Modern masterpieces
By combining contemporary plating skills with the artistry of trompe l'oeil, chef Yeung Wai-kit at the Michelin-starred restaurant, Fu Chun Ju, is helping to paint a new chapter in Cantonese cuisine, Li Yingxue reports.
"Each slice is around 4 to 5 millimeters thick, because if it's too thin, the crisp texture of the radish disappears," he says.
The radish is washed to reduce its sharpness and then marinated in a special sour sauce before they are rolled together with a slice of red chili, for extra pep, and then sliced again. The pistil of the cucumber forms the petals of the flower.
The radish and cucumber flowers look incredibly lifelike on the wooden-framed black plate, which was chosen specifically by Yeung to pair with the dish. He searched several markets before he found the right kind of plates.
"The moment I saw this plate, I could imagine in my mind what the dish would look like, and the only other thing for me to do would be to arrange the piles of the radish and cucumber to make the flowers seem more realistic," he says.
Another dish that looks like a painting is the braised sweet-and-sour pork ribs. Yeung chose a black stone plate as the base and placed two piles of red pork ribs on it. He surrounded them with pine needles before topping it off with a light dusting of powdered white sugar.
"The pork ribs look like stones and the white powder looks like snow," he says.
In Yeung's mind, unlike in Western cuisine where a dish takes three or four minutes to plate before serving, there are only at most 20 seconds before hot Chinese dishes begin to cool and the flavors begin to ebb.
