If my PoPo (Grandma on my mum's side) was anything to go by then, yes absolutely! In general though, the biggest compliment a Chinese person can seemingly give to a cake/pudding/dessert is that ‘It’s not too sweet’. Savoury foods and dishes tend to be more popular although western style desserts are becoming much more trendy. A lot of traditional Chinese sweets tend to mix sweet and savoury elements. Like the mooncakes that are eaten during the upcoming Mid-Autumn festival. They have sweet pastry and sweet lotus paste but a whole salted egg yolk in the middle. My grandmother on my Dad's side used to eat preserved citrus peels as snacks that were both sweet and very salty. As children we were sometimes given Haw sweets, thick discs of candied haws that were also a weird blend of sweet, tart and salty. They are very much acquired tastes that we had not acquired growing up in Ireland!
Our family meals in Ireland would typically end with some fresh fruit. I've written before about how Dad would slice apples or oranges or, in times of extreme excitement, mangoes, into wedges and we would each get a couple of pieces to end our meal with. This is still standard for many Chinese families. You still see it in many of the Chinese restaurants frequented by the Chinese community here in the UK. At the end of the meal the rice bowls and communal plates are cleared away and a plate of fresh fruit, often simple wedges of orange or melon is brought out automatically. The world of fruit has diversified massively in recent years. You can now buy mangoes, lychees and pomelos readily in supermarkets. When I was growing up, there were the standard apples, oranges and bananas and that was about it unless you wanted tinned fruit cocktail. Getting some exotic fruit was exciting in the 80’s and 90’s. The versions we get here in the UK have travelled so far and are sometimes a bit dried and shrivelled and past their best, they cannot compare to the fresh stuff bought from the fruit stalls and markets in Asia. When I eat fruit in Hong Kong, I understand why desserts are not as popular.
We used to go to Hong Kong as a family once every two years. The cost of flights for a family of five back then were sky high and my parents saved hard to be able to take us all. We would go for three to four weeks (basically the whole summer) with Dad often joining us for just part of the trip because he was working. We loved spending time with our aunts, uncles and cousins. We also loved the food. The things once tasted were missed until the next visit. Steaming bowls of freshly made noodles with wontons, spicy fish cakes on sticks, steaming hot sesame and peanut sheet noodles, going for dim-sum and eating so many dumplings you might pop. Family favourite dimsum were:
-Har-gao, delicate translucent dumplings filled with prawns
-Siu-mai, which are now pretty commonplace in restaurants and takeaways, are steamed pork and prawn dumplings in a thin yellow egg wrapper
-Char siu bao, also now incredibly popular and widely available, are fluffy steamed buns filled with roasted pork
-Chicken feet in black bean and chilli sauce
Mango Pudding
Desserts didn’t feature highly during our trips to Hong Kong, with two notable exceptions. Mango pudding and Dan tat (which we named our business after) are often served as part of the Dim Sum menu. I still love making and eating both of these things. Mango pudding is often set with agar agar rather than gelatine making it veggie friendly and we loved it as children. We would be allowed to share one or sometimes even have one to ourselves. It was often set in a fluted mould and then turned out onto a plate and drizzled with condensed milk. It was wobbly, sweet and aromatic and delightfully cooling in the summer heat. Dan tat (or Darn tarts as we named them in our hybridised English-Cantonese as children) are incredibly popular in Hong Kong. People queue at the bakeries on street corners to wait for the freshest batch to come out of the ovens and they are sometimes served as part of a dim sum meal. DanTat are flaky egg custard tarts, similar in some ways to the Portuguese Pastel de Nata. The pastry is buttery, flaky and almost savoury and the filling is a delicate sweet egg custard, much lighter and less creamy than the custard tarts here in the UK. We would always burn our mouths in the impatience of waiting for them to cool. The other dessert offering in restaurants in Hong Kong was a sweet soup, this was sometimes served hot and sometimes cold and consisted of a watery sweet liquid in a bowl with red beans and/or tapioca/sago pearls in it. My parents loved them but I’ve never really been a fan. I’d much rather have the fruit!
DanTat
My Dad and I love Lo Mai Chi. These are made of glutinous rice flour and are similar in texture to the Japanese Mochi. Chewy and fragrant, filled with crushed peanuts, brown sugar and shredded coconut. My mom loves a red bean pudding cake called Boot Jai Go. This is a weird one even for me. It is also made from rice flour and is made up of a thick brown sugar laden batter studded with red beans which is then steamed in earthenware bowls to give a rounded shape and served on sticks. It’s got a very firm jelly-like texture with a characteristic dip in the middle.
Boot-Jai-Go
In Ireland there are very few, if any dim sum restaurants outside of Dublin. We’re lucky that here in the UK, the China towns in Liverpool, Manchester and London have many good ones. We love Mei Mei in Liverpool for our dim sum fix (9-13 Berry St, Liverpool, L1 9DF, Tel: 0151 707 2888). You know it’s good because it’s always full of Chinese customers and there is always a long queue at the weekends. Customers don’t mind waiting because it is good! My parent’s love and affection for the foods of their youth and childhoods is infectious and we've taken to spreading that love to our friends by taking them to experience the dim sum fun. I sell it as tapas but Chinese food!
If you want to hear someone else wax lyrical about eating out in Hong Kong, check out Eat the Menu podcast by Ed Gamble and James Acaster, particularly their episode featuring Evelyn Mok, it is such fun! Anyone else have any local/regional desserts that they love?
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