Trip to Hong Kong Part 2- Food

Hi lovely people, how are you all coping with this freezing cold weather? This post will be part 2 of my Hong Kong trip. I know this is way overdue but better late than never right?

First, lets talk about my body and diet. Before my trip I changed my diet by cutting meat out totally and lost 3kg. Losing weight was not my intention however, I eliminated meat for health reasons and I am continuing eliminating meat from my diet as much as possible. I also mentioned that I will be pigging out everyday in Hong Kong. So what happened to my weight and body shape after?

I've put a photo of my abs below, before and after the holiday. I don't think I actually changed that much but I did put 3kg back on. Although I was eating all the time but I was walking literally every day from day till night.My daily routine was wake up, have breakfast, shopping/sightseeing (walking), lunch, shopping/ sight seeing (walking), dinner, late night shopping/sight seeing (walking). So I guess all that walking burnt majority of the food I ate and kept my metabolism going.

Did I have my usual nutritious breakfast? Yes, I did. I actually took sachets of baobab powder with me. Lol. I was going to bring seeds and nuts but I forgot. I still had my warm lemon water to start my day and then I had warm eggy porridge majority of the times and other times a bowl of mixed fruits. Blueberries in Hong Kong are super expensive compared to UK but I still bought them lol. I love my breakfast, it completes my day. Haha.

Warm porridge with baobab powder, blue berries and banana.

Warm porridge with baobab powder mixed in and topped with dragon fruit and a slice of cranberry wholemeal bread.

Bowl of blueberries, banana and dragon fruit

When I made my breakfast the first day my granddad's maid acted like my assistant while I was cooking lol. I said to her I want to make porridge and she gets a pot out for me and fills it with a bit of water. (I made porridge with water on the first day as my grandad doesn't drink milk) I started to cook it and then she asks me "Do you want to add an egg?" I was surprised she asked me that lol. I said yes and she goes to the fridge to grab one. I beat the egg into the pot and then she stretched her arm over for the egg shells. She threw them in the bin and then went to get me a spoon and a bowl and placed them next to the stove. She even washed up everything for me. It felt good lol. 

I did eat meat when I was in Hong Kong.It's hard to avoid meat because Chinese people love their meat. When I had dinner with my uncle, almost everything he ordered was meat. However, I only ate a small amount of meat and I tried to have as much greens as possible when I was there. Through out my trip I did have a lot of seafood though. Yum Yum!! Below is a bunch of photos I took of majority of the food I had.
This razor clam was absolutely delicious. It was cooked just right, good flavour of the black bean sauce and the chilli gave it a good kick. This is probably the best razor clam dish I've ever had.

Razor Clam in Black Bean Sauce

This is fish (not sure what kind of fish) stir fried with celery. This was average, quite bland but I still finished as it was the only vegetable dish my uncle ordered. I need to make sure I have my veggies lol..

Steamed scallops in the shell topped with vermicelli noodles and minced garlic and spring onions. One of my favourite dishes of all time but they over cooked it leaving the scallops a bit dry :(

Steamed Scallops

Steamed abalones. I've never been a big fan of these because they are tasteless and very chewy. But it just feels good to know you're eating something that considered good stuff (expensive).

Lunch with my cousin, tepankyaki. Prawns with mushroom rice, miso soup and pickled salad.

A hotpot buffet with my family (my dad's side), there were 9 of us. This is round one and we had all sorts of food; prawns, fishballs, squid balls, meatballs, fatty slices of beef (yuk!), vegetables, corn on cob, and many more. The bowl may look small in the photo but it was actually really big.

Round 1

This is fried fish skin, it was so yummy. You dip it into the hot pot but I prefer it dry and crispy so didn't dip them into hotpot.

Fried fish skin

Round two! This round we had ostrich meat, lots of green vegetables (I requested to have vegetables), lots of other meat (my uncle loves his meat) and those puffy balls thing. Not sure what they are but they are quite nice though.

Round 2

Dinner with my cousin, we went to a seafood restaurant that was recommended by a magazine. Apparently they do good deals for lobster, peking duck and pigeon so we went to check it out. They had quite a few combos; lobster and duck, pigeon and duck, pigeon and lobster, etc. We ordered cheese baked lobster with noodles and peking duck. The third dish is stir fried choi sum and shitake mushrooms, we felt we needed some sort of vegetables to be a bit healthier but we couldn't finish it. We were stuffed.

 

A square shaped custard egg tart. It was yummy. I love Hong Kong style custard egg tart especially short crust ones. Independent cafes does the best custard egg tarts.

 You can't find frozen yoghurt as pretty as this in the UK can you? If you know a place that does it as good or better let me know please!! This frozen yoghurt place is called Smile in Causeway Bay, I like the name as it reflects your reaction when you go in there. I literally smiled when I looked at their menu.

 A quick lunch with my mum, I had squid ball soup noodle with deep fried fish skin.

After having lunch, my mum and I felt like having dessert so went to a popular tofu dessert place that was round corner. This is tofu with sweet ginger juice.

Tofu Fa

Yes, this is a broccoli bake if you've already guessed. Trust me to have this. It was terrible and it wasn't a even a bake. It tasted like boiled broccoli topped with bland cheese sauce. Even I could make something better than that. Ok, I ordered it because I felt like having something healthy and small. 

Broccoli Cheese Bake

 Before going Hong Kong I did my research for the best places to eat. I looked for the best place for won ton noodles and Tasty Congee came up. Apparently it's a Michelin awarded restaurant. I had dinner there with my cousin and her friend who is also my childhood friend when I was still living in Sweden. We ordered some food that people usually eat for lunch, i. fried dough stick wrapped in pastry (the dish on the far top right) It was delicious! The pastry was extremely thin and silky and the fried dough stick wasn't too greasy and was very crispy. Won Ton noodles was obviously a must. We ordered a large portion but the large wasn't very large and it cost almost $60. It was like a regular portion you would usually get in other places however it was tasty though. We also ordered Chinese Kale (Guy Lan), some jelly fish, half a chicken and some sui gua (prawn dumplings). I actually wanted to order stir fried dry beef ho fan (beef with flat noodles) because apparently they are one of Tasty Congee's most popular dishes but my cousin said we've ordered enough. And she was right, we just managed to finish everything, we were stuffed. I will definitely go there again.

Tasty Congee Restaurant

One time, instead of having a proper meal for lunch my cousin and I went to Mong Kok to try the street food. I love the street food in Hong Kong, especially egg waffle (first photo-I'm not sure what the exact name is in English but because it looks like lots of tiny eggs attached together in Chinese we call it mini eggs) and waffle (second photo) with peanut butter, butter and condensed milk. Mmmmm. I know sounds very fatty and greasy but it is delicious and the waffle is so soft and spongy.

Waffles!

Other street food; Octopus seaweed balls with mayonnaise, spiral potato chips, honey grilled squid and squid salt chilli & garlic. 

 

I went to a Japanese Hokkaido restaurant for dinner with my mum and God parents. I wanted to try rice pizza, where the base is made with rice instead of dough. You might be wondering why there are pasta and some potato wedges, that's just Hong Kong for you. They tend to like implementing different types of cuisine to increase their variety and 9/10 times western cuisine like Italian is rubbish. So if you're in Hong Kong stick to Asian food. That black ink squid pasta wasn't very good and smelt quite fishy too. We ordered a tempura thousand island rice pizza.

Japanese Hokkaido Restaurant

I don't really eat Thai food because I hate the taste of Tom Yum and coriander but I had the most delicious Thai food ever in Hong Kong. My auntie took me to a Michelin awarded Thai restaurant located in Whoam Po. The food was amazing! 

Top: Fish cooked in lime juice. Bottom Left to right: Shark fin soup (sorry shark), sharing platter of spring rolls, prawn cake and fish cake.

Left to right: giant grilled squid, BBQ giant tiger prawns and mussels in some coconut sauce (I think its curry but didn't taste like it though).

Top left: dessert. Top right: Fresh young coconut water (my first time having fresh coconut water) Bottom: Fried soft shell crab. 

That's all the photos I've taken. Thanks for reading and I will blog you later!!

Have you been to Hong Kong? What's your favourite restaurant and food in Hong Kong? 

My Christmas and Trip to Hong Kong Part 1- beauty

Hi everyone, I haven't blogged for a month. I must admit I was lazy to blog after coming back from my holiday. I was lazy to go to the gym and I put less effort in making healthy food. Nevertheless, I hope you all had an amazing Christmas and had lots of yummy food. I had quite a bit. I will quickly show you what I had for Christmas and then move on to my trip to Hong Kong.

I spent Christmas day with my boyfriend and I cooked the dinner. I didn't make turkey or lamb as I'm not a fan of them. I only like turkey when its been stir fried and I hate the taste of lamb. I made roast chicken with roast potatoes, parsnips and carrots, garlic sauteed the brusselsprouts with a hint of lemon zests and macaroni cheese. I spent almost 4 hours in the kitchen cooking and my boyfriend was just sitting in the living room, watching TV and waiting to be fed. But I'm happy that he enjoyed the dinner as he had seconds as soon as he finished his first plate.

I should have turned the chicken around for a better presentation. The other side was browner and looked better. The potatoes and macaroni cheese were actually golden brown but my boyfriend's kitchen light makes everything look really yellow in photos.

 

The recipe for brussel sprouts was from Laura's Kitchen YouTube Channel, she has lots of good and simple recipes. Adding lemon zest gave it a zingy taste and covered the bitter taste.

Voila! Christmas dinner

On boxing day I went home with my boyfriend and had lots of seafood. My dad made majority of it and I cooked two pots of mussels in tomato white wine sauce.

My dad's hands lol. Steamed scallops with some vermicelli noodles, minced garlic and spring onions.

 Just plain boiled prawns with chilli soya sauce dip. I couldn't have this because the scabs on my face, I will talk about that later. There were a lot more prawns than what you see in the photo, I forgot to take a photo in the beginning.
 

 Mussels in tomato white wine sauce, I forgot to add a bit of chilli to give it a kick but it was still good. It felt good having my boyfriend helping me cut up the ingredients and watching me cook lol. We dipped toasted ciabatta bread into the tomato white wine sauce, it was so delicious.
 

Razor clam with vermicelli noodles in black bean sauce and tong ho stir fried in fermented tofu. It was my dad's first time cooking razor clams and didn't turn out too good. He over cooked it a bit. The colour isn't too nice because he didn't add dark soya sauce as I can't have soya sauce at the moment.We also had some vegetable gyoza but no photo for it, sorry. In total, there were six courses and we couldn't finish the last two course.

Back to the main topic, my trip to Hong Kong. Two weeks in Hong Kong was not enough, I didn't have time to go to all the places I wanted to. But I still ate lots of delicious food and did some shopping. In part 1, I will be talking about beauty and part 2 will be about food.

First of all, I've had a mole removal laser treatment done. I did it on the day I left Hong Kong as apparently you're suppose to avoid certain food and ingredients once you have cuts on your face; that includes, soya sauce, vinegar (anything that is sour) and egg. Right before the treatment, I bought an egg tart just to have a final taste of it lol. Hong Kong has some really good egg tart but very fatty.

I had 4 moles removed and they cost $100 each which I thought was a really good price. The whole process was less than 10 minutes and it did hurt! The pain level is a bit higher than when you first had your eyebrows or lips threaded which makes your eyes water. I could hear and smell the moles burning. The laser thing made a "zzzz" noise and burning smelt like burnt flies lol. If you've used those electric fly swatter you know what I'm on about. Once a fly gets caught between those wires and you press On, the fly will burn and creates a bad burning smell. 

This is a photo of me before the treatment. You can see a mole on the left side of my chin, one next to my nose on the left, one on the right side of my face parallel to the one on my chin and one on the nose. My moles are all scabby now. I still go out, they don't look too bad as they still look like moles but bigger. When I first looked in the mirror, I was thinking "why are my moles bigger?" lol. I'll show you the result once they are all off.

I got loads of Korean cosmetic products this time, some are from my cousin, my uncle and Godmother as Christmas present. Korean cosmetic are just irresistible. I love how they branded their products, makes you want to buy everything.

 

Laneige Sleeping pack from my uncle. I haven't tried any of the products as I'm waiting for my scabs to come off. I need to avoid getting them wet as much as possible. Yes, I have washed my face but have been extremely cautious. 

Etude House is one of the places I went to get those cosmetics. Even the shop front is very quirky. I love it!

Anyways that's it for now, I'll blog about the yummy food I had in Hong Kong in my next post. Thanks for reading.

{WIAW & RECIPE} Vegetable Pancake

Hi guys, it's been a while since I've done a WIAW post as I've been instagramming my food instead. Follow me on Instagram @missyungquainth =)  The weather in the UK has been up and down, mostly freezing cold and now I'm feeling poorly. I've got a cold and a cough; my nose is totally blocked and runny. I can't believe I'm ill before going away. I'm going Hong Kong for two weeks next Monday and I hope I'll be better by then. I need my taste bud to be working properly as I'll be pigging out everyday and night!

Today's WIAW post won't just be about what I had during week but will also feature a recipe for vegetable pancakes. =)  This week has been an indulgent week for me, I've been eating a lot on Wednesday and Thursday night and I broke my vegetarian diet. lol. But only for two days.

On Wednesday, I went out with my brother for dinner at Cha Cha Moon. I bought a Groupon deal pay £20 for £40 worth of food. We ordered three noodles main courses and one starter.

The first one is Fujian style udon, it has fishcakes, prawns, squid, belly pork and choi sum. 

This is seafood ho fun made in a black bean sauce; scallop, prawn, squid, red and green pepper. They put a bit too much dark soy sauce making it too dark. 

This was our starter, marinated sticky chicken. This was really good. I had two small bits as I didn't want to have too much meat.

The lobster was tiny and it cost us £25. Not impressed with the price, the taste and quality. The noodles tasted a bit like soap, they probably didn't rinse the noodles after cooking it the first time. The lobster was a bit over cooked making the texture very rough.  

After the dinner, we wanted dessert and so we walked to Häagen-Dazs for waffles. On our way we actually stopped at Cinnamon buns and got 2 mini buns for £1. A starter to our dessert lol. At Häagen-Dazs, we shared a Belgian waffle with raspberry and chocolate ice-cream. 

Thursday night was a date night with my boyfriend. We did a lot of walking. We walked from Liverpool street to Brick Lane and found a chocolate shop, they sold different flavours of homemade chocolate truffles and hot chocolate made with REAL chocolate and NOT powder. You can actually taste the cocoa. I bought a cinnamon hot chocolate.

Then we went to a bagel shop and bought some freshly baked bagel with smoked salmon and cream cheese and a block of almond cake. We ate this when we got home. We then walked from Brick Lane to Haggerston to my boyfriend's old work place, Ribeira, and we got free food! Lol. The chef made us both a salami sandwich, it was delicious! The bruschetta bread was crispy on the outside and soft on the inside, just perfect. We also ordered a smoothie like cocktail, was so refreshing.

This was just a snack before dinner. We then walked back to Kingsland Road for some Vietnamese, I ordered a bowl of pho with king prawns and my boyfriend ordered beef with ginger and spring onions and rice. Sorry didn't take a picture.

Sunday was my pancake day. If you're regular reader of mine you will know I love to experiment with my pancakes. On Sunday I decided to make some savory pancakes for lunch. The original recipe is from Shape Magazine but I adjusted a couple of things.

Ingredients (the following measurements are an estimate, I just went by my preference);
-1 cup of thinly sliced/shredded cabbage
-1 cup of carrots peeled like ribbons with a peeler
-1 cup or kale thinly sliced/shredded
-1/2 cup of spring onions shredded
-1/2 cup of diced mushrooms
-1/2 cup of all purpose flour
-3-4 eggs
-salt, pepper and other spices to season.

Method:
1. Cut up all the vegetables and then toss them together in a large bowl

2. Add the flour and toss well until all vegetables are coated

3. Beat the eggs and add to the vegetables and mix well. Add the spices to season.

4. Add a drop or two of oil into a non-stick pan and heat the pan. Once the pan is hot, turn the heat down to medium- low. Add about 2 spoonfuls of the mixture and use spatula to flatten it out like a pancake.

6. Cook each side for about 3-4 minutes or when its golden brown.

I served it with cottage cheese and it was a bad choice, I tasted better with ketchup. But if you seasoned it well you shouldn't need any sauce to go with it.

Thanks for reading!