Seventh Son - Cantonese Perfection

Dim sum at Seventh Son is perfection

Cantonese food is what I grew up on, and as I get older, I find myself appreciating it more and more, and having less tolerance for bad versions (am I going to end up one of those grumpy old people?).

I've been to Seventh Son about a dozen times since they opened last year, mostly for lunch (dim sum), but a few times for dinner too, and it has quickly become a firm favourite. There have been so few Chinese openings of note recently and I'm only too happy to have found a new, reliable standby.

Dynasty 8, Macau - Decent Dim Sum

Ham shui gok 鹹水角 at Dynasty 8, Conrad Macau

The title says it all. The dim sum at Dynasty 8 was decent. Out of the six things we had, one was excellent (rice paper rolls with barbecued pork), one was good (flaky chicken pastries), three were ok (har gow, ham shui gok, fried sesame balls with custard), and one was weird (soup dumplings), but ok. There's really no need to read past the jump, but if you must...

The Tasting Room by Galliot, Macau

Smoked egg with black winter truffle at The Tasting Room by Gaillot, Macau

Macau, Asia's try-hard attempt at Las Vegas, has seemed to serve a certain function in Hongkonger's vacationing habits that isn't dissimilar to its American counterpart. It's not the first time I'd been to Macau for hen's nights (that's a bachelorette party, non-Aussies) and big birthday bashes. The latter was the purpose of this trip, and this meal at The Tasting Room, and at the risk of sounding like a spoiled brat, we'd all been to Robuchon and wanted to try something different. Plus, it was about time to test run our expensive handbags on different bag stools... I kid.

Eating in Longyearbyen, Svalbard - The Northernmost Restaurants in the World

Yes, snowshoeing in Longyearbyen made me hungry, but the vast emptiness made me hungrier.

There's a certain hunger that strikes when you're in the Arctic Circle, 78 degrees north of the equator and about 1000km from the nearest decent-sized city (Tromsø). It has nothing to do with rumbles, caloric intake, or staying warm, rather, it's a hunger brought on by a subtle but unshakable sense of anxiety of being in the middle of absolutely nowhere, and being completely useless in fending for yourself should anything happen.

Hot Pot at Da Hong Pao

Pic from Da Hong Pao (sorry)

In its simplest form, all you need for hot pot (or steamboat, or Chinese fondue) is stock, or even water, and whatever ingredients you want to (and are able to) cook quickly in soup. It was always something I'd had at home - after all, you can spend less, and buy better ingredients. However, being in Hong Kong, where you can nary do a u-turn in your own apartment, having friends over for hotpot is quite a challenge, let alone having the space to prep everything and spread it all out.

Christmas Cooking Questions - To Brine Or Not To Brine

Should I brine these? (image via South Park Studios)

Around Christmastime, home cooks find themselves cooking larger cuts of meat, whole animals and the like, because we're generally feeding larger groups of people. No-one likes dry meat, and one of the eternal questions about cooking meat is brining.

Harold McGee, everyone's favourite food scientist, says that brining takes away the meat's own juices and flavours (because osmosis), and/but the salt breaks down some of the proteins so the meat will end up more tender (or mushy, if it was already very tender, or it it's been brined too long).

Breaking it down, the pros of brining are:
- Super duper juiciness
- Tender meat
- Meat flavoured with salt (which I suppose can also be a con)

And the cons:
- Meat juices (and thus flavour) lost and replaced with salty plain water
- Potential meat mushiness
- No brown pan juices from roasting

McGee recommends rubbing meat with salt and leaving it for a day or two ("dry brining") instead. With this method, however, it appears that dryness in the meat is a given, as is suggested in his article for the New York Times (he talks about serving turkey like pulled pork, with a ladle of sauce over the top). Question is, is compensating with a good sauce good enough?

Given the horror stories of dry meats at parties (I've sure eaten my fair share), I'm personally still a fan of brining. Your timing has to be right - over-brining can lead to awfully tasteless results, and I've found that lean, white meat in particular do benefit from brining, and when its dry, meat can be horrible to eat, no matter how flavoursome it might be. With calculated, minimal brining time, I've found that a balance of flavour and moisture can be attained*. I guess like most things in life, brining is a delicate balancing act.

Basic brine recipe: 1 litre of water to 4 tablespoons salt.

*Although I did learn from Harold that adding aromatics into the brine (herbs, veggies) etc. is pretty useless as those flavour molecules are mostly too big to penetrate the meat (see point 6 here). I've been using salt, water, onions, leeks, bay leaves and black peppercorns for lean pork chops, and Pioneer Woman's turkey brine for poultry. I'll try just using salt next time to test that theory out.

Happy Holidays!

A Christmas Tipple - Whiskey Infusion

After a whirlwind trip to Toronto last week, I came back with a suitcase full of chocolate and alcohol. I'll be writing about Dillon's, a spectacular new boutique distillery near Niagara Falls, soon (but probably not on this blog). First, though, I'm going to start on the low end - Canadian Club.

Eater Hong Kong Heatmap - 14 hot new restaurants in Hong Kong

It's that time of year again! The second 2013 edition of the Eater Hong Kong Heatmap is out.

The number of restaurants in HK that have opened in the past few months has been astounding. I couldn't include them all in the Eater map. Aside from the ones on the Eater list, others worth noting are: Teppanroom (new teppanyaki room in the Grand Hyatt's Japanese restaurant Kaetsu), Ham & Sherry (Jason Atherton), Prune (new deli by the lovely Grassroots Pantry gals), 85 South (southern BBQ), The Bellbrook (Australian), Sushi Kado, Plat du Jour, La Vache, Zafran, Ginza Iwa, Upper Modern Bistro (ex-chef at St. George at Hullett House), The Boss (Cantonese), Little Burro, The Butcher's Club (butcher, private kitchen, dry-ageing specialists), Locofama, Pez, Opendoor Cafe and La Cantoche.