Bringing dinner home

I’ve never been squeamish about food. One of my favorite dishes at dim sum is steamed chicken feet. I relish the soft, rich flavors of braised cow’s tongue. I grew up appreciating the textures and pungent aromas of various animal organs and innards.

There is a Cantonese saying: 背脊向天，都可以食. “Any animal whose back faces the sun can be eaten.”

It was, and continues to be, a motto I live by.

(EXCEPT I’ve recently decided not to eat Shark’s Fin – a Chinese delicacy that can sell for 100s of dollars a bowl – because of the cruel and inhumane ways in which the fin is acquired, not to mention the fact that sharks are endangered and that the Shark Fin industry is a huge criminal operation in Hong Kong…but that’s an issue for an upcoming post…)

The point is, I can’t even recall the numerous times I’ve watched my Mom hack up a soya sauce chicken at home for dinner.

It’s probably one of my favorite things to eat, ever. So I decided my first home-cooked meal to celebrate my new adventures in Hong Kong would be a classic Cantonese chicken dinner.

We’ve never bought a chicken live. In Canada, the chickens come plucked, beheaded and conveniently frozen or refrigerated in a clean, polished supermarket aisle.

Bravely, I marched over to the local market in my Kowloon neighborhood, anticipating I would have a live chicken slaughtered for dinner.

Did it happen? No. EPIC FAIL.

One walk down the “chicken aisle” in the market, and the sight of live chickens cooped up in cages -feathers, heads still attached and clucking away made me shudder. As I walked down the aisle, I noticed most of the stalls were dark and blue and white tape lined the walls indicating the area had been shut down by the Hong Kong department of health.

I was surprised by how quickly I was deterred. I knew there were many other places I could get chicken. So I retreated to the nearby supermarket. Maybe another day…

I bought a chilled chicken, a small one, and it cost $27 HKD, about $4 USD.

I decided to salt and pepper a chicken overnight and prepare a side dish of ginger and scallions to go along with it. Classic Cantonese fare.

At home, I took the chicken out of the bag to prepare it, grasping its thighs, one hand on each side of the body, sorta like holding a baby out in front of you….  and then OUTTTTTTT popped the neck over the sink – head and all. I saw the chicken’s eyes: closed, shut, like it was sleeping, or pretending to sleep? And its beak: small, hard, pale white, as it bobbed up and down before me.

And then, I, the one who eats “any animal whose back faces the sun” squealed and gasped and grimaced and oh so clumsily found a plate to plop that chicken down. I backed away.

The head would have to come off. But how to work up the courage to do it?

It took several minutes but I pulled myself together and then I took a big butcher knife, placed a white paper towel to cover the head of the chicken, and raised my blade up in the air.

BANG!

Down the blade came, making an indent in the neck. But the head did not come loose.

Again! BANG!

BANG! BANG! BANG!

I didn’t cut off the chicken’s head. I hacked it off.

That night, we enjoyed our chicken dinner, along with brown rice and stir fried broccoli and chinese mushrooms. Tomorrow, some thoughts on Hong Kong etiquette and signage.

Chopping the green onion and ginger for the garnish…

Salt and pepper the chicken raw in a plastic ziploc bag overnight.

The next day, steam for half an hour to an hour depending on the size of the bird. I steamed this one for about 30 minutes. (Notice the hacked off head.)

Let it cool in the open air and then hack it up, and serve with brown rice and stir fried veggies. YUM!

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