CAREFUL, LID HOT!

You can only get the rice clay-pots if you read Chinese. Because they are not on the English language menu. Not because they don't like you, but because they don't really know how to translate them, and there are too many, most of which English-only people would not order anyhow.

Dissected frog ontop of rice in claypot.
Spare ribs and dried fish rice claypot.
Preserved meat flavour rice claypot.
Press vegetable and fatty chunks ...
Etcetera, etcetera


Of course, explaining to the paler folks what the entire concept of claypot rice (煲仔飯 'pou chai faan') is about is also a stumbling block, especially as in it's great variety it is a Hong Kong and Kongchow (岡州) thing, badly and poorly represented elsewhere.

[Kongchow (岡州): old name for the four county area in the Pearl River Delta, eventually renamed sanwui (新會) centuries ago, from which by division the four present counties ('sanwui' 新會、 'hoi ping' 開平 、'toi san' 台山、 'en ping' 恩平) came. 新會孕育了四個邑 ('san wui yan-yuk le sei go yap'); "the new association spawned four crickets".]


煲仔飯

Rice cooked in a small clay casserole (砂煲 'saa pou') so that it will have a crackly browned, sometimes even burnt, layer where the rice stuck to the clay. In the finishing stage fragrant and often somewhat salty ingredients are layered on top to perfume the rice and cook along, frequently including dried stuff, preserved meats (fragrance!) and salt-pickled vegetables. When the lid is lifted, a sweetened soy sauce is drizzled around the hot edges for a further burst of steam, which also loosens the crackly part, which is one of the most appreciated parts of the dish. It is comforting, tasty, filling, and altogether echoes home town good things. It is also, when ordered for a meal, sheer lazy indulgence. Lunch or dinner, one or more.
You'll have to wait, there is no "instant".
Twenty minutes or so.

Scant vegetables. Chiefly animal protein.

One can tell from what the customers have in front of them what kind of people they are. That table with the sauteed vegetables and meats are three gentlemen having lunch together, but they need to be back at work soon. Those two claypots and a serving dish over there? Those old ladies are having a long relaxed meal. The table with the two young men, one plate of fried rice one plate of fried noodles, represents American born college students, sadly not able to read what's on the wall. This nearby table with nothing except a teapot for a man, a woman, and an adolescent girl with braces? Well, they are happy and relaxed, and there is no evidence that they already ate. So they must be waiting for fabulous claypots.

Their claypots came at the same time as mine did. I had plum vegetable meat patty claypot rice (梅菜肉餅煲仔飯 'mui choi yiuk beng pou chai faan'). I do not know exactly what they ordered, but for a while the restaurant was silent and happy.


It's a small place, and some of the staff only speak Toisanese, not Cantonese. Although one of them also understands Mandarin.
Oh, and enough English for "Sweet 'n Sour Pork".

It was an extremely enjoyable lunch.



Next time, laap mei pou chai faan.

臘味煲仔飯。




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