Oh-Bun Sesame! Black sesame rolls with condensed milk

Black sesame and condensed milk buns - beautiful textures and tastes

As January starts to wind down, my demon calories slowly wind up...and I've come up with quite the theory why it can't be helped for my British/Chinese background. Think back to early December, and we have a whole month of parties, canapés, alcohol and decadent food to consume... All with a certain "grace" period and less judgement that you will put on a few pounds. 25th December comes and you've mentally and physically prepared for your Christmas Everest. From mid January, I feel the grace period returns, without proper acknowledgement, as we prepare for Chinese New Year feasting. So really, this recipe and the copious amounts of flour I've used this week in cooking should be considered more of a saviour to my own future health. In between English and Chinese traditions, I've combined two treats to create something I was very proud to test out on a few friends last Friday. It's almost a guiltless pleasure- every doughy-soft, sweet and nutty bite was unequivocally justified I didn't feel sorry for my waistline in the slightest, it tasted that good. So, sorry that I'm not sorry.

Black sesame filling is rich, sophisticated and moreish

The recipe is inspired from cinnamon rolls. However about half way in, the sugar quantities get to you and the cinnamon,sugar, butter crunch becomes too much... and that sneaky guilt kicks in that it should be finished but your stomach can't take any more. Black sesame is something I love and definitely overcomes this anguish. It has a long lasting rich and toasty nuttiness, that's not too sweet or overpowering that really fills the mouth and whets the appetite to have another bite over and over.
There is most certainly a lot less butter and sugar here than most cinnamon rolls, but the glaze on top is a drizzle of condensed milk - something that's practically in our veins in Hong Kong. We put this in our tea, like how Vietnamese sweeten their coffee, spread it on toast for breakfast and decorate our cakes with it. It's our sweet elixir of choice for sure, and I like how everyone can individually add how sweet they want to make their bun (now with a handy squeezey bottle it comes in). Creamy, sweet and a satisfying thick texture- it's the final layer that really finished these buns.

Lashings of condensed milk? This one definitely needs a little more...yes please.

Be patient with the proofing and knead properly-it will all be worth it when you see the buns merge and bind to their neighbours to uniformly and obediently rise in the oven.

Chinese savoury pancakes and shakshuka

Pancakes with Chinese sausage, prawns and carrots...and oozy poached egg

Enough with the healthy stuff. It’s time to get back to a more carby reality . Well, it didn’t take long to break my health kick, which, I had forewarned you would be shattered (I’m still drinking the healthy tea… that totally counts). And what better way to shatter it with a weekend to the country for what can only be described as the ‘weekend of gout and gorge’. Tartiflette, slow cooked ox cheeks, dauphinoise, cheeseboards, bacon and pancakes…and it was the last bugger which got me thinking. Butter, carbs, sugar and meat. How to combine them all into one rebellious ‘up yours, health January’ recipe? Pancakes.

I’m an avid believer of brunch, even though the Chinese haven’t quite hooked on to it. Early dim sum doesn’t quite fit brunch requirements, however on scouring through Mama Lo’s old and weathered Chinese cook books I saw a savoury Chinese pancake recipe. A little dated and too afraid of some of the preserved ingredients in there, I’ve taken inspiration from a few places to create a rich, Asian pancake. The only ingredient you may not have come across is Lap Cheong. It is a pork sausage which is marinated and preserved – a near relative to chorizo. It’s sweet and salty, in the same way many of us have taken to dousing bacon in maple syrup for pancakes. Now that’s a sweet meat.

 

Little jewels of Lap Cheong and prawns

The mix of little diced sausage, spring onion, carrot and prawns makes a rich pancake that yearns for a wingman. I just picked up Ottolenghi’s great book ‘Plenty’ (I know I’m late to the game on this one) and a great shakshuka recipe stood out to me. Could it complement my jam packed uber Asian pancakes? Fantasising about this all week, it was put to the test. Sunday mornings is one of the most precious times you can ask for. Snoozy Sunday cuddles in bed, reaching out for the cold side of the pillow for another snooze and then plod down to the kitchen for fresh juice and a relaxing recipe to gear you up for the day. Sorted.

Fat man, poor man hot and sour soup

Hot and Sour soup

January sees a flurry of new diet fads, resolutions and fitness promises. We all get overwhelmingly inspired to try that new juice diet till we pass out (or break by eating a whole block of cheese), torment ourselves by buying a clothes size too small in the sales as ‘thinspiration’ and sign up to the platinum-deluxe-premium-ICantAffordThis package you’ll kid yourself over for a few months. It’s expected that we all put a few pounds on over the holidays, but we forget that our wallets suffer too – and that everyone is doing dry January only as an excuse to be a little better to your wallet.

We’re coming round to ‘the most depressing day of the year’ apparently, and nothing beats a satisfying soup, especially a take on a classic hot and sour. My bank account rinsed and my stomach overhanging with mince pies, I wanted another healthy option (don’t worry…they won’t all be so saintly, Lolo’s Kitchen is currently harbouring a fair amount of cheese, potatoes and bacon that needs to be eaten). My fat man, poor man soup started off as an ode to a friend who has turned vegetarian for January. I love vegetarian food, and I’m lucky enough to live in a place where there are so many options available. However, I do get a slight panic of what to do if I have a vegetarian friend coming round to dinner. It’s not all about filling them with tofu, Chinese/Asian cuisine I think has a lot more to offer than that.

Chinese normally drink soup before a full meal to actually whet our appetite – anything to make us eat more and exploit our fast metabolisms sounds good to me. However, this soup is great as a light lunch as you can almost drink it by the gallons and not feel guilty. I recommend making your own stock, but it’s easier to skip this part and just use ready-made if you don’t have the time. 

Sockeye salmon poached in Chinese tea and glass noodles with cucumber chilli dressing

Salmon poached in Lapsang Souchong tea with glass noodles and cucumber chilli dressing

Happy New Year everyone! Sorry for the mouthful of a post title, I couldn’t really find a way to sex it up (well, shorten it at least). Maybe it’s my two week Christmas break and the fact that I have gravy and meat practically running in my veins that has led to an inept ability to stir up any sort of a witty sentence? Anyway, I’ve been itching to get back to Lolo’s Little Kitchen as I’ve been up in Leeds with my family. Mama and Papa Lo arrived from the motherland, and we’ve had a gout inducing couple of weeks eating. It doesn’t help when your brother has a metabolism of a racehorse and your parents want to eat ‘traditional’ Western food like fish and chips, scotch eggs and full English breakfasts every day. That blueberry and pomegranate muesli will have to wait.

In a rather depressing come down of fatty Christmas food and sweets last week I was determined to try a few tricks for a bit of a cleanse to my system. In traditional Chinese medicine, there isn’t anything that you can take to ‘detox’, as it is too much of a shock to your body, but a more gentle and long standing ‘cleanse’ is recommended. An easy place to start would be to swap my copious cups of Yorkshire teas with Chinese tea. Oolong tea is great for January, as it is full of antioxidants to help fight high blood pressure, diabetes and liver damage. But more exciting than that, it promotes weight loss by increasing your metabolism if you drink it regularly. 

Sockeye Alaskan salmon complemented by a smoky Chinese tea

In this recipe, all the ingredients have great health benefits - salmon for its Omega-3 and vermicelli/glass noodles are made from the starch of mung beans and are a healthier, lighter and gluten free alternative to wheat noodles. Eating chilli helps lower cholesterol, improve circulation and lowers blood sugar levels, and gives the vermicelli a punchy ‘POW’ in flavour with the ginger and cucumber. I’ve tried this recipe with Oolong, and it works with green tea also, however recently good old Heston did a Lapsang Souchong infused smoked salmon over the holidays for Waitrose. It has a very distinctive smoky strong flavour (as well as many benefits of black tea) as pine wood is used to smoke the leaves, and so has just enough of a festive aroma to remind you of Xmas. I thought it was almost too smoky for an already smoked salmon, but poaching a salmon fillet in tea works wonderfully. This recipe barely needs any real cooking, it’s really simple (despite the overworked title description).

Lion's head meatball sub

ROAR, it's a lion's head meatball sub with chilli jam

I’m actually amazed by the English and their sense of pride when it comes to the sandwich. Don’t get me wrong, we’ve all tuned in and loved watching a Great British bake-off where they make the best picnic sandwich bread and filling, but I’m talking about the simplicity of a bread-butter-meat-bread sort of sandwich. Lined up in the aisles, they just appear slightly sorry looking and unfulfilling. I need more substance to keep me going than a sandwich and a packet of crisps.  It just doesn’t do it for me. I suppose I never really grew up with the humble sandwich in my lunchbox. I did however come across a brilliant blog called ‘300 sandwiches’ – where this girl’s boyfriend loves sandwiches so much he said she was ‘300 sandwiches away from an engagement ring’. And so started a wonderful, beautifully written blog of creative recipes and stories. I highly recommend it.

Soft sub roll, fresh chinese leaf and chilli jam: the perfect accompaniments

Yuzu sweet to me, honey-pie

Yuzu and honey meringue pie

So, this week was my first (hopefully of many) supper club hosted in the little lounge located adjacent to the little kitchen. Although I’ll start supper clubs up more regularly come 2014, this was a bit of a run through with some hungry guinea pigs friends. And thank goodness there was a run through. My oven, for some incomprehensible reason, always manages to cunningly detect pressure of a dinner party ahead, and this time it blew its fuse three times on me during the evening. 

Other than that hiccup, the evening seemed to pass by well. However, the morning of the supper club, I did have the most absurd ‘first world problem’ that sent me into a bit of a fluster in Waitrose. I was picking up some groceries – one of which was a tin of lychees to make the cocktails (the mere mention of Waitrose, fluster, lychees and cocktails is already screaming of a first world problem, I admit). I went back and forth in different sections trying to locate the damn thing. Was it in world cuisine section, Oriental or canned fruit and vegetables aisle – who knew? Doing a trolley slalom between the grannies aimlessly loitering over what tea and biscuit selection to choose from, I soon gave up, looking miserably at a can of mandarin slices I thought could substitute. I couldn’t get too upset over the lychees, but it had left me in a somewhat deflated state. Until I saw the ‘cooks essential ingredients’ section, where a little bottle of yuzu juice sat waiting for me. What sort of supermarket sells yuzu as an ‘essential ingredient’, but fails to offer lychees? The latter almost seems like a pauper of fruits compared to yuzu, but there was no time to waste, it was time to get people drunk on special cocktails.

The silver lining of this fluster was that I now know where to get yuzu. It’s a beautiful citrus fruit originating from China, however widely used in Japanese cuisine. The taste is a sharp zing like you get in grapefruit, but with an ending warm overtone of mandarin and oranges. It’s one of those tastes which you’ve never had before, yet there's a familiarity about it that leaves you intrigued. If you see this, or ponzu sauce/dressing, in a Japanese dish – try it out. It’s great for salad dressings, however I was left with half a bottle after the evening and felt inspired to put my own spin on things.

Coco-nuts for those buns

 

 

Coconut "cocktail" bun

The French. They are invincible in the pastry realm, no one can contend – no other country, let alone a lowly blogger such as myself. As much as I love this classic recipe, it’s an honest, humble and simple bun. My disclaimer for this is that it isn’t French pastry couture, but it is, for me, a true representative of Hong Kong bakeries. The iced bun’s Chinese cousin let’s call it. The cocktail bun is synonymous with the 1950’s, when it was first created as a ‘cocktail’ mixture out of day old, ground up buns with coconut and sugar in order to not waste food which was still perfectly edible.

The sweet and pillowy white bread base is filled with a butter and coconut soft centre – even if you aren’t a coconut enthusiast, it’s only a very delicate and subtle taste and definitely worth a try. Bakeries in Hong Kong are filled with a lot of sweet breads and pastries like this – it’s a far cry from the ones we’re used to in London.

Normally, I’m not a fan of Chinatown, with the exception of the groceries stores and two restaurants off the main strip. However, if I’m near, it’s almost obligatory to stock up on a cocktail bun from ‘Kowloon’ bakery and café. Bonus if you catch the buns as they come out the oven.

I first made this as a challenge to myself, hungover as hell one Sunday afternoon. Determined not to waste the day, I wanted to do something productive (where I could *ahem* reap the rewards afterwards). From adapting a few recipes here and there, this is what came of it. Make sure to block out a whole chunk of time for this – as although it’s not difficult, you do need to keep an eye on it.