Tuesday 31 January 2017

Chinatown and Year of the Rooster

Had to get the tube at Leicester Square today, so decided to take a brief detour through Chinatown. Lots of red lanterns everywhere still, very pretty, although the main Chinese New Year celebrations were a couple of days ago, on Sunday, I think.

The pastry shops seem to have lots of cream cakes these days, unusual for Chinatown, and not very different from the cream cakes we see in the Turkish shops. I wonder where this trend comes from. Green tea as a flavoring still seems to be popular though, and the bakeries all had a version of a green tea flavored Swiss roll.

Purple sweet potatoes at See Woo supermarket on Lisle street, rather expensive, though. Lots of seafood, with tanks of live lobsters and crabs, among other things.

Krachai and red Java apples at the shop on Gerrard Street opposite Loon Fung, I can't remember the shop's name at the moment.

Saw packets of dark red granules labelled Dried Red Yeast in Loon Fung and one of the other main supermarkets. Never noticed that before. The only instructions on one of the packets was to rinse with water before using. Is this the wine yeast that's used to make red-fermented bean curd, perhaps?

Bought a packet of licorice-flavored preserved kumquats, because I remember having them, and licorice-flavored preserved plums, when I was first in London many years ago, and one of my in-laws was living in Hong Kong at the time.

Found that my favourite pastry shop, Kowloon, at the end of Gerrard Street, was still going, and bought one of those fried sesame-coated balls of dough with a red bean paste filling, because I hadn't had one in a long while.