AND YOU COULD ADD BACON ...

Maybe today I'll buy some salt fish. I've had a hankering for salt fish lately. I keep thinking back to that last batch I bought at 景業公司 on Stockton Street. It was very good. There are three stores right there marked with the character 業 right next to each other. They sell a similar range of merchandise. But the centre one has probably the best selection of fermented seafood products. It's worth remembering.

I've seen pressed duck at the one right on the corner. Also worthwhile.


Besides the usual fresh fruit and vegetable markets, that stretch of Stockton Street right near Broadway also has dried foods, salt fish and other sea products, fresh seafood, meat, and bakeries. Plus a take-away joint that does a booming business. There are occasionally also skeevy non-Chinese from the bozo-infested fleabag hotels in North Beach.
Who are mercifully outnumbered by regular folks.

There are places to sit down and enjoy a hot beverage and pastries within easy walking distance, and Sam's Burgers is only a block away. It's two blocks away from City Lights Bookstore, if you want to ditch your non-food-obsessed friends while you shop.

NEAR STANLEY

Pork patty with salt fish (鹹魚蒸肉餅 'haam yü jing yiuk beng'), steamed eggs (蒸水蛋 'jing sui daan'), and Chinese broccoli with oyster sauce (蠔油芥蘭 'ho yau gai laan') are three almost iconic Hong Kong dishes which probably everyone remembers. And they are easy to make.

For the pork patty, just moosh some ground pork flattish, put a few slices of rehydrated salt fish on top, add some slivered ginger, and steam for about ten minutes over boiling water. The steamed eggs are a light custard of up to half a cup warm water per egg, something savoury added (for instance rehydrated dried oysters or chopped bacon, or maybe shrimp), the mixture poured into a shallow bowl or pyrex pie plate, and put into the steamer for roughly ten minutes.

And Chinese broccoli first blanched then sauced with a little stock or sherry and oyster sauce while stir-frying should be almost instinctive.


Why is Chinese Broccoli called that? It's not broccoli, but a closer relative of kale. So close, in fact, that one expects health nuts to put it in the blender with spirulina and drink it for breakfast, like a Berkeley wheat germ freak.



By the way: There are vegetarian versions of oyster sauce. They're good with kale.



If you go to Stanley, visit the Tin Hau Temple (赤柱天后廟 chek chyu tin hau miu').



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