Lemon chicken 西檸煎軟雞

We are all (or at least myself...) slaves of our habits, and I've been finding it extremely difficult to drag myself to go back to writing blog posts after a three-month absence! But here I am - the semester is drawing to a close and I'll try my best to dig up all the saved photos and recipes that I meant to post up ages ago. Thank you for checking for updates!

A few days ago the great British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher passed away. It was a news that I had anticipated for a long time since her health had been on the decline for more than a decade, and yet when the news struck I was still shocked and saddened. Growing up in Hong Kong, many of us had a special fascination for all things British, and I remember that I went through a phase of Anglophilia in my teenage years. I held Margaret Thatcher in very high esteem and even read his memoir The Downing Street Years as a thirteen-year-old even though I hadn't the slightest clue about British politics!

 Even today, many Hong Kong people are still nostalgic about our colonial past. I dare say many of us wish the clock could tick back in time! It's common in human history to look at the past with somewhat misplaced nostalgia and think of the past as a bygone golden age. Such a tendency is even more pronounced when the current state of affairs is a cause for discontentment - which is the case with Hong Kong at the moment.

While the Brits aren't known for for their gastronomy, they had left an unmistakable stamp on the food culture of Hong Kong. Think of milk tea, custard tarts, and the fusion dishes that were created as a result of British influence on Cantonese cuisine. The dish that I'm preparing today, lemon chicken, is undoubtedly a product of Hong Kong's colonial melange of East meets West. Its name in Chinese, 西檸煎軟雞 'pan-fried succulent chicken with western lemon', clearly shows that it's a fusion dish. The Chinese didn't use fresh fruits in their savoury cooking traditionally, and the sauce for this dish usually contains Bird's custard powder, an unmistakably British product that lends a fluorescent yellow colour and a custardy flavour and consistency. It is the sort of sweet-and-sour flavour that Westerners love, and it's no surprise that it's a popular item in Chinese takeaways overseas - although I heard that orange (rather than lemon) chicken is the default version in the USA?

Not-so-tangy lemon tart

'Lemon lovers are a special breed. They are shamelessly devoted to their favourite flavour, and they like it to be assertive and bold.' So wrote Tish Boyle, author of the Cake Book and one of my favourite American recipe writers. Since childhood, I've always been aversive to anything sour. Sure, I find vinegar and lemon juice essential in highlighting the flavours in a dish, but among the 'five flavours' sourness is the one that I've always been apprehensive about. I'm defensively sceptical whenever people tell me that an orange is sweet because I would always find it incredibly sour when I taste it myself - it's a topic which I've decided that I can trust no-one about. For the same reason I try to avoid tomatoes, and all kinds of berries. So I'm sorry, I don't belong to the breed.

That said, I do love the bright, zingy flavour of lemon. Thankfully, you can get plenty of citrus flavour from the skin and be light-handed with how much lemon juice you use. Now a true lemon-lover would argue that sourness is as essential a part of lemony-ness as the zesty fragrance, but I just can't. I shiver when I eat anything moderately tangy - I blame it on my genetics. Perhaps I should be equally magnanimous when I hear people complain that something is 'too chocolatey'.

Homemade lemon tea 自製凍檸茶

I always feel a sense of unease and embarrassment when I go over to friends' for dinner or party, and they ask me what I'd like to drink. In 9 out of 10 cases, I would say 'Oh, water would do.' They would either think I'm a health freak (which I clearly am not) or a weirdo (can't judge on that...). The truth is, in all humility, I just can't stand artificial flavours... Soft drinks are basically chemicals of course, and even 'healthy' commerical drinks like juice or pre-packaged tea still taste of those un-nameable ingredients that my tongue would instantly identify as chemicals, not food. Obviously I can't really tell people this when they offer me a drink - unless I want them to think that I'm an obnoxious snob!

At home, I like to make my own drinks with the exception of milk since I can't make it myself for obvious reasons. My beverage repertoire is still rather limited, but iced lemon tea is one that I often make. It's extremely easy to put together, and I don't know anyone who doesn't like iced lemon tea! When I was growing up, I loved the iced lemon tea we had in Hong Kong. There's the kind served in fast food restaurants which is basically strong black tea sweetened with syrup, filled with ice cubes and a few slices of lemon. I loved poking through the lemon flesh with the stirring stick and as a child, the amalgamation of tangy lemon juice, slightly bitter tea and sweet syrup felt like alchemy.

And then there were the two major commercial brands for lemon tea:  維他 and 陽光 - I'm sure you would know these two brands if you are from Hong Kong. I don't know about you, but I've always preferred 維他. It has a much stronger taste of tea which I consider essential in a decent lemon tea. 陽光 just tasted like sweetened lemon water to me... In fact, for many years, I thought that Vita lemon tea (維他檸檬茶) with Calbee's Hot and Spicy crisps (熱浪薯片) were the best things one could possibly eat on earth. They accompanied me in countless hours of watching anime and later, Japanese drama.