point I pestered Mum to teach me how to cook it. But while our Chinese friends raved about her fried rice, I felt it never matched that particular one. 

Many years later, I watched my grandmother make it and discovered that she added fish sauce, which was the key secret to make it extra fragrant. Finally I had unlocked the unwritten code to recreating the dish.

 

 

Recently I was pondering on the subject of why Asian food often tastes better in restaurants and is especially delectable in Asia. In fact I wondered why there was no perfect Char Kwei Teow in Melbourne or why some of my Twitter friends were on a quest to find the best Peking Duck? 

When I thought about the dishes I had faithfully recreated from my old and worn Asian cookbooks or from watching my family cook, I was confounded. While they all tasted delicious, to my mind they lacked a certain something. What was the 'je ne sais quoi?' 

While I've found that using farmer direct sourced produce lifts many European dishes to restaurant quality, it didn't give my Asian cooking the same edge. As in the fish sauce in the fried rice, there had to be something more to unlock the unwritten code.

That same week, I happily discovered a 1980's edition of my Mum's Chinese cooking Bible – The Hong Kong & China Gas Chinese Cookbook. I glued myself to it one Saturday and through its pages, relived some childhood memories. 


In the following days, I began to introduce some of my old favourites back into my cooking repertoire. And then I began to began to unravel my dilemma, discovering there are a series of keys to Asian cooking, unwritten rules, that affect the flavour.

Timing
In Asia, before the days of refrigeration, ingredients were bought immediately prior to cooking the meal and were skillfully transformed in an uncomplicated manner. In households generally there was extended family in the kitchen, making the production of items such as dumplings swift. So timing is a key. Although not the case here in Australia, in some parts of Asia this tradition continues.

MSG
Every recipe in my old Asian Cookbooks and in my newer Vietnamese cookbooks includes monosodium glutamate. It certainly does enhance the flavor, but given the negative health connotations, I don't use it myself and increasingly restaurants are reducing or removing it from their dishes. There is a marked difference in taste as a consequence.

Charcoal
Traditionally everything in Asia was cooked over charcoal burners. The flavor imparted to dishes either through ferocious heat or infused with smokiness is impossible to recreate on your standard contemporary European style stove. In Asia, many hawkers and some restaurants continue to use charcoal. Here, most Asian restaurants use gas. The volume of gas at my place is weak. It's just not acceptable for Asian cooking. So rather than put up with the mediocre, I find better results cooking on a butane camp stove turned up to full ferociousness than on my gas range.

Lard
What a delectable substance. It's the hidden fat in many Asian dishes, the fat that must not be named; an ingredient unwritten in most recipes although frequently used. Sometimes you'll find a recipe stipulates peanut oil, another essential flavor in Asian cooking. Both fats withstand the ferocious heat required for most dishes and also impart lashings of flavor. Again, for health reasons I have cut both from most of my cooking, using canola instead. 

Masterstock
Any professional practitioner of Asian cooking will have a pot of masterstock on the go constantly. Deep in richness and flavor, this will generally have a base stock that was started years ago. Chefs will also have other broths made from scratch to use in soups. The older a masterstock, the more it brings to a dish, so if you're using stock cubes or commercial tetra packs of stock in your dishes, they will never achieve the same result. The only exception I have observed has been Malaysian Hawkers, who not only use powdered commercial chicken stock but also flavor enhancers and even commercial Ketchup.

Equipment
Let's face it, modern equipment is not necessary in Asian cooking. Non-stick woks in particular are pointless as they can't deal with the heat required. Big heavy cast Iron woks heat up too slowly and hold the heat too long. A series of different sized lightweight woks, claypots and a steamer will do the trick.

Modern ovens don't do any favours to Asian recipes either, as we are forced to lie meat or bread down. Traditional Asian ovens are vertical so that bread can cling to the walls and the meat hangs vertically over a flame allowing for self basting as the fat renders downwards off the meat. It's one of the reasons Heston Blumenthal could not recreate the super crisp skin on his Peking Duck, without removing it and sewing it to a rack.

 

There was a time where Chinese restaurant food in Hong Kong didn't hold a candle to the food served in my Paternal household. With a few exceptions, Grandmother's Vietnamese influenced Cantonese fare was always far superior. The exceptions being yum cha and specialty roasted meats that were customarily left to 'the experts' or were ordered in. 

In my father's childhood, my family enjoyed a large household with a generous retinue of staff. Restaurants were less popular and the best Chefs were quite possibly located heading up the kitchens of families like mine. In some instances, those Chefs had been raised in the household and had been taught recipes passed down within the family. 

But those days have long since gone. I have resigned myself to the fact that my home cooking will not match that of the dishes of my Grandmother and that occasionally I will indulge the MSG, the lard and the peanut oil when I dine out.

I now have the keys. I can't unlock their magic without certain compromises. And instead, as in a successful marriage, will accept the best outcome that I can manage .... within reason.

 

 

Singapore: Ocean Curry Fish Head

Fish heads, fish heads, rolly polly fish heads
Fish heads, fish heads, eat them up
Yumm!

They can't play baseball, they don't wear sweaters
They're not good dancers, they don't play drums

Fish heads, fish heads, rolly polly fish heads
Fish heads, fish heads, eat them up
Yumm!

Rolly Polly fish heads are never seen drinking cappuccino in
Italian restaurants with Oriental women.
Yeeaahh

Fish heads, fish heads, rolly polly fish heads
Fish heads, fish heads, eat them up
Yumm!

The Fish Head Song

When in Singapore there are a few things that I insist on eating, without exception: Hainan Chicken Rice, Satay, either Pepper or Chilli Crab, and lastly, Fish Head Curry. Of these favourites, I have yet to find a venue in Melbourne that produces them to the high standards of Singapore.


The recipes for these Straits Chinese dishes have evolved in the kitchens of generations of Nonya's - female Peranakan's - descendants of the Fukienese from China who married local Malays. From as far back as the fifteenth century, The Peranakan made their homes in the former British colonies of Malacca, Penang and Singapore, as well as parts of Indonesia and the Isthmus of Kra.






Some Peranakan came via Phuket and brought with them a love of sour tamarind flavoured dishes, chilli and fresh Asian herbs. All seemed inspired by the local confluence of trade, where markets were filled with an abundance of spices from India.


The Malay influence in the cooking can be found in pounded spice pastes made from candlenuts, rhizomes and belanchan. The Chinese love of pork, duck and seafood is also evident. Chinese pickles and sauces are widely used; tropical coconut and pandan leaves drift into many dishes too.






Along with practicing Chinese Ancestor Worship and upholding Confucian values, educated Peranakans very much embraced Western ways. In terms of food, they took on Worcestershire sauce, ketchup, mayonnaise, breads and pastries. From this melting pot of cultures evolved a unique fusion food that I often crave.





On our latest trip to Singapore, we spent time with my dearest Bin, who I love as my sister. In my childhood, it was Bin's mother who cared for me in many times of family stress. And through her I was first introduced to Strait's Chinese cooking. The pull of this cooking is as strong as my link with the Hungarian food that comforted me at other times of my dysfunctional childhood.


Bin checked with her colleagues as to where to find 'The Best' Fish Head Curry in Singapore and as I expected, it was not a glamorous venue but a simple shop in Chinatown with many tables on the pavement. She cautioned us to meet her at her office by noon as the restaurants with the best reputation are full to capacity within minutes of opening for lunch.





We strode quickly to Ocean Curry Fish Head on Telok Ayer Street and grabbed an al fresco table. I gazed at the colourful old Chinese shop houses around us, while Bin went inside to the counter and ordered. Very quickly our fresh lime soda's arrived in large glass mugs and by that stage the venue was full.


Situated on a corner, the venue was open on two sides to the street, with large striped awnings sheltering customers below. We sat on red plastic stools at a round Formica topped table. A very basic set up, there were no frills when it came to accoutrements at Ocean Curry Fish Head, its reputation alone seemed to be all that was necessary to draw crowds. Furnished with cutlery and a moist towelette in an Ocean Curry Fish Head branded pack, we were equipped and anticipating a good meal ahead.






Inside, the counter, a bain marie and a TV dominated the room. A queue snaked its way to the counter as the hungry lunch time horde descended. Off to the sides, those who missed out on a table, waited like hungry seagulls, keeping eyes alert and making ready to swoop on any table where diners looked as though they might leave.


Bin ordered us stuffed squid, beans with XO sauce and a dish of Chilli clams - a dish many avoid in Singapore in fear of contracting amoebic dysentery, but we took our lives into our hands and indulged anyway, finding no side effects felt later. The dishes were simply prepared but delicious, a good foil texturally to the centrepiece to come. And then the curry arrived. Resplendent in a well used claypot, it wafted its steamy aromas seductively across the table to me.





On a hot humid day in Singapore, the heat put out by this heavy clay dish made the sweat flow freely. Beside us, local workers were mopping their brows and looking a little dishevelled by the exertions of plowing through both the heat and chilli of the dish in steamy conditions.


As I added the slurry of coconut based sauce to a mound of rice before me, the scent of fresh turmeric greeted my nostrils. A second later I felt the tickle of chilli making my nostrils flare like an impatient racehorse.


Burying my tongue in the rice and sauce mix, I picked up ground coriander, cumin, fenugreek, mustard seeds, wafts of ginger, garlic and tamarind, sweetened and thickened with coconut cream. I was in raptures of ecstasy - this was a dish fit for the Gods.





I felt sweat beading on my nose as I ate. In the mix were large chunks of white fleshed fish head, and we dove in for cheeks, and I for eyes and the tongue. There were whole ladies fingers - also known as okra - slices of long slim brinjal - slender purple eggplant - onion and chunks of tomato. The concoction was odd texturally; soft and vaguely slimy elements offset by an intense, rich and spicy sauce.


I don't tend to eat a lot of rice, but in this instance it was the best way to enjoy the sauce. I would have been as happy with a big loaf of stale bread to soak up every last drop, but I doubt that I would have made it through, as the dish is deceptively filling. Like that expanding gap filler available in hardware stores, it seems to swell up from within.





The hovering, late-coming, hungry hordes, desperate to snare a table had moved just feet from our seats as we launched into the dish. And as our plates began to empty, they made their presence clearly felt standing just inches from us. So mopping ourselves down with our complimentary moist wipes, we paid up. And to the relief of the human seagulls, beat a hasty retreat around the corner to wander through hospitality-ware stores and to go to a traditional Chinese shop to eat some uniquely Singaporean Chinese desserts.


Within seconds back at Ocean Curry Fish Head, our seats had been taken and the process of enjoyment had began again, and again.

Taking Stock Chinese Style

To possess the services of a good Chinese Chef in one's home is like having a prima donna in close vicinity. He includes all the talents of a connoisseur with the knowledge of a herb doctor, the sensitivity of a mother-in-law, and the benevolence of a clucking hen.

He once held the title of Dai Si Mo which means "Grand Charge of Cuisine Affairs" and through the ages his title has grown in dignity and expanded to Dai Si Fu which identifies him as the "Grand Maestro of the Culinary Arts". Being a Dai Si Fu, he must be handled with the diplomacy and gentleness learned through time and experience.

No Dai Si Fu will remain in your home unless he loves you: and lucky and envied are those blessed with his solicitous attentions over the satisfaction of the stomach and health through the delicacies of his works of art and the science of leung-hay and yeet-hay (cool and hot chi force).

DOREEN YEN HUNG FENG
The Joy of Chinese Cooking, 1952

Ah Lung was a little girl when my family purchased her. It was the tradition for poor Chinese families with no money for a dowry to sell their daughters into service for life. In return for a new life in the household of a wealthy family, they worked as servants until they were old and many who never married were cared for by their employers until they died. Ah Lung died of cancer in the care of my grandparents in the nineteen seventies.

Little girls often started in the kitchens of the great Chinese houses and moved on to other tasks such as being maids as they grew. Ah Lung had been in the service of our extended family when my father was born and was chosen to be his nanny.

Becoming the nanny of a 'number one son' would have raised her standing in the hierachy of the household retinue and was a commendation of her skill. At that time she was probably around the same age as my grandmother, who had come to Hong Kong from Vietnam to find a husband. While my grandmother revelled in her new found life as a married woman in a sophisticated and modern family of influence, in a cosmopolitan city of the nineteen thirties, Ah Lung spoilt my father rotten.

My father is a stubbornly obstreperous character at times, and like a little Emperor he took advantage of her nurturing and kind heart. While my aunts and uncle dined together at the nursery table, his majesty was allowed to sit in his red pedal car and was fed mouthfuls of his favourite dishes.

My uncle - his younger brother - also had a personal nanny and their sisters shared another. I don't know anything of the other servants, but when my father's generation had left home and my grandparents downsized to just the one home on Hong Kong Island, Ah Lung became their housekeeper and Dai Si Fu chef.

By the time I arrived in the family Ah Lung had a gold tooth, a gappy smile and was deaf. In fact Ah Lung - pronounced ah-loong - 'deaf one' was her nickname, but she was strong and wiry and as wrinkled as a steamed tofu skin roll.

Dressed in the traditional clothes of an Amah she wore a three quarter sleeved, fitted, starched white mandarin collared top, that sat wide, stiff and loose over her hips and wide black pants. Her greying hair was cut short to the neck and pulled back tightly from her face with a wiry alice band.

At three months old I was taken to Hong Kong for my Mun Yuet. This is the time when the birth of Chinese babies are celebrated and named. I believe the tradition began at the third month because infant mortality had always been very high in China, with many babies 'taken away by bad spirits' in the first months of their lives. Prior to the Mun Yuet party, babies were given pet animal names to confuse the spirits and many wore little hats with small pointed ears sewn on them to disguise the child as a small animal.

When my parents decided to stay in Hong Kong and not to return to Australia, Ah Lung and my grandmother became very much involved in my upbringing. In fact such was their influence, I didn't learn to speak English until several years later, when we moved to England. Respectfully in Cantonese, I called my carers Ma Ma and Lung Por. I loved and revered them both.

In spite of my mother arriving in Hong Kong unable to speak Cantonese, Ah Lung and Ma Ma patiently taught her a great deal about Chinese cooking and by default, me also in later years, as I watched my mother recreating their dishes in our kitchen and later, when giving Chinese cooking lessons in shopping malls and in our home.

Mum had a lot to learn, because with the exception of roasted meats and wind dried specialties, everything was made from scratch in the family kitchen with fresh food purchased in the wet markets every day.

As if by osmosis the notion of a healthy balance of elements, textures and herbs in cooking was taken in by us and because it is now second nature to me, I am often startled when these principles are not addressed by others in their Asian cooking. I earnestly try to live up to the legacy of their mastery and subconsciously even apply Confucian notions to western cookery. But memory is such a strong thing that I feel certain I fall short of their skills.

Today, in a time where households no longer have chefs and household servants, convenience is the driving force contributing to unnecessarily poor diets in the developed world, creating an obese population with all the medical complications that come along with it.

The same findings of poor nutrition and obesity resulting from a dependence on convenience foods have also begun to come out of China. In a country that has traditionally placed so much stock in the benefits of balanced eating with reference to herbal enhancement for well being - along with exercise through martial arts - western style convenience and apathy towards home cooking is emerging as a negative trend that is sadly mirroring the current malaise in the west.

While the Chinese turn their backs on centuries of tradition, in the west a few of us are looking back to restore the nurturing balance of days gone by and in one form this manifests as the Slow Food Movement.

Although there are people in the developed world who do not know a time when shopping was not done in the Supermarket - a time before packaged and processed convenience food became the norm - a number of us are taking stock of our habits and are questioning the notion of convenience, especially when it comes to the health of our families. What is the actual cost of packaged convenience in our lives? It saves us time and effort but is expensive per gram, not particularly delicious and loaded with synthetic additives that can impact negatively on the health of children. So in the long run is it really worthwhile to cut corners?

I - like many who claim that we are nuts about cooking and are agog about things gourmet - unconsciously used to reach for the convenience of a stock cube or vacuum pack of stock or veal jus. Although it is by no means one of the worst of convenience foods available, it is actually quite an insipid addition to meals.

While home made stock is the most simple and cheap of necessary items to have in the pantry, I used to put it in the 'too hard basket' and curiously turned a blind eye to the chemicals, stabilisers, flavours and colors in packaged stock that I would eschew in items such as packaged dressings and sauces. But I now realise that stock is the life blood of cooking; a fundamental.

If your dishes are to reach the dizzy heights of flavour, you have to be using a good stock. Once I turned the corner I found that this is what lifts home cooked meals above the fare cooked in some venues and I can picture Ah Lung laughing at me and calling me a silly girl, nodding knowingly with her wide gappy smile.

If you are passionate about cooking but not currently making your own stock or Bouillon - whether European or Asian - you are possibly, as the Chinese proverb says, "Riding a cow, looking for a horse". You're making do until you can afford - or can understand - better. Once you turn the corner, you just don't go back. And to be honest, I smacked myself in the forehead when I realised how cheap and easy it is to make. It is also convenient to have on hand and not difficult to store when you know how.

The Chinese Culinary Arts have recipes for a number of stocks. At their very basic, Chinese stocks are considered to be the life blood of good health, carrying the medicinal benefits of the same herbs and spices that ancient herbal medicines use as a base to eradicate toxins and to correct the balance of the life force.

The term 'Masterstock' is something that is now fashionably bandied about in the west, particularly in the Australian restaurant scene, but is not really understood in its correct form. Simply it is a basic meat based clear soup in which different meats have been poached. Then the solution is strained, boiled, added to and used over and over again.

Each time it is used to poach more meat, the flavour increases in pungency and it imparts a deep flavour to anything poached in it. In a restaurant the stock would be used every day for poaching and added to sauces. In a household this happens less often. There are two forms of traditional Masterstock. One is merely darker than the other, employing dark soy in the mix to create specifically richer dishes such as Red Braised recipes.

The use of Chinese Masterstock evolved from a technique known in Cantonese as 'Dunn'. This is steaming and double boiling. The meat involved is browned, then submerged with vegetables in a pot of stock, which itself is then placed into a shallow bath of boiling water and the lot is covered, producing steam. After some time, the ingredients are then removed and sometimes a little of the stock is thickened with cornstarch and served with the ingredients. The rest of the stock is then reserved for use on another occasion.

The older the stock - having been used multiple times - the tastier the result. For Malaysian buffs looking for the best Hai Nan Chicken Rice, you'll find that the best ones have always been poached in an old Masterstock - which you drink slightly diluted as a side dish. To round out the meal it is mixed with dark soy sauce and chilli for dipping and is used to cook the rice that is served with the chicken. Similarly it is used for Chinese Baak Jaam Gai (poached chicken), Yow Gai (Golden Oil Chicken) and See Yow Gai (Soy Sauce chicken).

Some people pass some of their stock down through the generations and a top Chinese restaurant will have a stock that predates the venue - which would have accompanied their first Dai Si Fu. My current batch is only approaching its third year, but if you taste a spoon of that and then a spoon of packaged stock, the difference is immediately evident. Masterstock is silky and rich. It has a sheen and a depth of texture as well as flavour. It makes all the difference to a sauce, a braise, a daube, a curry, a risotto or a paella and is fantastic simply served with fresh, fine egg noodles, torn lettuce and some won ton dumplings.

As with all things, the better the quality of your ingredients, the tastier the result. I choose to use free range, ethically raised local meat and locally sourced heritage vegetables because they taste significantly better and help to support other 'Aussie Battlers'. The intensity of the stock develops faster with these ingredients. I get the spices whole from my local Asian Grocer and suspend them in a muslin bag which can be bought there too. You can even buy the complete spice mix at some Asian Grocers.

My home made stock is cheap, dead easy to make and a wholesome convenience food. I keep it in sterilised glass jars with metal lids in the fridge and some of it becomes ice cubes that get tossed a couple at a time to season stir fries. At least one litre is kept frozen in reserve, to add to the next batch I make. If I poach meat in it I reserve that batch to use again too and it all goes into the pot when I make more of the basic stock.

The key to keeping your stock from going off is to keep the solution sterile. If you're not using it every day, once you have opened a jar of it you must boil the solution again before re-refridgerating, so as to rid it of micro-organisms. I just nuke mine in the microwave, replace the lid and allow it to cool and form a vacuum again before returning it to the fridge.

If you think you don't have time to make it, consider pulling it together before watching a DVD and let it simmer away while you relax. When the movie's finished, let it cool and then strain it. Heat again and bottle it. Simple stuff really.

Because I am a fuss-pot, I cook about a six litre batch over the course of a day. Usually after a saturday morning visit to the market, I start it in the pressure cooker and then remove the spice bag. Then I add the vegetables and simmer it down gradually, adding more water as it gets low, skimming along the way. Just before dinner, at the end of the process I remove the fresh herbs and vegies doing one last batch of water to simmer then switch it off and allow it to cool. After dinner I filter it twice through a Chux. But that's me. Mum does hers in a crockpot/slow cooker/electric congee maker from Hong Kong and leaves it alone.

Masterstock is not uniform in flavour, so my approach is adhoc now that I have an older potion. Depending on what is emerging as the dominant flavour over time I adjust the seasoning to taste. However if you want to start down this path, below the picture is the formal recipe that kick starts a Masterstock. Do you yourself a favour and revive a tradition.

Chinese Masterstock starter
In 3hrs it makes roughly 3 litres of stock

1.5kg Chicken carcasses (include necks and feet if you have them)
Optional - 650g pork spare ribs OR a 10cm square piece of pig or ham skin

For a vegetable version substitute the meat with:
500g bean sprouts
10 dried Shitake mushrooms

250ml Shaoxing Rice Wine
6 slices of ginger (if it's old, bruise it with the flat of a cleaver)
6 spring onions (scallions) tied in a knot, with the roots removed
2 large cloves garlic
100g rock sugar
3 tablespoon light soy sauce
4 or 5 litres of water
1 large carrot sliced in half vertically through the length
1 whole stick of celery
(Optional) a bunch of parsley stems (no leaves) tied with cooking twine

Placed in a muslin bag or a small cloth tied with string:
4 cardamon pods OR 2 large round brown cardamon
1 tspn fennel seeds
2 pieces of Cassia bark
2 star anise
1 piece of dried Mandarin peel
4 coriander roots
4 cloves
1 tsp Szechuan Peppercorns

Remove any excess fat from the meat and place in a stock pot with all the other ingredients. Bring to the boil and simmer for 20minutes before removing the spices, or do the same in a pressure cooker.

Cook over low heat for 2-3hours, occasionally skimming the surface - though you can leave this until the end. Taste the stock, if it is too weak reduce it further and then add back some water. Cool.

Line a colander/strainer with a fresh piece of Chux cloth or cheesecloth and place over a bowl to strain the solution. Repeat on returning it to the pot if there's still a lot of silt like residue sinking to the bottom.

Bring to the boil again and then bottle it or freeze in ice cube trays and then transfer the frozen stock cubes to a bag so you can grab a couple as you need them. Reserve some stock for the next time.

When you run low and need to make another batch, do exactly the same and add in the reserved stock. The Chinese ethic is to waste nothing, so the bones from the discarded carcasses feed my pets and some of the meat is made into rillettes or tossed into congee made with masterstock.

Dim Sum touched my heart

The literal translation of Dim Sum, the food served at Yum Cha, is 'touch the heart' which can be taken to mean your heart's delight.

It is said that the meal Yum Cha (meaning to drink tea) began as a range of snacks on offer in the tea houses that dotted The Silk Road from 300BC, connecting China to the trade routes of Europe and Africa via Asia Minor. Today there are in the vicinity of two thousand varieties of dim sum with a repertoire of sixty different dishes being served in the larger Cantonese Yum Cha restaurants.

Some venues bring the dim sum to the table for your selection on trolleys, while more traditional and smaller places bring them by tray, suspended by a strap around the neck of a waitress. When a dish is selected by a table, it is marked off on a sheet which is tallied at the end of the meal, with each priced according to their ingredients and skill level. Increasingly the trays are disappearing in favour of the venue offering a you a carte where your selection is marked and then the order is placed with the kitchen.

Served from the small hours of the morning until the early afternoon, diners will select at least one steamed, one fried and one braised dish, plus a blanched vegetable dish for a properly balanced meal and sometimes a plate of sliced roast meat is also taken. Depending on the number of diners at the table, often the repast will be finished with a shared plate of noodles or filled out with a bowl of congee. To aid the digestion tea is always drunk with Dim Sum and tiny sweet dishes are offered to finish the meal.

Yum Cha Nostalgia


Memory one:
I sit in a high chair in a bustling restaurant on The Peak in Hong Kong. My Chinese Grandmother is dressed in a modern Cheung Sam. She removes the translucent white rice pastry skin from a steamed prawn dumpling that she has cooled and leaning in, hands me it on a toothpick, making it simple for me to savour the filling.


Memory two:
1970. I am crunching my way through a deep fried wonton with sweet sauce in a Chinese restaurant when suddenly deafened by firecrackers. My nose wrinkles as the gunpowder drifts up from the street. We are eating Yum Cha upstairs. A waiter moves through the room with a broomstick, attached to which are a Chinese cabbage, a roast duck and some Lai See (lucky red money packets), which he suspends over the street from a nearby window.

Next I am being held at the hips by a family friend so that I can pivot out of another window to watch the Lunar New Year festivities below. An ornate Chinese Dragon climbs up to retrieve the spoils from the broomstick and two lions dance in the street amongst more exploding fire crackers. Drummers & cymbals beat and clash in a steady rhythm that I carry in my head for the next two days and when stirred, I can still hear them today.

We were in Gerard Street, London. The Dim Sum languished on a large round table in the midst of the excitement at Lee Ho Fook, the restaurant immortalised by Warren Zevon in his song 'Werewolves of London'.



Memory three:
My father dresses me in one of my prettiest and most expensive outfits purchased in a London Boutique. I am seven and we are in Hong Kong, going to lunch with his father and my grandfather's cousins.

The cab pulls up at the restaurant door. We are at Luk Yu, at the time Hong Kong's oldest Tea House. The senior staff wear long traditional robes and the tables and stools are carved antiques. There is fine porcelain on the table and in between us are spittoons plus other accoutrements of times gone by. One gentleman has even brought his caged song bird along and it sits by him at the table.

My Grandfather seemed to be as much a part of the furniture here. Like an Oriental Gentleman's Club the clients all seemed to know one another. Smiling benevolantly like Sau Sing Kung, the diety of longevity, he was in his element.

There was no need to order food here. As a regular at the venue for over thirty years, they knew what he liked and unobtrusively brought the dim sum to the table in a steady stream. Too enthralled to take much notice of what we ate, I sat mesmerised and observed quietly while the men talked.






Memory four:
Sundays at the Hong Kong Jockey Club in Happy Valley. Our family had a standing reservation for Yum Cha in one of the large Cantonese venues overlooking the race course. Over the clatter of chopsticks and enthusiastic conversations we would hook up around an enormous round table, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.

Each week the order was the same. Towers of bamboo steamers would crowd the Lazy Susan in the middle of the table that included Grandfather's favourites like braised tripe, mango pudding and Mah Tai Goh, a steamed sponge cake, and my childhood favourite of fried wonton with sweet and sour sauce.

There would be three teapots on the table, one with Pu Erh (Bo Lay) for the older people, one with rose petal scented Jasmine tea for the younger generation and a pot of hot water to dilute either tea when it became heavily steeped. It was my task to pour tea for my elders. I learnt to hold a pot in each hand and pour steadily.

By the end of the meal the starched table cloth was covered in sauce stains, teapot drips and the bony detritus left from discarded chicken feet and spare rib chomping. The world's problem's had been solved, jokes had been cracked and our bellies were full enough to have us seeking out a place to nap. The crackle and clatter of the Mah Jong tables drifted over from another room and some of the older generation moved off to play .



Memory five:
It's four in the morning in a street just above Lang Kwai Fong, the nightclub district of Hong Kong Island. Three people dressed as though from the Rocky Horror show, a French hooker with a Freddy Mercury moustache in a black PVC trench coat and thigh length boots sits alongside a nun and three men in flamenco dresses with Timberland boots.

We sit on low stools eating dim sum including chicken feet, dragon's balls and Tofu skin rolls. One friend skewers a silky dumpling with a chopstick and feeds it to me. My feet hurt, I am a Yoko Ono clone in hot pants with soaring platform soled boots. The elderly people sitting around us behave as though we are invisible.

We had been up all night celebrating Halloween. All the expats and American born Chinese donned fancy dress to attend the Halloween parties at the city's nightclubs. My flatmate ran a popular club and restaurant, so naturally I was obliged to join the fun there. Navigating the steep cobblestoned hill that made up the nightclub district was hard. Newscasters were filming the streets lined six deep with local Chinese watching the crazy foreigners arrive in fancy dress.

As costumed people walked through the crowd they were pummelled by gentle blows. The locals hit the Gwei Lo (Ghost people/Foreign Devils) to ward off any bad spirits that may accompany them in their hideous costumes. My arms felt black and blue by the time I got in the door but my friend, 'The French Hooker', greeted me with a Flaming Lamborghini cocktail and from then until we sat down to Yum Cha, my night was a blur.




Memory six:
It was five thirty in morning when the phone rang. Grandfather said brightly in Cantonese "I'm downstairs, it's time for breakfast". I had arrived in Hong Kong a matter of hours earlier. With a resigned sigh, I rolled out of the hotel bed and quickly pulled on some clothes, brushed my teeth and joined my grandfather. He had been muttering and pacing back and forth across the lobby in anticipation, much to the amusement of the staff.

Aged in his eighties and dressed immaculately as always in a three piece suit and tie, he looked at his elegant Rolex and strode out to a cab on the kerb. He took me to a humble Yum Cha venue filled with other elderly men, a place where in his youth he would never have dared venture.

The other customers were cut from a different cloth, had missing teeth, bulging hairy moles and craggy faces. Their clothes were cheap, synthetic and casual. My grandfather's bespoke attire was an anomaly here and I - a jet-lagged Eurasian woman with a spiky haircut - was a curiosity. "My number one grand-daughter!" he announced proudly in Cantonese whenever anyone stared at me at length and he would squeeze my arm with a grip like a monkey wrench.

Here the steamers containing the dumplings were metal, the bowls melamine, the lighting burned holes in your retinas, the tables were unadorned Laminex and the waitresses hawking the dumplings were loud, old and coarse. The din was deafening.

Men argued about the racing form, roared riotously and cursed one another. They fought loudly over the bill and spat poultry bones on the floor. But they welcomed my grandfather like a long lost friend, and I, sitting in this strange place, wondered at how he had come know to these people in the course of his pampered life. He waived my queries off with a shrug. Just another facet of his eternal mystique it seemed.

These days it is I who look at the face of his Rolex in anticipation of adventures to come.





Memory Seven:
Jalan Alor, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. My infected foot throbs with pain, my face is blotchy with heat and humidity but thoughts of myself dissolve as I discover the crispiest roasted belly pork I have ever eaten whilst sitting on the pavement of an inner city street waving lurid green chopsticks over orange plastic plates.

The delicious dumplings of dim sum on the table pale into insignificance as I crunch my way through the fatty, meaty, fatty, meaty, crispy pork accompanied by Hoi Sin sauce and fresh chilli. I share a dumpling with a stray cat and chat in Cantonese to the Chef. My holiday was ending.

Twenty four hours later I would be pulling on an overcoat, at home in Melbourne again.




Memory Eight:
As the lazy susan of dim sum spins like the Wheel Of Fortune, Mr Stickyfingers is sucking the flesh off a braised chicken foot at the Hong Kong Police Club and discussing how well he has done punting on the Hong Kong Cup. My extended family look on with approval and have obviously taken him in as one of them.

It is the second day of my grandmother's funeral. My beloved has sat through rituals in a language he does not speak and helped to fold sacks and sacks full of paper gold ingots to incinerate. They represent the wealth that my grandmother has enjoyed during her time with the living and once burnt, are taken into the afterlife along with paper clothes and shoes, credit card and passport and a beautiful paper home furnished with all the luxuries in life with servants, set in a spectacular garden.


The family astrologer had told us that Grandmother had attained enlightenment by the time of her death and that her journey was now over. She would not, unlike my grandfather, be re-incarnated. Her funeral was a Tao Buddhist celebration of her life, heavy with ancient rituals and symbolism.


Amazingly just days before she died, Grandmother accurately foresaw that there would be a mix up with her body at the morgue, but said that it would all eventually be sorted out. That she did this didn't surprise me in the least. After all, this was a woman who had chosen to wake herself out of a coma, years before.


Before she left, she reassured us that she was looking forward to moving on to a spectacular place where the garden of her new home was filled with beautiful exotic flowers. I think of her now, strolling amongst the blooms in her eternal paradise, free of the frustrations of day to day life on earth.

I love the conviviality of Yum Cha. I love Dim Sum - and I love that I now can enjoy it at home. You see it is almost taboo in Chinese culture to make Yum Cha yourself.


Dim Sum Masters are revered and as an Asian you do not enter their territory by attempting to make your own - God forbid! Good dim sum takes time. Years of apprenticeship are involved to study making the dishes with recipes as old as ancient Chinese history.


Special consideration must be made as to the balance of proper ingredients, textures, flavours as well as auspicious symbolism in naming and in the balance of the components. As in all Chinese food, the Confucian principles of harmony are addressed in their production.


So what am I eating at home? Takeaway. The Linx Chinese food stall and cafe at South Melbourne Market is now selling frozen dim sum. The proper kind, not the aproximated yuppie version on offer elsewhere in the market. At Linx, it is the real deal. I can get all my favourite dumplings, buns and braises and the fried items like Gee Ma Ha (Prawn toast), Ham Sui Gok (stuffed deep fried glutinous pastry dumplings), Wu Gok (Panko crumbed mushrom and pork filled taro dumplings) or Chun Goon (Spring Rolls), I take away hot. Once defrosted, the steamed items only need a ten minute blast in the wok to heat.


I don't use the cliched bamboo steamer. Mine died years ago. From an Asian supplier I have a metal disk with large holes cut out of it to suspend within my wok. I use it for steaming whole fish etc too. I lay some baking paper under the softest dumplings to keep them from losing their pastry bottoms to the metal plate and the braises go into shallow dishes. The Lor Mai Gai (lotus wrapped stuffed glutinous rice) sits to one side and then I pop on the wok lid. Simple, quick and the result is deeply satisfying.


Lifting the lid to examine the glossy morsels in my wok, water drips down on my dumplings. As I inhale their aroma, hundreds of memories wash over me with the unfurling of the steam. Dim Sum is deep in my heart.

OMG! Chef's Hat Fire Sale

April 2007:

Fire has gutted a South Melbourne cooking equipment supplies shop, causing an estimated $250,000 damage.

Firefighters were called to the Chef's Hat store in Coventry Street about 3.30 this morning.

At the height of the fire, a rear wall of the building collapsed, blocking access to the seat of the blaze, in a storage area at the rear of the business.

Metropolitan Fire Brigade communications controller Laurie Crowther said crews called in extra resources and aggressively battled the fire from the front of the shop, confining the blaze to the storage area and "significantly" reducing the damage bill.

It took 25 firefighters 90 minutes to bring the blaze under control.

No one was injured.

theage.com.au

In April last year the Chef's Hat Store in South Melbourne - specialising in hotelware and catering equipment - had a fire. Since then, I have been lurking there regularly, waiting for the fire damaged stock to come on sale. Well, finally, it has happened. I suppose the investigation has been concluded in so far as insurance etc and in front of the counter now are pallets of fire damaged stock.


I looked in and walked out with a perfect - though ash covered - Scanpan at a third of the retail price and some fabulous stemware priced at 50cents each. On sale there is all manner of items, some charred, covered in ash, dented or damaged, some in perfect condition and although mostly suited to the hospitality industry there are finds for the home cook too.


Terms of the sale are no refund, no exchange, no guarantee and no account payment. Had I a bigger kitchen I would have bought more paraphernalia and there was even a lamp I was eyeing off. I watched more stuff coming out of storage as the stock moved and there were only a modest number of shoppers milling about digging through cartons.



More good news - a new stall has opened next to the famous South Melbourne Market Dim Sim shop. Named Linx it is a Chinese roast meat store which ironically also sells dim sum, including Sui Mai - the dumplings that Aussie Dim Sims were modeled on. The window is sexily filled with glistening examples of Cantonese style roast meats that make my mouth water.


Both dine in and take away is offered, with outdoor seating and also a few tables indoors. The kitchen is on display and a Chinese Sui Mei Master and Dim Sum chef are hard at work, supported by a number of ladies who speak in reverential Cantonese to them.


I have eaten at Linx twice and taken away both Cantonese Roast duck and Char Sui. Both were as good as my father's. I give the dim sum the thumbs up too, including PG's favourite fried footballs, Ham Sui Gok. Also available are Chinese Red Roast sausage, soy sauce chicken and roasted crisp belly pork, which can be eaten on the spot served on rice. The menu has a selection of Malaysian noodles and the bain marie contains the customary western oriented items like lemon chicken, generic stir fries etc.


Luckily for me it is open six days a week (Tues-Sunday) so I no longer have to go to Victoria Street, Richmond for a fix.

Chef's Hat, 131 Cecil Street, South Melbourne, Victoria

Linx Chinese Food - BBQ & Dim Sum
Stall 92-93 South Melbourne Market, Cecil Street South Melbourne
Tue-Thurs 11am-9pm, Wed-Sun 9.30am - 9pm
ph. 9696 1628


Both venues offer trade and retail sales

Parking for both venues

Stinky balls of stodge

I looked up and looked down. The sky matched the newly concreted pavement. I rounded the corner and beheld the queue in the distance. It had snaked out to the edge of the wide, extended pavement and around along the bicycle path.

The café patrons looked on as a rag-tag group of locals, suburban visitors and tourists patiently waited on the street. The queue seemed to be a constant source of bemusement as they sippped caffé latés, and wrapped fat fingers around panini, bomboloni and pancakes, clustered on simple outdoor furniture.

I joined the queue. There were 26 people ahead of me. The wind bore a cold hole in my back and as the sky got darker, the rain spat icy droplets on my cheeks. I drew up my hood and buried my hands deeper into my pockets. Shuffling along with the rest of the expectant shoppers, the vendors moved sales along briskly. It took 5minutes to get to the front.

I knew what I wanted. Here there was no time for dilly-dallying or procrastination over the short menu. When you got to the counter you placed your order and were specific. Dim Sims, fried or steamed; Deep Fried Spring Rolls or crispy Potato cakes - all together, in separate bags or mixed bags? Cash only. Transaction complete, move on quickly.

Condiments to the left – slosh dark soy sauce or squirt lurid red Sriracha chilli into the bags and consume quickly on the street before the greaseproof paper of the brown paper bags melds into the dumpling pastry. Fingers covered in grease and sauce, I make a beeline for the public conveniences to clean myself up.

Mr Stickyfingers and I have a Sunday ritual. We start our day with freshly baked organic artisanal bread, with Marsh’s traditional eggs from chickens that roam freely, feeding on grass, insects and whatever fare they come across, with a helping of Gypsy Pig free range, rare breed bacon. It’s the perfect start to the day, healthy and delicious. We then get stuck into our chores and if we need something from South Melbourne Market – usually a visit to the market’s cheese room – then comes the second part of the ritual; the dim sim queue.

The antithesis to our breakfast, this anomaly in our diet is something that started as a way to entice Mr Stickyfingers to the market. But I too have begun to enjoy the stinky delights of God knows how many kinds of offal derived from beef and mutton, cabbage, starch and seasoning with a little meat, wrapped in a thicker than average Goa Tse dumpling pastry. I know, it sounds dreadful, but comes together well. Their Spring Rolls however are not to my taste. The filling is mushy and reeks heavily of cabbage, not unlike another Australian snack food – the Chiko Roll.

Although I have been visiting the market for twenty years it took me some time to come around to these giant dumplings. I suspect that the recipe has been refined somewhat since the death of the business’ patriarch and after, on two occasions, fines of $26,000 & $30,000 for breaches of food safety, arising from unsanitary conditions and not using refrigerated vehicles to transport their products. The recipe was until then, quite an adhoc production.

The Dim Sim is something of a culinary icon in Australia. It is a dumpling made by Chinese Vendors to appeal to western palates as a snack food and is a popular item sold in fish and chip shops and Chinese takeaways. It is not dim sum, which is found at Southern Chinese Yum Cha, though it would appear to be based on their tiny steamed Sui Mai dumplings.

Elizabeth Chong - a Melbourne Chinese cooking teacher - claims that in 1945 her father William Wing Young was the inventor, serving them in his restaurant Wing Lee and selling them at Football matches. The South Melbourne Market dim sim however, is the one upon which most commercial dim sims are based. With a large circumference packed with a stodgy, meaty filling, Aussies love them either steamed or fried.

Kuen Cheng was the father of this commercial ‘Dimmie’. As a cook for the US Marine corps he escaped the Japanese invasion of China and wound up in Darwin, working his way down to Melbourne, where in 1949 his family claims that he sold the dim sims from a trolley that he took to Caulfield Race Course and nearby pubs. It is said that the dumplings were originally very salty, which made patrons thirsty and kept him in the ‘good books’ with the Publicans who allowed this mutually beneficial trade to continue on their premises.

Once business was booming he relocated to South Melbourne market. Today Kuen’s children continue to maintain the business in a newly refurbished and larger stall. People come from all over Melbourne for their fix and there are always queues, even early in the morning. I once met a man who drives from Grafton in Northern NSW armed with an enormous car fridge, to buy large bags of frozen uncooked Dim Sims that will last him several months. He has been buying them since 1960. Such is the love for SMMDS.

South Melbourne Market Dim Sims, Stall 96. South Melbourne Market, Cecil Street (between Coventry and York Streets), South Melbourne, Victoria. Open: Wednesday, Saturday & Sunday: 8.00am - 4.00pm, Friday: 8.00am - 6.00pm. Closed: Monday, Tuesday & Thursday & some Public Holidays.