Bites that Love You Back
Bites that Love You Back, from a Creative Gastronomic City
Caviar and ice-dripped Dragon Well
For the pure enjoyment of someone cooking for us, we praise good eats.
Humans are the only species that cook with fire. Humans also preserve nature’s best for symphonic eats. Experts identified kokumi, the 6th taste from aged and fermented foods, distinct from umami the 5th, or the four basics of sweet, sour, bitter, and salty. I love them all. Ready for the journey?
A genius combines the freshly cooked and freshly preserved.
Most of us don’t partake of wild beluga or sevruga sturgeon caviar daily unless we’re from the Caspian Sea, in which case it could be a familiar luxury by the mouthful. Thanks to farming, caviar is now a superfood cherished by the most discerning chefs. It takes some creativeness to playfully and lavishly use sturgeon caviar in Cantonese cuisine. And I mean lavishly, spooning these tiny pearls of joy onto any exquisite bite you shall fancy.
One such pairing is the oh-so-crispy roasted goose skin on soft, plumpy pumpkin pancakes with Kristal caviar. The choice of goose is significant. A famous farmed crossbreed of the European Anser and Asian/Siberian wild goose is perfect. It yields delicate skin and just a thin layer of fat to render an elegant roast.
Treasures of the ocean, the sky, and the land convene and ask the human diner, “Are we desirable?”
The human nods eagerly, and a divine moment happens when the little beads burst with buttery flavor in the mouth, paper-thin roast crumbles, and an earthen comfort rounds it all up. Try these olive-colored pearls on translucent shrimp dumplings and morsels of fish too? Oh yes. The roes perk up almost anything fresh and subtle. So, on go gentle turns with the dainty mother-of-pearl scooper.
It was a brisk day in June when I first tasted this pleasantry. June weather in the northern hemisphere is not unlike that of December in the south. To top off this dim sum lunch extraordinaire, our tea sommelier presented ice-dripped Dragon Well in liqueur glasses. Harvest before April 5 (明前龍井）makes this one of the most precious of green teas. Pale green and clear, the tea is almost the color of champagne. I breathed in the gentle fragrance. The sense of nature’s crisp freshness is distinct, with a slightly sweet finish.
The ice drip process yielded only 10–20 gms of tea per unit. That’s an 18-hour session of pure ice cubes dripping through a filter. Our sommelier advised cleansing the palate with fresh fruit before tasting this coolness.
Oh, my love! The elixir of Dragon Well lives where fairies dwell.
UNESCO named Macau a Creative Gastronomic City for its culinary legacy. Healthy eating is not all about lean. Pleasure and balance carry the journey. And so, with a warm heart and a rejuvenated mind, I build on the series of enticing moments to savor. I promise deliciousness.
Stay tuned.
© Pseu Pending (Seu) 2021
