Lau Chun, chef and television presenter, whose family owns Yellow Door and Kin's Kitchen, has just learned how to make the Cantonese dish of baked fish organs with egg - from his 80-year-old uncle. After the lesson is over, he worships his ancestors.
That would resonate with Professor Sidney Cheung, from the department of anthropology at Chinese University, who is writing a paper on family recipes as intangible heritage. He has just returned from a trip to New Orleans, where he discovered that, having lost so much following Hurricane Katrina, people are producing books of family recipes to preserve what history and tradition they can.
'One argument is that people like us, in our 40s or even 50s, don't know how to cook family food, we don't inherit the family recipes,' Cheung says. 'There's a lack of inter-generational communication. We don't know how to buy food, we don't know how to cook different vegetables, we don't understand different ingredients in the market.'
This loss or diminishment of culinary culture is deeply affecting Hong Kong - and much of it has to do with money.
Lau Kin-wai, who gives his name to Kin's Kitchen, cites a dish such as salted chicken, which takes too long to prepare, and then occupies an entire oven. Or something as simple as stir-fried vegetables. 'Every housewife can do it - but the restaurant cannot.'
He explains how restaurants steam the vegetables first, then reheat them in the wok - to save a precious 30 seconds. Even chefs who do have time cut corners. Lau says 30 or 40 years ago everyone could do everything - but that changed when rents rocketed, and government policy caused the disappearance of dai pai dong culture.
