Easter eggs … and a bit more besides
Sunday 20 April 2014, 12.08am HKT
10.07pm local time, 24°C (75°F), warmish
(Click image for full size)
(via Imgur)
Just for the Easter period, I’m using this image as the temporary background. No particular reason, I just like this picture. Makes a nice change for Easter Sunday.
Just a reminder to myself, I again bumped into Roger, the Spaniard I got chatting with in IKEA a few weeks back. This happened at my usual MX Café.
His wife, sister and a cousin was with him this time, all visiting Hong Kong but leaving tomorrow after their eight-day trip here. All very nice Spanish ladies.
(Sorry, I forgot to take pictures of them.)
Three of them had this, which is called char siu faan (叉燒飯), or barbecued pork rice. It’s Cantonese fare.
I think the four of them found the Chinese rice dishes they had a bit oily and heavy for their liking. Chinese rice ain’t paella, that’s for sure. Or Italian risotto.
(Click image for larger size)
One of them had the siu ngaap faan (燒鴨飯), or roast duck rice instead. Roast duck is different from roast goose (燒鵝, siu ngor).
(Click image for larger size)
The roast goose served up in Hong Kong is identical to goose served in Guangdong (Canton) province in southern China. Owing to the higher cost of goose, most Hong Kong restaurants serve duck instead. Duck is quicker to cook as well, an important factor for fast-food eateries.
Goose has a distinctive flavour. That makes it a favourite European dish traditionally eaten only on Christmas Day and appointed feast days such as Saint Martin’s Day.
Goose’s distinctive flavour, however, is considered ‘a bit rich’ (to the British) or ‘pungent’ (to Americans) — which is neither, of course — so goose (and sometimes duck also) is generally replaced by that cardboard-tasting turkey in the UK and the USA.
I had a chicken wing and a soup instead — Western fare. The whisky up there could almost be my regular fare too, considering the hormonally imbalanced Wall Street types I work with.
The Spanish girls were surprised that I hadn’t eaten rice in … oh … nearly 20 years. Rice is mainly a southern Chinese thing, and I’m a northerner by blood. Chinese northies are more into flour food (like bread, pasta, dumplings, pies), steaks, soups (similar to the European kind, not the watery Cantonese types) — generally more substantial fare.
So, half the Chinese are not rice eaters. The more you know…
A tapas bar in San Sebastián (or Donostia) in the Basque region of north of Spain
Personally, I’m missing the tapas anywhere in Spain that serve Fino (the driest and palest of Spanish sherries) and jamón.
(Images of char siu faan, siu ngaap faan and tapas bar via Wikipedia)
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DocID: B14117 (474 words)
Updated 20 APR 2014 to make some images clickable
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Turkey is dry and tasteless, so to get any flavor we smoke or maybe drop the whole bird into a deep fat fryer made just for that. It requires lots of seasoning and lots of added fat to be any good. But it’s a lot of meat for relatively low price.
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That is true. Back in England, I used to buy a whole turkey whenever I’m around Norfolk (northeast of London) and then chop it up to share with friends because there’s so much meat for one to finish.
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