When you have
access to the freshest ingredient, the
next step you take is to make
sure you give it the respect it
deserves. In Guangzhou, the cuisine is
founded on the availability of produce
that is either swimming, wriggling or
walking around hours before they
settle on the dining
table.
After our visit to
the Huangsha seafood wholesale market,
we go back to the kitchens of
the Four Points Sheraton where
executive chef Ben Huang gives me
a few lessons.
We had
bought a kilo of banded flower
prawns, brought home in a plastic
bag pumped full of oxygen so
the crustaceans retain their
bounce.
These, the chef says,
are to be steamed until the
prawns are just the right side
of translucent, cooked only enough to
retain the texture and sweetness. It
will be served at table with
just a little saucer of the
best soy sauce.
It is
the best finger food I have
ever tasted. The shells came off
smoothly, and the heads needed a
little tug to remove them, all
evidence of the precise timing that
went into the cooking. Each morsel
was sweet and succulent and the
platter disappeared in the few minutes
of silence that was homage to
the prawns, and the chef.
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