Margaret Xu Yuan

THEME
Margaret Xu Yuan
By LinYee Yuan | Issue 18, Feb/Mar 2009 For the Love of Food

TAGS: Food, Social Issues, Environment


Margaret Xu Yuan grew up loving the Chinese wet market behind her childhood home—instead of lunch money, her parents gave her money to go shopping to cook for herself when they were away.

Yuan is now the chef and owner behind Yin Yang, a three-table private kitchen named after the local favorite beverage of half-coffee/half-tea. What began as a single table experiment in the New Territories is now the hardest reservation to be had in Hong Kong Island. The entrepreneurial gourmand shares her dreams for the restaurant and clues us into the secret behind cooking with flowerpots.



Yin Yang Tofu
Theme: How would you describe the cuisine at Yin Yang?

Margaret Xu Yuan: It’s very difficult to describe, but I’d say Contemporary Chinese with a Hong Kong twist. Hong Kong has always been a bit “fusion” —the rural areas are Hakka, there is traditional Cantonese food, Chiu Chow cuisine, the colonial British influences. I also love the original cuisine from people who live on boats—like sea urchin and steamed custard. My food uses the oldest methods, but presenting what I learned from Hong Kong, in a very contemporary way.


How did you start traveling to villages to learn traditional cooking methods?

When I had my own ad agency, I found myself going to the New Territories to study chi gong, Chinese traditional breathing exercises. And I thought, “Maybe I can learn some cooking techniques?” like when you go to the provinces in Europe. Like most small communities, they don’t like outsiders and they would never teach you anything if you just went up there. So I started having this little hideaway for the weekends and I experimented with the stone rice grinder and they taught me how to use wood and charcoal for cooking. The villages are mainly Hakka and I would just go to different people’s houses to learn.

I go to get inspired to come up with different things; yesterday I was at the Shaolin Temple and I actually asked the Shaolin monk for some recipes. I once saw a sea urchin mousse in a beautiful little cup with some “caviar” made out of consomme, and it got me thinking, how about if I make a tofu mousse?

It sounds like a really great excuse to do some traveling….

And eating! On yesterday’s trip I also went to this place with huge traditional charcoal burners for roast goose which look like my terracotta setup. They also still use the stone grinder for making tofu and they specialize in riverfish in that area. So I went to look at the different kinds of fish and to see how it’s prepared.



How did you start cooking in terracotta?

When I was living in a penthouse apartment in Shouson Hill I was playing with Peking duck, which has a totally crispy skin, at home. And no matter how well you prepare the skin, the normal conventional ovens just didn’t do a proper job. At the restaurant they use this stainless steel tub where they hang the duck so I thought, well I have the roof and I’ll put some charcoal down there and do my own version. The stainless steel is so ugly and well, terracotta would match my roof.

When I sold my house and moved, I built another one in the village. But instead of doing the duck, I was inspired by the Hakka people’s love of chicken so I tried it and people went nuts.

Actually, when the gas company built all my new stoves for me in the restaurant with terracotta, the engineer actually told me terracotta radiates high heat evenly so the chicken is crispy but juicy inside. I’ve even invented a few more stoves like a fish stove out of a rectangular terracotta pot.



Stone ground rice cakes are your signature dish. What is the stone grinding process like?

Basically you soak the rice or beans overnight and you grind it into a thick liquid paste by adding little bits of water along the way. I also make tofu. For my rice cakes I drain out the water and use it like a wet flour base. The beauty of it, and why I started designing these cakes is that I can do whatever color I want. I started experimenting with purple and white rice with fresh grated tumeric that turns into bright yellow sticky rice. When layered, it looks like a real dessert rather than a boring cake.

Every Chinese New Year they have these traditional round cakes that are brown (brown sugar) or white (coconut flavored, made out of sticky rice). The way this all started is that I had a quiet month with my design job so I thought, “I’m going to design some New Year cakes for fun and see if I can sell some.” I had a friend who was an editor of a weekly food magazine; she wrote a feature on the cakes, and I sold out of them in three days. People were calling long distance from Macau and it got so popular that I had to pretend I wasn’t here when I answered the phone. The guys would call back and say, “Your staff doesn’t want to do business!” I was willing not to make money by being insistent that everything be hand done even though I couldn’t find anybody who would work with the stone grinder.

This was the start of having my one-table stone ground kitchen in the village, my own creation of a signature roast chicken, and rice cakes.



How are things going in your new space, Yin Yang, in Wan Chai?

I was researching original Hong Kong cuisine because I was quite ashamed that Hong Kong has its own original cuisine but no one is doing it properly. The government loved the organic food idea and I they gave me the chance to do it. With my cuisine I’m trying to show other professionals that Hong Kong Chinese cuisine can be done fresh and popular and people will pay for it.

I like the natural taste of things. I never use a pressure cooker. If food takes a long time to cook to break down its textures, I think that it should follow its natural path and the same with vegetables. It should grow in its natural environment and in its season in order to taste good. Like anything else it should not be prompted and you shouldn’t have to add anything. Being organic is mainly for taste and quality of life for me.

The [actual] space is very, very tight, [but] I actually don’t want it to be bigger. People are talking to me about opening my kind of restaurant somewhere else in the world. I would be more interested in doing the same kind of small-scale, romantic little place in other parts of the world to promote Hong Kong cuisine rather than making my own restaurant bigger.