Tung Po Kitchen Part 2

Always rowdy, always loud, always too much beer, always with amazing company, but above all always delicious. (and always a hangover the next day)

Lovely Corner

Yes, that is the name of a restaurant. A Nepalese one.

Long time before we moved to HK some friends back in Spain took us to taste momos, tonight we tasted the nepalese version…

Delicious and soft with vegetarian filling and some nice sauces. The best part is I got a tutorial of how to make momos by the owner, a nice short man who also paints romantic landscapes and realistic tiger mugshots; classy stuff. The rice and the samosas were also good, but beware of the pickled vegetables, they are extremely spicy.

We will come back to taste the pork momos but also try to make them at home with the technique I learned, more on that later….

And, also the view is interesting to say the least…

Lovely Corner

7/F, Cheung Hing Commercial Building,

37-43 Cochrane St.,

Central, Hong Kong

Phone: 2854-0916

Rice noodle soup

Pick your soup, pick your noodles, pick how spicy, pick how sour, pick your topping.
No fuss, just a heavenly 40HKD treat right in the middle of TST. Queues are long but service is swift.

23 Lock Road. TST. HK

Local Textures 8

(Wanchai wet market)
I look at you / you look at me.

Lasaña de Pollo

It is officially Lasagna week. So after trying Mrs.K’s family recipe (http://aratandamonkey.blogspot.com/2009/08/kitchen-confidential.html), my mother felt she also deserved hers to be tried out. So that is what I did for the past few hours and here are the photos to prove it.

I must warn you… preparing Lasagna is a lengthy affair, a worthwhile one but nevertheless tough work!. First I boiled the chicken (actually I. my cooking angel did), which was then shredded and mixed with a homemade tomato sauce. With some of the water where the chicken was cooked I made a bechamel and even pan fried some huge tasty portobello and Chinese mushrooms and then assembled the floors of the lasagna building. One layer of each of the above. And to the oven. Topping it all up with more cheese than I should have…

Note to self, no need to fill the thing all the way to the top, not only is it too heavy, but it bubbles out and stains the inside of the oven. Note to self, be careful taking hot bubbling things out of the oven. The first thing I would change about my matchbox kitchen is not having to stand on a stool to reach the oven, yes it is that small…but hey, I see this as a sort of military training. If I can cook lasagna in this kitchen I can do it anywhere!.

So here it is. There is plenty leftover that I will freeze for those of you close by….for the rest try making it on a rainy afternoon.

Tung Po Kitchen

The food was amazing and so was the company. I’m sorry there are no photos of the food itself but we tucked in pretty quick… we ate shrimp and alligator and vermicelli and veggies and durian dumplings and the famous Fung Sa Gaai (Wind and Sand Chicken)… the beer was plenty and someone even ordered champagne at the end. The chef came over to have shots with us and we got out of there walking in zig zag.

Go there for the amazing food and buzzing ambiance, that is the epitome of Hong Kong. Don’t wear high heels, the floor is slippery and BYO tissues. Sometimes there might be quite a line.

Tung Po Kitchen
2/F Java Rd Municipal Bldg,

99 Java Rd
North Point

pd: photos by Carlos Franklin (gracias carlitos)

Merendolas

As if I wasn’t bad enough at writing in one blog, from January on I might collaborate with one of the most fun blogs I have heard about lately:  merendolas. Merendola is a very fun Spanish word meaning snack; but they kind of snack you used to have at home with brothers and sisters when you got back from soccer practice/dance class/math review… so sort of a childhood complicity kinda thing. Anyway, my friend Sarah and her sister have started a yummy blog about the sheer pleasure of eating at odd hours and if time allows I will contribute with some of my grandma’s recipes, so be prepared to put on that apron.

The photo up there was taken at Ching Ching Desserts  (G/F, 77 Electric Road, Hong Kong) and are traditional Chinese desserts. Like most everything in Chinese cuisine there is soup involved; sweet one in this case…the upper one is mango+sago+starfruit; the one in the bottom is ginger syrup + rice balls filled with warm peanut butter; weird but absolutely delicious. There are a few dessert “restaurants” like Ching Ching (including one that specializes in mango desserts, my personal favorite) in Hong Kong and I promise to do a proper post about those and some of the other delicacies they serve, yes I promise.

For the moment head to www.merendolas.com and get those taste buds working.

Have a great time over christmas, whatever it means to you and get some good energy for next year, i’ll be a tough but exciting one!.

Dim sum

I can’t say anything about dim sum that hasn’t already been said in the Internet and that you couldn’t easily google-up, but I can make a very small contribution to the Cantonese-less out there. The girls in the office take me out for the Dim Sum from time to time and the other day they were very nice to make me a small pocket dictionary out of the very receipt.

Here I share it with you. Hope it helps you indulge in one of the best things in HK, so delicious-laaah.