Read full review
2015-09-06
7226 views
Speaking of Chinese cuisine, most of the time we have in HK would be Guangdong, Chiuchow, Shanghaiese, hakka and Peking style. When I was told we are gonna try out Zhanijian amd Yangiiang this time, I am like ? huh? It’s just a good opportunity to explore something new, and most importantly to do some proper catch up with my mates, so no doubt I am in. With a super long list on the menu, I can imagine its gonna be a super full meal, we have a few appetizer to start our meal. The first one was th
he first one was the steamed rice rolls with mince pork, flat noodles with bean sprouts. It looks like those steam rice rolls we had in yum char. Well, the texture is more crunchy in general, and to serve cold.
Braised beef brisket with radish sound very familiar to us, its relatively common in Hong Kong. Its good but the radish would taste nice if braised a little longer in the soup.
Out of the four appetizers I liked the pan fried mashed cuttlefish cake the most, the texture is firm but chewy and I can taste the little chewy bites, no additional sauce is needed as it is fully flavored.
The shredded jellyfish and okra was recommended by May, saying that I gotta try it and feel the difference. To be honest I wasn’t impressed by its appearance, I joked to Katrina, my frd saying that the jellyfish was like the skin of a froggie and I was kinda scared. The texture? I would regard it as a very rough piece in terms of its texture but is very crunchy, if I was scared by its appearance, I probably missed the chance to try out this unique texture.
People that knows me well probably know my mum doesn’t cook a lot. And even if she cooks, mum is not good at making soups, so speaking of soup, especially chinese soup, is something that I would really enjoy drinking. (I love seafood chowder but chinese soup is always my first choice). The team prepared the Double boiled pork backbone soup with aloe and yat-yuet fish. My first time ever trying out soup with aloe, and a lot of yat-yuet fish has been used for this soup. Comments? It’s super sweet and a pretty good pain relief for my sore throat. Double boiled soup need a lot of effort so I would say it is a nice and value for money dish.
Seafood dishes were served after the soup, pan fried abalones is a decent one, the chef made some ligh cuts on the abalone , soaked into egg mixed for a big, pan fried and to baked it. Still taste pretty fresh as an abalone, with a good presentation too.
Kat told me she liked the cold poached squid served with ginger or soy sauce. To make it clear, the squid itself is plain, no additional flavours, but the texture is good and goes well with the sauce, put it in this way, we do not add a lot of seasonings if the dish is fresh right?
Moving forward we still got more seafood for tonight, how to describe it? Using a seafood combo doesn’t sound too right to me, presentation I would regard it as a chinese style bouillabaisse, it isn’t a seafood soup though, but with a good selection of seafood, giant prawns, crabs, fish cooked with garlic, ginger and butter. Right, it’s called baked sea bream, crab, tiger prawns with salt in casserole. Not much seasoning was added. Not a huge fan of sea bream but it was pretty good , thanks someone for scooping those meat for me I was just too lazy, the tiger prawn was good too, and the crab, it was full of crab roe! We were joking about consuming the crab roe will probably lead to heart attack so we gotta do Angioplasty, it’s definitely attractive but will be good to share with your mates if it is good right?
Braised garoupa head with bean curd was on our menu tonight, it was huge! I was too lazy so I didn’t plan to eat any, but I was so spoiled by my frds so someone scoop those fish meat and tofu for me, so I had a few bite of it, fish meat was good with lots of collagen, bet it will be popular for ladies aye.
The steamed chicken served with scallion and soy sauce sound familiar to you?The special thing about this dish is the chicken is from Zhanijiang, although I didn’t visit mainland very often, but the chicken in mainland china is so different with those we had in Hong Kong, pretty big portion so would recommend it if you are coming in a group of 6 or plus.
Braised pork belly and dried cuttlefish in oyster sauce was a very interesting combination, fully flavored so should be a good meat dish to go with rice, the texture of the pork belly is not soft and smooth enough, I still liked it but there is room for improvements.
Guess we all need some veges and fibre as we had too much of meat and seafood today, the poached mustard green and bean curd sheet was nice, it isn’t anything complicated but vege dish suppose to be light in flavor and plain, they are using the mustard green from a particular place which I wasn’t able to tell the difference though.
Before we move on to the carbs , braised water chestnut and pumpkin in casserole was served. Those mini water chestnut was really good, the pumpkin was cooked til tender, it has a really creamy texture ,cooked with the water chestnut and pine nuts was a very wise idea as it created a very complex and unique texture for this dish.
We were too full for carbs, but there was a pot of fried rice with diced goose and peanuts before dessert. I only had 1 spoon full , heard that they used a special type of white rice so the texture is different from the ordinary rice, my comments, it was’t oily so I felt less guilty.
Time for the sweet treat!The walnut shape steamed walnut buns was so cute! The walnut filling reminded me of those sweet dumplings! Cute shape and walnut is good for our brain right? It’s definitely a cute dim sum dish.
Finally was the sweet water chestnut and dried lily bulb soup. I admit I am bias, as I always love my mum’s signature sweet water chestnut soup! The only difference in here was the dried lily bulb and the lotus seed, I didn’t want to comment, but I finished almost the whole thing.
Overall some of the dishes that they serve is very similar to some of our home cook dishes, by looking at the map, Zhanijian amd Yangiiang are very close to Hong Kong and are located along the coast, therefore we do have some similarities geographically.
Post
