Roasts and redundant cooking capacities

I am in the UK this week with my children (Adrian is in Hong Kong working). Adrian promised them that they could come back to Ilkley to visit their friends. This promise was part of the whole moving negotiations and post-move efforts (bribes?) to get them to stop being angry with us for kidnapping (their term) and forcibly moving them thousands of miles from their customary lives (both literally and in a figural way). To facilitate this visit we are staying in a lovely, self-catering apartment in an old Victorian confection on the edge of Ilkley Moor. There are great views; invigorating walks; easy access to the town; pigs, chickens, and rabbits in the garden; and things to do inside when (note I do not say if) it rains. It is a comfortable, rather than stuffy, one bed-roomed flat in the daylight basement (so plenty of light). What is particularly nice, however is the fact that there is a reasonable kitchen. Personally, I think it is the provision of kitchen facilities that makes self catering preferable to hotels--that and the fact that you don't have to vacate when the maid wants to come in as there is no maid. I am planning to make the most of this kitchen opportunity. Ilkley has some lovely ways to provision food, as I have suggested in my academic writing, and I intend to make the most of them!

Strangely what I have come to realize on this trip are a couple of things about myself and my relationship with food--or maybe it is my food capacities. Firstly, I have come to understand how difficult it is for me to cook in Hong Kong. While you can really get pretty much anything you want, you do pay a price for it that, quite frankly, puts me right off. I absolutely refuse to pay the equivalent of £15 (about $20 US) for what I view as a rather scrawny chicken. I was in the Otley (UK) Waitrose tonight with Simon and saw a HUGE chicken in the cooler. It looked a bit alien to me as I had forgotten how large British chickens can be--yes I know the conditions under which many are reared and am aware of the environmental/genetic/hormonal acrobatics that go into producing chickens like these large breasted creature that are on sale--but golly I would love to find something vaguely similar for a reasonable price in Hong Kong.

While I did not buy the above chicken, I did buy a lamb shoulder that I plan to slow cook in the oven this weekend. When you cook it on a low heat, with some liquid such as canned tomatoes and wine, and covered with tin foil for several hours it comes out falling off the bone, slightly sticky, and oh so tender and lovely. I am really looking forward to this. I shall make some roasted potatoes and maybe some broad beans to go with it. Again I was able to purchase this shoulder for about £11, where the equivalent in Hong Kong would have cost me easily £35. While what I have purchased is English lamb (this is Waitrose after all), I could have probably gone to another store and gotten New Zealand lamb for less. It is the NZ lamb that one gets in Hong Kong, which makes me more indignant as HK is closer so why is the lamb three times the price--must be something to do with the fact that the Cantonese don't really eat much lamb. Of course maybe they don't eat it because it is so bloody expensive, or the fact that in the south of China it is too hot for sheep and so it isn't part of the tradition. They do eat about everything else though. The story here, however, is that it is very difficult to roast things in Hong Kong. One buys small amounts of the meats one might roast and either cooks them as a stir fry or grinds them up with a bunch of other things (and parts) and puts them into a dumpling of some sort.

This brings me to my second self-observation. Eleven years in the UK was enough time for me to learn to eat like a (middle class) British person. I really struggled (as I am now in HK) when we first moved to the UK with the food and the way it is made available in the shops (note I say shops here not grocery store). There was none of the Mexican ingredients that I had come to rely on in the US, there was no Tuna Helper, there were no Lipton's fried onions (which is really only an issue at Thanksgiving when one wants to make Green Bean Casserole), and the Peanut Butter was wrong. Ironically, I can get all of these things much more easily in Hong Kong (with the exception of Tuna Helper--is that even around any more?). But now, since living in the UK, I long to cook roasts with the accompaniments. Indeed I only learned how to cook roast chicken and lamb and roasted potatoes since moving to the UK. But I got good at them and I came to like them and now I miss the chance to make them. AND I have forgotten how I used to cook in the US. I am sure I have the techniques still, I just have forgotten what I used to make regularly. I found myself so easily whipping up a mix of eggplant, broad beans, and black pudding on toast for my dinner tonight, something that just wouldn't have happened easily were I in Hong Kong tonight--no black pudding or broad beans and the eggplants are the skinny Japanese kind--Thank God the wine is not difficult to find. I've become a good cook in the UK, but am having to learn all over (for the second time) how to cook where I live now.

This is not to say that I am not learning to cook with what is available less expensively in Hong Kong. There are some wonderful fish, greens, and noodles. Part of my difficulty is that many of these ingredients are not listed or illustrated in my many cookbooks. While I have added to my cookbook collection, I find that these books are mainly written for an English speaking audience that does not live in Asia, and as a result, many of the ingredients are not these local foods. This makes sense from a commercial perspective as many of those from the ex-pat community in Hong Kong have live-in helpers who do the cooking and shopping for them, so such a cookbook would not be too useful in this context. Thus the bulk of the potential audience are those who would actually find it difficult to buy these strange fish and odd cuts of meat that can be found in the markets in Hong Kong.

This technical difficulty is compounded by the taste preferences of my family. My children pretty much refuse to eat the local food when it is cooked for them. Mind you, they are of an age where they pretty much refuse to eat anything I cook for them, so no real stress there. Adrian and I, on the other hand have come to realize that we actually prefer a little more spice and flavor than what is typically in Cantonese food. This means cooking Tai or, my favorite Vietnamese food. I have a recipe for a salad with palmetto (a milder, larger form of grapefruit), Chinese cabbage and crab in a fish sauce, lime, chilli dressing that is wonderful. Likewise I do noodles once a week. But I would like to branch out a bit more. Recently I also ate in a Hunanese restaurant. Hunan province is in the north of China and is based more on corn than rice and has stronger flavors, but is not so hot as Szechuan food. I had a roasted eggplant (Aubergine) dish with lots of garlic and a bit of chilli that was absolutely wonderful. I have been unable to copy it however. Something key is missing from my attempts. I think it might be a quest!

In the mean time, I am once again struggling with the intersections of contextual knowledge and design that is spatially specific. Unfortunately as time plays into this, I'll probably reach a stage of proficiency, and at the same time end up replacing rather than expanding my cooking/food knowledge, just at about the moment we decide to move countries again. This will, of course involve (re-)learning how to provision and cook in our new environment. Indeed, in ten years time you may find me writing about my longing for bok choi and complaining that I can only find one kind of soy sauce rather than the 3 or 4 kinds that my recipe calls for (yes this is a feature of Chinese cooking). Whatever happens, I am sure I will enjoy trying to get to grips with this new food environment.

Home and Work

I realise it has been a while since I've posted anything. This is not because we have been sitting on our hands at home doing nothing worthy of writing about, it is just that I have been having difficulty thinking how I would organise this post. I've decided on a geographical organisation (rather than chronological or topical), though like most things geographical there are certainly instances where spaces fold on themselves, making linkages between non-spatially proximate places...

Starting farther away, we were recently visited by some friends from Ilkley who had been travelling in Australia and were on their way home. Simon and I were quite pleased to spend a Saturday afternoon with the Pattersons who had flown in early in the morning. I think the heat might have been a bit of a shock, as was the speed at which storms move through Hong Kong. As it is currently winter in Australia, the 34 degrees (C) and high humidity was a bit different than what they were used to. They were staying in the centre of Mong Kok in Kowloon and so we got the 7 bus from across the street (after an unusual bit of a wait) and rode it down to the ferry terminal at TST. Rather than jump on the ferry we went into Star House and had lunch at a Viet Nameese restaurant called Rice Paper, which has pretty good food. This proved to be a good decision because a cracking storm came through, complete with lightning, while we were eating. The storm soon passed, the weather cleared, the sun came out and by the time we had finished eating and looked around the mall a bit, we were able to get the star ferry over to central. We then took the train to Admiralty and walked through Hong Kong Park to the Peak Tram and went up to the top for a reasonable view. It was still a bit of a hazy day, but one could still see the sights. We then went back down and said goodbye in the late afternoon at the Mong Kok station. I am pretty sure they made it back to their hotel as I did receive a text. They were off to UK the next day, but it was great to see them. I hope they liked Hong Kong.

The Sunday saw a return visit for Adrian and I to Mong Kok. Mong Kok is in the centre of Kowloon and is where all the markets are. Our purpose was to go and find some cooking supplies. We were out and about in the early afternoon and it was surprisingly quiet. Mong Kok gets so busy and full of people that often one cannot see anything but crowds of bodies moving against each other. Think busy disco on a Saturday night. This particular Sunday, however, it was like a quiet street in Ilkley. We could not figure it out and thought is may have been due to the T1 warning. A T1 is the warning that is hoisted when there is a Typhoon in the area that could possibly hit Hong Kong. It did not come to HK in the end and we subsequently learned that the only people who pay any attention to the T1's are nervous expats and tourists. Everyone else doesn't get excited until the warning level is at 8. We still don't know why it was so quiet, but we did find a very interesting building on Reclamation street housing a market, which looks like it has been there since before Hong Kong was a British colony. This old, labrintine building with its corrugated roofing and dilapidated walls is surrounded, of course, by high rise buildings, but by squinting one might imagine what things were like before all the high rises came. We were able to buy a cast iron wok for about £4. There are much more expensive wok's but we have been informed that the best are cast iron. These are thinner than the heavy cast iron skillets that one gets in the US. Like the skillet, the woks also need seasoning before use. Properly seasoned, cast iron is great to cook on as it is non-stick but you can use metal cooking tools. We were given instructions to use pig fat and red chilli's to season the wok. You heat the wok on the stove and put the pig fat and chilli's in and stir them around for about a half hour ensuring that the pig fat is fully melted and the air in the house if full of smoke. Then you let this sit for 24 hours. Wipe out and you can use your wok. it works wonderfully and we have made a number of excellent meals since. We also purchased a fish knife made in Japan that has just one side of the blade sharpened and is perfect for cutting fish into sashimi, a very large cleaver and cutting board. The cooking supply shops make the cleavers and the woks right on the premises and you can see the shop owners pounding away in the back. On our way home we stopped off at the market in Sui Wo Court (just below where we live) and showed the wok to the butcher who immediately gave us a piece of pork fat for our new wok. A very successful outing!

The children have been fully engaged in activities much closer to home. Both are settled into their school, which is just across the road from where we live. Both have commented on how friendly all the other children are to them. Indeed Simon has been to a birthday party of one child already and Grace was invited to a movie last weekend and for a sleepover this coming weekend. Both are also finding the volume of homework something of a surprise. The expectation is that they spend 1-2 hours a night doing their work. This is involving a change of focus for them after school. No longer can they lay around or play on the Xbox, but must get right on it if they don't want to be up until 10:30 at night finishing writing tasks as Grace was the other night. They seem to be rising to the challenge and Grace in particular has distinguished herself having had her poem chosen by the teacher to be read out. She read it to us and we were similarly quite impressed. She will be very embarrassed at these comments, but it really was quite good. Simon has been selected for the school football (soccer) team and may actually end up playing for the age group above his year. He was a bit worried about the try outs, but as he scored two goals within about two minutes it turns out he needn't have been. He also is learning Mandarin chinese at quite a pace.

We had an interesting outing to Sai Kung this weekend. Sai Kung is in the New Territories and while boasting a Starbucks and quite a few ex -pats who are "escaping" from central, it is still quite rural and chinese. There main attraction is the seafront with its boat rides and seafood restaurants. You can either purchase fresh fish directly from the boats and have the restaurant cook it for you, or you can buy from the tanks that are at many of the restaurants themselves. The guidebook we had indicated that one could get a ferry from the pier out to one of the outlying islands where there is a golf course, a temple, and some ruins. It turns out that if you want to go to the south side of the island, not the side where the golf course is, you have to get a separate ferry located at some unknown (at least to us) place. We got the ferry to the golf course and discovered, once there that all that can be done from this ferry is play golf. So that is what we (Simon, Adrian, and I) did. We actually practiced hitting balls from the practice range. Neither Adrian nor I have played golf in years and years (and even then I was pretty rubbish) and Simon had never played, but we all agreed that the practice hitting we did was pretty fun. The practice range was in the shade and we were able to get a family pass for about £20, which included 1.5 hours on the range, unlimited balls, and the rental of two 5 irons and some other smaller club for Simon, and the ferry trip. By the end we were all able to hit the ball out toward the 60 yard marker. I think this is something we may do again. It was certainly something different than what we normally do on a Sunday afternoon. Moreover the setting was absolutely stunning. I've taken some photographs, but as these are on my big camera, rather than my Iphone they will have to wait until I get back to Sheffield before I can upload them.

This week is a busy one for us as we have several social obligations and we are hoping to go to Macau at the weekend. The boat with our things should also arrive in Hong Kong on Friday, and if we are lucky should be at the flat on Monday or Tuesday--just in time before I leave to go back to the UK on the Tuesday night.