Vintage cookbooks trace Hong Kong’s food heritage from Hakka to haute in new exhibition

Social media is full of cooking videos today, but it was not long ago that only those who had earned their stripes in a professional kitchen – and gained the approval of a publishing house – could create culinary content for the masses in the form of cookbooks. In Hong Kong, the 1960s saw an influx of immigrants and an expanding middle class whose interest in home cooking fuelled a surge in popularity of cookbooks and food-themed TV shows. This is the starting point of “Treasured Recipes”, a new exhibition at PMQ Taste Library in Hong Kong’s Central neighbourhood. The first of three exhibitions under the library’s new Guest Curator programme – in which different creators are brought in to explore the unexpected potential of the culinary arts – “Treasured Recipes” features an extensive archive of cookbooks, from local to international and retro to contemporary. Home cooking in a bygone era The first two sections of the exhibition, The Taste of Home and The Witness of History, centre on texts and photographs depicting Hong Kong domestic life in a bygone era and the familiar flavours of refined Cantonese cuisine. “Home-cooked recipes directly mirror a family’s daily life and circumstances,” says food writer and publisher Michael Lui Ka-chun, the exhibition’s curator. He stresses, however, that one must look closely – at word choices, design decisions, photographs and illustrations – to appreciate how these cookbooks reflect culture and the evolution of society. “The minute details are incredibly useful. A single photograph does much more than just capture a visual moment. It serves as documentation; it is a piece of history in itself,” he says. The exhibition features instalments from Chan Wing’s 30 Years in the Kitchen series from the 1950s and Shi Xisheng’s The Complete Family Cookbook series from the 1920s. There is also the first issue of Lisa Yam’s World, a culinary magazine that ran from 1989 until the mid-1990s. Yam, better known as Mrs Fong or Fong Tai, is one of Hong Kong’s pioneering TV chefs. From the 1970s to the 90s, she transformed cooking into entertainment. She became a household name, publishing bilingual cookbooks in Chinese, English and even Tagalog. One of the centrepieces of The Taste of Home section is a framed photograph pulled from a page in Wong Yuk-yu’s 2009 book The Legacy of Shunde: Fung Shing Restaurant’s Master Chef Tam Kwok King. The book details the history of Hong Kong’s Fung Shing Restaurant chain that opened its first branch in 1954, and its focus on dishes from Shunde in China’s Guangdong province. The photograph captures the restaurant’s chef Tam Kwok-king being interviewed by a Tokyo-based TV channel in the 1960s. At the time, the Japanese public’s understanding of Chinese cuisine was limited to Shanghainese, Pekinese and Sichuanese dishes. Tam was tasked with showing true Cantonese cooking with its simple sin mei (umami) and tsing sin (fresh) flavours. In the photograph, Chinese placards next to the dishes read: “goose webs”, “stir-fried softshell turtle slices” and “salt-baked chicken”. Lui says that while the Japanese were not yet familiar with Cantonese flavours, they could understand some of the ingredients. “There is a famous restaurant in Kyoto called Daiichi, which serves softshell turtle, too. With Tam’s food, the Japanese could comprehend our food culture through these parallels.” He adds that Shunde cuisine has, in some ways, influenced Hong Kong banquets, formal feasts and even home-cooked meals. Hong Kong’s culinary heritage and evolving style Issues of The Food World magazine series (1979-1986) are also on show. Their covers depict the aesthetics of old-school Chinese restaurants, including banquet-restaurant interiors and an example of opulent plating, giving a window into industry trends of the mid-to-late 20th century. Lui highlights the vintage magazine cover designs and how they reflect the style of the time. More than 40 years later, they still look somewhat timeless. Next to the Fung Shing Restaurant photo is another that captures an elderly Hakka woman using chopsticks to place white wood ear fungus into a large glass jar. Lui selected this photograph to remind visitors of Hong Kong’s Hakka heritage and indigenous food influences. “There was a period in Hong Kong’s history when Hakka restaurants were everywhere,” he says. “I really want to retrace the cultural dimensions that shape our modern palate and highlight how our local cuisine carries forward many rustic, traditional elements from the early Hakka people.” International connections The final two sections of the exhibition, World Master Recipes and Creative Awakenings, showcase landmark books from internationally renowned chefs. Lui sees a connection between Western chefs – from traditionalists such as Paul Bocuse, Alain Ducasse and Joel Robuchon to nonconformists such as Ferran Adria, Andre Chiang and Rene Redzepi – and Hong Kong diners who have “always possessed a global perspective” and “love looking outwards and absorbing things from around the world”. Lui says he selected cookbooks from international culinary masters to show how global culinary standards were, at certain points in history, intertwined with Hongkongers’ lives. “For instance, both Ducasse and Robuchon opened restaurants here that were prominent additions to Hong Kong’s dining scene,” he says. “For many people, these restaurants served as a culinary awakening and perhaps taught them what French cuisine or fine dining truly meant: the presentation, the sequence of the courses and the substance of the dishes.” The exhibition culminates in a fusion of all four sections. For this, Lui gathered cookbooks and private manuscripts from locally revered culinary figures including Yam, Man Ho Chinese Restaurant head chef Jayson Tang, ArChan Chan of Ho Lee Fook, and Peter Pang, the founder of Big JJ Seafood Hotpot restaurant. All four are celebrity chefs in their own right, and their contributions to the exhibition come in the way of recipes and writings about refining traditional Cantonese cuisine into modern dishes. “Take chef Tang,” Lui says. “He challenges the mindset of defaulting luxury Cantonese dining to premium delicacies like abalone, sea cucumber, shark fin and fish maw, and constantly ponders how to take the most ordinary dishes and push them to their sensory potential. “ArChan, on the other hand, loves getting to the root of things and would dissect how XO sauce should be stir-fried and balanced. In her cookbook, she investigates things like why bone-in meat tastes richer than boneless cuts and proves that the heat conduction properties of bone are different.” Lui says that Pang, meanwhile, challenges the binary of high-class versus low-class dining and turns humble food – such as hotpot – into delectable plates for all to enjoy. At its core, “Treasured Recipes” invites food lovers and chefs alike to explore how food and culture are intertwined. “In Hong Kong, people used to dismissively say that chefs only work in kitchens because they couldn’t cut it academically,” Lui says. “But professional cooking requires brains – a lot of intellectual engagement and meticulous research and analysis.” Treasured Recipes, PMQ Taste Library, Hollywood building, 5/F, H504, PMQ, 35 Aberdeen Street, Central, Wed-Sat, 1pm-6pm, until August 30. Entry costs HK$20 for adults and is free for children less than 100cm tall.

Vintage cookbooks trace Hong Kong’s food heritage from Hakka to haute in new exhibition

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}‘Treasured Recipes’ at PMQ Taste Library features food-themed books and magazines spanning decades to show how the city’s food scene evolved

Home cooking in a bygone era

‘Treasured Recipes’ at PMQ Taste Library features food-themed books and magazines spanning decades to show how the city’s food scene evolved