There’s nothing better Full English Breakfasts and it’s always a bonus when you can find a place that serves them when you’re away from the motherland. Even better? Making one yourself, and using ingredients that are available locally. After a couple of months of buying groceries at the Wan Chai wet markets in Hong Kong, I started piecing together the produce and meat available and determined that it would be possible to make an awesome English breakfast out of what was available for sale. The clincher was the cans of beans that are sold in the dry food stores. The remaining ingredients are all common ingredients in Cantonese cuisine, and world cuisine for that matter.

The Ingredients

Pork

Tomato

This guy was my go to vegetable guy. He’s located on Hennesey Road in Wan Chai next to the library, on the same road as the 7-11, the video game place with the Taiko drum arcade machine, the bakery, the bank, an awesome restaurant, and the Western doctor. That could be said for most of streets in Hong Kong, though.

Potatoes and Onions

I bought these from a very camera shy, albeit quick, clerk.

Mushrooms

Sui Mai

These are basically fish balls and meat balls and are used in soups or eaten after being steamed.

There were four types of Sui Mai I bought, and to get a more authentic Full English Breakfast experience, I’d recommend the meat ones that are shown in the following picture, second from the left. The fish taste of the others was a bit much, especially when there’s a vaguely fishy substance inside the dumpling. The ones that have the random fishy substance inside of them are shaped like Super Nintendo enemies.

Eggs

I had bought some eggs previously before this, but this is how they are sold in a wet market.

Chinese Sausages

This man was happy to sell me four chinese sausages for the low, low price of 20 元.

Baked Beans

The can that started this quest.

Cooking

This part is rather self explanatory. Fry it all up! I used Canola oil as butter is impossible to find in the wet markets. I did do some prep, though — I boiled the potatoes after dicing them and I marinated the pork while I went out and bought the remaining ingredients.

The beans… there is one problem with Hong Kong apartments. The space. I had a small studio, and therefore only one small induction stove. How to cook the beans?

With a rice cooker! I even used the water to make green tea. One of the problems solved…

Here’s the fry up in mid-action.

One more thing. There’s no pepper in a wet market. Nothing. But, the potatoes need something in them…

I used this Sichuan style pickled bamboo shoots that my Sichuan head chef had made previously. It worked quite well. I can’t make this, but it looked like it was chopping up a ton of vegetables and then shoving the mix in a jar. Refrigeration was optional.

Presentation

Now you’re thinking I killed myself with grease, right? Well, I didn’t finish the plate, and I was 4 hours away from a trans pacific flight at this time, so I have excuses for creating this monstrous plate. And, yes, my last meal in Hong Kong was a full English breakfast.

Eating

It was amazingly good after months of eating tofu, rice, vegetables, and value meals at McDonalds. This is a highly recommended excursion and food project for one to do. It cost around HK $100, but it made enough for 3 people to eat, maybe even more. The pork was excellent, as the butcher cut it very thin, and the marinade was enough to tenderize it. The other ingredients taste like they do at a normal restaurant, and the sui mai was a nice bit of localization to this meal. A good idea would be to add a bit of western fried rice, if you had some pre-cooked rice available. The chinese sausages were a bit sweet for my tastes, and it clashed with the rest of the meal. There are blood based sausages, and that might be a better choice for one who is used to the blood pudding that comes with the breakfasts that have an Irish inclination. The meat based Dim Sum / “Sui Mai” was a perfect addition, and did most of the job of replacing an English sausage.

Chinese food looks simple to cook. There’s nothing to bake; everything is flash fried or steamed. All soup is made in front of you, even at a roadside stand. There’s separate bowls for all the ingredients; you order; they mix it all up with hot water and hand it to you. The biggest emphasis is placed on the freshness of the food, and the end result has to have as much evidence of freshness as possible. The less evidence of cooking that is present, the better the food is perceived to be. This is the “biggest must” among the many rules to follow.

The second rule is there has to be vegetables, and they have to cooked perfectly.

It looks easy to cook, and it’s an afterthought in our cuisine. It’s basically boiling and chopping. The first time, I did several things wrong. The color was wrong because I cooked it longer than necessary. I used to much oil, and ruined the broth for ‘tong’. Too much ginger, then there was not enough. I think I’ve got the whole thing down now, and I’ll present a pictorial of the feat. I still like the whole dumping a can of corn in a saucepan, but the following food has its place in my kitchen repertoire.

These are the vegetables I bought from the market in Wan Chai. I have no idea what they’re called, so I have to consult that kid’s book of vegetables I bought in Shenzhen… ah, they’re suan tai (蒜苔). Ok, Suan Tai is surprisingly oily for something so green, but it’s a great vegetable to start cooking with. It’s easy to get everything consistent as the pieces are all uniform. It’s easy to cut, and quick to cut, also. There’s little cleaning prep to be done. A good one to start with.

Cut these guys up into suitable sized chunks; about the size of a green bean. The roots are hard and I don’t like eating them, but the flowery top thing is ok to eat, and makes it look better in the end. After everything’s cut, you put the following in the saucepan: about a tablespoon of salt, about the same amount of oil, and ginger, about a finger’s worth. I missed that here, but my cooking instructor was away at the time so it didn’t matter. The amount of water is smaller than you’d expect; you want the water to quickly hit the boiling point.

This is the cruicial stage in the game here. If you ignore the other instructions and decide to put jello in the mix I’ll forgive you, but you have to do this right: The dish is DONE, as in off the stove and on a plate, when the color starts to turn slightly greener. It’s very crucial. If the vegetables start to lose their color, the vegetables are ruined and you must throw them out into street from your 30th floor apartment whilst shouting “bu hao chi de!” to anyone unfortunate enough to have poorly cooked vegetables dumped on their clothes. So watch the color. It’s the most important part. You got that?

I made some sauce because it’s a blog and it’s got to be all fancy. I think this is called teriyiaki sauce.

The end result. Notice the flower things aren’t cut off, and I’m here to write this so it’s good to eat. I cut them off the first time I cooked this, so I’m just pointing this out in case you decide to cut these off.

Eat!