Dieting in Hong Kong: Portion Control

I am back in Honkers but sadly this time I am on a diet. I have been struggling to maintain my weight in my year abroad. In fact my insatiable lust for food has caused me to steadily balloon over time. I generally eat very healthily but I have realised that I eat too much and possibly too often. Greed for good grub is my excuse.

It is an universal truth that you are what you eat and the only way to loose weight is to eat less and exercise more, right? Well I spent 6 months hauling my backside to the gym at least 3 times a week [and even saturday mornings for Body Pump sessions!!] in Melbourne, but going to the gym not only increased my appetite and my need for more food but it became an excuse to indulge. In Australia the portions are enormous and I really have no self control over portion size - 'eyes bigger than my belly' as they say!  All that exercise also turned most of my fat into muscle which actually weighs more than fat - so I was constantly getting heavier! Over the last few months I have had to give up the gym due to lack of funds and travelling around. So all the toned muscles I built have now settled into flab! With the ol' metabolism slowly grinding to a halt with age, it means that I have to eat less, much less than before, if I want to reduce. However I love my food and I refuse to starve myself [hungry = angry and irritable] so what is a girl to do?

The other worry is that I know that I am an apple shape by nature ie my body shape is such that I put on weight around the tyres around my middle. The buddha bellies and muffin tops that the experts lovingly call central obesity, puts apples at higher risk of high cholesterol and heart disease, as all the fat lies close to the main organs like the liver and the heart.  If you are a pear shape then you may not like your thighs but it is a much better shape for your heart!

I decided to take note of the eating habits of the impossibly slim and trim Chinese ladies in Honkers and look into what they eat. They all eat out. Everywhere you look there are restaurants teeming with people, all the time. Most people don't have great cooking fascilities at home. So eating out is very common. So how do they do it? Well the most obvious thing I noticed straight away was portion sizes. People eat Dim Sum and share plates of food with each other a lot more here - so small portions divided into even smaller mouthfuls. They take a little bite size portion onto a small bowl and they don't have a large plate for themselves. Spanish style Tapas is also very popular here. When they go for a pizza - it is shared between a group. Someone overheard my converstaion about pizzas the other day and they nearly choked when I admitted that I had a whole one to myself... oh the shame and the guilt!

I was misty eyed and nostalgic when I found a Pret a Manger in HK. It was a reminder of home but I noticed that they only serve single slim sandwiches here! I have spied on office workers at lunch and all the women come in and have one slim sandwich and they eat it very very slowly ....

Even the supermarket portions of meat or fish are packaged in smaller portions and meant for sharing between people.

I have also observed that they hardly eat that much meat - especially red meat... No great big juicy rib eye steaks for them and certainly not washed down with a gallon of red wine! Weirdly they don't go for many raw salads either - apparently many people believe that raw food is harder to digest and makes you bloated. Cooked salads seem to be popular instead as is blanched/steamed greens like choi sum/ bok choy, served with a little soy.  Rice and noodles are a staple but I have observed that they don't eat much of it, especially at night. They like soups as fillers and believe some are good for digection like miso soup which is though to be a probiotic. They do have tofu [good for calcium I guess] but very little dairy/eggs.

More importantly, they hardly ever drink alcohol. They mostly consume gallons of green tea which is full of antioxidants and helps increase the metabolism apparently!

I dare say the ultimate diet control is actually using chop sticks - it is very hard to shovel in too much food too quickly with 2 bits of stick. 

So wish me luck - I am trying my hardest to stay away from the yummy dim sum places until I learn not to over order. I am also going to follow the Chinese rules that I have observed and see if I can get back into my little black dress by New Years Eve! Oh. Hang on. I forgot about Xmas. Oh dear.

For the love of Pizza

Pizza Porn

My insatiable pizza lust has led me to eating more pizzas around the world than you can shake a stick at and I have finally realised that I may have used up my pizza quota for a lifetime. I am now on a pizza free diet [Boooo!] as none of my clothes fit and my face is looking like a calzone. But before I go cold turkey, please let me share with you some of the best I have had recently and quietly reveal that the number 5 top spot that was open in my top 5 best pizza joints in the world, has now been filled.

In Auckland New Zealand, I was pleasantly surprised at a pub called the Country Club [nothing to do with a golf course] which had great thin based tasty pizzas! [See photo above and below] They were generous and unconventional with their toppings but each one was a reasonable size [ie not that much bigger than your head - Miss Piggy would approve] and no soggy bottoms! We had the additional excitement of the rugby world cup and the joyous reunion with our beloved Kiwi mates, which made the pizzas taste even better!

chicken, chorizo and red onion

Next in line came SPQR, again in New Zealand, in the stylish Ponsonby road area of Auckland. This restaurant was my final meal before heading back to Melbourne and boy oh boy did it meet the mark. We sat outside on the pavement seats, soaking up the sun and being thoroughly looked after by a very flamboyant & gregarious waiter! The pizza I had was incredibly thin and crispy and the toppings were numerous but the best bit was the tomato sauce - it made the pizza one of the finest I have had! The flavours were bold and robust with so many strong topping ingredients but it was thin enough to make the mark! Check this out...

Salami, Black olives, Anchovies and mushrooms

My 3rd and final venue is a little wood fired pizza shack or beach hut called Champling, in Seminyak Bali, Indonesia. I was a very lucky girl to not only spend my birthday in Bali this year but I also got birthday pizza for lunch [who needs cake!]. This hut was behind our Hotel, right on the beach with a massive wood fire and looking out towards the water. When I went up to ask if their pizza was thin or fat based, the little Balinese girl serving behind the bar squeeked 'it's crispy' at me and I was sold! The view was just incredible - the continual & mesmorising rolling waves of the Indian ocean & miles and miles of clean beach was stunning. With music in the background and the warm ocean breeze, I had died and gone to paradise!

Okay so the location, view and warm weather made a huge impact on the choice, but Champling wins hands down and makes it onto my top 5 Pizza list! I found the lunch options on Bali to be pretty aweful - their salads made me ill [probably to do with the running water used to wash leaves not being drinkable or clean - raw food is a no no on this Island] and the other options were the burger/chips-Aussie/British- male-on-holiday-and-junk-food-diet variety. I tried going for Indonesian curries but they rendered me unwell for hours afterwards too and to be honest they were not that impressive. It was best to stick to food made to order in a fire that would cremate all microbes! So I pretty much went back there for lunch on most days but to keep it some what healthier and guilt free, I asked them to make mine without cheese. The toppings were simple, tasty and kept to a minimum. The star of the show was the delicious tomato sauce base and the crispy slightly smoky base. Simple and perfect.

So that's it. Sigh! Back to being healthy. No more Pizza. At least not for the rest of THIS year...[ahem.]

Plenty more fish in the sea - or is there???

At 6am on the day of my Balinese cooking course, me and a group of eager beaver foodies were taken to the only fish market on the south of the island, to pick up the restaurants catch of the day. When we were at the beach we were shown the Balinese side of the beach which was empty and then the Javanese side which showed more hustle and bustle. I was looking forward to a Rick Stein style odyssy of roving around a busy fish market but instead there was hardly anything going on. Turns out the waters surrounding Bali have been all but fished out and due to fear and ancestral superstitions about the sea and their inability to swim most Balinese fishermen have stopped fishing! The Javanese on the other hand, fish in Java and bring their meagre offerings over after a day long trip and sell their undersized fish as so called freshly caught stuff!! Unbelievable! There I was thinking we had sucked the seas dry in Europe but as it turns out there are hardly any fish left in the sea on this side of the world too. How sad.

The fish market had loads of fish that looked deader than dead but the whole place did not smell of fish at all. They have no refridgeration or ice. So what were the day old fish being kept in ? And since there is absolutely no regulation of fishing, the size of the catch were woefully small - in the EU or in Oz they would be fined heavily for trawling such small underlings!

There were some fish that looked freshly caught as they had rigor mortis, slimey flesh and clear eyes but mostly they looked very very miserable indeed. It made me not want to eat seafood in Bali as I realised that all the top end resto's were importing everything and the smaller local places were using these not so fresh undersized babies. There is sadly no escaping the fact that we have over fished our oceans and due to over population and constant demand there is really no fish left in the sea.

This was all that was fresh and available for the restaurant we were doing the course at

Nevertheless having been stunned into silence the group trudged back to the restaurant for our master class and learnt a few choice recipes.

Recipe No. 1: Prawn and papaya salad [Lawar Gedang]

The Balinese curry spice mix for seafood is another complex batch of ingredients that have to be roasted, crushed and cooked down for an hour. Once made it can be cooled and stored for ages and used generously with any kind of fish or seafood as a masala or marinade.

Spice mix: large red chillies [seeded and sliced], garlic [peeled and sliced], shallots [peeled and sliuced], fresh tumeric [peeled and sliced], tomatoes [seeded and sliced], candle nuts/raw skinless peanuts [crushed], corriander seeds [crushed], tamarind pulp [soaked and drained], dried shrimp paste [roasted - stinkiest stuff in the world], veg oil, water, salt and bruised lemongrass stalks.

This amazingly fragrant masala is sauteed in oil to release the flavours and to it you add minced prawns, chicken stock and coconut cream. This is then simmered until the prawns change colour and become firmer. Then you add salt, pepper, lime juice and zest before allowing it to cool.

In the meantime you grate a green papaya and mix it with grated coconut, deep fried shallots, deep fried garlic and fresh red chillies chopped up finely. Once the dressing is cooled it is combined with the papaya and served garnished with deep fried shallots. I have noticed that deep fried shallots and garlic can be bought ready made in jars in most asian grocers these days so you don't have to make your own batch every time.

Recipe No. 2 : Minced seafood sate [Sate Lilit Ikan]

This is a good way of using up fish trimmings when filleting fish. You can use half minced prawns to half fresh white boneless fish too. Basically you mince up the flesh [in a food processor] then mix in grated coconut, a good dollop of the seafood spice mix, salt, black pepper, palm sugar and finely chopped red birds' eye chillies. You can use lemongrass stalks as the skewers or just soaked wooden sticks. Best to use your hand to mould the mixture around the sticks and BBQ until golden and eat immediately!

Sate boys

Recipe No. 3:

Another method of cooking this seafood/fish paste and spice mix is to mould it into a sausage shape and steam in it banana leaves or I guess you could even use the husk of corn or just baking paper.

The Balinese tend to steam these parcels of minced seafood/fish or minced chicken in banana leaves secured with tooth picks. When they cook their steamed rice they pop in the parcels for about 15 minutes before the end of cooking time. Dead simple and a very healthy way of cooking!

I rarely ate any fish in Bali after my experience at the cooking course. I love fish and I don't want to give it up. But it made me think twice while I was there. In Australia there seems to be an abundance of huge great big fish. They do have a very small overall population here compared to the size of their land and their seas and they do have very strict and well regulated fishing policies which definitely helps. I think I can get away with eating fish in Melbourne without worrying. However, will we all eventually have to stop eating fish ? Now that would be a crying shame.

Balinese Banter

My birthday wish last year was to spend my next one, on a beach in Bali and by sheer hard work and bloody mindedness I made my wish come true! As a treat to myself, I booked in to do a Balinese cooking course - one of those days where they take you to the early morning markets and teach you real home cooking. It was a real eye opener to the Balinese way of eating and economising. I also learnt a lot of interesting cooking tips from the course which I will share with you and a few yummy recipes.

When I think of Indonesian foods the 1st things that come to mind are dishes like Nasi Goreng [translates as Fried Rice] or satays and rich curries. It seems that Bali has a lot of influences from other Indonesian Islands like Java and countries like Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and China. Nasi Goreng is essentially a chinese concept - left over bits all fried together with yesterdays rice. The satays with peanut sauce apparently is a Java-nese concept. It was really hard to find a true and pure Balinese restaurant on the Island or real Balinese food on the streets. The real Balinese cuisine is in their home cooking and the cooking school gave me an insight to what the people of Bali really eat.

Their main staple is rice and all the other bits are condiments to flavour the rice. So a small amount of curry or sauce of some description is presented to enable them to eat the rice. I was also told that they are one of the only nations that don't really sit down to eat together as a family but eat as and when they are hungry and it usually is a bit of cold rice with what ever is available! They have a real sweet tooth here as breakfast is usually rice and shredded coconut with palm sugar syrups or an array of sweet desserts made primarily with tapioca, coconut and palm sugar or sweet rice/mung bean puddings eaten with coconut cream.

They have a lot of weird and wonderful fruits too which they grow in their back yard and sell but don't really eat! Ever heard of snake fruit?

Apart from that I learnt that they have 2 basic spice mixes for curries, one for meat & one for fish/seafood. If you make it from scratch you may have to substitute some of the ingredients and the recipe, unfortunately, is as long as your arm. I think I will venture to make a large batch when I get home [if not exactly the same batch as the course!] and store it in ice cube trays in the freezer. Then I can just defrost a few cubes at a time when I get the urge to make an Indonesian curry! They use these spice mixes for every savoury dish so it is worth making. They also prefer to use coconut oil but veg oil is just as good. I personally will be sticking to using canola/rapeseed oil myself as it is the healthiest option! The addition of coconut cream and palm sugar to many dishes make their cuisine very rich indeed and far too sweet for me. So I will be adapting those elements too if I recreate these recipes!

Ingredients for Basic Spice Mix: To use with Chicken/Beef/Duck/Venison/Lamb...

Red chillies, garlic, ginger, shallots, galangal, kencur [lesser galangal = ??], fresh tumeric, dried shrimp paste, corriander seeds crushed, candlenuts [substitute : raw peanuts without the skin], black pepper corns, grated nutmeg, crushed cloves, bruised lemongrass, salam leaves [?? no idea??], veg oil, water and salt!

So all these ingredients get toasted, roasted, crushed and pummeled into a paste before cooking out slowly over an hour! It can then be cooled and stored. I reckon I can make a close imitation with whatever I can find and it will have to do! Lord help the neighbours as it really did stink when they were making up a batch!

Recipe No. 1: Whole chicken
A really great technique for a whole chicken is to mix a batch of the spice mix with chopped spinach that has been wilted then cooled.  This stuffing is then shoved under the skin on the breast side and inside the cavity. The chook is liberally massaged with more of the spice mix and then steamed in banana leaves [which I believe we can get at flower shops in Blighty or just use foil and a bamboo steamer!] for an hour and then roast it in the oven for an hour without the leaves/foil, to crisp up the skin.

Recipe No. 2: Cubed chicken
Mix a handful of the spice mix with cubes of chicken and grate a good bit of palm sugar all over the mix. Then throw in a generous pinch of chopped red chillies and salt and finally give the chicken a Balinese massage. Leave to marinade while the BBQ gets hot then skewer the cubes onto soaked wooden sticks and BBQ yourself some chicken satays. This can be done with cubes of beef/pork too!

Recipe No. 3 : Peanut Sauce
Ever wanted to make a great satay sauce? Well this is what you do... Take 500mg of roasted peanuts with their skins on and grind them finely in a food processor along with 5 cloves of garlic and about 5 red birds eye chillies [or less if you aren't brave enough] and a peeled knob of galangal. Then bring this paste to the boil in a litre of coconut milk and 20g of palm sugar and 4 tablespoons of sweet soy sauce. Simmer uncovered for 15 minutes and serve with lime juice on top [check for salt and season to your taste].

Sharing the Meat Love



Jing Do Zha Jiang Mian ie Chinese equivalent to Spag Bol!

I love any culture that encourages sharing food. Most Asian cultures involve sharing food in large groups with everything plonked on the middle of the table and everyone helping themselves to a little bit of everything. That's how I was brought up. That's how I like to share with my friends and family when I cook at home. The Italians do it well - gathering large groups of people of all ages to talk loudly over each other, eating a continuous flow of fabulous food, over many hours! That is how meals should be and it is so much fun.

The Chinese think it's rather strange that foreigners order individual dishes just for themselves for every course. They always make dishes to share, so everyone gets a little taste of everything. They also don't pile on every type of food that's on the table, onto one plate, mixing up all the flavours at the same time and eating that as a huge individual portion - I hate that too! On the otherhand, I'm also sure that no one likes to be forced to finish a large plate of food, especially if it is not tasty, just to be polite.

At home, I was brought up to always try some of the appetisers and the veg first. Only then was I allowed to help myself to a bit of any meat or fish dishes on offer and you were only expected to eat till you were full  [However this is in theory - I know I always managed to overeat! My mum's food was and still is - amazing!]. Eating together and helping yourself to many different dishes was the main idea and eating how ever much you wanted.

The ceremony of food and the order in which we eat varies from city to city and culture to culture. As an adult, I am used to having a starter, then a main and then maybe a pudding and then finally perhaps some cheese. In elaborate meals there may even be a fish course after the starter and before the meat main. Here in HK some meals end with a refreshing soup! The concept of 3 courses is lost in many places. Things can arrive one at a time when they are ready or as you finish each dish! Sometimes everything appears at the same time! Vegetables are also a bit of an after thought. They are for colour or texture in the presentation or a side order but never the main event. In a group situation, especially for a special occasion, Meat and Fish/Seafood are the stars of the show.

I love the 'special occasion' dishes in Chinese cuisine, not just for the care taken over appearance and presentation but I am very impressed with the amount of love they give their meat. They marinade with huge numbers of ingredients. They massage meat in such precise stages and for such a long time that it's no wonder that the taste and textures are so incredible.

Over the last few weeks I have been learning Regional Chinese Cuisine e.g Cantonese, Fugian, Sichuan etc. The dishes that I really want to adapt and create for my friends and family are the sharing dishes for special occasions found on the Banquet or Feasting Menus.

1. BEGGARS CHICKEN [also known as Fortune Chicken] - It's known as that because the beggars would steal chickens and have no means of cooking them other than wrapping the chicken in clay and putting them into a makeshift oven into the ground [much like a Tandoor]:

Joints released and bones cracked without breaking skin

Massaged with marinade inside out and cavity filled with 2 types of stuffing and skewered shut!

wrapped in lotus leaves

Covered in dough and baked for 3 hours!

Incredible flavours!

1 Chicken to share with the whole family

So this bad boy has been massaged, marinaded, wrapped in lotus leaves and then a layer of dough followed by a layer of foil and finally popped in the oven for 3 hours. So it cooks in all the marinade, stuffing and its own juices in an oven within an oven within an oven and so on! WoW! I thought I made a mean Sunday Roast. I have never given any chicken this much love and attention. Well. Things are about to change! There is also a real sense of ceremony involved in bringing such a dish to the table and cracking it open in front of your guests then unwrapping and serving it! Sunday lunch will never be the same again!

2. CANTONESE DUCK: This is different from Peking Duck which is served straight from the oven to keep the skin crispy. [nb - The Chinese i.e. according to my cooking instructor - find it hilarious that we have crispy duck in the UK which is essentially just deep fried - not baked/roasted in the oven - and not like anything found here!]





Duck marinaded and massaged inside and cavity stuffed with a filling and skewered shut

Hung in front of a fan and under the air con for 6 hours!

This duck was massaged with a marinade, then stuffed with a filling, then painted with a sugar syrup, dried for 6 hours before being roasted for 45min & finally rested for an hour! Can you imagine how flavoursome and tender the meat was? OMG !  By the way, to serve,  it gets carved up into small pieces so as to ensure that every one gets to have a little bite, as this duck would be made to serve and share with the whole extended family. I generally do not mind bone in meat and will sometimes chew through some, but I must admit that this way of serving means that you get bits of bone in every bite and it is quite fiddly to eat around the bone and sometimes too hard to chew through it. I think Dentists here would have lots of cases of cracked teeth/fillings and worn down surfaces, with all the bone chewing that goes on! 

The other thing I found tedious about these hundred year old recipes was that they expected you to follow them to the letter e.g the duck had to be washed with hot water exactly 3 times, the back had to be painted with a sugar syrup exactly 6 times and so on. Okay - so there maybe some method to the madness, to give that exact reddish brown effect on the skin but I must say I find all the rules at school stiffling! I cannot wait to get back to my kitchen in England, break all the rules and create healthier versions of all the dishes. I am taking on board all the meat love and all the new techniques and leaving behind tradition and the deep fat frying! Hands up! - Who wants to come round for dinner?







Pizza : Say "NO" to soggy bottoms

Capriciosa at Scopa , Wellington, NZ

I am a massive Pizza snob. I can't stand those thick bread based, processed meat feast horrors, with pineapple toppings and crusts injected with artery hardening processed cheese! No thank you! However, it is my guilty secret shame that given an Italian thin crusted number with just a few delicious toppings, I will fall head over heels and eat the whole thing before you have had a chance to order.. You know how Miss Piggy said 'never eat anything bigger than your head?" Well it does not apply to a proper wood fired thin base pizza!

It really is NOT diet food and I only allow myself to have one maybe once a month depending on whether I have somewhere good to try. I have eaten Pizza's around the world and I have my top 5 places:

1. La Marina, Trois Ilets, Martinique: I had the thinnest crispy based pizza with an unusual sprinkle of parsley, garlic and olive oil crushed together over my pizza and it was heavenly! This was during my honey moon and will be forever remembered as the best pizza I ever had... Sigh!

2. Scopa, Cuba St, Wellington, New Zealand: [Picture above and below] One of the best pizza joints I have been to, with a group of friends - thin crust, good quality Italian gourmet ingredients!

Salami and red peppers

3. Al Parco, Parliament Hill, Highgate: This tiny family run Italian place is always packed and has the best thin crust options. I used to frequent this place before I got married and it was my favourite hangover cure on a Sunday - ahhh memories...they used to have these pickled mushroom they used along side artichoke hearts - they were delicious!

4. The Duck, Battersea Rise, Clapham Junction: This pub has a wood fired oven and the chefs make individual pizza's to order about the size of your head - maybe a little bit bigger] for next to nothing - great deals are on offer [like Pizza and a glass of red/beer for under a tenner] especially when the Rugby is on the big screen. Needless to say thin crispy crusts prevail!

5. .. Well Number 5 spot on my top 5 is still open ..It was going to be D.O.C. in Melbourne but my last visit there was ruined by yet another soggy bottomed pizza.. Then I was advised that Franco Manco in Brixton, London was the best  [I have yet to make it down there on a Saturday before midday to queue up for the pleasure] and the other spot was Sting Rays in the East End of London ... but to be honest I am still looking...

In HK I was told 208 Deucento Otto was the best pizza in town - so I went to check it out:

We went in the evening when it was full of beautiful people and the bar was pumping. We were given seats outside which is okay as you get some air con blasting out and there are fans but it is not great being near the constant flow of traffic and fumes! The pizza menu is short and sweet and it boasts that all their pizzas come with buffalo mozarella. I must say the toppings were fantastic quality ingredients and divine BUT both pizzas we shared had SOGGY BOTTOMS! I hate that! It feels like eating wet paper with glue - what a disappointment! So my verdict for 208 is Pizza: 3/5 Service 4/5 Total: 7/10

Proscuitto e Funghi

Diavolo

left over soggy base - ate all the gorgeous toppings!

The next week I was walking down past 208 further down Hollywood road and I spied some impossibly thin women sharing [shock! horror!] an impossibly thin based pizza at Classifieds. This is a stylish ex-pat hang out well known for cheese, cheese and wine tasting classes and fabulous brunch/lunch. So I decide to give them a go and I was pleasantly surprised that they had the all important thin crispy base! No soggy bottoms here! However the toppings were not really Italian [leant more towards the French/English] and they used Mozarella made of Cow's milk not Buffalo - but maybe that's why their bases were still crunchy? Who knows! All I know is that Classified won hands down... Pizza 4/5 service 4/5 Total: 8/10

Spice Lover's Heaven

Classifieds is a great place to hang out for brekkie on the weekends and they bake really fresh yummy seeded breads on site that you can buy and take home.

Eggs Benedict

Poached egg on chorizo and beans

They have a extensive [expensive] wine list and an even longer cheese list!

NZ Pinot Noir and a Spanish Manchego - You can't beat that!

 If you know of somewhere I could go to have the best thin crust Italian pizza please let me know! I would very much like to have my top 5 list completed! It can only be somewhere I can give a 10/10!