Kasey and Karena: Rocking it in Hong Kong (+recipes)

Sago with roasted peanuts. Photo / Michael Craig

Being on the road is great, but it’s also a joy to come home and whip up some of these home-grown favourites again, write MasterChef winners Kasey and Karena Bird.

We have just returned from one of the best trips we have been on in a very long time. This was because we not only got to travel to Hong Kong, which has always been on our bucket list, but also because we were able to take our parents and our younger sister, Michaela, with us.

Being able to share the experience with our family has been incredibly special.
Dad worked in Hong Kong for a year when we were young so he got a buzz out of showing us around his old haunts and we let him lead the way in navigating the busy streets and railway system.

He took us to the hole-in-the-wall eating spots he would frequent when he lived there. Mum loved the wet market and how the fishmongers filleted the fish so precisely using their huge meat cleavers.

Michaela loved exploring the malls that had every kind of makeup brand you can think of and where she could devour countless numbers of dumplings with us. She is as obsessed with them as we are.

The humidity was intense and the noises and crowds let us know we were far from home, and that was part of the beauty of Hong Kong. It was obvious where the good places were because you could see the locals crowding the humble eating rooms.

We particularly loved how the food was prepared and the vegetables cooked.

The fried beans with pork mince was one of our favourites and we tried to recreate this dish as soon as we returned home.

The beans are so tasty cooked this way and the savoury mince makes this much more than a side dish.

One of the best things we did was to visit a huge commercial kitchen that is very popular with locals. It had more than 30 cooks who each had very specific jobs.

We learned how to use the huge, extremely hot woks they cook their different stir-fry dishes in. One dish we learned to make was this beef with flat noodles.

One person was in charge of portioning all the ingredients the chef needed for the dish. The chef would cook it and a third person would garnish and take the food to the pass. It all worked like a well-oiled machine and the chef had each dish down to a fine art.

All your prep needs to be done before you start, because the cooking part does not take long at all.

People in Hong Kong always try to balance their meal. If you have something spicy then you should balance it with something cooling.

This meant we would usually finish our meal with something cold and creamy, such as this delicious coconut cream sago. If you finish your meal with this sweet treat, it will leave you feeling refreshed and soothed.

Sago is available from most supermarkets. Eat it simply like this or add fruit; cold melon is our preferred choice.

Try out Kasey and Karena's delicious recipes at bite.co.nz below

• Beef and flat noodle stir fry
• Pork mince and beans
• Coconut sago