Bonus Chapter: Junk Food from My Childhood

And just for fun - we certainly ate our share of junk food while growing up in the UK. Interestingly, I don’t think our parents limited our intake too much. Or they were too tired from working the night before so my brother and I were left unsupervised until around midday. We had the good/bad fortune of living next door to the newsagents. With spare money from the till, we indulged in sweets, chocolates and crisps whenever we felt like it. Some notable memories include:

Chocolate easter eggs 

After Christmas, the shops start stocking up on chocolate eggs for Easter. These are usually a hollow chocolate shell filled with a treat such as a toy or a bag of chocolates. I remember receiving 7 large chocolate eggs one Easter and I ate through all of them in one sitting! My favorites was of course Cadbury’s milk chocolate such as Wispa, Aero, Bounty or Flake. I was very partial to Maltesers. I didn’t care so much for Twix or Mars Bars. 

Soft serve vanilla ice cream with Cadbury’s 99 flake 

Living in a seaside town, soft-serve ice cream was everywhere for the tourists. Back then, only two flavors were available - vanilla or strawberry. My favorite was vanilla with a Cadbury’s chocolate 99 flake.

Pot Noodles

When our local newsagents started stocking Pot Noodles, we were done for. Kee and I loved them as they were so flavorful and easy to make. My favorite flavours were the Beef & Tomato and Curry version. The Beef & Tomato version with its sachet of tomato ketchup was one of the most satisfying unami tastes in my memory. I’ve since learnt that these Pot Noodles were sodium bombs. So much so, that once they revised the recipes for modern times to reduce the salt, all the amazing taste I remember from my childhood disappeared. They now taste just as bad as they look. Which is probably a good thing. 

Nissin Ramen

This red packet of processed ramen noodles was a staple in our teenage years and my guess is that it still is for my brother! There are so many combinations to make a satisfying lunch. As teenagers living at the takeaway, we would add veggies such as broccoli and slices of roast pork. Later, during our college years, we added slices of ham and topped off the ramen with a fried egg. I’ve always liked mine with plenty of chopped spring onions. The soup base was laden with MSG - no wonder we loved it. Nutritionally empty, it is not something I eat anymore but I still think fondly of the taste memories! 

First Mcdonalds in Torquay

Mcdonalds did not arrive in Torquay until I was a teenager, shortly after Burger King appeared. Before that time, our appetite for fast-food burgers came from Wimpy. Therefore, the Mcdonalds menu was a rare and wonderful thing to try. I remember a relative buying Mcdonalds and setting aside a cold “Filet of Fish” burger for me to try. Aside from the sensation of being new in town, it was nothing special. I sometimes would get Chicken McNuggets but I never really enjoyed Mcdonalds. Even as a teenager, I would rather get a toasted teacake with butter at a local cafe anytime. Bonus fact - Kee worked at Burger King for a few years! He was so competent that he was trusted in the kitchen to cook the burgers!

Chapter 6: Food for Special Occasions

Growing up in England, we celebrated special occasions with a mix of different foods. As a treat for Saturday supper, our family would have sirloin steak with rice when the takeaway closed. This was a family tradition, dating back to my grandfather! This was the day all the workers got paid as well. Dad will pan-fry the steaks with onions and mushrooms. Aside from salt, Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce was used to add piquancy. It was eaten with white rice with dollops of Coleman’s English mustard.

At Christmas or sometimes as a Sunday treat, Mum would roast a Leg of Lamb. We would eat this with steamed savoy cabbage, sweetcorn and white rice. She would make a gravy from the drippings in the pan and slice up some of the lamb meat to put in it. We would enjoy our plate of Roast Lamb with lashings of mint sauce from a jar!

Chinese feast food was often served at Christmas and Lunar New Year. When preparing a Chinese feast, care was taken to have a lucky number of dishes - for example 3, 8, 9 or 10. These numbers symbolize health, prosperity, longevity and perfection respectively. You can even include the soup when counting or split a dish into 2 plates to make the count work for you! Whatever you do, don’t make 4 dishes. 

Avoid white ingredients such as tofu as white is worn at funerals and ingredients such as squid which sounds like "getting fired from a job". Lucky dishes and ingredients include: 

• Braised shittake mushrooms and "fat choi" with dried oysters and scallops on bed of lettuce
• Lucky shrimp for laughter
• Whole fish to keep all your luck (retain head and tail)
• Whole chicken or duck for luck
• Hakka speciality dish - taro with pork belly
• Vegetables
• A soup
• Stir-fried lobster with spring onions, ginger and garlic in XO tomato sauce

Braised dried scallops and oysters on bed of lettuce

Chapter 5: Hoi Shan Takeaway Food

Aside from the food cooked by Mum, we also have vivid memories of the food we served to customers at the Hoi Shan takeaway. Most dishes were westernized versions of Chinese food. Not to say it was bad, it was just different. In fact, I often make fried rice and sweetcorn soup - a devastatingly good combo. 25 years after leaving the takeaway life, I can still remember the full Hoi Shan menu and the 58 dishes on it. We lived on the premises of the takeaway so we were often called to complete chores. If you were not of age yet to reach the counter to take customer orders, there were plenty of prep tasks a pre-teen could do. These included bagging prawn crackers, cutting up mushrooms into quarters, cracking eggs. If the takeaway were making their own chips, you may have been involved in potato peeling and operating the chipper. My brother and I certainly did our fair share of tasks. 

Hoi Shan Curry

I’ve always loved our home-made Hoi Shan curry and nothing I have had elsewhere in the world can duplicate the fruity, spicy and savory taste. Brilliant with any protein on top of rice or for “curry and chips”. The Hoi Shan curry starts life as a curry paste, made from scratch. Once the paste is created, it can be used when needed, by adding water to make the curry sauce. 

In looking at the recipe for the curry paste provided by our Aunt Lily, I can see how adding all the fruits contributed to its uniqueness. I’ve downsized the recipe to create a reasonable quantity for home use. Once the curry paste is made, it will keep for about a week. During this time, you just take some of the curry paste, dilute with water and cook with anything you like. Add salt to taste and additional chili sauce if you want more spice. At Hoi Shan takeaway in Torquay, the most popular dishes were Chicken Curry (no 27) and Beef Curry (no 28). 

Forewarning - to make the curry paste, you need at least 5 hours. 

Ingredients

300g of finely-diced fresh garlic, peeled

150g of finely-diced fresh ginger root, peeled

Vegetable oil

1 roughly-chopped onion

1 roughly-chopped leek

Small swede, roughly-chopped

3-4 celery stalks, roughly-chopped

1 orange, sliced into quarters (include peel)

1 lemon, sliced into quarters (include peel)

1 banana, sliced (include peel)

1 apple, sliced into quarters (include peel)

1.5 bags plain flour

1.5 cups madras curry powder

0.5 cups turmeric

0.25 cups chili powder

1 can coconut cream (optional)

Steps

1. Begin by finely dicing 300g of fresh garlic and 1150g of fresh ginger root, peel scraped. 
2. Fill up half of a large cooking pot with vegetable oil and heat until very hot. Add the garlic and ginger to the hot oil.
3. Add the chopped onion, leek, swede, banana, celery, orange, lemon and apple into the hot oil and let it fry slowly. This can take up to an hour to fry until crispy. 
4. When done, carefully sieve out the ingredients and let the flavored oil sit to cool for half an hour on the stovetop.
5. For the second stage, prepare 1.5 bags of plain flour , 1.5 cups of madras curry powder, 0.5 cups of turmeric, and a 1/4 cup of chilli powder
6. Add one can of coconut cream and stir into the warm oil once until it melts. Auntie Lily uses coconut cream in this recipe. Dad does not.
7. First put the coconut cream in till it melts. Then add the flour, madras powder, turmeric and chili powder into the aid. Stir throughly and on a slow heat until it starts to thicken.
8. Put the pot into the oven at a low heat for 3 hours until set. You now have the curry paste which you can dilute with water to make curries

- - - - - -

Barbecue Roasted spare ribs (no 16)

I once made this dish for a group of friends on a weekend away hiking Mount Washington in New Hampshire, USA and it went down a treat. You just need to marinade the ribs ahead of time (preferably overnight). Ingredients for the marinade included hoi sin sauce, soy sauce, rice wine, tomato paste, chopped garlic, honey. You can make your own combination!

The Hoi Shan special (no 10)

This was a stir-fry of beansprouts, onions, water chestnuts with shrimp and pork with rice. There were 3 slices of chicken breast and 3 slices of char sui on top with a BBQ sauce poured over the dish. Missing Chinese food in my first term at Manchester University, I actually visited the local Chinese takeaway to get their very similar menu special! 

Chicken & sweetcorn soup (no 55)

Devastatingly simple, this soup was a later add-on to the Hot Shan menu. It’s also an easy soup to make at home - requiring very few ingredients and time. You can substitute the chicken for minced pork or fish. You can also make a vegetarian version by using a vegan broth substitute. 

Ingredients

1 chicken breast, no skin or bone, finely diced

1 can of cream of sweetcorn

Water

2 eggs, beaten

Sesame oil

Spring onions, finely chopped as a garnish

Salt & white pepper

• In a saucepan, cook the diced chicken breast meat in 300 ml of boiling water for 3 minutes until cooked through.
• Add the cream of sweetcorn and stir through
• Ensure the soup is boiling hot as you drizzle the beaten egg into the soup, stirring as you drizzle.
• Add salt and white pepper to taste
• With the soup in individual bowls, add finely-chopped spring onions if desired and drizzle with half a teaspoon of sesame oil. 

Corn soup as part of a vegan spread (bottom centre)

Luxury version: These days, Mum makes this soup even more flavorful by using corn cobs (instead of canned corn) and creating a stock first. Don’t attempt this unless you have plenty of time! First, she cleans the corn off the cob and puts aside. Then, she makes a stock from boiling pork meat, carrots and the cobs for a couple of hours. She likes to use a variety of different corn varieties including the white shoepeg corn which is very sweet.

Chapter 4: Loving Your Soup and Your Family

Watercress,corn,carrot and water chestnut soup ingredients (centre right)

Cantonese slow-boiled soups was a staple at home. Mum’s favorite saying is that loving soup is akin to loving your family. Not a soup lover? That means you are not so attached to the family. Cantonese soups are always consommés and can be used to fix various constitution problems. For example, if you had been over-indulging in fried foods, you maybe “heaty” and need a soup with cooling ingredients such as winter melon. Hacking cough? Sooth your throat with moisturizing chinese pear and barley soup. 

Most chinese soups use pork as a base although there are also soups that use chicken or fish. The latter creates a nutritious collagen-dense soup but watch out for the bones! You can also omit animal protein all together for a vegan soup. 

You need 2-3 hours of simmering to make these soups. Leftovers? The soup is even better the next day.

Some favorite combinations include: 

• Watercress and dried almonds
• Winter melon
• Chinese pear (suet lei), apple and barley
• Green and red carrot
• Fun kok, water chestnut, lotus root
• Fish, potato, tomato, corn
• Papaya

Chapter 3: Daily Home Cooking

While enjoying great coastal scenery, Torquay is some distance away from the main urban areas. This meant that the nearest Chinese grocery store was in Plymouth (one hour drive away). However, these days, I hear that there are at least 4 Asian grocery stores in Exeter which makes things easier. To supplement our Asian diets, my mother would order some ingredients from the “beansprouts man” – vendors set up to deliver beansprouts, mushrooms and other necessities to a Chinese takeaway business. She could order various green vegetables such as choi sum, blocks of tofu and wonton wrappers. 

At other times, my mother would get hold of some special ingredients via friends and family that have come back from visiting Hong Kong. These were usually food stuffs such as dried shittake mushrooms, dried scallops for soups and even expensive ingredients such as bird’s nest and other obscure delicacies. I remember being given a double-steamed sweet soup “tong shui” on the night before an important exam. There were translucent jelly-like pearls in the soup. Mum did not explain what they were. It tasted fine so I drank it with no suspicions. In my early 20's, I had the same sweet soup in Hong Kong with friends. They were more than happy to tell me that the jelly-like pearls were frog ovaries. Full of estrogen and great for the skin! I never had it again. 

Family dinner was at 5pm sharp every evening and it was nearly always Chinese home-cooked dishes. The food was very different from what we sold in the takeaway. Aside from steamed or pan-fried fish or shellfish, boiled vegetables, my mother's repertoire also included dishes with plenty of sauce - a favourite for my siblings and I. Home-style pork & tofu is the first dish whereby I asked Mum for the recipe. Here it is: 

Home-style Pork & Tofu

Home-style Pork & Tofu (top right)

Ingredients

Small piece of steak or pork loin

Marinated pickled vegetable "ja choi" (0.5 packet)

1 block of soft tofu, cut into cubes

2 dried scallops

2 garlic gloves, finely diced

1 tablespoon of oyster sauce

cornflour, soy sauce, cooking wine, salt and oil for the marinade

1 spring onion, finely diced

Steps

1. Soak dried scallops in boiling hot water for 1 hour. When shredded, chop finely

2. Finely dice the steak or pork loin, marinade in salt, cooking wine, soy sauce, cornflour and oil

3. Finely dice the pickled vegetable "ja choi" and mix in with the marinaded meat

4. Heat 2 tablespoons of cooking oil in  wok, cook the meat first. Add dried scallops and garlic

5. When meat is cooked through, add 0.25 teaspoon of sugar, 1 tablespoon of soy sauce and some water

6. Add the cubes of tofu and 1 tablespoon of oyster sauce and let simmer for 1 minute, with the lid on

7. Stir 0.5 teaspoon of cornflour with cold water and add to the dish to thicken the sauce

8. Turn off the heat and stir in the finely chopped spring onions just before serving. 

- - - - - - - 

Steamed pork ribs

This simple homely dish relies on the quality of the pork. Feel free to use more garlic or white pepper depending on your taste preference. 

Ingredients

Chopped pork ribs, raw

Diced garlic

Sugar

Salt

Soy sauce

White pepper

Cornstarch

Steps

1. Marinade the chopped ribs with all the ingredients in a shallow dish for a few hours. 
2. Steam the dish for approximately 30 minutes. Bring the water to a boil, and then turn the heat to a low setting so there is constant steam. You can steam for longer e.g. 1 hour on a simmer if you prefer the pork to be more tender.

  

Chapter 2: Hakka Food

Both my parents are of Hakka origin – having grown up in neighboring villages in the New Territories of Hong Kong. The Laws are one of the 4 indigenous surnames in the Man Uk Pin village near Sha Tau Kok. Our lineage book recording male ancestry goes back 20 generations which is approximately 400 years. This means the Laws were in Hong Kong before the British arrived and created the colony. 

Mum is from the Wan Family in Tam Shui Hang village which is just outside Sha Tau Kok. The Wans have also been in Hong Kong for a long time.

Hakka women were known to be particularly hard-working and expected to help with all the agricultural duties. They were never subject to foot-binding as they had to work the land - in the rice paddies, driving oxen and so on. My mum would be the first to tell you that her early childhood chore was leading the oxen to the field during the day. 

Hakka cuisine is very savory - strong in flavor but not spicy. Common ingredients are pickled vegetables such as “mui choi”, pickled radishes and preserved salty fish. The Hakka were migrants throughout history which led to the prevalent trend for pickling food through salt for preservation purposes.

Stuffed Tofu and Peppers

This is a classic Hakka dish whereby blocks of tofu, peppers or aubergines are stuffed with a mince pork & shrimp filling. If avoiding seafood, you can add finely-diced water chestnut, carrot or wood-ear fungus to the pork mince to provide crunch. 

Stuffed fresh tofu, ready for pan-frying

Braised stuffed tofu in oyster sauce

Braised Taro and Pork Belly

This is a well-known Hakka dish in which my Grandfather Wan has a particularly good recipe! The recipe has passed down to my mother and my uncles. Every Lunar New Year, the family still continues to make several dishes to give as gifts to villagers and friends. It's a time-consuming dish to make so making a large batch is an all-day affair for several hands! 

All hands on deck!

The epic steamer

30 dishes ready for steaming

Chapter 1: Seafood Childhood

One of the perks of living by the coast and in Torbay no less, was that we were always able to buy seafood. Fresh fish was abundant and I have memories of accompanying my mother in the drive to her favorite fishmongers in Paignton. The fishing capital of England, Brixham was on the other end of the bay so there was always good supplies. Perhaps it was a little expensive but my family didn't hold back especially when it came to quality fresh ingredients. 

My father loves fresh fish particularly steamed Cantonese-style with ginger and shredded spring onions in a soy sauce oil glaze. If there was no fish at the dinner table, he wasn’t happy.

Steamed Turbot

A family dinner featuring stir-fried crab

Fishing was a hobby for day-offs and late nights after Hoi Shan closed – eels at the harbor, fishing trips out to sea on Tuesdays. One summer, my father even co-bought a boat and it was soon used for weekly fishing trips, undertaken by my dad, brother and various relatives and friends. The largest haul ever on one outing was 35 sea bass which was promptly stored in the freezer!  We all got a little bored of eating sea bass that summer. 

In the summer, we bought fresh lobsters and crabs. Not for us was the simple steaming or boiling method. After cleaning and dissecting into pieces, the shellfish was cooked with their own roe with the triumvarate of ginger, spring onions and garlic. Tomato ketchup gave the sauce piquancy and XO liquer was used to give an aromatic finish.

Sometimes, individual fisherman will come round to sell a freshly-caught fish – still live and kicking in the bucket.  Some of the family’s favorites were sea bass, John Dory, red mullet and flat fish like Dover or lemon sole which were ideal pan-fried with a drizzle of scallions and soy sauce to finish.

I'm happy to have these seafood memories because unfortunately, I developed a shellfish allergy in my mid-40's! Luckily, my tastebuds remember...

Hakka in Torquay: A Food Memoir

I grew up in a seaside town called Torquay in Devon, a county in the south-west of England. My grandfather Lo Sam Fat had emigrated to England from Hong Kong in the 1950's and after working for other people, eventually saved enough money to open his own takeaway with business partners. This was the Rice Bowl in Exeter which was the very first Chinese takeaway in the town. My grandmother, father and his siblings relocated from Hong Kong to join him and that is how I came to be born in England. 

The Rice Bowl is now an Indian takeaway

My grandfather then opened up a takeaway in Newton Abbot called Hoi Shan and a second branch of Hoi Shan was opened up in Torquay for my parents to manage. Hoi Shan translates to "Sea Mountain" which seems very poetic. However, l think all my  grandfather did was name the takeaway after the local dim sum joint they frequented back in Hong Kong!

Growing up in a Hakka family in England, I ate western food while out and about but mostly Chinese food at home, cooked by our mother who is an excellent cook! While I loved ham sandwiches, yogurts and roast lamb, we always ate Chinese food for the 5pm family dinner. The Hoi Shan takeaway had to open by 5.30pm so the home meal was ready at 5pm and eaten quickly while hot. 

The food at the family dinner was very different to the food we sold at Hoi Shan. We ate Hakka and Cantonese dishes using fresh, local ingredients. Seafood such as whole fish, lobster and crab often featured - a benefit of living by the coast of south-west Devon.The dishes zinged with garlic, ginger and spring onions. However, we sold food customized for the Western palate. Not to say, it was of lesser culinary quality but the ginger and garlic were certainly pared down or even non-existent. Having said that, there are some gems from the takeaway menu that I still crave. I think often about our popular Hoi Shan curry with our home-made curry paste – a recipe I will share in a later blog post!

Grilled red mullet - a favourite 

The food I ate for breakfast and lunch was mostly English. In the UK, 1980’s food was particularly bland with few foreign influences. Mum will sometimes take us out for a Roast Beef lunch at The Edwardian restaurant or at pub carvery. As a treat, sometimes we would have lunch at Hoopers – lasagna was a favorite. Being young and influenced by school classmates, I thought it was more sophisticated to be eating Western food. Elegance was eating off a flat plate with a knife and fork. Ironic now to look back and realize it was exactly the opposite. It was the food at home that was sophisticated with bold, beautiful flavors – and it is this cooking which I will try to share with you all in upcoming posts. 

Sik fan!