XO Soused

For years now , and since Andrew’s visit to the brilliant Albert Adrià in Barcelona in 2017, Andrew and Albert have been talking about collaborating on a menu that meshes the world of dim sum and tapas and upends European industry norms about pastry. Finally on Friday 7th July 2023 - after months of emails and calls - Albert arrived with his team and boxes of specialist ingredients to prep for a special weekend menu that is an industry first and marks an exciting new evolution in creativity for both chefs. On the eve of these dinners, Mukta recorded a live Q&A with Andrew and Albert to explore the collaboration from an XO Soused POV!Intro and outro music: 遊子 [wanderer] by mafmadmaf.comXO Soused aims to be a fortnightly audio newsletter. We’d be grateful if you can share XO Soused with your friends! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewwongandmuktadas.substack.com

Macanese gastronomy is reputedly the oldest fusion cuisine in the world and has been recognised by UNESCO as an intangible cultural heritage. This tiny territory - smaller than Hong Kong, which it neighbours - also has one of the most dynamic economies in the world where some of the best chefs using the finest ingredients cook for the very rich. How does Macanese food cut through this noise?But how does a chef like Andrew - operating within a system of distinct yet connected regional Chinese cuisines - understand, embody, codify and cook a corpus that borrows so heavily from Portuguese colonial tastes and textures? And is fusion a problematic term or simply an imprecise word to describe complex alchemies involved in cooking food that lands well in a given context? ReferencesBoileau, Janet Patricia. "A culinary history of the Portuguese Eurasians: the origins of Luso-Asian cuisine in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries." PhD diss., 2010.Das, Mukta. “One of Many Ways For Macanese Aluar” The Recipes Project, 2021Jackson, Annabel. The Making of Macau’s Fusion Cuisine: From Family Table to World Stage. Hong Kong University Press, 2020.Intro and outro music: 遊子 [wanderer] by mafmadmaf.comXO Soused is a fortnightly audio newsletter. We’d be grateful if you can share XO Soused with your friends! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewwongandmuktadas.substack.com

Episode 2 goes inside Andrew’s family as they battle to carve a space in London’s hospitality sector . As Britain’s Asian restaurant sector transformed in the lead up to the new millennium, so too did the ambitions of many a restaurateur -not least Andrew’s father, who constantly cast about for new ideas and concepts. What kind of pressures, limits and opportunities did this present to the family? How did the teenage Andrew understand these forces as they impacted on his father in particular? What did it mean to have a family business in this patriarchal world, and where did it leave Andrew’s mother and Andrew when his father passed away?Tomorrow: British Chinese cuisine - Wong family dynamics from 2008 - the presentIntro and outro music: 遊子 [wanderer] by mafmadmaf.comXO Soused is a fortnightly audio newsletter. We’d be grateful if you can share XO Soused with your friends! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewwongandmuktadas.substack.com

How do contemporary cooks interpret historically researched cookbooks? How relatable to contemporary dining are Song era historical recipes, and how far do recipe writers, cooks and chefs have to do this translation work? Andrew talks through a present day book of Song era recipes that he has been reviewing and researching as both he and Mukta explore how these recipes reflect Song dynasty social, economic, cultural and philosophical life. How do these recipes draw from and sketch out the luxury markets that defined the era, as well as the clean-eating philosophies that developed in reaction to these rich diets? And, equally importantly, how does this cookbook - a complicated culinary snapshot of Song era cooking - capture the evolution of Han majoritarian cuisine against which all other Chinese cuisines have become ‘ethnic’, or ‘other’? Intro and outro music: 遊子 [wanderer] by mafmadmaf.comXO Soused is a fortnightly audio and video newsletter. We’d be grateful if you can share XO Soused with your friends! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewwongandmuktadas.substack.com

What are braised bear paws doing on a (likely) imperial banqueting menu from the 1700s? What does the appearance of this exotic meat, and other dishes like steamed camel hump, tell us about the changing categories of ‘wildlife’ and ‘livestock’ in global food history, and about how Chinese heartland foods and peripheral cuisines are constructed? Are there more to the names of these dishes than straightforward description, or can these names signal less about the central ingredient and more about the look of the dish? As the skills and knowledge to cook such dishes remain accessible to Andrew and his chef network, how can he bring such complex ideas of edibility to his diners without crossing certain lines? What cross-cultural encounters about edibility and etiquette does his banqueting menu already contain and where else will he push out the envelope? Further reading: Yue, Isaac, 2018. The Comprehensive Manchu–Han Banquet: History, Myth, and Development. Ming Qing Yanjiu 22(1):93-111Intro and outro music: 遊子 [wanderer] by mafmadmaf.comAfter an unexpected hiatus, XO Soused is back to being a fortnightly audio newsletter. We’d be grateful if you can share XO Soused with your friends! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewwongandmuktadas.substack.com

Andrew is taking his restaurant in a new direction in 2022. Gone is his à la carte menu and in its place will be a a dining experience akin to some of the historical Chinese banquets written into court records and novels, and painted on to silk. In this special festive episode Andrew and Mukta discuss why Andrew has taken this direction, what historical recipes are inspiring, and what underlying rules and rituals shape flavours combinations, the dishes that are served and to who, and even where dishes are placed on the table. Download Dr Isaac Yue’s excellent chapter on the Qing-era Han-Manchu banquet to access the translated dishes that Andrew reads from during the episode. This episode of XO Soused is a festive special. XO Soused will return for season 2 in January 2022. Intro and outro music: 遊子 [wanderer] by mafmadmaf.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewwongandmuktadas.substack.com

What is Beggar’s Chicken? What are the myths that surround it and why are they important? How has Andrew attempted to bring Beggar’s Chicken - chicken stuffed and wrapped in leaves and clay - into his professional kitchen, and what iterations of the dish is he trying next? Why is the technique such a fundamental part of its origin story and how has that technique and the recipe changed over time? XO Soused is a fortnightly audio newsletter.Intro and outro music: 遊子 [wanderer] by mafmadmaf.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewwongandmuktadas.substack.com

Why are there so many ingredients in Chinese cuisine that are dried? What is the cultural and culinary importance of these foods? Weaving their way through key dried items such as abalone, bird’s nest and even controversial ingredients such as shark’s fin, Andrew and Mukta discuss why Chinese chefs have chosen certain seafood, livestock and plant matter for drying and rehydrating, and what flavours, textures and cultural value this adds to dishes. And how are these foods dried? What marinades and stocks are used to soak the foods before drying? How many times ingredients are dehydrated and rehydrated in these same or different stocks and sauces? And how should we rehydrate foods before finally cooking these in a dish?XO Soused is a fortnightly audio newsletter.Intro and outro music: 遊子 [wanderer] by mafmadmaf.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewwongandmuktadas.substack.com

Why should dessert go at the end? Why have western and westernised restaurants embraced this structure of cooking and eating, while in some Asian cuisines, sweet and savoury dishes are served together? More importantly, why do western professional kitchens barely use sugars in their savoury dishes? Meanwhile chefs cooking some Asian foods use sugars - cane sugar, beet sugar, honey, and maltose - in equal quantities as savoury ingredients for taste, colour, viscosity, and depth and balance of flavour. So where does that leave Chinese desserts? What are their levels of sweetness and creaminess? How does Andrew create desserts for A.Wong that navigate these Chinese norms and the expectations of his Chinese and non-Chinese diners? A video and accompanying recipe for Dragon’s beard candy: https://www.tastemade.com/videos/dragons-beard/XO Soused is a fortnightly audio newsletter.Intro and outro music: 遊子 [wanderer] by mafmadmaf.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewwongandmuktadas.substack.com

How does creativity work for a professional chef cooking Chinese food? What was creative culinary life like in the palace kitchens in China? What was the role of tradition and how did other rules and boundaries either restrict or even elevate innovative thinking? When there’s too much choice - a defining characteristic of working from vast and well stocked palace stores - how does a chef find a culinary direction or a theme, and find a space for his specialism?And what rules and boundaries allow Andrew to innovate in his kitchen? How does his experience mirror the creative lives of imperial chefs in the past or of the Michelin-starred chefs around him? If you’d like to read more about chefs in the Qing Court: Rawski, E, 1998. The Last Emperors: A Social History of Qing Imperial Institutions. University of California Press. Pages on food and the court (pp 46-49) can be viewed for free on Google BooksXO Soused is a fortnightly audio newsletter.Intro and outro music: 遊子 [wanderer] by mafmadmaf.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewwongandmuktadas.substack.com

With so many oil and fat substitutes available to the modern chef, what role does lard still play in professional Chinese kitchens? What classical Chinese - and particularly dim sum - recipes require lard? And how is the fat from the pork put to other uses by Chinese chefs, including and legendary Cantonese chef, William Poon? What techniques using pork fat has Mr Poon taught Andrew recently?How have dim sum chefs adapted their pastry making to suit western palates unused to the porcine aroma of lard-laminated dough? And what of the other dishes that use lard - how have these recipes changed in recent time? And does this lard taming mirror the work that Chinese chefs had to do in the past?Intro and outro music: 遊子 [wanderer] by mafmadmaf.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewwongandmuktadas.substack.com

XO Sauce - a combination of dried seafood, ham, chillies and other seasonings in a stock - has grown to be a Hong Kong condiment par excellence. How is this condiment now used in the Chinese kitchens, and what ingredients does it go well with during the cooking process? What does the XO in the name signify, and what are the origin stories surrounding the sauce, and how does it play up the distinctions and disjunctures in Hong Kong society? In this edition we revisit and do a deep-dive into our ‘sort-of’ namesake. How many ways do you enjoy XO sauce? Do you add it as a savoury topping to comforting congee, to spread it like jam on wagyu beef? Are there hard and fast rules defining how XO sauce is created? And, now that East Asian dried scallops are no longer available in the UK, how has Andrew adapted these rules for making a London-style XO sauce? If you’d like to learn more about Hong Kong cuisine in the 1970s and 1980s: Cheung, S, C. H., 2012, ‘Food and Cuisine in a changing society' in D. Wu and S. C. H. Cheung (eds) Globalization of Chinese Food, Routledge, pp. 120-132. Intro and outro music: 遊子 [wanderer] by mafmadmaf.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewwongandmuktadas.substack.com

Many Chinese dishes use a spiced chicken stock as a building block. This is a meat broth infused with cinnamon, cassia bark, fennel seed, angelica root, liquorice, and star anise. How are these spices used? What use do pre-mixed spice powders have, and why does Andrew prefer 13-spice powder (a classic western Chinese spice mix) over the Cantonese 5-spice powder for some dishes? How is history reflected in the different regional spicing cultures and spiced cooking techniques in China? And have Chinese cooks gradually eased off on spicing over the centuries? Could a 12th century Chinese recipe for a spiced meat paste appeal to modern eaters? Intro and outro music: 遊子 [wanderer] by mafmadmaf.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewwongandmuktadas.substack.com