I had so many delicious noodles in Hong Kong, and I've been doing my best to do justice to those spicy bowls back in America. Some of my favorite noodle shops--Good Hope Noodle in Mong Kok, Mak's Noodles in Central, and Ho To Tai Noodle Shop in the New Territories--serve fried egg noodles with BBQ pork belly. It's amazingly good. So I took a stab at my own version.
Using some Chinese five spice, s&p, fresh tomatoes, vinegar, olive oil, soy sauce, and just a few tablespoons of some Texas-style sweet and tangy BBQ sauce (I said this was a take on the dishes I had!), I whipped up a sauce to accompany the noodles and pork belly. You'll need a few hours to make the pork belly, but once it's done this dish is quick and easy. And you can even cook up the pork belly the day before you're planning to make your noodles.
Want some music to go with those Hong Kong noodles and pork belly? Here's Siouxsie and the Banshees' "Hong Kong Garden."
Ingredients:
--pork belly
--1 lb. Chinese egg noodles (I prefer the super skinny kind, and you can find them at an Asian grocery)
--1/2 tsp. Chinese five spice
--3 tbsp. soy sauce
--1 medium-sized tomato, pureed
--1 tsp. pomegranate vinegar (you could use a simple balsamic vinegar instead)
--2-3 tsp. olive oil
--2 tbsp. Texas-style BBQ sauce (feel free to make your own too, of course!)
--1 tsp. salt & pepper
--1-2 tsp. coarse sea salt
Preheat oven to 475 degrees F.
You're going to make the pork belly first, and you'll need to make it at least 3-4 hours before you plan to start on the noodles.
Score the skin/fat of the pork belly with a very sharp knife, being careful not to cut into the meat. Sprinkle the coarse sea salt over the skin and rub in, pushing the salt into the score marks. Pour about 1 tsp. or so of the olive oil over the skin and rub in thoroughly.
Place the pork belly on a roasting rack in a roasting pan, and place in the hot oven for 20 minutes, or just until the skin begins to bubble. Turn the heat down to 325 degrees F and continue roasting for about 2.5 hours, or until the meat begins to easily pull apart. Depending on the size of your pork belly, you'll need to keep an eye on it and adjust accordingly. Once it's done, remove from the oven and allow it to rest, covered with foil, for at least 20 minutes.
Onto the main dish. In a small bowl, combine the Chinese five spice, soy sauce, tomato, pomegranate vinegar, BBQ sauce, about 1 tsp. or so olive oil, and 1 tsp. s&p. Whisk together to combine, then set aside.
In a medium-sized pot, boil your egg noodles for just about a minute and a half, then drain and rinse with cold water. Set aside for just a few minutes while you get the pork belly ready.
When your pork belly has cooled, slice and chop into about 1/2" strips. Over medium heat in a sauce pan, fry the pork belly to crisp it up, about 5 min. Once it's sizzling, add the sauce mixture and continue to fry for another minute or two. Add the egg noodles. Cook for another minute or two as you mix the noodles with the pork belly and sauce, just until everything is crispy and ready to serve. If you have more noodles than you can eat, this dish makes for some great leftovers.
I can't stop dreaming about Japanese matcha desserts. In case you're not familiar with matcha, it's a ground green tea in powder form, and it's one of the most brightly colored teas you'll ever see. I bought some from Ippodo at their main store on Kyoto's Teramachi Street, and I brought it home with me to Virginia. I plan to make as many matcha sweets as possible before its expiration date. This mousse tart takes a little bit of time, but it's light, airy, and earthy. Oh, and it's a magnificent shade of green.
While in Kyoto, I sampled a very wide variety of matcha desserts, and aside from the ice cream, a slice of a matcha mousse tart was my favorite. It turns out it's difficult to find a good recipe in English. Thanks goodness for GoogleTranslate! Despite its many idiomatic dilemmas, running a search for "抹茶のタルト" provided me with precisely the information I needed. After some initial translations back to English, I realized the recipes used metric measurements. But with some math, baking intuition, and luck, I managed to make a dessert that brought me back to Japan.
The recipe involves making a matcha sponge cake crust, and then following that with the matcha mousse. Plan for some refrigerator time, too--it'll need about 3 hours to set.
Thinking about being lost in translation, so to speak, and the memory of walking through the streets of Kyoto, it only makes sense to give you this song: here's Air's "Alone in Kyoto" from Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation soundtrack.
Sponge Cake Ingredients:
--2 large eggs
--1/4 c. granulated sugar
--2 tbsp. unsalted butter, melted
--1/4 c. all-purpose flour
--2 tbsp. cornstarch
--1 tbsp. matcha
Mousse Ingredients:
--3 large egg yolks
--1/4 c. granulated sugar
--1/3 c. whole milk
--1 c. whipping cream
--2 heaping tbsp. matcha
--1 package gelatine
--2 tbsp. luke-warm water
--2 tbsp. hot water
Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.
Make the sponge cake crust first. In a stand mixer, beat eggs and sugar until pale yellow. Add butter and continue to mix on low speed.
In a medium-sized bowl, sift together cornstarch, flour, and matcha. Slowly add, bit by bit, to the wet mixture in your stand mixer. Mix on low speed until the dry ingredients are fully incorporated.
Line a springform pan with parchment paper and pour in your cake batter (there's not going to be very much of it at all, so don't be alarmed). Bake for about 15 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clean. Remove from oven and allow to cool. Once it's done cooling, trim the edges so the cake fits in the bottom of a tart pan or a pie dish and refrigerate until you're ready for it.
Onto the mousse. Clean your stand mixer bowl, and whisk the egg yolks and sugar until they're fully combined. Set aside for just a minute or two.
In a small bowl, incorporate your gelatine into the 2 tbsp. of luke-warm water. You'll need to whisk it just a bit. Set aside (but not for too long--it'll begin to congeal). In a pot, whisk together the matcha and the 2 tbsp. hot water. It'll be just enough liquid to form a matcha paste. Now add the whole milk over low heat and whisk constantly to incorporate. Bring to a boil, and as soon as the milk begins to bubble around the sides, remove it from the heat. Only after you've removed it from the heat and it has just started to cool, whisk in the gelatine. (It's really important that the milk isn't boiling when you add the gelatine--it'll kill the gelatine.)
Add the green tea/milk mixture to the egg yolk mixture a bit at a time, and beat on medium speed for several minutes until it gets frothy. Your green tea/milk mixture should be warm enough to temper the egg yolks.
Now pour the whipping cream into a separate bowl and whisk until medium peaks form. Slowly fold it into the green tea/milk mixture until it's incorporated. You've got your mousse!
Remove your sponge cake crust from the refrigerator and pour the mousse mixture over it. Cover very tightly with plastic wrap, being careful not to let the plastic wrap cling to the top of the mousse. Refrigerate for at least 3 hours.
When you're ready to serve your matcha mousse tart, use a flour sifter to dust the top with matcha. Serve chilled.
The first of my glorious recipes from Hong Kong! This one's usually a winter dish, warm and comforting. But I tried Chinese clay pot rice for the first time in Hong Kong this summer at Ser Wong Fun despite the hundred-degree weather and stifling humidity. Ser Wong Fun is known for making delicious snake soup and clay pot rice when it's cold outside, and it's located just a few doors down from Linva Tailor, the shop that made Maggie Cheung's cheongsams for In the Mood for Love.
You could make this rice in any heavy cookware, but a Chinese clay pot is the best and most authentic way to cook up this dish. The traditional kitchen shops along Hong Kong's Shanghai Street stock stacks of them, but lucky for everyone outside of China, they're pretty easy to buy online, too.
You can put just about any ingredients you'd like in your clay pot rice. I tried to mirror the dish I had at Ser Wong Fun, so I mixed fresh ginger, scallions, and lap cheong (Chinese sweet sausage) in with my rice. Since this dish originated so close to the fabrics and dresses of the Wong Kar-wai film that stole my heart, here's Nat King Cole's "Quizás, Quizás, Quizás" from In the Mood for Love.
Ingredients:
--1 c. purple rice (you can buy Chinese rice at an Asian grocery store if you've got one, but otherwise, a jasmine rice will do)
--3 full tbsp. freshly minced ginger (don't buy ginger that has already been minced and canned--you need to buy it fresh, and then peel and chop it yourself)
--3 sweet Chinese sausages (as with the purple rice, an Asian grocery should sell these sausages, but you could substitute a hard salami)
--2 tbsp. freshly chopped scallions
--1/4 c. soy sauce
--1 tsp. salt
First, immerse your clay pot in water and then towel dry it. Add 1 c. rice, salt, and 1 1/4 c. water (or whatever water-to-rice ratio your rice calls for--this dish is best with your rice a little bit al dente). Heat over low-medium heat, uncovered, until the water just begins to boil. Reduce heat to low and cover. Allow to cook for approximately 12-15 minutes or until the rice has absorbed all the water.
Meanwhile, remove the casing from your sausages and chop into roughly 1/4" quarters. Pan fry the sausage until it's cooked and crispy, about 4-5 minutes over medium heat. Mix the sausage, 2 tbsp. of the freshly minced ginger, and soy sauce to the clay pot. Mix and continue to heat over low heat for just about 5-6 minutes, or until the soy sauce has cooked into the rice mixture.
Top with the remaining 1 tbsp. of fresh ginger and scallions and serve warm. We sauteed some bok choy on the side. Yum!
