Born poor, Hong Kong’s ‘Abalone King’ worked his way up to found a three-Michelin-star restaurant by perfecting the cooking of the dried delicacy

• Yeung Koon-yat’s two sisters died of starvation in a wartime orphanage. A restaurant cleaner at 16, he worked his way up to opening the Forum restaurant in 1974
• Known as the Abalone King for his expertise with the dried molluscs, he extols their pleasures and offers suggestions for how to cook them in a 1998 book