ORGANIC VILLAGE CHICKEN AND BEST OF HONG KONG AT ZUAN YUAN

Free-range, organically raised village chicken is prized for its toothsome, leaner meat texture. This month, Zuan Yuan’s Executive Chinese Chef Tommy Choong Chan Hoo focuses on five different preparations to showcase this chook at its best eating quality.

The notable show-stealing Organic Village Chicken with Chinese Herbs (RM120 per bird) needs to be pre-ordered 24 hours in advance. Thoroughly suffused by the enticing nuances of various Chinese herbs used in its preparation, the fall-off-the-bone chicken is satisfyingly good. Not a single drop of the flavourful herbal broth is wasted either.

According to Chef Tommy, diners may enjoy the village chicken smoked, steamed with cordycep flowers, poached with dried scallop sauce and garden greens or roast with black truffle paste. The various preparations will be available until end October.

Long recognised as Asia’s "Gourmet Paradise" and "World's Fair of Food", Hong Kong holds a special place in Chef Tommy’s heart as the place where his culinary career took off. This month, he pays tribute to this bastion of Cantonese food with a special range of Hong Kong-style specialities.

His Pan Fried Scallop stuffed with Prawn Paste served with Superior Sauce encapsulates the refined spirit of Cantonese cooking perfectly. Lightly dressed with a lush, caramelised sauce, the sea-fresh sweetness of the scallops and prawns easily make this the ‘must have’ dish of the day.

Dried mandarin peel, dried prawns and spring onion are de rigeur when it comes to making fish balls in Hong Kong but for his speciality of Curry Fish Balls and Fish Maw “Hong Kong” Style in Claypot, the chef says he has tweaked the recipe to suit local tastebuds.

Served in a fragrant Indian-inspired curry gravy, the fishballs’ QQ springiness is delicious. Coupled with spongy pieces of fish maw, one can easily be induced to eat more than their fair share of rice.

Shiitake and oyster mushrooms are mixed with chopped onion, butter, milk and superior stock to form a rich stuffing for the Baked Assorted Mushrooms and Crab Meat with Cheese in Crab Shell. It’s an old-school appetiser when cheese was a novelty during the colonial era and the well-heeled preferred to devour crabs without getting their hands dirty.

The Crispy Roasted Duck stuffed with Yam Paste served with Sweet Sauce is a misnomer. In reality, Chef Tommy stuffed the roast duck between a layer of yam paste before deep-frying his creation. Served with drizzle of sweet bean sauce, the outer crust is deliciously crisp with wispy tendrils whilst the inner layer is the meaty part.

Priced between RM36 and RM48, the Best of Hong Kong selection is available for lunch (12noon to 2.30pm) and dinner (6pm to 10.30pm) daily.

For enquiries or reservations at Zuan Yuan, please call tel: 03 - 7681 1157 or email: zuanyuan@oneworldhotel.com.my. Address: One World Hotel, First Avenue, Bandar Utama City Centre, Selangor.

A YEAR OF BLOOMING ABUNDANCE AT HILTON KUALA LUMPUR

Strawberries in yee sang. Seafood soup redolent with oceanic flavours. Fish swimming with nostalgic inspired accents. Brace yourselves for a Year of Blooming Abundance at Hilton Kuala Lumpur's Chynna Restaurant this Chinese New Year.

From the precision of the resident tea-pouring expert to the last morsel of sticky nian goa, our dinner preview was anything but ho-hum. A harbinger of the auspicious celebration ahead, the preview session started with the curtain-raising Yu Sheng Selection (RM128 for half portion, RM280 for whole portion).

A pile of huge American strawberries, bursting with bracing tanginess mingled well with the colourful platter of julienne radish, carrot, pickles, crushed macadamia, fresh coriander and dried kumquat. We were relieved to find the house dressing was light, fruity and didn’t turn the salad into a soggy mess after our vigorous bout of tossing.

In conjunction with the Chinese New Year celebration, Chef Lam Hock Hin has conjured up a repertoire of special dishes for the occasion. While the Grand Fortune Set would require a minimum of 5 persons per table at RM688 per head, other festive sets: Abundance (RM288 per person), Prosperity (RM398) and Wealth (RM438) are good for two or more. All the festive menus will be available from 7 January to 24 February.

The night’s show-stopper was the Braised Assorted Dried Seafood with Vegetarian Fins, Crabmeat & Fish Maw; its complex layers of savoury, deep-sea flavours in my experience was the only soup to have come closest to mimicking the real deal. I daresay I lapped up every last drop of that subtly fishy, unctuously thick milieu of crabmeat, seamoss, slivers of fish maw, translucent noodles...it was par excellence. 

Pumpkin sauce was Chef Lam’s way of bestowing a healthy slant to his creation of Braised Abalone Cubes with Sea Cucumber, Pumpkin Sauce & Crispy Smoked Meat. “I got the brainwave after eating a pumpkin dish prepared by my girlfriend” said the chef in jest when he was asked on the inspiration behind the dish. 

“The pumpkin sauce’s golden colour also bodes well for Chinese New Year. Finely diced, crispy smoked duck was added to give the dish more flavour. It makes a nice change from the usual braised abalone and sea cucumber dish.”

Lots of painstaking work has gone into the chef’s speciality of Steamed Wild Caught Giant Grouper Slices with Congee, Fried Ginger & Touchu Chilli Sauce. According to Lam, the rice has to be soaked overnight and underwent several water changes before it was boiled down into that milky white, smooth congee base.

The final dish was a gastronomic treat for fish lovers who are partial to supple, smooth and delicate texture. Again drawing inspiration from traditional comfort food, Lam amped up the fish slices and congee pairing with fried ginger strips for some warm, spicy kick, and briny taucheo (preserved soya beans) with chilli to jolt the tastebuds awake.

Mindful of our multi-racial society, Lam decided a dish with Indian and Malay influences has a place on the Chinese New Year table too. It was on-point too as the spice quotient of the Batter Fried Crispy Chicken with Yellow Curry Sauce proved a hit especially among the young ones. 

We enjoyed the curry leaf-scented okra pieces atop the fried chicken. Marinated with dried shrimp paste, the crispy and moist chicken pieces were delectable to boot.

Another wave of nostalgia hit us when we sampled the Stewed Cabbage with Yam and Shrimps in Claypot. It wasn’t anything to look at but the taste was homey and delicious; good comfort food that you’d want to keep eating. 

 

One dish to ensure you leave Chynna replete is the Ten Grain Rice Stuffed with Chicken Floss. My only pet peeve with this offering is the clumps of rice was a tad sweet for my liking. IMHO, the rice should not have been steamed with sugar since each clump of the multi-grained rice already came with chicken floss on top — in this case, less is more!

Dessert featured a duet Combination of Snow White Coconut Jelly and Nian Gao Roll with Cheddar Cheese, Macadamia Nut and Musang King Durian. The former passed muster but paled into the shadows next to the festive new year cake.

With a powerful King of Fruit filling, we couldn’t detect any trace of the cheese nuance in the Nian Gao roll. Overall, the sweet treat was acceptable but the cheese simply failed to make its presence felt. Otherwise it was a lovely and sweet way to conclude a celebratory CNY dinner.

For reservations, call Hilton Kuala Lumpur's Chynna, tel: 03-2264 2264 or visit life.hiltonkl.com

36 YEARS OF GOOD EATS AT NEW FORMOSA

New Formosa - PJ’s bastion of Chinese-Taiwanese cuisine - celebrated its 36^th anniversary in September. To mark the milestone, owner Jeanie Lee and husband Lee Weng Eng (also the resto’s chef) came up with special celebratory menus (RM498++ and RM598++ per table of 10 persons) showcasing the resto’s perennial signature specialities.

Ever the genial host, Mrs Lee decided to fete our dining party to handpicked specials from the celebratory menus and popular signature dishes which made New Formosa what it is today.

Big flavours and multi-textures reigned in the opening Formosa Special Combination. The quintet of tasty Yam Balls, 3-cup Squid, Formosan-style Butter Fish Slices, Deep-fried Oysters Taiwanese-style and Stuffed Lotus Root with Special Fish Paste were hard to fault. Some of the offerings stirred up fond memories of old-school wedding banquets while the distinctly Taiwanese ones piqued interest with new tweaks. Overall, it was a substantial platter that left no cause for complaints.

 

As a kid, I’m a huge fan of chicken meat and the Steamed Village Chicken with Black Fungus took me down my childhood memory lane. Toothsomely tender, the super-succulent chook were raveworthy thanks to the trinity of minced ginger, spring onion and crunchy black fungus blanketing it.

 

For farn toong or die-hard rice eaters, the Bamboo Rice definitely rose to the occasion. Studded with diced pumpkin, mushroom, dried shrimps, lap cheong (Chinese sausage), minced pork and fried shallot, the aromatic and delectable grains were satisfyingly out-of-this-world.

 

Crabs are rarely found at New Formosa so when you do encounter them, the critters should ‘grab’ your attention. We couldn’t decide which was better – the fresh, sweet crab claws or the addictive sweet-sour sauce redolent with garlic, spring onion and vinegarish accents which we greedily soaked up with fried mantou.

The piquancy of hot bean sauce in the local seabass dish should please those with a penchant for strong flavours. Surprisingly, the fish’s delicate sweetness remained discernible despite being inundated by a generous helping of tart-salty-hot sauce. 

 

Only available on weekdays, the unique Formosa Stone Fire Pot (RM20 per person, min 3 persons per table) features 22 ingredients. Assorted housemade meat and fishballs, mushroom, corn, pumpkin, cabbage, crabstick, bamboo pith and other ingredients are more than ample to make the speciality memorable. Prawns can also be added (charged according to market price) for that luxe dimension.

 

A durable ‘stone’ pot placed atop a portable stove is heated up for sautéing garlic and chicken meat. Once the Taiwanese satay-type sauce is added and the meat cooked through, the stir-fried dish is ready to be sampled.

The same heated pot is then reused to partially cook the prawns before steamboat stock is poured in. All the other goodies are then added and slowly brought to boil. Is it any wonder the resultant milieu tasted superbly good and incomparable to normal steamboat?

When it comes to dessert, few diners can resist the resto’s evergreen Sweet Yam in Honey Sauce. Soft and powdery, the chunks of warm yam were coated in caramelised sugar at the table then plunged into ice-cold water. This process turned the outer coating crackly, edged with wispy sugary tendrils, making the yam pieces a joy to eat.

Clean and astringent, the second dessert of marble-smooth Green Tea Pudding with Red Beans also went down a treat. Besides cleansing the palate, it left all of us in a jolly sweet mood to wrap up the night.

For reservations, call New Formosa, tel: 03 7875 7478. Address: 46, Jalan SS2/24, 47300 Petaling Jaya, Selangor.