GADDI'S REMEMBERED

My first of many visits to Hong Kong was way back in 1964. Things were vastly different in those days -- the place had a lot more character, I arrived at the old Kai Tek airport on a hot and sultry summer afternoon and was whisked immediately to a gleaming white Rolls Royce. I felt like a true taipan as the limousine weaved its way through the bustling narrow streets of Kowloon to the historic Peninsula Hotel -- an experience I enjoyed several times during the early Sixties.

A string quintet was playing Gershwin in the hotel lobby and floral-frocked expatriate wives and elegantly-clad Hong Kong Chinese were enjoying afternoon tea colonial-style: devouring huge cream cakes and sipping Darjeeling tea.

Gaddi’s at the Peninsula Hotel was without doubt the finest restaurant in the colony, and one of the best in the whole Far East -- and I am glad to hear that it has maintained its eminence since the changes to Hong Kong's status.

I was privileged to be invited by the hotel management to fly out first class from Europe in 1988 with Cathay Pacific for the hotel’s 60th anniversary dinner at Gaddi’s.

I kept the very ornate personalised menu from the evening: quail salad, endive soup with capsicums and Balik salmon, steamed fillet of sea bass, roast veal stuffed with bone marrow in a light tarragon sauce and a decoratively glazed pastry served with mango sherbet. We drank a Louis Latour Bâtard-Montrachet 1985, a Château La Conseillante 1979 and a Deutz Cuvée du 150e Anniversaire.

During dinner I was seated next to a young lady charmingly named Heidi Ho who turned out to be a mine of information on the Peninsula’s history. I discovered that officers of my father’s regiment, the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, had been billeted at the Peninsula while on their way to Shanghai shortly before the hotel opened. I never knew my father, who tragically was among the many to disappear in the Burmese jungles during World War II, but I did know he had earlier been to Hong Kong and Shanghai. The dinner took on another dimension knowing that he had probably also ‘put up at the Pen’ back in the late Twenties.

The kitchen at Gaddi’s had (and doubtless still has) a knack of transforming vegetables, spices and herbs into true culinary delights. Here’s a couple you might like to try.

CARROTS WITH ORANGE AND CARDAMOM

1 tablespoon cardamom pods
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
375 g carrots, sliced thinly on the diagonal
5 cm piece fresh ginger root, peeled and finely chopped
2 teaspoons caster sugar
finely grated rind and juice of 1 large orange
2 teaspoons lemon juice
salt

Remove the seeds from the cardamom pods and crush.

Heat the wok until hot. Add the vegetable oil and heat using a moderate heat. Add the carrrots and ginger and stir-fry for 2-3 minutes. Add the crushed cardamom seeds and stir-fry for a few seconds.

Add the caster sugar, orange juice and rind, lemon juice and salt to taste. Bring to the boil and stir-fry for 1 minute, or until the liquid is reduced. Serve at once.

Serves 4.


MANGETOUT WITH GINGER AND MINT

2 tablespoons olive oil
5 cm piece of fresh ginger root, peeled and cut into matchsticks
500 g mangetout
2 teaspoons chopped fresh mint
salt and pepper
mint sprigs to garnish

Heat the wok until hot. Add the olive oil and heat over a moderate heat until hot, but not smoking. Add the ginger and stir-fry over a gentle heat for 1-2 minutes.

Add the mangetout and stir-fry for 2 minutes. Remove from the heat and stir in the lemon juice and mint. Add salt and pepper to taste. Decorate with mint twigs and serve at once.

Serves 4