Christmas dinner is always a bit of a challenge in our house. In the period before we moved to Hong Kong I would always cook a whole salmon. The first year we lived in Hong Kong, I ventured to the wet market to purchase a fish. Salmon are not widely available in Hong Kong, certainly not in the markets, so I got some other fish. I’ve still no idea what it was, but I do know we all got really ill. For the next two years I ordered the whole meal from a restaurant in Sai Kung, which arrived hot and tasted lovely, but was mostly turkey imported from the US. This year I am cooking venison purchased locally. What strikes me about this tale of food feasts is what we understand about what comprises fresh food and how that is so linked up with cultural differences.
Category Archives: Recipe
(Not) a middle class point of view: Bloke’s Pasta.
Tonight, for dinner, I made a family favorite: a modified version of “Proper blokes’ sausage fusilli”. My version is an adaptation of a recipe in Jamie Oliver’s “Cook with Jamie“, which he wrote to help people “learn to cook properly and enjoy it (back cover).” I originally purchased the book (cost $16.99–though I think I might have gotten it for less at Cosco) to give to my son so he could feel confident in a kitchen. This dish is the one thing he has ventured from the book, though I have made many other things from it with good results. The book was written about the time that Jamie Oliver was beginning to try to have a food revolution in the UK, certainly before he really started talking to people who might consider themselves “ordinary folk”. As a result, the food, despite the ordinary and everyday language of the book and the best intentions of the author, is really not sympathetic to the economic needs of those “ordinary folk”. Continue reading
Link
This is a link to: From Farm to Fork with recipes
The entry is brief and highlights a recent purchase of half a lamb that had been two days before walking in a field. Yesterday, it was butchered into food and today became a meal. It was yummy. Continue reading
Spicy Eggplant and some questions of lack.
Hong Kong claims a cosmopolitan food culture. Indeed, many Hong Konger‘s claim that not only can you try a new food culture in Hong Kong, but you can get a better version. It is a point of pride. What is surprising to me, then, is the fact that while you can easily access other cuisines and often in artfully decorated jars or in ready made portions in the refrigerated section of the upmarket stores, it is difficult to find Chinese food that is similarly packaged. This is not because food gifting is not a big deal here, giving food baskets is huge at certain times of the year. Maybe this lack has something to do with Continue reading
GeoFoodie 
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