Hong Kong Cooking

I stumbled upon these pictures today, and was surprised and rather embarrassed to realize that they are from way back in April and I have not posted them yet. I suppose that April and May were rather tumultuous times, what with moving and all, but I am still aghast that in the intervening time I have not noticed and posted them. Oh well.

J's friend Gary is from Hong Kong, as are his girlfriend Karen and our friend Harry. In April, Gary and Karen invited me, J, Harry, and Jonny over for a Hong Kong-style hot pot meal, and for durian afterwards.

I have to say, I wasn't entirely sure what a hot pot meant in this context, but when I got there and saw that there were dumplings, I realized that it must be the best invention ever. Which it was. We had all this delicious food, which we put into the hot pot and cooked (to varying degrees of done-ness, depending on our patience). Everything was delicious!

It was a bit hard to get all the food out of the hot pot with chopsticks, but we did pretty well. The dumplings were the hardest, and I have to confess that I did spear just one or two.

Yum, yum, yum!

This is durian. It is a fruit that smells so bad that it is illegal in certain public places in some Asian countries. J thinks that it smells like death (or old gym socks), and others have compared it to much nastier things, but I actually wasn't too bothered by it. It certainly didn't smell good, but I didn't find it too bad, either.

Although it is illegal in some places, it is also called "King of Fruits" in others. I get the impression that people either truly love it or find it supremely distasteful.

It is pretty weird looking, especially because it kind of looks like meat, but then when you scoop it, it is a bit stringy like squash. I actually thought it tasted pretty good, which elicited exclamations of delight from Gary, who bought it, and shrieks of disgust from Harry, who had been appalled that we were even going to try it. 

The only complaint I had was that it was so sweet that it bordered on the sickeningly sweet of rotting things, especially after Harry pointed that out. But I found that if I didn't think about that perspective on it, I just enjoyed that it was sweet. J didn't like it, although he did admit that if the smell hadn't repulsed him so much, he might have been okay with the taste.

Just for added information, this is apparently what durian skin looks like. What we ate was packaged and frozen, which Gary says greatly detracts from the taste, but that's how it is available in NZ.

It was a great evening, and it was fun to spend time with that group of people all together, since we usually hung out with the two couples separately. 

At one point in the evening, I looked up from my conversation with J and Jonny to notice that the three caucasian people were deep in conversation in English, while the three from Hong Kong were enthusiastically talking in Cantonese. I was amused to realize that in addition to this accidental separation, we three caucasians happened to be discussing racism. Wanting to complete my picture of the scene, I asked the Hong Kong group what they were discussing, and Harry replied, "Noodles." Perfect! As an overly analytical and self-reflective person, I tend to be entertained by the varied and surprising manifestations of stereotypes, and this situation will doubtless remain at the top of my list for years to come.