A sneak preview of Halal mooncakes at Hong Kong Goods Shop

Thanks to Hong Kong Good Shops for holding a tasting so that we could get a sneak preview of the new Halal mooncakes.



Halal means food that Muslims are allowed to eat under Islamic Shariʻah. The criteria specify both what foods are allowed, and how the food must be prepared. The foods addressed are mostly types of meat and animal tissue.

The food must come from a supplier that uses halal practices. Specifically, the slaughter must be performed by a Muslim, who must precede the slaughter by invoking the name of Allah, most commonly by saying "Bismillah" ("In the name of Allah") and then three times "Allahu akbar" (God is the greatest). Then, the animal must be slaughtered with a sharp knife by cutting the throat, windpipe and the blood vessels in the neck (while the animal is conscious), causing the animal’s death without cutting the spinal cord. Lastly, the blood from the veins must be drained. This final step is performed because blood can harbor harmful bacteria, and also to ensure that there are no blood clots, thus keeping the entire body safe and clean to be eaten.





Halal certifcation:





In Singapore, there are more Muslims, hence more Halal products, in Hong Kong there are just as much Muslims, ranging from Indonesian maids, locals, expats, but no one has really taken the step to get Halal certification to produce Halal food because to get certified, one of the members must be a Muslim of authority.

I was excited about the mooncakes because of the sweet purple potato, in general I rarely eat mooncakes, because I have always hated sweet lotus seed paste with the savoury egg yolk.

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Mooncakes with purple potato filling:


As expected, it looked visually nice because of the colour purple contrasted by the vibrant egg yolk.



Not only was it colourful, it was delicious too and not cloyingly sweet.
However, some people felt that there were too many sweet potato fibres in it which made the texture dry and rough.
Maybe this could be improved by adding okra because it has a lubrication properties.



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Cheese sticks



I loved these cheesesticks, but the cheese could have been stronger.

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Almond Cookies



These cookies had a nice buttery taste with pieces of almond it in.
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Bread and butter
The bread was soft and deliciously paired with anchor butter!



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Cold Meze platter @ Bahce

Bahce Turkish Restaurant (Lantau Island)
After the delicious food at China Bear, I walked past this shop and saw people having some dishes that looked delicious.

So waited a while until I was a little hungrier and tried this place.

I am not familiar with Turkish food so I didn't know what the dish was that I saw earlier, but since they had a Meze platter I ordered that instead.
There was either a hot meze or a cold meze so I chose the cold one because the hot one seemed a bit heavy.

The Cold Meze basically had: Hummus, Green beans, Kisir, haydari, dolma, eggplant, served with salad.

The pita bread was for dipping the Mezes.


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Hummus:

The hummus was ok, but not sour enough so after adding the lemon it tasted so much nicer.
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Green beans:

The sauce that it was in was tomato puree, but the tomato tasted quite artificial.
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Kisir:

Basically, this was couscous and I loved it because there was lots of cumin in it.
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Haydari:

This was basically garlic and dill yoghurt dip, the dill was a bit too strong.
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Dolma:

This was rice wrapped in vegetables leaves, it was too minty and oily for my liking.
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Egg plant:

This was my favourite dip, but there was not much egg plant taste.
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Ice Cream Gallery @ Food Expo

Ice Cream Gallery (Kwun Tong)
Went to the Food Expo with Mjqueen7e because she had some complimentary tickets.

I was surprised to see that ICG was exhibiting there, so decided to try the flavours I did not try on the Kwun Tong visit.

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Jamon and Melon Sorbet:
(made with 24 months Spanish Jamon Iberico and Melon)

The sorbet tasted really nice because you could really taste the melon.
There were pieces of Iberico ham in it which had a slight hard texture because it was frozen.
It would be great if the ham and melon taste were equally prominent.
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French Foie Gras Ice Cream:

The same comment as the icecreams at Kwun Tong, you could not really taste the foie gras even though there were pieces of real foie gras in the icecream because the sweetness was more prominent.
It tasted like chocolate icecream.
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Back for more "snacks" @ Café&Meal MUJI

Café&Meal MUJI (Causeway Bay)

The portions are pathetically small but delicious.

Since I wanted to try some other items, I tried this before a tasting knowing it won't fill me up!

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Food!:

Clockwise from where the chopsticks point are: Indian chicken, Bacon and Potato Salad with Creamy Sauce and Spinach and Chicken Burger with Teriyaki Sauce.
The indian chicken was a bit boring, it was just plain roast chicken and you could not taste any spices.
The bacon and potato salad was delicious, creamy and cheesey, and the pieces of spinach were cooked but still had a crunch.
The spinach and chicken burger was ok, but a bit too sweet.
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Roasted tea pudding:

The pudding was topped with sweet runny liquid on top which is the essense of its sweetness in that pudding.
The texture of the pudding was so light that you could drink it (similar to the texture of Chinese silky tofu flower) and the taste was seriously delcious because it was like drinking tea flavoured silky tofu flower.
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Dishes that I ordered from the counter:


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Lychee and longan yoghurt @ Lab Made

Lab Made Liquid Nitrogen Ice Cream Laboratory (Tai Hang)
This time the lychee and longan flavour caught my eye.
If they had silky tofu flavour I would have tried that too which was the latest tasting flavour for the first lucky 800 people who queued at their opening in TST.

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Lychee and longan yoghurt:

I found this creative because not often lychee is mixed with longan.
Usually they are separate items in desserts such as the longan sago.
Anyway, the pairing of the two were quite nice, chunks of fragrant lychee and sweet longan in the yoghurt.
The sweetness was just right too, but I couldnt figure out why the colour was pink because both lychee and longan are white fleshed.
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Crunchy sea salt gelato with caramel sauce:

The sea salt gelato was quite plain but you could taste pieces of cheerios in it.
However the salt taste was not that apparent.
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Delicious Korean school food

School Food (Causeway Bay)
In most people's memory, school food was disgusting in the UK.
Luckily my school dinners were great and it was not even a private school, but I keep hearing stories about how miserable school dinners were.

This new Korean joint called School Food does not exactly serve school food but Korean food.

Just imagine how delightful it would be if we had this at school say once every two weeks.

As well as food, they had these really cute Athie drinks served in jugs which are great for sharing, there are four flavours.

We tried cotton strawberry and pineapple.

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Cotton Strawberry athie:

The strawberry athie was really loveable with a light fizz and strawberry taste.
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Pineapple athie:
The colour of this was blue which you can see behind the strawberry athie jug, its pineapple flavour was strong but it could have been more sour.
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Jjang-a-chi:
Jjang-a-chi is a root vegetable sourced from School Food’s vegetable farm and pickled.
It has been processed for more than seven times to give a unique flavor.
All their pickles are imported directly from School Food’s food factory in Korea.
The rice rolls that we tried contained the Jjang-a-chi and one of the rices had a non spicy version of it.
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Spam II:

These were rice rolls rolled with spam and Jjang-a-chi in the middle wrapped in seaweed and a thin layered of omelette with mozarella cheese melted on it.
The egg and spam reminded me of breakfast and I wouldn't mind having this for breakfast.
The spam was quite interesting because the texture is different from the usual spam and it is similar to soft Gammon ham.
The spam was boiled to get rid of the chemicals and oils and then soaked in marinade for flavour.
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Squid ink mari:

As well as the Spam rolls, these were my favourite, it had chunks of squid in it.
They have used the body part of the squid so that is it soft and supple.
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Prawn mari:

They were delicious when they arrived, because it was still some warm.
It was like eating warm soft glutinous rice with hot crunchy prawns in the middle wrapped in seaweed.
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hot pepper and anchovy mari:
These rice rolls were delicious because the tiny anchovies were crispy and the green chilis they use taste like the Mexican chilis.
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Soy carbonara toppoki:

The carbonara was interesting because it was my first time trying Korean style carbonara. It had chewy Korean rice rolls and thick glass noodles.
The combination of carbonara sauce and sweet Korean soy sauce were quite appetizing but this dish is quite filling and slightly heavy.
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Street style topokki:
These were rice cakes cooked in Korean chili sauce. Personally I found them too spicy.
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School Naengmyeon:

The School Naengmyeon is a bowl of cold soda noodles topped with beef broth slush.
At School food, they have a machine dedicated for making beef broth slush and they freeze their own beef broths.
When the beef broth slush melts in your mouth, it is extremely refreshing and eases the spicy kick you get from the noodles.
The noodles are slightly chewy and similar to thin strands of konjac noodles because of the texture.
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Pan-grilled butter bibimbap with pickles (soy):

The rice was served on a huge pan looking like a spoon, beneath the egg, there was butter and pickles.

After mixing, it is ready to eat.

There was a strong and fragrant butter taste, but I felt that the pickles could be sliced into shorter pieces so that it was more convenient to eat.
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Chicken gangjeong with green onion salad:

The taste of the fried chicken reminded of fried chicken wings in red beancurd sauce and the salad that came with it balanced out the oilyness of the chicken because it was spicy and it was thinly shredded spring onions which are normally used as garnishing but when eaten alone, it has quite a pungent taste.
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Snow in Seoul:
There is a choice of Ginger and cinammon tea or Coffee jelly.


The one we had was Coffee Jelly, it was nice and cooling and tasted like latte.
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Avocado milkshake:

I was surprised to see this on the menu because if it is on the menu, then it must mean avocado is a popular fruit in Korea.
The milkshake was really dreamy because it was not icy at all, and it was extremely thick so the other flavours are bound to taste good too.
It reminds me of American thick shakes and the texture is like thick whipped double cream because when you put your spoon in it, you can feel how light the texture is.
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All the rolls here are freshly made to order.

Unexpectedly more surprised than surprised

Ho Yuen Restaurant (Mong Kok)
I rarely eat food from Cha Chaan Teng's, especially from Mong Kok, so I don't know what possessed me into going here.

Usually I do not eat Hong Kong style food from Mong Kok because it does not come out the way you imagine it to be.

In this case, I was expecting it to be weird, but it was weirder than my expectation!

I suppose I was attracted by their product shot of tricoloured fusili in "red soup" because thats what it saids in Chinese literally red soup. [Forgot to take photo but there is a photo infront of the shop]

Inside this Cha Chaan Teng, it was old and gloomy, just like a scene from the 1970's.

At this restaurant, there is a minimum spending of $14 per person.

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Fusilli in red soup:

Before I ordered, my definition of red soup was either going to be the usual HK style vegetable soups or HK style Borschts soups, but when it came, it was neither.

There were two huge bones in the broth and pieces of chili fakes floating about.
These are the surprises that I am talking about when I go to Mong Kok restaurants, you would never have imagined seeing chili flakes or huge bones in a simple fusilli soup!~~

See how big the bone is!!

Anyway the fusilli was not tri-coloured as shown on their product picture at the front of the shop, and the soup was nicer than my expectation because it was quite savoury with lots of meat fibres in it.
[Probably some leftover broth used to make this red soup!]
The chili flakes complemented the soup nicely because took away the gameyness/unfreshness of the meat on the bone.
As for the fusilli, it was not too hard or soft and the shape was intact.
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Scrambled egg, chicken wings and crispy bun:

The crispy bun was the only item I liked and it was different to the other buns.
It was slightly buttered with some honey on it.
The bun was nice and crispy with a soft centre enhanced by the sweetness of the honey.
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