COSMOPOLITAN Hong Kong has long been famous for its food. With each migrant population group bringing a taste from home, the culinary experience of the territory is rarely equalled.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the myriad hotel dining-rooms, which usually go one better than the bland 'international' cuisine of five-star equivalents elsewhere. Many of Hong Kong's top chefs attempt to mix the ingredients and ethnic traditions ofAsia with the techniques of Europe.
To share the more successful fruits of this combination, Hong Kong Hilton chef Winfried Brugger and former colleagues Franz Kranzfelder, chef-patron of Portico, and Gerard Dubois, chef and co-owner of La Rose Noire Patisserie, have collaborated on a cook book - The Cutting Edge. 'I like to call it the new approach to Hong Kong cuisine,' said Brugger. 'One which embodies European cooking styles which have grown up and developed in Hong Kong. Our professional training, like so many other hotel chefs here, is European but what we produce is indigenous to Asia.' To be published on November 4, this is a glossy, full-colour hardback based largely on the Hilton's 'Taste of Gold' menu which won a gold medal in 1990 at the Salon Culinaire bi-annual world championship cook-off in Singapore. Translated into an a la cartemenu at the Hilton Grill soon after, the menu received so many compliments from customers that Brugger and then deputy chairman of Cheung Kong Holdings - the owner of the Hilton - George Magnus cooked up the idea for The Cutting Edge.
'George has always believed in us and taken a great interest in what we do,' said Brugger. 'He viewed every annual general meeting as a chance for us to showcase our talent - we'd discuss each dish with him and experiment until he was satisfied. He's done the same with the recipes in this book.' If Mr Magnus was the book's sugar-daddy, general manager James Smith was its day-to-day minder. Brugger admits his boss was sceptical at the start - 'he knows how emotional chefs get about their work' - but once committed, he stuck to the project like burnt sugar to a saucepan.
'James gave me a free hand to express myself in the Grill,' said Brugger. 'But I've had to stand up to tough criticism, too. He's fanatical about food, being an ex-chef, and came into the kitchen daily to see how the dishes were progressing. He's the one who challenged us most and got us there.' At times it looked as though The Cutting Edge - arguably the first cook book on Hong Kong cuisine - would never emerge from the creative oven. It was cancelled three times and subject to numerous delays, including a printing hold-up two weeks ago.
But after more than two years, the book was produced in two months. When the final go-ahead came in August, the chefs immediately closeted themselves in their respective kitchens to test the recipes; 150 in all. Each had to be prepared at least six times to ensure they were feasible for domestic kitchens. The food photographs, taken by Simon Wheeler with supplements by Richard Dobson, were done in five weeks.
