bc magazine

‘Twas The Week Before Christmas…

https://bcmagazine.smugmug.com/Bcene-photos/2016/20161125-great-christmas/i-G5sCsjZ

It’s the week before Christmas and you’ve got nothing ready or planned… While the festive season for many in Hong Kong has zero religious significance it is a time for gifts and feasting. And there is no better gift that either cooking someone a good meal or gifting them a tasty bite. Thankfully our local supermarkets are all up to speed and there to make your life easy and Christmas a tasty treat.

bc‘s ‘no cooking needed’ Christmas feast starts with a trip to Great in the basement of Pacific Place with a side stop at Marks & Spencer is all you need – in fact a trip to Great’s website probably suffices as whether you want roast turkey, beef, lamb or pork all can be ordered online and delivered or collected. They also offer all the trimmings: roast potatoes, carrots, parsnips, Brussel sprouts, cranberry sauce, gravy, stuffing…. The roasts can be ordered uncooked or cooked and in different sizes depending on your needs.

White truffle and caviar at Great’s luxury food counter

Starter
Smoked salmon: IKEA offers packs of frozen smoked salmon (Lax Kallrökt) $69 for 200g.

Main
Roast Turkey, roast potatoes, parsnips, red cabbage, Brussels sprouts, stuffing, gravy, cranberry sauce.
Roast Turkey: Great: cooked US roast turkey $120-220/kg (4-6kg). Buy at the cooked food counter including Christmas Day. They also have roast beef, roast lamb and baked gammon if you prefer something other than turkey.
Roast potatoes: Great: cooked
Parsnips: Great: cooked and raw
Brussels sprouts: Great: cooked and raw
Red cabbage: sadly we couldn’t find any cooked this year
Turkey gravy/ bread sauce: Marks & Spencer: $49/400g
Cranberry sauce: Marks & Spencer: $49/400g
Stuffing: Marks & Spencer: sage and onion/ cranberry & orange stuffing
Bacon wrapped sausages: still unable to find this staple side dish in a cooked version.

Dessert
Christmas Pudding with Brandy Butter
Christmas pudding: Great: Cole’s Classic Christmas Pudding ($159/454g),
Brandy Butter: Great: Cole’s Brandy Butter $15.5/42g
Panettone: Great: An Italian Christmas favourite that can be enhanced wonderfully with a can of classic Bird’s custard mixed with a dash of brandy/ rum.

Cheese
Great’s cheese room is one of the wonders of Hong Kong, the choice is varied, constantly changing, delicious and if you’re used to US and European cheese prices, expensive – but what is Christmas without cheese?
English Stilton: Great: $46/100g

Christmas Cake + Mince Pies
A good tasty Christmas cake is a Christmas necessity, especially one with marzipan and Royal icing.
Christmas Cake: Great and M&S have several choices at different prices from $89 (Gluten free – M&S) upwards. Most are sadly more like fruit cakes than Christmas cake which is a shame as the two are subtly different in taste.
Mince Pies: Again Great and M&S have several choices, but after sampling several none are that special that we recommend one over another.

Drinks
Mulled Wine: Great: Shropshire Spice Traditional Mulled Wine Mix: $33.9/8g

Store Details + Contacts:
Great Basement Pacific Place, Admiralty Tel: 2918 9986 www.greatfoodhall.com
IKEA Causeway Bay, Shatin, Kowloon Bay www.ikea.com.hk
Marks & Spencer various stores www.marksandspencer.com

Edit: 21 Dec – Added Christmas cake photo and updated text

Learn Traditional French Cooking

Two years ago Disciples Escoffier, the French culinary association launched a partnership with Towngas Cooking Centre to offer a course in traditional French cooking the Disciples Escoffier Diploma in Culinary Arts. Established in France in 1954, and based on a 5,000 menu cookbook published in 1903, the Disciples Escoffier Diploma is an intense and expensive culinary programme, taught locally by chef Vincent Leroux and split into the 3 levels. Each level features 180 hours of study and cooking over three months.

The Basic level ($60,000) teaches the core French cooking techniques, including knifing skills, ingredients and sauce matching, handling of unusual ingredients, as well as dish plating and creativity training. Upon completion of the course and passing the exam you can move onto the Intermediate ($70,000) and Upper ($80,000) levels.

The ability and quality of those able to complete the full course is such that the CEO of the Institut Culiniaire Disciples Escoffier Robert Fontana commented that if he rang a Michelin starred restaurant in France and asked them if they’d employ a course graduate – the restaurant would offer them a trial sight unseen purely based on the person having graduated the course. Application for the February 2017 basic course is now open, contact 2576 1535 for more information.

J.CO Donuts to Open in Wanchai

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Asian donut shop J.CO arrives in Hong Kong. The shop will open, subject to government licences, sometime this week at 55 Hennessy Road in Wanchai. J.Co has hundreds of outlets across Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore and Malaysia offering donuts, coffee and frozen yoghurt.

Locally the store will offer 24 different flavoured donuts including 4 Hong Kong themed ones in two different styles ring and filled. According to Managing Director Frankie Lin the local specials are ring donuts Alcapone, Jacky Chunk and filled shells Tiramisu, Coco Loco and Why Nut.

The $15 donuts are light and not too sweet, the dough is a lot less dense and filling than traditional European styled donuts – which given their success across Asia obviously goes down well with Asian palates. For me, based on the three we tried, they’re a little unsubstantial and bland, but there’s still 21 to taste.

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There are also boxes of mini donuts called J.Pops ($98) which look perfect for gifting or sharing with friends. They only make a limited number of boxes each day, so call ahead and order if must have a box.

The J.Club breakfast menu, available until 11am, offers 5 different breakfast sandwiches ($22) made using the donut dough. We didn’t get to taste these, but will be back to try them out. None of the drinks were available so we can’t comment on the quality of the Indonesian coffee.

The shop is bigger than you’d expect and offers numerous seats – whether J.Co will be comfortable with long term seat hogs as happens in many coffee shops remains to be seen.

J.Co has one big problem though, it makes extensive use of that disgusting artificial plastic tasting fluffy white stuff that masquerades as ‘cream’ in Hong Kong. It’s piled on top of drinks, mixed into some of the donut fillings which ruins both. Steer clear of this ‘cream’ and you’ll enjoy J.Co a lot more!

J.Co: 55 Hennessy Road, Wanchai
Opening hours: 7:30am-9pm www.jcodonuts.com.hk

https://bcmagazine.smugmug.com/Bcene-photos/2016/Donuts-JCO-8-December-2016/i-k3g9dMp/A

Edited: 13 December to correct a factual error

Luxe Culinary Launch

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Nelson Siu publisher of local wine magazine Wine Luxe has launched a new catering service Luxe Culinary offering bespoke and celebrity chef catering. Currently there are three celebrity chefs on board celebrity chefs: Charmaine Cheung, Christian Yang and Jacky Yu and they have created a range of menus and canapés (priced upwards from $300 per 12 pieces).

As well food they offer advice on food and wine parings, cutlery and everything you need when you’d rather have someone else do the heavy lifting at your next party/ corporate event.

5th Annual Nebraska Beef Macau BBQ @ Studio City – 14 November, 2016

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The 5th Annual American BBQ, Nebraska in Macau took place at Studio City on the 14 November, 2016. Over 300 people including US Consul General Kurt Tong and Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts enjoyed Nebraska and US beef, pork and lamb cooked and prepared in over 20 different ways.

Sponsored by the Nebraska Beef Council and organised by US Meat Export Federation and the Nebraska and US Agricultural Trade Offices in HK with assistance from Angliss. The annual event looks to raise awareness of the quality and taste of American meat and agricultural produce.
Click here or on any photo to see all the images.

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Crft Pit Tasting Brunch @ Ap Lei Chau

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With an expanded retail menu American BBQ kitchen Crft Pit, which opened in 2015, is now offering it’s wide range of BBQ’d meats for order online with home delivery.

Located in Ap Lei Chau the food factory, under the helm of Chef Leo Kam, also offers a Saturday tasting brunch (1-4pm) where you can sample their broad range of Southern BBQ’d and smoked meats on the terrace overlooking the South China Sea or inside watching the kitchen in action. The retail store also offers whiskey, wine, beer and soft drinks to pair with your BBQ.

Everything is served on metal take-away trays with paper wraps which matches with the working kitchen feel. bc sampled several items, sadly the tasty and popular pulled pork, which we sampled at Wine & Dine, had sold out, so well be back to have that again. What stands out across the menu is for want of a better description the cleanness of the meat. The lack of hormones, msg and additives, plus the light smoking allow the meat’s flavour to stand out. The beef is mainly from the US, while the New Zealand lamb and French spring chicken are both halal. The clean flavours are because Crft Pit is a food factory and sell their products to many restaurants across the city who then flavour them as they desire.

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The highlights are the pulled pork sliders and the sausages ($20 each), they’re superb meaty and full of flavour. The hot pastrami sandwich ($118) is pretty good, it’s hard not to compare it to the three inch thick pastrami slabs from New York, but that’s really not a fair comparison. The St Louis style spare ribs ($50) are meaty and not too heavily sauced so as to wipe out the meat. While the Texas short rib is a big slab of beef. For sides there’s Jalapeno Mac n Cheese ($30), Southorn Slaw ($25) and BBQ lentils ($30) – all tasty and good sized portions.

Everything is served to be shared, the tables are big, the atmosphere relaxed and it’s a very enjoyable way to spend a Saturday afternoon, or host your own event there. The negatives it’s, in Hong Kong terms, in the middle of nowhere, although the 671 bus stops outside the door and there’s on street parking. Don’t want to go to Ap Lei Chau, see the online menu at www.crft-pit.com and have your food cooked for you and delivered directly to your door.

With Thanksgiving coming up see Crft-Pit’s Thanksgiving Turkey Set which feeds 4-6 people for $1998.

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Belgium Week Brings Vibrant Culture to Hong Kong

An eclectic introduction to modern Belgium culture is perhaps the best description for Belgium Week which runs from the 12-19 November and showcases a diverse range of artists including Filip Jordens, Jacques Brel, Peter Lenaerts, DJ Maxime Firket, Yves Ullens de Schooten, Harold Ancart, Sophie Whettnall, Belgian comics and gastronomy.

The weeks events launch with DJ Maxime Firket at Kee Club on the 12 November. On Sunday one of the more interesting performances is Filip Jordens Homage a Brel where he performs a repetoire of the legendary singer-songwriter and actor Jacques Brel songs at Ping Pong Gintonería in Sai Ying Pun, tickets are $500.

https://youtu.be/E7zgNye6HTE

The most unusual event is sound artist Peter Lenaerts MicroSleepDub ‘residency’ at Wing in Chai Wan from the 17-27 November. MicroSleepDub is about micro sound, architecture and urbanism. It’s a durational performance built around a sound composition for dub plates where Lenaerts listens and looks for sounds that are too quiet, too vague, or too low to be heard normally. Using a microphone as a microscope, he zooms in and amplifies these neglected, underexposed and discarded sounds. MicroSleepDub is an all night performance, where listening and sleeping are both encouraged. Entry is free, but registration is required.

A series of art exhibitions at the Kee Club and Artone will showcase established and new artists from Belgium whose artworks reflect Belgium as a country; rich in culture and artistic expression. Exhibition curator Emilie Rolin Jacquemyns commented that “I wanted to showcase a wide spectrum of artists that could really give a deeper feeling of Belgium. Each time I look at their artwork, there is a part of our culture, history and way of life that I see. Light is at the core of all their work, everything is subtle, minimalist and perfect. To me, there is a calming sense that unite all these pieces, and a sense of brightness, an expression of colour, that brings Belgium closer to home for me here in Hong Kong.”

Artists exhibiting at the KEE Club include:
Harold Ancart: born in Brussels but now lives and works in New York, he will be presenting an untitled piece. Using space and repetition for his architectural installations and works on paper, his work is often minimalist with recurring motifs of parrots, the jungle and palm trees.

Ann Veronica Janssens: an artist who uses distribution of light, colour, and reflective surfaces to reveal the instability of perception of time and space. She will showcase her art piece named Magic Mirror.

Sophie Whettnall: lives and works in Brussels and focuses on light but also has an eye for its absence, as well as landscape – a frequent theme in her work, uses raw and natural elements to reflect contradictory concepts and perceptions and will be exhibiting Border Lines #26.

Poetic Views
Date: 11am-11pm, 14-18 November, 2016
Venue: KEE Club
Tickets: Free

Photographer Yves Ullens de Schooten who will be showcasing The Theatre of Lights using abstract photography as his medium to express emotion and energy brought by light and colour at ArtOne.

Matières et contrast (Materials and Contrast)
Date: 10am-9pm, 12-19 November, 2016
Venue: Artone
Tickets: Free

In addition to the KEE and ArtOne exhibitions, Michel Mouffe has a solo show at the Axel Vervoordt Gallery and Andy Wauman, a solo show at Art Statements, Wong Chuk Hang. There is also an exhibition of photography, by Jean-Pierre Ruelle – Hong Kong and Islands at the Lightstage Gallery, Sheung Wan.

For a full program of events see www.belgiumhk.com

Belgium Week
Date: 12-19 November, 2016
Venue: Various
Tickets: See individual events
More info: www.BelgiumHK.com

8th Great American BBQ, Nebraska in Macau @ Venetian – 29 October, 2019

The 8th Great American BBQ, Nebraska in Macau took place at the Venetian and saw hundreds of people enjoy Nebraska beef cooked and cooked in a wide variety of ways. Those present included the new US Consul General Hanscom Smith and former Miss Macau.

Sponsored by the Nebraska Beef Council and organised by US Meat Export Federation and US Agricultural Trade Offices in HK. The annual event looks to raise awareness of the quality and taste of American meat and agricultural produce.
Click here or on any photo to see all the images.

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