Sunday Brunch at The Pawn - A Little Slice of Britain!

I do feel extremely lucky - everything I end up writing here seems to revolve around me doing something very indulgent usually involving food, friends and chatting! BUT, in my slight defence, I don't write about the boring stuff because, quite frankly, its boring. But do forgive me, if it ends up being a bit repetitive!

On Sunday, the day after the Junk Boat, I went for Sunday brunch at a really nice restaurant called the Pawn in Wan Chai. Now, for those who know me, I have a love of beautiful architecture and buildings and I have been ever so lucky to grow up and live in places with a lot of history and culture and pretty buildings to admire! In the south of France this summer (I miss you ALL SO much!) there were some of the most beautiful villages I have ever seen. I could not think of a better way to spend my graduating summer than in such beautiful surroundings with some of my bestest friends.

Hong Kong itself is sadly lacking in the sort of architecture that you would wander round and admire. The architecture in Hong Kong is incredible for the sheer scale and size of the cityscape, surely some of the best in the world. The harbour in between Kowloon and Hong Kong Island consists of a narrow strip of water that can be crossed by the star ferry in 5 - 10 mins and offers some of the most spectacular views of both sides of the harbour skyline. There are just so many buildings in one space that is really is strangely magnificent, although I never thought I would say that, and in a totally different way to other types of architecture. Indeed, on Friday, as I was headed home from work (on my ritual of taking the Star Ferry across the harbour!), I saw a couple posing for wedding photos with the Hong Kong Island skyline as their backdrop. There was something so incongrous about it, and not something you would traditionally hope to have as your wedding photo background, or maybe it is. Apparantly, if you get married here, it is extremely popular to have such a setting for your wedding. It certainly is amazing to see, and unique! and they both looked incredibly happy so thats all that matters!

Oh wow, what a tangent I have gone off on. How am I to bring this back to Sunday brunch I hear you wonder as you drop off reading this exceedingly dull post! Well, the vague point was The Pawn itself is housed in one of the remaining 'old' buildings in Hong Kong from pre 1900! It is a three story newly restored heritage building in a colonial style with a roof garden right in the centre of Wan Chai, which was a real treat in itself! Inside, it was like stepping back home, it reminded me of a British gastropub with wooden floorboards and tables and a bar and to top it off the waiters were in tartan trousers! It was a lovely setting to treat ourselves to an all day brunch menu! It is not cheap of course, and full of expat types but so lovely and relaxing. They have treats like Heinz baked beans which comes in its own serving jug!, fish and chips and poached eggs on english muffins.

Bit of a luxury, but once in a while, when you need a bit of escapism to remind you of home, it does the job!

Chatteris LOVE - Read and Write with Auntie Grace and Cantonese Cooking!

Chatteris LOVE 16/09

I love Wednesdays...for so many reasons. Lucy and Amy introduced me to humpday wednesdays - I think I am quite late to this concept but in a nutshell, you make it to Wednesdays and you are over the hump of the week and its all downhill until to the weekend I think that its ingenious and quite fitting for how my week seems to go! Another special thing about Wednesdays are that, the evenings are spent at Chatteris for workshops and Chatteris LOVE events. It's a great opportunity to see and catch up with all the other CNETS and to share experiences of the week whilst also trying out and experiencing something of the Hong Kong culture (and also eat copious amounts of biscuits and Chinese tea!). It's kind of our home away from home and a great atmosphere to relax in. This week Chatteris hosted its first Read and Write Chinese with Auntie Grace (the project manager of the charity) and also a Cantonese cooking lesson! Grace, with the invaluable help of a few girls from the Fresh Fish school, where the Chatteris office is and also where we did our first week orientation wnet through some of the Cantonese strokes for learning to write Cantonese (there are 8 if I remember rightly) and then introduced us to a kinergarten sets of picture flash cards for us to learn how to read Cantonese. Our group were given colours and we were subjected to Suki (one of the lovely primary girls) sitting near us and making us repeat and repeat and repeat each sound after her to the familiar refrain of 'no, not zee but ze ee' - what i was saying and what she was saying sounded rather similar to me however rather different to her! Hopefully by the end of the 9 months, I will have mastered the basics in kindergarten reading and writing! we alo have our own notebooks complete with boxes for the chinese characters. Since Chinese is a graphic language as opposed to a phonic langauge like ours. The entire process involves a much different approach to most other subjects and indeed languages and sometimes it is not what you feel like doing after a long day at school but it is an extremely worthwhile thing to aim at. I am making the basic reading and writing my challenge this year as I have no excuses since there are many willing and kind helping hands on offer to help me so expect some interesting and illegible Christmas cards from me..haha!

After an intense Chinese language training session, (!) we moved in to the more relaxed cooking lesson, where Margaret and Irene were teaching us the delights of how to make Chinese wontons and dumplings which you see everywhere around Hong Kong. Chinese dumplings are made by wrapping meat or vegetable fillings in a flat dough (which looks like very thin pastry, almost like rice paper) which is then crimped around the edges (rather fiddly!) Similarly, wontons are made from Chinese wrappers of wheat flour, water and egg, which vary in thickness depending on what they will be used for. You can stuff them with ground meats or tofu and beans -indeed it seems any kind of variation is okay! These can then be boiled or steamed in the wonton soup or fried until crisp The dumplings can then be pan fried, boiled or steamed. In our case, we had a soup going for this purpose which, in true Chinese style, seemed to have all manner of things floating in it, to give it flavour. In Hong Kong, many of the dishes are based around this idea of a soup into which go pretty much everything, noodles, meat, dumplings, egg, vegetables etc. I think it is some kind of wonton soup which again dates back to the 7th century. Apparantly, the long finger like, almost crescent shape for the dumplings symbolise wealth and so are traditionally served and eaten around Chinese New Year for good luck.
However fiddly it proved to be, (Margaret saved most of mine which I think is why they worked so well!) it was also really fun forming them and then plopping them in to the big communal bowl of ever steaming soup and then attempting to work out which shape was yours to eat, when we wanted it again later! We were given a sheet with some other recipes on it so if I am feeling adventurous anytime soon, I may give it a try!

It was such a nice evening and I feel as if the charity continues to provide such a wealth of support and help even when though we have started our schools etc and it feels like we have been here for ages, its like our family away from home! awww! xxxx

Satursday 12th September - My Very First Visitor!

My lovely cousin Maria and her friend Livvy came through Hong Kong en route from Thailand to Australia this week for a few days and I was lucky enough to be able to spend the day with them on Saturday which was lovely since they were my first visitor!

After having left their HUGE backpacks with me at the flat, we headed off to Stanley Market, on the south of the Island. The weather was lovely, and we wandered around the labrinth of stalls and shops there and then went to an amazing cafe where we had fresh juice and cakes which was such a treat! The waterfront was lovely, full of restaurants (pizza express! - little bit too excited!) and bars and cafes, which looked out over the waterfront and a really pretty covered pier too. It was very peaceul and a really nice way to spend a saturday afternoon. We also went to visit Tin Hau temple which was nearby who is, if I remember rightly the goddess of the seas and who in her lifetime, saved many lives out at sea and so there are many temples and shrines made to her around Hong Kong.

I wish Maria and Livvy a wonderful rest of trip around the world as they depart on the next chapter of their adventure! Thank you both for a lovely day!

Food!

In true foodie fashion, I will attempt to document some of the plethora of restaurants, I end up at here because Hong Kong is brimming with every cuisine imaginable! With a total of 22 Michelin starred restaurants in the city, one magazine article I read recently quoted Hong Kong as offering 'such a multiplicity of good, eating at every level that it can be almost overwhelming in its appeal to restaurant addicts'. Overwhelming I completely agree! There must be a hundred restaurants on every one of the main streets here and in true Hong Kong fashion, the tendency is to build up as well, so not only do you have ground floor offerings, but restaurants at every level up in malls and shopping centres along each road. Food here is extremely cheap if you want to eat local food and there are restaurants practically every few doors down on basically every road selling it. I can easily get a bowl of noodles in soup with veg/rice and tofu and veg. and a drink for $20 - $30 HKD, which is (very roughly!) less than 2 pounds.
As well as these local restaurants, there are restaurants offering Thai Vietamese, lots of Japanese, Taiwanese, Korean, Indian, as well as a variety of Chinese cuisine, from the more spicy Sichuan variety to the more Cantonese Hong Kong variety as well as a multiplicy of dim sum restaurants. There are also the Western chains, Delifance, Starbucks, McDonalds and McCafe - where the coffee I am ashamed to say is surprisingly good! (Apparantly, it is widely known that the McDonalds here is some of the cheapest in the world, even cheaper than mainland China.), Pizza Hut, and Sophie Franklin, there are even Pizza Expresses - what are you waiting for?! to name but a few as well as more Asian chains, are offering food at multiple points on each street. The list is endless!

I have decided I am going to have to take it upon myself and make it my mission to try out and explore as many of these places a possible, so I will know where to take you all when you come and visit! haha!

Eating In Hong Kong

For those of you who know me, you will know that much of my life is about food! Whether it’s the baking of it, or shopping for it, or reading BBC good food magazine, watching it being cooked (Saturday kitchen, em, I miss you) or indeed eating it! I am a devoted foodie. Having been lucky enough to have been always treated to amazing home cooking while I was growing up, I have wanted to continue the process when I moved away from home in St Andrews, being subjected to hall food, and so have subsequently taken a big interest in it and have loved being able to do lots of cooking with friends where we have undertaken many a supper party and baked some amazing cakes! (crème egg brownies, faye…?!!)

However, I am fast realising the days of humous, beetroot, couscous, wholewheat bread are gone! Even the days of knowing what goes in to your food…gone! I am strangely disconcerted by the blank looks when I point at some Chinese thing and ask what’s in it, or ingredients, recipe…even though they can usually converse in English, they mainly come up blank on the ingredients front which worries me slightly! As does, when was this baked, at the bakery on my road, - the lady looked at me as though I had asked her something really bizarre..i just gave up and paid for it. However, having moved in to my flat, I am able to cook for myself! For the very first time in almost three weeks, I am able to know every ingredient and what was in everything. I made (for those who are interested!) tofu which I steamed (Julia murray!) and had it with onions, chopped tomatoes, (which they don’t use here so I just chopped my own, - Waitrose seems the only brand!) peppers and brocolli and kidney beans! and had it with buckwheat noodles – sounds strange to most, but it was just the best supper ever. I have also found porridge so I am on my way back to normality! Especially when I arrived home from the supermarket last night having gone to get tupperwares with a $31 kettle! (about £2.50 maybe?!) let’s see how long that one lasts!

However, Chinese apartments just don’t have ovens. It does not appear to be part of their culture which is very much based on cooking over a hob or a stove and either frying or steaming things so that means no baking! I think I may have to invest in a toaster oven…! Although interestingly, they do make a sort of sponge cake here which they steam which I had at dim sum lat week which was very good however, probably not something to be tried at home just yet!

However, I am extremely keen to try out some of the local food and experience the food available here. Although we are lucky enough to be able to but pretty much anything, the western food is all extremely expensive, and not what I came here to do. Much of the trouble I have had has been the lack of any sort of kitchen or indeed cooking facilities in the guest house where we stayed which necessitated eating out or buying take away food or having something cold. And because we are all on a budget, and have not started to work yet, it all gets quite expensive. But, that can all change while we are in our flat! I will write more, about the food, when I have managed to work it out further!

I was lucky enough to be taken for dim sum, when I went to visit my school in City One and over a dim sum lunch in the biggest restaurant I have been in. (we arrived and walked for about 5 minutes through the restaurant, it consisted of a labyrinth of corridors, and side rooms, and then different floors!) I took the opportunity to able to quiz Cecily, my lovely teacher in charge all about the food as it came out and was put in to the centre of the table. Although, when they see you are western, the teachers on my table ordered all the fried food – they seem to know we like spring rolls, but they call them Western spring rolls which is highly ironic since we eat them as they are supposed to be Chinese! Everything about this style of food is different, the textures, and shapes and sizes and way of eating is completely different from the usual one person one dish at home. Many of the dishes came covered in a kind of gelatinous rice paste, which is translucent and wrapped around things like vegetables or meat. Or sometimes it is fried. Also, a lot of the food, comes in tall bamboo steamers which they stack and deliver. It’s a great way to experience lots of different types of Chinese food. There are also egg custard tarts here as dessert (Michael, they are everywhere here!)

The style and customs of eating are wonderful here. The Chinese love their food. Instead of having three set meals, food seems to be a big part of their culture. There are so many street stalls cooking food early in the morning and late in to the night, and people queue up for it everywhere. Also, the manner of eating is all about sharing which I love as well. All the food comes and is placed in the centre and you take what you want. It is quite common to have people place stuff in your bowls off one of the dishes for you. The customs are also completely different, burping, slurping, etc, are all deemed acceptable and even good. In fact, anything that shows you are enjoying your food is good. Which actually makes a lot of sense really when you think about it and the slurping is also highly useful when a lot of their food comes in bowls of soup, with noodles in and all you have are chopsticks and a shallow spoon to eat it with!


There is an incredible food and street market called the Bowrington Street market about 2 minutes from my flat which is amazing and sells an array of fruit, vegetables beancurd, meat and fish that are still alive practically when you buy them, not for the faint hearted! They place them on a white tray on their side and they jump up and down sporadically while the stall owner washes them with sufficient water so they survive…just! Yesterday when I went down there, there was a fish lying in the road in front of one such stall which was the size of a not so small child, it was about 4 or 5 foot – I think from the interest their stall was getting, it was a successful marketing tool but to a vegetarian it was anything but!