Ties to Singapore
Chan told us he was inspired by Singapore when he created this dish.
“We have a group of customers from Singapore who come to Hong Kong for conferences several times every year. Based on the famous street food there, we would prepare some afternoon snacks for them. Last year, they wanted to have deep-fried fish skin with salted egg yolk, so we made it for them. They really satisfied with the fish skin we made, vacuum packing all the leftovers to bring back home.”
While we were here, Chan also shared with us the meticulous process of testing new items. To better understand their own products, a dish would be tasted at various points – when it’s just cooked, 15 minutes later and half an hour later. For most Chinese dishes, high temperature is always the additional ingredient that turns them up a notch.
“Sometimes we rely on our colleagues at the front of the house to remind diners to finish the dishes quickly,” he added.
Any reader who attempted dishes with a salted egg yolk sauce at home would know the most difficult part is to create a sauce strong enough to be glued on the main ingredient. According to Chan, you just have to shake off the doubt in your mind and be generous with the amount of oil.
“Butter and vegetable oil give the salted egg yolk paste a more liquid texture, so it would adhere to the ingredient. It does make the dish more oily, but there’s no other way to do it. More often than not, good food isn’t the healthiest,” Chan said.
Deep-fried Fish Skin with Salted Egg Yolk
Ingredients
- 8 Salted egg yolk
- 50g Fried fish skin
- 30g Butter
- 10g Vegetable oil
- 4g Sugar
Method
- Bake the egg yolks in the oven at 250°C for 10 minutes. Mash well.
- Melt butter along with vegetable oil and sugar.
- Combined the butter mixture with the mashed egg yolk.
- Deep-fried the fish skin till hot. Add the salted egg yolk sauce and mix evenly.
