Fragrant Knives Blog
This dish is inspired by Sean's favourite cha chaan teng (Western-style cafe) in Hong Kong, a small independent diner called Fat Boy Ming’s Cafe (肥仔銘茶餐廳). Ming’s best dish is his stir-fried macaroni, with spring onion, green pepper, BBQ pork and sausage. It’s not the most celebrated Hong Kong dish, but to me, emblematic of Hong Kong culinary pragmatism, a logical combination of cha chaan teng ingredients.
Sean's take is an adaptation of Fat Boy Ming’s dish, replacing the BBQ pork and sausage for a sweet lean Spanish chorizo that pairs well with the green peppers and spring onion. You could use whatever pork product you have on hand, or indeed, omit meat entirely. This dish is about precise cutting and stir-fry technique.
Celebrating Chinese home cooking at our first knife skills workshop!
This week, we hosted our first ever knife skills workshop at the ESEA Community Centre in London, celebrating the craft and culture of Chinese home cooking through our Chinese Chef’s Knife.
New Video: The Origin of our Chinese Chef's Knife
Sean visits the workshop in Yangjiang where the high-carbon blades and carved rosewood handles of our Chinese Chef's Knife are expertly made, and talks about the origins of his idea to bring his vision to Western kitchens.
Cleaver, Chopper, Caidao, Choidou, Chūka Bōchō, Chinese Chef's Knife - We Explain the Difference.
You may see other articles refer to Chinese chef’s knives - 菜刀 (pronounced caidao/choidou in Mandarin and Cantonese respectively) - as Chinese cleavers. Here at Fragrant Knives, we feel that the association of the word ‘cleaver’ with meat cleavers in English leads to a misunderstanding of what the knife is truly for.
Yangjiang really has no right to be as beautiful as it is. It’s a tier-four city of a few million people set in the countryside a couple of hours from its provincial capital, an old city but never one of particular cultural significance. Within China, people might know it for fermented black beans, or blade production, which it’s been the centre of for hundreds of years. Either way, it’s not a place that tourists often visit.