Father's Day Dinner - Seafood in Sai Kung

We always celebrate special family occasions early to avoid crazy charges & make booking for table less painful :)

So we had our father's day dinner the week before the real day ;)

A lovely seafood dinner in Sai Kung, as requested by SC's dad.

My fil & mil went to Sai Kung market & chose the seafood from the restaurant's shop, and they get delivered to the restaurant, then cooked the way we wanted.

Sweet yummy prawns. Perfectly cooked.

Clams. Absolutely delicious! Perfect with rice.

Fish with broccoli. This was alright.

Obligatory soup. We could do without this. Not tasty enough.

Giant ass abalone! Perfectly cooked.

Scallops with vermicelli with tasty garlicky topping.

I bet I'm not the only one who likes the noodles more than the scallop - despite the fact that it's cooked nicely.

Fried giant ass oysters cooked in wine. Don't judge this fugly looking dish by its appearance...

...because it's so darn yummy!

Mantis shrimps. So tasty!!!!!

Lobster on a bed of fried rice instead of noodles. I'd prefer it with noodles :)

Mostly yummy dishes at HK$330 per person. Much better value for money than the touristy famous waterfront Sai Kung restos. I'd totally go for this one again.

G/F See Cheung Street, Sai Kung

Hong Kong

Tel: +852 2792 0006

Click here for openrice link.

Seafood Feast & Sunset Beach - Lei Yue Mun, Hong Kong

Where to go this weekend? Here's an idea. Some might think that Lei Yue Mun is a typical tourist rip-off place that's not worth visiting. Oh, that doesn't need to be the case. This was my first visit to Lei Yue Mun and I could not believe that I haven't discovered it earlier!

I visited the place with my family and we had an awesome time. I mean... look at THAT beautiful pink sunset. It is just breath-taking.

I'd recommend arriving Lei Yue Mun before 5:30 pm, especially if you drive - so that you can still get a parking space easily and you can enjoy the beach and the seafood market a bit before dinner. Once you've arrived, walk towards the seafood market and walk all the way to the beach.

The beach is unique in a way that...there is no fine white sand, but there are shells and broken glass everywhere. I'd recommend wearing appropriate footwear (with thick soles) at the beach.


Beautiful display of seafood.


Feast for your eyes.


We didn't do the "select your own seafood and get a restaurant to cook them" thing. We tried that in Sai Kung and it ended up really expensive. So, this time we chose a set dinner instead.


There are some food souvenirs to buy too.

Not overpriced at all. We bought pork jerky and it's really yummy.


I bought HK$15 worth of honey coated walnuts too. Really nice!

After exploring the market and enjoying the beach, it's time for dinner. We didn't pick any restaurant near the beach with wall to wall sea view. We're pretty happy with this restaurant. Decent seafood, great value for money!


Here's our set dinner.

We started with a nice fish and tofu soup - which I didn't photograph. Duh! And then this plate of snails. These are nicely cooked, but I just never liked anything of this texture. It came with sweet hoi sin sauce, but I prefer dipping them in soy sauce.


Razor clams - beautifully cooked. Sweet and fresh.


Scallops. Perfectly cooked and those noodles are SO FLAVORFUL, I'd love to eat them with rice. The perfect companion for the sweet scallop.


Abalone. Again, I am not a big fan of abalone texture... I won't look for it, but if it's there, I'd eat it. Nicely cooked.


Steamed crab with egg white. Silky smooth egg white. Love love love it. The crab meat's lovely too, but I am not a big fan of crab roe cooked this way.


Prawns. Tasty sauce, sweet and fresh, but the meat is just a tiny bit over. I enjoyed licking the shell.


Perfectly cooked steamed fish where the meat's satiny smooth but gets off the bone really easily. Love it.


Mantis prawn. Perfectly cooked, tasty crispy bits. Licked my fingers clean.


The beauty of seafood meal is... that you don't get full so fast. We all needed some carbs at that point. This sticky rice with Chinese sausages is subtly flavored (to me that is equal to being under-seasoned, but I am sure I need to watch my sodium level, or my palate is dead and I can only taste something when it's really salty T_T). This is not ground breaking, but it's nice.


I've never been a big fan of lobster, but everybody raved about how much meat we get (daam daam yuk) and how we didn't have to struggle to take out the meat from the lobster's shell. I just enjoyed the noodles. The sauce can be saltier (again, dead palate). It's a nice end to the meal. We got a platter of fresh fruits too. Icy cold but not frozen. Just the way I like it.

The whole meal costs HK$350 per person. Wayyy better price that the seafood meals I had in Sai Kung.

After dinner, enjoy a nice sea-side stroll. The sunset's changed to a sparkling night view.

Tips:
- Get there before 5:30 pm for easy parking/exploring the market/beach
- Book restaurant ahead and ask for the price and the set menu

How to get to Lei Yue Mun:
Taxi from Yau Tong MTR Station or ferry from Sai Wan Ho MTR Station

The restaurant we tried:
Kam Lee Loy (funnily, their signage says "Kam Lee Lok")
金利來
G/F 54B Lei Yue Mun Praya Road, Lei Yue Mun. 
Hong Kong.
Address in Chinese for taxi: 鯉魚門海傍道西54B號地下
Tel: +852 2244 3003

Super Easy Choy Sum Shrimp Stir Fry

Another dish my MIL always makes, super sweet veggie, fresh shrimps. Beautiful. Finally I saw her making it recently. It's amazing how she can make the dish taste so good without even using aromatics like ginger or garlic. Very minimal, and the ingredients shine through.

Recipe
- 1 cup shrimps, deshelled, deveined, butterflied
- a pack of choy sum
- vegetable oil, salt, and pepper

Season shrimps with salt and pepper. Heat up frying pan with some vegetable oil, stir fry shrimps until half done and set aside. Stir fry choy sum until they reach the level of tenderness that you like (don't let them turn yellow), season with a bit of salt, add shrimps, stir fry until shrimps are just cooked, and serve.

Perfect for a light meal!

Family Dinner at SC's Mom's - Simple Homemade Chinese Food, I Love!

Dinner at SC's parent's means a satisfying meal of delicious homemade Chinese food!
Take a look of what we had yesterday for dinner :)

Steamed squid with glass noodles, garlic, chilli, fermented black beans, topped with plenty of fresh coriander. Imagine the glass noodles soaking up all those delicious flavors. Yum!


Steamed small crabs, served with vinegar. They're so tiny and cute!


Marinated (lo sui) beef shin and chicken gizzard. Tender, juicy and flavorful! She made extra so that we could pack some leftover for tonight's dinner.


Pan fried pork neck, simply seasoned with salt, pepper and sugar. Charred & flavorful exterior, tender and juicy interior. Fat at its most fabulous form!


Steamed pork with fermented beans and preserved vegetables. Love the touch of sourness in this dish. Baby M feasted on the tender potatoes from the homemade Chinese-style tomato soup.


Stir fried pumpkin with fermented black beans and garlic. SC's mom is the queen of using pumpkin in stir fries and her pumpkin dishes are always yummy!

For dessert, we had lots of fruits, watermelon, rockmelon...and we had the juiciest, sweetest, biggest lychees I've had so far!

SC's mom shared a tip of now to make the lychees less "heaty", which is soaking them in salted water. Leave them soaked in the fridge if you wanna serve them cold. You can rinse the water off before serving.
Nothing's more refreshing than these cold lychees.

What a dinner!
Show me the yummies you had last weekend, will you?

PS. You must've noticed that the pictures were all distorted and weird? That's because I was playing with my brand new wide angle lens. Heheheh

Seabass in Indonesian Opor Sauce 印尼椰汁鱸魚

I thought it was going to be so easy.

The idea sounded perfect in my mind.

1. Pan fry a piece of nice fish perfectly.

2. Prepare a flavorful sauce using instant spice pack

3. Garnish

In my mind, these 3 easy steps would turn the tasty Indonesian dish into something that looks "fine dining".

I should've known that I'm not a fine-dining material.

我仲以為好容易

1. 剪好D魚

2. 用調味包

3. 裝飾吓

我成日都以為整到好似高級餐廳咁係好容易...

I butchered the fish!

I've failed to get the skin crispy and I've overcooked the flesh.

Grrrr.

Luckily, seabass is a pretty forgiving fish. So apart from looking horrible, it stays moist and yummy. Phew! And the sauce, I did use an instant opor (Indonesian coconut milk sauce) spice pack, but cranked it up with a lot of fresh ingredients, so it was really yummy!

I'll do better next time.

我浪費左條咁靚既魚...

我整唔到D皮脆, 條魚又煮得太熟...

好彩鱸魚點整都係好食...除左望落去唔好睇, 食落去都仲OK既

個現成印尼椰汁調味包係得既, 成碟魚3D晒..仲有自己都加左好多配料落去

我下次會努力的了...

Recipe

The Sauce

- Opor seasoning pack

- 1/2 cup coconut cream

- 2 cloves garlic, crushed

- 1 stalk lemongrass, crushed

- 2 cloves shallot, thinly sliced

- 4 kaffir lime leaves

- a touch of sugar, pepper, cooking oil, water

Saute garlic, lemongrass and shallot in a bit of cooking oil, add spice pack, add coconut milk, a bit of water, and a touch of sugar. Set aside

剪香D蒜頭, 檸檬葉, 紅䓤頭, 加調味包, 加椰奶, 加水, 加糖, 放埋一邊

The fish

- 2 fish fillet (I used seabass)

- cooking oil, butter, salt and pepper

Season fish fillet with salt, pepper, rub generously with oil. Heat up a frying pan. When pan is really hot, add the fish skin down. Let cook until the skin crisped (I was too impatient), add oil and butter when necessary, turn once, let cook for a bit (thin fish fillet cooks real fast!), place fish fillet on top of sauce. I garnish mine with mint leaves and ate it with a lot of rice.

條魚, 用監鹽, 油, 胡椒調好味, 同佢按摩吓. 整熱個獲, 落個皮煎先, 煎脆左, 落油, 牛油, 每面只可煎一次, 自己因時間. 上碟, 落埋D醬汁

Dammit. If only I cooked that fish perfectly...

自古失敗在嘗試!

Baked Cheesy Pumpkin, Chicken, Mussels & Rice with Bacon Bits

This is why I like dumping stuff into my oven.

Uh huh!

It all started with one leftover small Japanese pumpkin.
It'd be lonely in the oven, so I added a chicken leg fillet I had in my fridge.
Then I saw a pack of mussels, already defrosted.
Ah, join the fun please...
...and why stop there?
Some bits of bacon won't hurt, right?

Recipe
- 1 small Japanese pumpkin, peeled, cut into similarly sized chunks
- 2 Chicken leg fillet with skin cut into 2 or 4 chunks (too bad I only had one, it wasn't enough)
- Some mussels (if you have fresh, still in shell, nice...but you gotta clean them. Mine aren't as nice but they were already clean, ready for dumping)
- 3 slices of bacon, cut into bits
- 4 cloves of garlic, crushed, don't need to peel
- 4 shallot, peeled, cut into chunks
- Butter, olive oil, salt, pepper, sugar, rosemary
- Cooked rice
- Cheeses (I used grated mozzarella and parmesan)

Preheat oven to 250C while preparing ingredients. Place pumpkin chunks, chicken (skin side up), garlic, onion, and bacon bits in a baking dish. Add olive oil, dots of butter, salt, pepper and sugar (season generously), mix well with your hands until everything's coated with some oil and butter, and seasoned well. Bake until chicken skin's golden and pumpkin chunks are tender. Add mussels about 5 minutes before done.

This could already be a delicious dinner, but if you're mad like me (or you have some spare cheese to melt...), you can go further...

Butter a baking dish, or small pretty "le creuset inspired, made in China" individual baking dishes like me, add cooked rice, add various bits of the baked dish, top with cheese and bake until the cheeses melt and golden.


Uh huh! Uh huh!

Ahem, sorry for being pushy, obnoxious and shameless...but...
Remember my adorable son (as his mom, I am highly biased, but I think he is pretty cute)?

He still needs more vote for Huggies HK photo contest.
If you haven't voted but you want to, here are the links:
1. Like this page: http://www.facebook.com/HuggiesHK
2. Like his picture here: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=179319918779117&set=a.179319748779134.44752.175747015803074&theater

Thanks so so so so so muchhhh for your support and have a yummy weekend!

Frites - Delicious Mussels & Fries

Frites.

I used to pronounce this as "frights" but don't. It's "freet" with a silent s, learnt it from our French friend who highly recommended this place.

At the end of this tunnel, you'll find deliciousness.
Promising :)


We went there for the mussels and the fries served with mayo.
That's right.

Fries and mayo (not Miracle Whip. Not that there's anything wrong with miracle whip ^_*), crispy on the outside, fluffy on the inside, chunky fries with a small pot of slightly salty, tangy and creamy mayo.
Perfection.

I had half a kilo of Mariniere mussels, the mussels were perfectly cook, every little bite is a nice combination of fresh seafood sweetness, savory garlic, and fragrant white wine and herbs. Scoop the sauce with a spoon or mop it clean with a piece of bread...or two?


We also love the pot of Frites House Mussels, I literally couldn't stop myself from slurping the sauce of my friend's pot. Fresh and sweet from the onion and mussels, slighty tangy from the tomatoes, and creamy without being too rich. Yummy!

Half a kilo, easy. Each of us finished our pot clean...

...despite having polished off a bowl of beer sausages, hearty and savory with a touch of sweetness. The perfect small bites to share with a few friends.


Frites
Shop 1& 2, 1st Floor, Queen's Palace, 74 Queen's Road, Central
Hong Kong
中環皇后大道中74號皇后中心1樓
Tel: +852 2179 5179
(About HK$300 per person (with some alcoholic drinks), remember to make booking, the place is super packed!)