Where to find the best Lunar New Year puddings

Lunar New Year's pudding is an age-old tradition. Today's chefs offer fresh twists on the classics, infusing them with flavours from across the globe

Lunar New Year

Bernice Chanin Vancouver,Charley LanyonandVANESSA Y UNG

Published: 10:15pm, 11 Feb 2015

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FUNGUS AMONG US
Yee Tung Heen's executive Chinese chef Wong Wing-keung got the inspiration for this year's special mixed mushroom and fungus pudding (HK$228) while working in Yunnan as part of a chef exchange. Yunnan is famous across China for its mushrooms and Wong became enamoured of the fungi on offer there. To make the pudding, he combines morel mushrooms, porcini mushrooms, elm fungus and yellow fungus. Wong says he picked mushrooms that were not too strongly flavoured, so as not to overpower the taste of the pudding. He soaks the dried fungi twice, adding the second batch of soaking water to the pudding to keep the flavour mellow, before mixing in the chopped mushrooms. In another break with tradition, Wong slices the turnip instead of shredding it; this gives a roughly textured, rustic kind of pudding. The result is a rich and earthy taste, with a pleasing mix of textures from the dried and fresh ingredients. It's the perfect pudding for winter.

Morel of the story: the ingredients (above) for vegetarian turnip pudding with assorted mushrooms (top). Photos: Bruce Yan

The Excelsior Hong Kong, 281 Gloucester Road, Causeway Bay, tel: 2837 6790

THAT BEETS EVERYTHING
Lai Ching-shing, the Chinese executive chef at Yue in the City Garden Hotel, is no stranger to bucking tradition when it comes to making New Year puddings. Last year Lai offered a chocolate flavoured pudding that became a surprise hit. This year he continues his love of combining Western ingredients and Eastern techniques in a healthy savoury pudding. His beetroot pudding (HK$168) can be jarring when it is brought to the table: a jiggling blood-red plateau reminiscent of the cranberry moulds served at American Thanksgiving. The pudding is the simplest one we tasted, consisting of only three ingredients: beets, caster sugar and arrowroot powder, which thickens it up and adds a gelatinous texture. The pudding is profoundly beety: sweet and rich with a nice texture thanks to the arrowroot and the fact that the chef combines cubed beets and beet juice. Those expecting a more complex pudding may be disappointed, but beet lovers will be thrilled.

Roots and all: chef Lai (above); and his beetroot pudding (below).

City Garden Hotel, 9 City Garden Road, North Point, tel: 2887 2888

KEEPING IT OLD SCHOOL

With all of the modern variations on offer it's important to try traditional turnip pudding to experience the foundation on which all the other puddings are built. Old school turnip pudding is still the most popular choice in Hong Kong, and Dynasty Restaurant is known to do it right. In a perfect pudding, each element should work in concert while also shining individually and unadorned, lending a depth and richness to the otherwise bland steamed turnip. That is certainly the case at Dynasty, which sells its turnip pudding for HK$188. For those with palates used to the bolder flavours of more modern puddings, the original recipe might be a bit bland, and we all agreed it would benefit from more seasoning, or another handful of fatty sausage. We couldn't resist trying the traditional sweet pudding with coconut, which turned out to be delicious. Cut into small orange squares that were fried to golden brown, the pudding filled the room with the mouth-watering aroma of coconut and toasted sugar, and had a pleasant chewy texture. The chef has been making them for nearly 50 years, so it's no surprise they taste so good.

Stamp of approval: traditional turnip cake with Chinese sausage, conpoy and dried shrimp from Dynasty Restaurant.

Dynasty Restaurant, Renaissance Harbour View Hotel Hong Kong, 1 Harbour Road, Wan Chai, tel: 2802 8888

GOT TO HAVE KAYA
Mok Kit-keung spent 19 years cooking in Singapore before returning to Hong Kong. He brought a brilliant idea with him: every morning in Singapore he would watch locals enjoying a breakfast of toast with kaya. Surely, he thought, kaya, which is a kind of sweet coconut jam, would be a perfect flavour for a New Year pudding. As executive Chinese chef at Shang Palace at the Kowloon Shangri-La, Mok started experimenting with his own version of kaya. He added in a massive 80 grams of sustainable Indonesian birds nest to each pudding, and the final product turned out even better than he anticipated. His kaya pudding (HK$438) may be a startling neon yellow, but it is rich, deep and redolent of toasted coconut. Its texture really sets this pudding apart. It achieves the perfect balance between chewy and gummy, and is sweet and decadent without being cloying or overly oily. The kaya was a revelation and made this our favourite sweet pudding of the bunch. But the bird's nest seemed to be little more than an afterthought, as we could barely taste it, or feel it in the texture.

Full steam ahead: bird's nest and kaya pudding.

Shang Palace, Lower Level 1, Kowloon Shangri-La, 64 Mody Road, Tsim Sha Tsui East, tel: 2733 8754

BRIGHT IDEAS
Hoi King Heen Chinese executive chef Leung Fai-hung has countless creative ideas for New Year puddings. He considered making one with almonds, pine nuts and brown sugar, but finally settled for a sweet potato and sugarcane pudding (HK$198). It is the most attractive of the bunch, a beautiful two layered affair: the bottom two-thirds is bright purple from the sweet potatoes, and the top third is orange from the cane sugar. He experimented with yellow sweet potato, but the colour wasn't as nice. It is quite a complex pudding to make: the sweet potatoes are mashed and cooked, then steamed for 90 minutes. Then the top layer is added, and everything is steamed again to meld it together. The result is not too sweet, and it's chewy without being sticky. It's best to pan fry slices over a medium heat, flipping them periodically before dipping them into beaten egg and frying them again.

Purple reign: sweet potato and sugar cane pudding.

Hoi King Heen, B2, InterContinental Grand Stanford Hotel, 70 Mody Road, Tsim Sha Tsui East, tel: 2731 2883

BRING IT ALL BACK HOME

Theresa Yiu (left) founder and CEO of Dashijie, made waves in Hong Kong when she introduced her New Year pudding to City'super in 2009. She sold 10,000 in that first year and made Dashijie synonymous with quality pudding. At heart, Yiu is a traditionalist. She learned to cook under the tutelage of the late Pearl Kong Chen in the '70s and says her greatest ambition is to make products that taste like they were made at home. Still, that hasn't stopped her from experimenting and pudding lovers eagerly wait to hear which new flavour Yiu will introduce each year. This year it's radish cake with lotus root and preserved tofu (HK$288). She took the inspiration from the classic Cantonese dish of braised lotus root with preserved tofu and pork belly, and her pudding does capture some of the essential flavours of that dish. This is not a simple pudding to make, as it's a multistep process. Yiu sautés the lotus root with garlic, sesame oil and Shaoxing wine, then adds home-made Chinese sausage, dried seafood from Singapore and preserved brown tofu. The result is the most complex pudding we tried. It is intensely savoury and there's a distinct punch from the wine and garlic. This pudding is a meal in itself.

What's cooking: ingredients for Theresa Yiu's radish cake with lotus root.

Dashijie products are available at City'super branches across Hong Kong

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This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: New world orders

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