Wednesday October 3, 2007
True flavours of Foochow cuisine
By K.W. MAK
Photos by BRIAN MOH
Foo Chow restaurants are usually rated by the quality of the fishballs served and Taste of Foochow Restaurant wins hands down in this department. For more than 20 years, the fishballs from this restaurant has been rated as one of the best.
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Tasty creations: Every dish is distinctive with the trademark fishballs getting the top billing. |
The true hallmark of the restaurant is owner Wong Tai Hoh’s recipes.
No visit to the shop is complete without an order of fishballs, be they the plain variety or the Saito Fishball with minced meat stuffing. Both fishballs are equally springy in texture.
The other signature dish is of course the Red Wine Chicken Noodles, which uses mee sua to capture and absorb the essence of the rice wine to ensure each noodle strand is infused with the wine’s flavour.
Customers can also request for the bottle of home made rice wine and add as many spoonfuls of wine to further enhance the wine flavour.
Another specialty of the restaurant is the Yanpi Wanton and Yan Dumpling. Do not be deceived by the plain look of the dumplings, as the magic ingredient is not the filling (minced pork) but the Yanpi skins used to wrap the filling.
Yanpi is a soft smooth skin that is made from lean pork, tapioca flour and glutinous rice pounded to a dry paste and rolled into thin papery slices.
The restaurant’s traditional snack, Oyster Pancakes, sells like hot cakes and is available only on weekends.
A savoury filling of minced pork, mushrooms, chives, seaweed and prawns is encased in batter made of ground rice and yellow beans.
Deep-fried to a golden-brown pancake, the dish requires a certain amount of culinary dexterity to make because the two halves of the batter require just the right temperature and consistency to ensure that they stick together.
“This dish ended up on the menu by mistake,” recalled Tai Hoh, 62. “I was making some for the family but because I had no place to fry the dish except at the restaurant, people were curious and wanted to try it.”
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Oyster Pancakes: The restaurant's popular snack available only on weekends. |
“The ingredients changed over time, and although oysters were used in the filling originally, it was scarce and hard to come by, so we changed the filling as we went along,” said Tai Hoh.
Ding Bian Hu is a porridge dish that typically accompanies the Oyster Pancake snacks, but this dish is available only to those who make advanced orders. A savoury broth made of rice paste with seafood soup stock; the dish is not commonly available because of the tedious process in making each bowl.
“It takes 15 to 20 minutes to make each bowl,” said William Wong, Tai Hoh’s son who helps with the running of the shop.
“You have to heat up the wok, put the ingredients like meat and veggies into the broth and pour the stock in slowly from the sides, wait for the stock to be absorbed and repeat the process three to four times.”
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