Monday, July 25, 2005
Hong Kong vs UK BBQ
The difference between barbecues in Hong Kong and the UK are described.
In Hong Kong, barbecues are often hired out and the food bought at the same place - so no need to prepare food in advance. The brazier is a communal one, with each guest taking a long fork and spearing pieces of meat, sausages and fish and cooking the food themselves. I suppose it is easier that way since there is very little space in Hong Kong's high rises and barbecues would be a fire hazard in the appartments. Plus the kitchens would be too small for more than a single person to cook in, so it is the novelty of being able to cook your own food which makes the steam boat and grill houses so popular in Hong Kong.
Compare with the UK, usually a barbecue grill is bought and the food prepared by a host - who also cooks the food for people. There is more space - generally with a garden - though the weather is can be a little unpredictable sometimes. The host does all the work, and the guests do not generally partake in the cooking process - though they will often bring food to be cooked that the party.
In Hong Kong, barbecues are often hired out and the food bought at the same place - so no need to prepare food in advance. The brazier is a communal one, with each guest taking a long fork and spearing pieces of meat, sausages and fish and cooking the food themselves. I suppose it is easier that way since there is very little space in Hong Kong's high rises and barbecues would be a fire hazard in the appartments. Plus the kitchens would be too small for more than a single person to cook in, so it is the novelty of being able to cook your own food which makes the steam boat and grill houses so popular in Hong Kong.
Compare with the UK, usually a barbecue grill is bought and the food prepared by a host - who also cooks the food for people. There is more space - generally with a garden - though the weather is can be a little unpredictable sometimes. The host does all the work, and the guests do not generally partake in the cooking process - though they will often bring food to be cooked that the party.
Saturday, July 23, 2005
Planning a Party Menu
Ok, we are finally holding a BBQ today and after much deliberation about the food to prepare and taking into account that we have one vegetarian, one non beef eater and one onion hater - a menu had to be devise. Funny enough the vegetarian and non beef eater (me) were easy enough to cater for. I made some some mediterranean vegetable parcels with pesto sauce, garlic mushroom kebabs, garlic bread and potato poppettes. All pretty straight forward stuff. For non beef meat - that was simply marinading some chicken in soy sauce, sugar, chili, garlic and five spice and skewering them into kebabs. Then there were nasi goreng spicy chicken wings. There were also some minted lamb kebabs from Tesco, on the recommendation of Gary (Tim's friend) who raved on about how good they are - but described by Tim as toothpaste flavoured lamb :S. The problem was the non onion eater - who refused to eat anything with a hint of onion and we struggled to find burgers without onion in - but we did - though we almost had to make some for scratch and we also found some sausages without onion and beef casing. We had plenty of food and the guests brought round more too. For desert, I made apple crumble and strawberry scones with fresh cream :D
