Monday, June 28, 2010

Hot burnt pig's knuckle by Shanghai Garden 紅燒元蹄, 紫玉蘭

For those who wanna know the "hot burnt" cooking, please come try this one by Shanghai Garden. Quite many restaurants often use soy sauce and oyster sauce and sugar to make their so-called "hot burnt" cooking. The first step of "hot burnt" is to brown the yellow rock sugar (not the transparent square ones) in the wok at low heat to get the "burnt" aroma of yellow rock sugar. The next step is to stir in stock and some fine soy sauce (no need to put much since the burnt process would make the sauce very deep in color) to braise the food.
1. A 6th visit to Shanghai Garden and this time with more people, I insisted on ordering this "love and hate" dish but every time the "love" wins. It's very cheap in terms of 3 dishes together (eggs and veggie and quite in a big portion) at just HK$168. 20 years ago, Snow Garden 雪園 already charged it at HK$280.

2. The waitress helped cut it in easy pieces. Wow... the Chef made the "hot burnt" sauce so good as I can taste the original "yellow rock sugar burnt aroma". I even wanted to pack the sauce. The eggs are wonderful too - very nice "Lo Shui". The veggie was stir fried with some yellow wine that go so well with the other 2 fellows. We cleaned this big plate. So happy!

14 comments:

Thailand Club said...

this is real gourmet, a real treat after a day of work

Stella said...

Wow, this looks so yummy with big portion and good price.
This same dish if you add one octopus and "lo Shui" for 3 hours also tastes good. The whole room can smell the nice aroma of "lo shui mud yu". Has to be octopus not squid as the aroma from octopus is unique.

Anonymous said...

$168 is very cheap. many restaurants charge over $200. is it in exchange square?

Paranoid Android said...

Yum yum... The ones in KL are Teochew Style Braised Meat. I don't think it is the same? Not sure. My knowledge of Chinese cuisine is deplorable.

in the sea said...

Android, yes, the cooking way is braising. Just I explained the first step of how this braising should start with. By the way, most cooking way for the braising is to use soy and oyster sauce and some with five spices or some are just star anise. The most classic way is this "yellow rock sugar" caramelized sauce mix.

Stella, the "Lo Shui" octopus is my favourite too. Can't be squid definitely as squid isn't a food for long time cooking.

To Anonymous, this place is on the 2nd floor of Hutchison Whampoa house opposite to the City Hall .

Paranoid Android said...

Thanks. For the life of me, I don't think I have ever seen yellow rock sugar. First thing I must do is go grocery shopping with you, and you can show me all the stuff I need to cook and understand Chinese cooking. LOL. It is really complicated? Just Sugar alone already confuses me. *giddy*

in the sea said...

OK. let me take a photo of the yellow rock sugar and you will see it. There are quite different types of sugar. Why using yellow rock sugar is because only yellow rock sugar wouldn't get sour after long hours of braising. I enjoy browsing in grocery in many places. It's a playground to me, besides browsing at CD shops, camera shops...etc. If you are in HK, I will show you. :)

Stella said...

Hi Paranoid,
Yes, even sugar there are many types.
I think you have the yellow crystal sugar and also the yellow cane sugar in Malaysia and S'Pore too.
Why I know? Because we only used these 2 kinds of sugar for cooking when we were in S'Pore.
Yes, HK has everything on earth and it is really a paradise.

Paranoid Android said...

Sky, Stella, Thanks for the info! Oooh yes. We do share common playgrounds except for the grocery part. Ha ha ha! I remember my first visit to HK many years ago and how excited I was at Swindon's. My first purchase in Hong Kong was Salman Rushdie's Midnight Children.

KL was just developing then and we did not have a proper book shop.

in the sea said...

Stella, I have some reservation. There should be something we don't have. We don't have enough healthy food like low fat/low sodium/low sugar...etc. Only small variety of food are under these. I used to buy the no sugar caffeine free coke in the States.

Android, Swindon's is such an old friend. We are in a cement jungle; so we have to find our way to amuse ourselves.

Stella said...

I doubt if there is something that HK does not have.
In fact, you will be surprised to hear that LA does not really have too many low-sodium or low-sugar stuffs to choose from.
I once tried to look for some no-sugar and no-sodium snack for Micky but did not find any.
Really hard to believe.

in the sea said...

Har... even at the old time Lucky's store (I think now it's merged and changed to Robertson's) has those kinds of low-this or no-that.

Stella said...

That is correct SEA. I am very surprised US supermarkets have very limited low-this-low-that products. Even at "Whole Foods" that sells high end healthy things still very limited with low-sodium and low-sugar products.
Dick's cousin Anita(from HK) came visit LA earlier. She is surprised she cannot find much low sodium low sugar things here. She said more healthy organic food she can find from HK than in LA. But more costly in HK though.

in the sea said...

What a turn. US groceries now go back to the 70's? Not even fashion, music, daily things go nostalgic?