A Matter of Taste

As a child I was quite a fussy eater, I think we all go through that stage. I remember being young and Mum making the best meals ever. Whenever I went to have a meal at a friend’s house there was always that dread of what was going to be served up and would they be offended if I didn’t eat that huge pile of steamed pumpkin or rehydrated peas. Mum had millions of ways to make mince, chops and sausages taste like gourmet meals. Chicken cost too much and anything Asian, Indian, Italian wasn’t even on the radar.

Going to boarding school encouraged me to be a bit more adventurous. Only because we had to. Every meal we had to line up, say grace, get served something (usually dreadful), sit down at our allotted seat and eat. We were not allowed to talk until the duty master rang a little bell and then we could talk. Like Pavlov’s dog I still eat my meal and then talk—none of this European taking a bite, chewing, swallowing and then speaking. If you are Italian you cannot hold on to your fork and speak because you might stab someone in the eye when you gesticulate. I also think that eating in silence has made me a fast eater as there is nothing else you can do. However, we still had to eat everything on the plate, and I mean everything and we weren’t allowed to leave the table until we did. Masters watched us for any sign of trying to drop our food on the floor or putting it into our pockets. On one occasion prefects were assigned to feed the reluctant ones, those with food phobias—one boy could not eat anything pink, otherwise he would be sick. Another it was cabbage. Anyway, I remember the prefects feeding these guys like babies and one was sick back into his bowl, whereby the prefect just stirred back into the food and fed it back to him. Barbaric times. Particular horrors from those days for me were boiled leeks in a thin insipid white sauce and prunes in an equally distasteful ‘custard’ sauce. Funnily enough, I did develop a taste for lambs fry and bacon during my time there.

At a different boarding school in secondary school I remember them serving ‘sweetbreads’, which is either the throat or pancreas. This was served in a white sauce as I remember too. Luckily we didn’t have to eat everything at this particular institution.

A major influence on me was my step-father Sham, a Malaysian, who introduced me to The Curry and many other Asian delights. Although still traumatised by institutional food it encouraged me to be adventurous. So today, I like spicy (but not too hot as to kill the flavour) foods with interesting textures and colours. My wife’s family also introduced me to authentic Chinese cooking and its many varieties, especially the more northern cuisine.

Coming to Hong Kong has meant the real deal. This is the place where the Western concept of Chinese food has come from. Most Chinese who left and started Chinese restaurants are from this area. The old fashioned term is Cantonese cooking. The Cantonese or Guangdong people introduced the world to the word dim sum. They almost solely use rice and noodles (often rice based) as their staples and love their seafood, pork and chicken. BBQ meat is a speciality and you will see pork flaps, ducks with their heads attached and the humble chook displayed prominently in restaurant windows, shining with their glossy red glaze. Chickens are often poached in a broth and are much lighter in colour. There are always plenty of vegetables, steamed or flash-fried in all sorts of delicious sauces. The range of mushrooms is staggering too.

They are obsessed with food here, it tends to dominate everything. A common greeting is ‘have you eaten (rice)?’. This is a question just like our ‘how are you?’ is not replied with the detail of our lives. It’s just being polite. At my work they were all very concerned about me and what I ate. They told me which restaurants to steer clear of and questioned whether the bread bun I had bought at the 7/11 was going to be sufficient. One of my colleagues went to a local that regularly delivered food (everyone delivers here—even McDonalds) to the staffroom and photocopied an English version of their menu for me. A popular choice is ‘the lunchbox’ which is any container full to the brim with a rice or noodle based dish. This can cost about 20 HK dollars (about 4 NZ) and it will fill you up. Trust me.

My colleagues in the English Department were very relieved to hear that I was not a vegetarian—there was a collective sigh of relief from them as the last 2 NETs were vegetarians. It makes it quite difficult to fit in because food is such an integral part of social discourse. They are absolutely fascinated about what I bring to work and it will become a point of conversation. If I haven’t eaten anything during the lunch break they will all fuss over me.

On my second week I was invited to the regular yum cha group. Yum cha literally means to take tea but it also means to eat as well, usually dim sum---small bites of food. Steamed in bamboo trays or deep-fried. It’s best to have an ‘eat first, as questions later’ attitude as some things just look—to Western eyes—a little odd. Take chicken feet for example. We usually cut that bit off or we don’t even see it. Here it’s cooked with the bird, as well as its head. In dim sum it’s marinated in a sauce, fried and then steamed. Back home I steered clear of these but here I thought that I should be like the locals and eat them. They actually taste quite nice. There’s no actual meet, just skin and bones. Most people like the feel of rolling the bones around in their mouth. I have also tried deep fried chicken cartilage (nice—like KFC) and fish buoyancy bladder (spongy and a slightly fishy flavour). I’m still working myself up for the tripe. The memory of sweetbreads is indelibly printed on my mind.

One day at the markets we went to a noodle place. Many places that have the ducks in the window also have pig’s intestines there—looking like a length of untwisted sausage, I’ve even seen them on sticks like kebabs. This particular place had a pot of them boiling on the stove near the entrance. We asked for an English version of the menu and ordered deep fried pork chop on noodles and dry fried noodles. Yes, we got the pork chop but it was in a noodle soup and the dry fried noodle was a noodle soup which had something that looked like onion rings in it. We ate them, pronounced them OK and then soon realised it was pig’s intestines—deep fried and then put into a noodle soup. I’m not sure if this is what we actually ordered or they just wanted to see what the gweilos would eat. Probably not the latter because all this is ordinary here. They also think that westerners only like western food, especially McDonalds. We just feed to Poppy, thought it would make a good 21st story.

Another great thing about here is that food costs very little. Most people will eat out 3 to 4 times a week because their living space is so small. Instead of inviting people to their flat for dinner, they go out. I asked one of my lunch partners if the yum cha we were having was considered good and he said it was fair considering the price. I then asked where I could go to get the best, and I was told any one of the 5 star hotels but, ‘very expensive, one time they brought out hot steaming crap, one hundred dollars for one crap!’ I nodded and agreed that one hundred dollars was a lot for a crap. Food is always very fresh and lots of flavour is to be appreciated, especially with the vegetables. I think my most favourite aspect is that you can be a pig at the table. You can slurp, bring your bowl to your mouth and chew noisily. And it’s perfectly acceptable to leave the bones and scraps on the table. My kind of town.