HK diners have a discerning palate for fine cuisine. I knew from the longest time, they spent the most time appreciating fine foods. But largely, their palate was more skewed towards the traditional opulent foods that signified wealth or people of aristocratic tastes and preferences. For example before the conservation activists started educating people on the poor sharks being dismembered for their fins and tossed back into the sea to die a painful death, sharks fin soup was a much wanted prestigious item that was a “must have”.
I remember watching TVB Cantonese Soaps and it always mentioned bird’s nest, abalone and sharks fin!
These days, the HK diners have moved towards elegant dining and they have good deep pockets to pay for the dining experience.
The Edible Forest Floor was one such magnificent dining experience that I will be blogging on over the next few pages.
Chef Uwe developed over 12 courses, a dining experience not only cost thousands of HKD dollars, but it was a masterpiece of a dining experience that left each diner with a lot to crow about as they enjoyed each meal carefully and painstakingly created like an artist. I do applaud Chef Uwe’s effort and design in each of these meticulously prepared dishes.
I would like to describe Course 3 which served salmon cured in honey glazed with bee & carrot wax. The Chef carefully placed 3 pieces of nicely cut salmon in a wooden mould and saturated the salmon with Arcadia Bes e wax.
It requires a special temperature to melt Arcadia Bees wax as it has a relatively low melting point range of 62 to 64 °C (144 to 147 °F). Therefore, If the bees wax is heated above 85 °C (185 °F) discoloration occurs.
The flash point of beeswax is 204.4 °C (399.9 °F).
Picture below shows that the Salmon fish after it has been cooked in Bee wax.
The salmon looks raw freshly sliced even after the curing process using Arcadia Beeswax. The trick to keeping the salmon looking as if it is “raw” effect is that the chef used temperature that has actually slow cooked it during the process where it returns to solid wax state!
The taste is far more interesting than what it looks when it is served!
It is far softer than a fresh piece of sliced sashimi salmon fish, as the bees wax infuses the light honey taste into the texture of the fish.
It is slow cooked as the hot wax that is poured into the mould and as it cooks it slowly it infuses other flavours into the fish.
This is a taste which one would look at from different views. The style of taste preferred by the chef was that he used natural tastes such as a natural sweetness from all ingredients – simple yet humble to create an unassuming dish!
It was lightly salted using Sea salts to bring out or should I say enhance the natural sea environment the Salmon thrived.
The after taste effects follows as you slowly chew the fish in your mouth and let it glide down your throat.
I commend the chef on a presentation that is unique but I felt the Japanese presentation could be improved to “toot” the horn of this dish better. It looked not “screamingly loud” to tell me as a suspicious diner that I taste more intense than the what I appear to look like 😉
This was served as Course 3 of the Edible Forest Dramatic Meal that left me wanting more to see and experience the sight, beauty and elegance of the Forest Floor Menu by Chef!
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