Hong Kong Day 5 Dinner Part 2

This is TWW's famous pork oil rice. It comes steaming hot in a medium-sized claypot. The rice is top grade white rice, fluffy individual grains that aren't too soft or too hard. Served with the rice are superior soya sauce and pork oil.


Perfect rice.


Drizzle the pork oil. The more the better.


Then the soya sauce.


Mix the rice thoroughly.


I ate every single grain, like my ma always told me to.

What's my verdict? How can anything so simple taste so good?! I tasted the rice individually, then the soya sauce and the oil before mixing them. The rice of course was beautiful top grade rice. The soya sauce was slightly umami/xien/savory sweet, making me wonder if there was msg in it. But it was the oil that stumped me. Why was the pork oil so light? When we make pork oil out of pork fat at home, the oil usually comes out dark golden in color with a distinct pork oil flavor. TWW's pork oil was very light (must've used very small heat to slowly coax the oil out) in texture and color, and the pork oil smell was not there. Yet that bowl of rice tasted beyond my high expectations. I think the secret lies in cooking the rice to perfection, and because when food is so simple, it must also depend on quality ingredients. Highly recommended. Hub and I cleaned a bowl out each.

Anyone of you ever eaten rice done this way before? A and Hub both remembered childhood days in Shanghai when this was the way rice was commonly eaten. This was the first time I've eaten pork oil rice. My kids eat a similar version (taught by their father): butter and Bovril mixed into piping hot rice. It is yum too, but the flavor of the Bovril and butter is heavier than pork oil rice. Ming came up with a version of Bovril and butter with spaghetti and it is damn good.

TWW's most famous dessert is ma lai go (Malay cake), which, like I said in my post on TWW last year, is not a Malaysian creation. I'm guessing that it was a HK chef who came up with this and gave it the exotic name. Most ma lai go are golden-brown in color, an allusion to the brown-skinned Malays, but TWW has kept its ma lai go a yellow color. Ma lai go should not be confused with chinese sponge cake because the former has lard while the latter is devoid of fat. There is another cake, usually served in dim sum places, called the chin chen go (1000-layer cake) and it has several, not thousands, of layers. I was surprised to see that TWW's ma lai go had several layers-- ma lai go is usually one solid block with no custard in between.




Tww's ma lai go is softer than cotton puff, lightly fragrant with lard, eggs and some flavor I can't quite tell. Ma lai go is probably the only cake which you eat with chopsticks if you want to practise HK dining etiquette.

So that's TWW and its fantastic food. If you go there and your stomach allows it, try their house noodles too. It is super fine and crunchy. A bought me two boxes. Am keeping them for special occasions.