The Malaysian Insider :: Food

Posted: 19 Aug 2011 05:23 PM PDT

Great appetiser... Foie Gras with Apricot Mushroom. — All pictures by Eu Hooi Khaw

KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 20 — Once in a while the Oriental Group of restaurants that includes Noble House, Oriental Pavilion, Oriental Banquet, Ming Room, Shark's Fin House and Han Room, lets diners have a gourmet experience courtesy of the best guest chefs, whether locally or from China.

A secret family recipe, the Steamed Freshwater Prawns were delicious.

"This is the fourth time we are doing this," said Datuk Phillip Siew, its chairman, "and this time we have a guest chef from Shunde, China." He and his group executive chef Justin Hor had visited and vetted the restaurants there, picking up the finest dishes suitable to our taste.

Both Phillip and Justin, together with Shunde master chef Jacky Lam, presided over a tasting of the dishes at Noble House recently.

Shunde is in Guangdong Province, located in the middle of the Pearl River in southern China. Shunde people are into home-style cooking, emphasising the freshness of seafood, and chicken which is slaughtered and immediately steamed.

To hear Shunde chef Jacky Lam tell it, you literally put your hand in the river, catch the fish and steam it at once. "If they have a fish that weighs 15kg, six people will eat it all at one go!" he said. "If they eat a chicken that's fresh, they will order 10 chickens to be cooked in different ways."

Shunde is also famous for its ginger milk pudding or "chong lai", made from fresh buffalo milk, tai tau choy or preserved salted radish, Tai Leong Yay Kei Kuen or slabs of pig fat wrapped round chicken and deepfried, among many others. Shunde cooking techniques are well-known, and the best Cantonese chefs come from the many cooking schools here.

We dined off an eight-course Shunde menu that was so fine, varied and unusual that it's worth the RM2,188 it costs for 10 people. You could also order these dishes off the a la carte menu till September 15.

Sesame Balls Stuffed with Seafood and Squid Ink -- a must-try.

First, the Magnificent Six Treasures: Foie Gras with Apricot Mushroom, Rainbow Chicken Roll, Crispy Shiitake Mushroom, Sesame Ball Stuffed with Seafood and Squid Ink and Shark's Fin with Cucumber and Fresh Lily Bulb.

Foie gras sits on a slice of mushroom that has been braised in a subtly spiced loh sooi. The creaminess of foie gras lands on the silky, flavourful mushroom at the bite.

The Rainbow Chicken Roll, wrapped up with cucumber, red and yellow peppers and drizzled with a hot, sour and sweet Sichuan sauce, needed more oomph, but the Crispy Shiitake Mushroom tasted like a scrumptious honey glazed eel finished with fried ginger shreds.

The Chilled Marinated Pork Jelly had a great mouthfeel, gelatinous with a little cartilage crunch from the pig's ear, and flavour from small chunks of pork. It was amazing eaten with the dip of vinegar, garlic, shallots and Thai chilli sauce poured over it.

All the flavours of Shunde are distilled in the Sesame Balls stuffed with seafood and squid ink. It's a black, bouncy fishball (from the Lang Yue Tow or fishhead), with fragrant hints of mandarin peel or chan pei, dried shrimps and spring onion. Sesame seeds cling to this deepfried fishball which is delicious eaten with a pungent dip of fermented mussel meat with shredded ginger.

Another appetiser I enjoyed was the Shark's Skin fried with cucumber and fresh lily bulbs. (In some countries, including the West, shark meat is regularly eaten). The almost gelatinous shark skin is so smooth and tastes wonderful against the cucumber slices, and sweet, crunchy lily bulbs, tossed in a light oyster sauce.

Tender, soft Panfried Australian Abalone.

Braised Superior Shark's Fin Soup with fresh crabmeat was flawlessly done, the stock had all the sweetness steeped from chicken, pork and dried scallops. Chef Lam taught us the proper way to eat this: first have the soup, then midway add in the bean sprouts (which act as a palate cleanser), and lastly vinegar. Only parsley is allowed from the start in a good shark's fin soup, as it gives it a fragrant lift.

Roast Suckling Pig in the finest Macau Style had a super crispy skin, and a pair of scissors was passed round to snip at the pig for good luck. You could hear the crackling sound as this was done. The pig has been marinated on the underside with fragrant fresh herbs like thyme and mint, among others, in a Portuguese style. (Chef Lam is based in Macau. His consultancy services are much in demand in Hong Kong, China and Macau.) The roast suckling pig was simply scrumptious, the thin crispy skin gives way to succulent juicy meat.

A glass of chilled lemon juice for digestion and we were off to the Steamed Freshwater Prawns, steamed with a 15-year Far Tiu wine and organic egg yolk. I keep bathing the prawn with this yummy sauce, slurping it up, and loving the taste of it with the prawn roe.

Shunde master chef Jacky Lam panfrying abalone.

The chef showed his mettle with the pan-frying of abalone that had been marinated with rice wine, oyster sauce, Sichuan hotbean sauce, then tossed in a combination of rice flour and sang fun. He added some chilli, spring onion and black pepper at the last, and served this tender, sweet and peppery abalone with a chilled glass of chardonnay. It was yummy.

The Shunde Fried Rice was delicious to the last grain. The chef had fish pieces rolled in salted egg yolk and deepfried added to the rice, together with pine nuts, celery and lettuce. All the textures of these rolled round the palate, and we delighted especially in the crunchy bits of fish in salted egg yolk.

The chef had promised that we would do the Fresh Milk or chong lai dessert ourselves. It was a marvellous experience. He poured one and a half spoons of sweetened Bentong ginger juice into a bowl, then we poured the fresh milk heated to 80 degrees C. The ginger juice sets the milk. A teaspoon put on top of my shiny smooth milk custard did not sink in! It was simply divine.

Crystal Dumplings and Shunde Chicken Biscuits, the last more delicate than ours, ended this sumptuous lunch.

Noble House is at 19 Jalan Delima, off Jalan Imbi, KL, Tel: 03-2145 8822. It's advisable to book if you want the RM2,188 menu.

Full Feed Generated by Get Full RSS, sponsored by Used Car Search.

Kredit: http://www.themalaysianinsider.com

Jumaat, 19 Ogos 2011

The Malaysian Insider :: Food

The Malaysian Insider :: Food

0 ulasan:

Catat Ulasan