Cantonese recipes lost in time: book revives lavish dishes that disappeared from Hong Kong restauran

When Chee began interviewing chef Chui, she was overwhelmed by his knowledge of these forgotten dishes she had never heard of before.

“Afterwards I tried to look them up online and either there was no information, or a famous writer like Chua Lam had mentioned them in passing but said nothing about how these dishes were made or their ingredients. That’s when I realised there was no written record of these dishes,” she says.

Decades ago in Hong Kong, wealthy customers visiting high-end restaurants, such as Fook Lam Moon, would order dishes like double-boiled pig’s stomach stuffed with chicken and bird’s nest; wok-seared crab cake with bird’s nest and egg white; and wok-fried, thinly sliced giant sea conch “snow flakes” with chicken fillet and crispy Jinhua ham medallions.

They were later dropped off menus because they were very laborious to prepare, the menu price didn’t make them worth the effort involved, or they required such expertise that the chances of executing them perfectly was very low, Chee says.

For example, lamb cheek and knuckle soup is considered a cheaper version of snake soup and, like the latter, is eaten in winter. The lamb cheeks are braised, then hand shredded. The meat is delicious and has a very smooth texture, Chee says.

The leg bones are used to make a soup, with the cartilage thickening it. The rest of the recipe is very similar to snake soup, featuring ingredients such as sliced mushrooms, shredded chicken, wood ear fungus, and Chinese ham. It is eaten with chrysanthemum petals, kaffir lime leaves and fried crackers.

The two soups are equally laborious to make, but when a restaurant can only charge HK$1,200 (US$150) for a tureen of lamb soup that feeds six, compared to HK$3,000 for a similar-sized amount of snake soup, it is obvious which one is worth cooking.

Another dish that requires top culinary skills is wok-fried, thinly sliced giant sea conch “snow flakes” with chicken fillet and crispy Jinhua ham medallions.

“It sounds like an ordinary dish, but it was lost for a long time. When I was researching this dish online, I could only find it mentioned once, in passing, by food critic Chua Lam, who said you can’t find the dish any more in Hong Kong. There was nothing about how it was prepared,” Chee says.

It costs HK$7,000 to make the dish. Sourcing a large, fresh sea conch of good quality from Chaozhou, in Guangdong province, southern China, can cost HK$2,000 alone. Then the chef must extract the meat of the conch carefully, without wastage, and slice it evenly, ensuring the slices are just the right thickness.

Another element of the dish is Chinese ham, marinated in a honey glaze and sliced thinly so that it, the chicken and the conch slices are eaten stacked together like a mini-sandwich.

People who have read Chui’s column have requested the dish at his restaurant. “I’ve eaten this dish five or six times, and each time Chui’s chefs improve. The sea conch is cooked a fraction of a second less [each time], so the taste gets better and better,” Chee says.

She describes another dish, called wok-seared crab cake with bird’s nest and egg white, which she nicknames “Chinese bird’s nest eggs Benedict”, though there is no English muffin or Hollandaise sauce involved.

Bird’s nest is first cooked in chicken stock to give it flavour, then combined with egg whites and fresh crabmeat before being steamed into the shape of a pipa, a pear-shaped Chinese plucked musical instrument. Afterwards it is pan-fried and served on a bed of vegetables.

“It’s so good, very fragrant and has such an elegant taste, with lots of umami from the crabmeat,” Chee says. “It’s very light and refreshing, but very flavourful.” This dish costs HK$320 and is available at Seventh Son. It was added to the menu because many readers wanted to try the dish.

“Chef Leung was very happy to make dishes he hadn’t made for many years,” Chee says. “He recreated dishes that he learned when he was 17 years old and hadn’t made since.”

She says Chinese food is still underrated, with many believing dishes are quick and inexpensive to make and ignorant of the fact they can include expensive ingredients and require skilled, knowledgeable chefs to cook them.

“Many Chinese chefs can’t speak English so their cooking techniques aren’t easily shared with non-Chinese-speaking chefs, Chee says. There are plans to translate her Chinese-language book into English next year.

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