Siu Yook ( Crispy Roast Pork ) - disastrous results!

Ok, so I thought it would be a good idea to try to make siu yook last night.
Bought a rolled joint of belly pork and started my attempt, with great anticipation.

Mistake number one:
When I unrolled the joint and undid the strings, I noticed that the skin had been scored.

Oh well, never mind.. maybe it wont matter.
So I pierce lots holes on the skin with a sharp knife and blanched the skin.
Then I marinated it with rice wine, salt, pepper and 5 spice powder and leave it to dry for a couple of hours.




So, I popped it into the oven for 1 hr ... hmm... skin still has not risen. As the rest of the pork was cooked, I put the skin towards the grill. After a few mins, it started to char and burn, but the skin still has not risen!

Ok, decided to give up.
When I tried to cut it, it was so tough my knife would not go through the skin! So, unfortunately, it had to go into the bin!




Better luck next time, I hope! Any tips would be greatly welcomed!

Cantonese Roast Meats

A quick and convenient dinner is simply going to a local vendor and buying a portion of mixed Cantonese Roast Meat, containg Char Siu, Siew Yoke and Siew Aap. Translated, Sweet BBQ Pork, Crispy Roast Belly Pork and Roast Duck. This lot cost only £8. I have put a 6in ruler next to it to demonstrate the portion size here.. big enough to feed 3 - 4 adults!




For those living locally in Manchester, I actually bought this from Chi Yip, which is located in Chadderton. Their Char Siu is usually only average, but the Roast Duck is about the best I have tasted in Greater Manchester and the Crispy Pork is quite good too. The skin is usually quite crispy if you eat it straight away.

Canton-i Restaurant @ 1-Utama, Petaling Jaya

Back home in Manchester now. However, there is still plenty for me to write about regarding my culinary exploits in KL / PJ during my visit. The last few days since I have been back has been rather dull, as far as eating is concerned. But this always happen after every visit to Malaysia. After a couple of week of extreme stimulations of the tastebuds, all the food here seems rather bland and unexciting. Even when I went to a nice restaurant yesterday, it failed to recreate the buzz and high of tasting Malaysian food in Malaysia itself.


Here is place I have read about in many blogs and have had it on my list as a must-visit when I visited Malaysia next, so here I was.

The front was very modern, clean and had a rather upmarket look to it, despite having the image of selling popular Hong Kong hawker / cafe food. It was around 12pm on a Saturday and there were already loads of people going into the restaurant. I would have liked to have lunched a little later but seeing the crowd, we thought we'd better grab a table there before they were full up.



Here we can see the cooks doing their stuff in a kitchen exposed for all to see. No spitting into the food here! So, you can safely return the food if you dont like it!


The char siu wantan noodle dish was very nice. The char siu was tender and fresh with just enough charring to avoid the bitter taste. This was definitely Malaysian style char siu rather than the red and blander Hong Kong style. The wantans were huge.. like siu mai, and plenty of juicy prawns and pork filling within. The noodle was nice too, but not outstanding. The sauce, however, was just ok. Not as good as an old fashioned Malaysian style wantan mee sauce from a hawker.


The ngau nam meen (beef brisket noodle) is as good as any I have ever tasted. Neither better nor worse. I dont think anything ordering this would be disappointed, but neither would they be wowed.


I ordered an indivudual plate of crispy roast pork (siew yoke) and roast cuttlefish, after reading good reviews about the former. I was not disappointed with the former, as the skin was really crispy and meat was juicy and tender. However, the cuttlefish was really tough. I have had much better in the UK. I have not seen this kind of cuttlefish being sold fresh in the local markets here, so maybe the quality of the raw cuttlefish was not so good.



My overall impression was that it was just ok, especially given the price of around rm80 for all the above dishes. Ok, so its still about half the price I would have to pay in the UK in an average Chinese restaurant. However, I expected it to have cost a lot less in South East Asia, even if the quality was above average.

Some of the other blogs that made me visit this place:

Babe in the city
Masak Masak
Ling239