Eating Local

In Singapore, I equate an order of 'wonton noodles' as a dry plate with char siew (叉燒) and some miserable meat dumplings in a bowl of soup. I never knew that the authentic stuff isn't exactly like that. I've been taught that in Hong Kong, these sort of things are separate. Wonton (雲吞麵) noodles are served in soup and char siew is separately chopped up and placed over rice. No wonder the girlfriend was bemused when I asked her about dry wonton noodles. My idea of the dishes isn't even reflected in the words!

I asked to go to a char siew place for dinner. These shops would also serve siew yok (烧肉) and roast goose (燒鵝). Roast (燒臘), I'm told. I'm not a fan of these meats and I don't know how to appreciate it. The girls can't be arsed about going to the famous shops in Hong Kong, like Yung Kee (鏞記) or travel all the way to Sham Tseng ( 深井) to one of the popular shops or even to Mongkok for a branch of Chan Kee (陳記燒鵝茶餐廳), we very much prefer to head to somewhere local. So we circled the neighborhood and randomly plonked ourselves into one that wasn't exactly crowded because everyone else was holed up at the pubs or at home to watch one of those World Cup matches. The shops that did only take-out boxes of food looked like they were doing a roaring trade.

The meal came with a bowl of soup! It tasted rather homecooked. So I was sure that the soup was simmered with pork, but I didn't know what were the root vegetables in there. Kikare didn't know either. We simply stared at each other. Jomel declared that those were slices of burdock root. Okay. She would know! She's excellent in the area of cooking!

I couldn't resist a bite of the char siew. It was tender and tasty. Now, repeat after me, char siew is not pork, char siew is not pork, char siew is not pork. Though honestly, I preferred just to have the gravy over the rice. It made for tasty rice. The 2 small pieces of char siew already made the tummy churn ever so slightly. So I buried the rest under the rice that wasn't finished.