Flavors with a dash of delight

Wang cooked one of his signature dishes at the gala dinner - braised pork and abalone with brown sauce. He stews the meat Shanghai-style for an hour before adding the truffle sauce.

"The fattiness of the meat compliments the Hennessy XO very well, as it enhances the roundness of the cognac and elevates its elegance," says Wang.

"Usually we drink white liquor with Chinese dishes, but now we are exploring more about pairing red wine or cognac with Chinese cuisine."

Gao also brought one of his signature dishes to the gala dinner, a dish that took him years to perfect - mini eight-treasures-stuffed duck.

In 2002, Gao met a customer who liked the eight treasures stuffed duck dish, but wanted a smaller portion. Gao tried to use chicken, pigeon and even quail successively to make the dish but he was never satisfied with the results. It was only when he figured out how to stuff the skin of the duck's neck with the fresh ingredients - sea cucumber, abalone, mushrooms, bamboo shoots and glutinous rice - did it finally work.

Du's phoenix-tailed prawn was designed especially for the dinner. It's a modern take on peeled pan-fried prawns. Du peels half of each prawn and keeps the other half of their phoenix-like tail to improve the presentation of the dish. For seasoning, instead of dipping the prawn in vinegar, Du made vinegar and lemon "bubbles" using a modern molecular gastronomic technique.

"People are used to eating prawns with a spoon, so I think the vinegar bubbles will help make it more fun for the guests to enjoy the dish," says Du.

Zhang created a vegetable dish, crispy rice cakes with cane shoots, adding sea sedge powder as seasoning, which is also an updated way of serving the traditional Ningbo dish of sea sedge and rice cakes. The deep-fried rice cakes are sliced before they are served, and the natural curve they form adds an artistic touch to the presentation of the dish.

The gala dinner ended with Du's four Western desserts with Chinese ingredients served in the same glass bowl with dry ice - a thousand-layer cake made with broad beans, a Longjing tea flavor tiramisu, French pudding with kalimeris and black chocolate ice cream.

It's the fourth year of the Hennessy and Meals: The Rediscovery of the Taste of Chinese Cuisine event, which previously explored the cuisine of Xiamen, Fujian province, and Guangzhou and Shunde in Guangdong province.

Hennessy also opened a pop-up food lab in Shanghai from May 25 to 27 to explore the secrets behind the flavors. It was free to join by registering in advance. Customers were able to sample some of the dishes created by the four chefs for the gala dinner.

Model Zhang Liang, He Sui and actor Zhou Yiwei were invited to be the first "testers" at the lab, where they served Du's phoenix-tailed prawns as openers.