Hong Kong's scorching summers seem to last forever and with at least one more month of heat and humidity to endure, it's tempting to subsist solely on salads, ice cream and cold drinks. But you can make more substantial meals without overheating the kitchen - or yourself. The following dishes require little or no cooking.
Gai see fun pei (pictured)
This is an easy dish because it uses the salt-baked or soy-sauce chicken sold at Chinese roast-meat shops. Purchase the chicken uncut and shred the meat into long strands. Fun pei are sheets of mung bean noodles. You can find them, tightly rolled, in the refrigerated noodle sections of some supermarkets. Like the more familiar fun see (dried mung bean vermicelli), fun pei doesn't need to be cooked; rather, you just soak it in hot water (I use boiled water from the kettle). There are many versions of the sauce for this dish. At some restaurants, it tastes like plain sesame paste, spooned straight from the jar. This version is more tasty, but should be made according to your preferences.
? cooked soy-sauce or salt-baked chicken
300 grams fun pei
1 Chinese or Japanese cucumber, about 100 grams
Fresh coriander