My granola

For as long as I have lived,  I have never been a morning person (maybe I'm not alone here?). It is only natural  that I have never been fond of breakfast either. We all carry the memories of the food we ate in childhood throughout our lives, and one of the most dreadful food memories that will continue to haunt me till my very last day is being forced to eat oatmeal for breakfast at 6am when I was in primary school. It was cooked in water rather than milk and with an egg mixed in. Maybe it doesn't sound that bad to you, but to me it was horror. I was constantly told that one needs to eat a full breakfast because you need energy, and that it's the most important meal of the day and so on. But the thing is, it's just so difficult to have an appetite when your body hasn't truly woken up yet! Why force-feed yourself like a goose destined for foie gras when you are still half asleep?

Another breakfast item that I absolutely hated was congee. Ugh! Who wants to eat a boiling soup of plain rice first thing in the morning to burn your tongue? What I do like, though, is soya milk with fried doughnut (油炸鬼) - kind of like churros. That aside, one of my first love affairs with food was going to a tofu shop in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong before my piano lesson on Sunday mornings when I was in primary school. I would go there on my own and order pan-fried stuffed tofu (煎釀豆腐), tofu pudding (豆腐花) and fresh soya milk. I must have been ecstatic when I was eating since the staff offered to show me their kitchen and the soya milk-making process! As a Chinese, I liked dim sum too, but it's more brunch than breakfast I suppose. In any case it's not something you can eat on a daily basis...

Red bean soup, Cantonese style 起沙紅豆沙

Among the the many sweet soups in Cantonese repertoire, red bean soup (紅豆沙) and mung bean soup (綠豆沙) are undoubtedly the most popular. They always show up among the complimentary sweet soups served at Chinese restaurants in Hong Kong. When I was a kid, my parents would take me out for dinner at weekends. It was a family event that I always looked forward to, and I always awaited these sweet soups with great anticipation since mum didn't cook sweet soups at home. It's the kind of simple, wholesome food that are always intertwined with childhood memories.

Interestingly, according to traditional Chinese medicine, red beans are considered 'warming' and mung beans 'cooling'. The weather turned really cold in the last few days so I made some red bean soup for some extra warmth. Red beans are also known as azuki beans in Japan and they're as common in Asian desserts as chocolate in western baking. They are rich in iron and Chinese medicine claims that they are good for replenishing the blood and getting rid of excess liquid in the body (利水消腫).

Red bean soups can be found all over China, but the Cantonese call their version 'red bean sand' (紅豆沙) rather than 'red bean soup' (紅豆湯). With normal red bean soup you simply boil the red beans with water until it becomes a a watery mixture, with the Cantonese version it is imperative that the starch inside the beans be released into the soup so that the soup is not watery, but has a hint of sandiness - 起沙. Cantonese people also like to add aged tangerine peel (陳皮), an obligatory addition to a genuine red bean soup for any 老廣東.

Biscuits VS Cookies (and two shortbreads)

Having lived in both the UK and the US, I'm constantly bewildered by the enormous differences between British and American English terminology. In my own field of music, I'm yet to come to terms with the American way of denoting note values - quarter notes, sixteenths, etc. In daily life, I still say dustbin rather than trash can, trolley rather than cart, socket rather than outlet. It goes without saying that I still ask my American friends occasionally for a rubber which always makes them burst out laughing. George Bernard Shaw's famous statement that 'England and America are two countries separated by a common language' really hits the nail on its head.

Since food is such an integral part of any culture, it is expected that British and American English would have very different vocabulary for food. The following are some of the new terminologies that I had to 'relearn' when I first came here three years ago:

 UK / US

rocket / arugula

swede / rutabaga

spring onions / scallions

crisps / chips

chips / French fries

treacle / molasses

icing sugar / confectioner's sugar
digestives / graham crackers

sultanas / raisins

muesli / granola

skimmed milk / non-fat milk

cling film / plastic wrap

cornflour / cornstarch

 etc...

Classic crème brûlée

A week after getting the lovely local cream, I still had a jar (almost a pound) of the stuff sitting in my fridge. I had already made panna cotta with it, and wanted to encapsulate the remaining cream in a form that would do it justice. I thought about making a whipped cream cake that uses all cream rather than butter, but it came to me that it's the perfect occasion for making crème brûlée.

Despite its French name, legend has it that crème brûlée is in fact of English origin. According to James Beard, before the Gallicization of its name, it was known as burnt cream for a long time in England. One of the earliest recipes of 'burnt cream' was from a 17th-century cookbook from Dorsetshire. It was a mixture of sugar, egg yolks and cream cooked over heat - just like how creme anglaise is prepared - then poured into a dish and cooled (a few chefs like Simon Hopkinson still prepare the dish this way). The top was then sprinkled with sugar and the sugar caramelised to a brown glaze with a red-hot salamander, and old type of heavy metal tool which was lowered to the surface of the sugar and moved over it until the intense heat melted and browned the sugar, hence the name burnt cream. It subsequently became a standard dessert at Cambridge University, especially Christ College. ("Creme Brulee: Dessert One of the Greatest," James A. Beard, Los Angeles Times, November 5, 1970.)

Like so many other great dishes, the allure of crème brûlée consists in its textural combination of crispiness and creaminess. This combination can be found across the board: roast suckling pig, with its crackled skin and the melting fat lying underneath; ice cream served with a dainty tuile or with a chocolate sauce that hardens to a crisp layer; tarts and quiches, cream puffs, etc. It is possibly the most endearing textural combination known to humankind, and I feel that western plated desserts are largely created with this principle in mind.

Melon tapioca soup 蜜瓜西米露

While most western desserts are solid (even ice cream is semi-solid, no?), I think it is true to say that most Asian desserts are in some form of liquid. The southern Chinese province Canton boasts an impressive array of 'sweet soups' - a strange concept to westerners I'm sure. They are actually eaten in a bowl with a spoon rather than consumed as a drink. Thus in Cantonese we wouldn't say we're 'drinking sweet soup', but rather 'eating sweet soup' 食糖水.

One of the most popular sweets soups in Hong Kong is tapioca soup 西米露. Thanks to the restaurant chain 許留山, mango tapioca soup has become one of the household desserts in Hong Kong. Tapioca soup is actually extremely easy to make at home, and at a fraction of the price you pay at a sweet soup vendor. Since it's a soupy mixture, the proportions of the ingredients are kind of ad lib. - there's no need for finicky precision like baking a cake.

Since good mangoes are impossible to come by in the States, I decided to make melon tapioca soup instead. I like to mix different kinds of melons for a more interesting flavour, but you can stick to only one kind if you wish. The same method of preparation goes for other fruits like mangoes and watermelon (very popular in Hong Kong), although I'm yet to encounter strawberry or banana tapioca soup... Anyone?