- 3 months ago
Today, Bon Appétit meets Chef Lucas Sin in Hong Kong to try Bamboo-pressed Noodles. These noodles are rare and an iconic part of Hong Kong’s street food legacy, with only a handful of places still making them the traditional way by hand. Using nothing but eggs and flour, these springy noodles are pressed with a 40-year-old bamboo pole and then transformed into the perfect bowl of wonton noodle soup.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Today we have a special opportunity to take a look at how bamboo noodles are
00:12made. Bamboo noodles are an iconic noodle in Hong Kong and it's rare that
00:15they're still made by the original bamboo pole. It's a little bit of a dying art.
00:19So in here is Lau Sum Gi's production kitchen where chef makes bamboo noodles
00:24fresh every single day. Hello, Lo Man. First thing is the dough and it starts
00:28with the eggs. Look at this blue egg. Slightly larger than the chicken egg
00:32because this is a duck egg. Duck egg a little bit higher in fat content and
00:37also as a result a little bit more aromatic. It tastes a
00:42little bit better but it lacks, according to chef, a little bit of that natural
00:47egg flavor that we're used to. The ratio of chicken eggs to duck eggs about 30
00:51chicken eggs, 90 duck eggs per batch. One to three. The most amazing thing about this
00:57noodle is that there is no water added. The egg is all of the hydration inside of
01:03that dough. Eggs are cracked. Now we're going to put the dough together. So in his mixer is his flour.
01:14Higher in protein. The more you need it, the more gluten structure going to develop and that's the name of
01:20the game. There's a very tight gluten protein matrix that's going to be
01:23resilient, elastic, and the proper texture. This is the alkaline solution. In the
01:30English term is usually lye but that can be confusing because what's actually
01:34inside of it differs from culture to culture. In Hong Kong it's primarily
01:38potassium carbonate with a little bit of sodium carbonate.
01:59That's it. That was a 5, 10, 15 second mixing process. Look at that beautiful yellow color.
02:05That comes from the eggs and the interaction between the alkaline solution, the lye. It's like you just
02:12want to combine the wet and the dry ingredients relatively well so that the kneading can actually
02:17take place on the table with the bamboo pole. There's a senso bench on which there is a piece
02:23of wood and chef likes to portion everything out with these little pieces of brown paper. So that's
02:28what he's working on. He's putting all of his body weight first through his fists into the dough just
02:37to bring it together so it's workable. The dough is so firm because there's no water at all so in order
02:42to bring it together it's going to take a lot more force than if you were to do it like a pasta dough by hand
02:48which is what the bamboo pole is for. One, two, three. It's like a cake of dough. A piece of rubber on a
02:56couple pieces of cloth anchored to the back of the table and then this thick bamboo rod so to speak. I mean
03:02that's really it. That's really it. Oh, cool. I'm not waiting for you. I'll do it again.
03:08When you first do it, when you first do it, when you first do it, you think it's really fun?
03:12It's really fun. It's like a sea side. It's really fun. It looks like it's really fun.
03:16I was only 10 years old. Do you still think it's really fun right now?
03:23The bamboo pole leverages the weight of the chef to get that dough
03:29to really combine and to encourage that gluten formation. I mean the bounce is not just for show.
03:34The bounce is a small movement of the pole from one side to the other
03:40to lengthen and stretch that dough out but also to bring that dough back together.
03:44After the first pressing, it's going to look a little bit like the shape of a fan
03:48so he'll rotate it 180 degrees and do it again. This is a very physical process that really depends
03:53on the chef even more so than most other cooking things because the amount of force that's applied
03:58into the dough is dependent on the weight of the chef itself. What all of this is to say
04:02that it all comes from experience. So we're looking for a lot of gluten formation. We're looking
04:06for a lot of elasticity but if you need the dough too much, that that noodle becomes too hard.
04:12And too little means that the dough's not going to come together. Standing here watching him do it,
04:17it feels as if it's quite simple but I know for a fact that if I were to try it,
04:23it wouldn't come out right and it's just a matter of a lot of these invisible little bits and pieces
04:30of experience that allow that it will become a certain type of way. Understanding of the climate
04:37and the dough that is really hard to quantify. This bamboo pole is from Chef's uncle, 40 years old.
04:43This one here, 10 plus. To prevent it from cracking, after each session he'll put a little bit of water on it,
04:50just to rub it down, hydrate it just very slightly and this becomes a lifelong bamboo pole.
04:58Next step is to get it sheeted out. Sheeting also helps knead and combine it a little bit as well,
05:03but you had to get it incorporated in the first place which is why the bamboo pole was so important.
05:08Thinner and thinner and thinner rollers and at the end just a little dusting of flour.
05:14Then it gets rolled up quite neatly.
05:20After that, this coil gets put in front of the cutter and it gets rest here for another at least
05:27five minutes because it's been going through a lot of kneading through these flour machines.
05:32That is a collection of one very, very, very long noodle and so he's going to tear it up by hand
05:39and place it inside of that tray. Chef says you want to see a bit of elasticity but you want it to snap
05:46because if it doesn't snap it means that you wouldn't be able to bite through it. So chef needs to finish
05:50the noodles but this emergency batch of noodles is going to the restaurant so let's head back over
05:55there and try to get some food. Welcome to their second location. Time to order.
06:03Very few dishes in Hong Kong are more iconic or more emblematic of Hong Kong than the wonton noodle.
06:09This is a third generation shop. Laosamge started off with the chef's grandfather, came down from
06:15Guangzhou, originally started as a cart that becomes a daipaidong, an outside street stall,
06:20that finally becomes a storefront around the corner on Phukwengai in 1992.
06:25The wonton noodle is three components. First, the wontons, dumplings wrapped with shrimp and pork.
06:30The wonton wrapper traditionally is made from the exact same dough as the noodles themselves.
06:35So stores who make bamboo noodles from scratch also have the same dough ready to make wontons.
06:42The second component is the bamboo noodle itself. Noodles go into the hot water. She's constantly
06:46agitating with chopsticks trying to loosen it up as quickly as possible. You want those noodles to
06:51become separated the instant that they hit the water so that they don't clump up and cook unevenly.
06:55And then once they've hydrated full of water, it actually goes into cold water where she's constantly
07:00agitating it and then back into the hot water. Into the cold water to get rid of any alkaline,
07:05soapy flavor. And the second cook is to finish the hydration process for the noodle. Into the bowl
07:10on top of the wontons. There's no seasoning, no sesame oil, nothing required because the name of the game
07:16is delicacy and cleanliness. And the last component is broth built off of pork bones and flounder and bits
07:22and pieces of shrimp. With a little bit of fresh yellow chives to garnish, the broth goes into the bowl and
07:28that's for typical love. So I'm going to get wonton noodle soup. For me, the most important metric of
07:33a good bowl of bamboo noodles is the springiness of that noodle. It needs to be resilient. It shouldn't
07:38get soft. It shouldn't sort of dissolve into the soup. There are wonton noodle shops all over Hong Kong,
07:42but it's pretty hard to find a wonton noodle shop that still makes their bamboo noodles by pole,
07:48by hand. That insistence on that quality and the insistence on craftsmanship and control is why we're here.
07:53At the table, they would give you a little bit of either... Oh, amazing.
08:02It's a little bit like that fajita effect when the server brings over the fajitas in the restaurant
08:06and you can smell it and everybody can smell it and makes you want to eat it. That's what happens
08:10with these wonton noodles. The heat of the broth is bringing everything up to the surface and into the
08:15air. And the first thing you smell is a certain type of sweetness that's grounded in almost like an earthy
08:20umami thing. That's the steam bringing up those gentle aromatics from those yellow chives, but also
08:26everything that's been put inside of that broth. The clarity of that broth is paramount. You can see
08:31the bottom of the bowl and you know that they achieved this with a very gentle simmer. A very low
08:37temperature coaxing of all of those flavor compounds out of everything that's inside of that flavor satchel.
08:42I took a spoon before I was going to tell you, but it is just so enticing.
08:56So ridiculous. So good. The bamboo noodles have to be on top because you don't want them to soak up
09:02too much broth. If you ever get wonton noodles with wonton served on the top, you know that that shop
09:06isn't serious. You know that they're not highlighting the technique of the noodles themselves.
09:13We see that bounce. You want this to be elastic and resilient, not hard. If it's hard,
09:18it means it's brittle, which means that it's been dried. This is fresh every day. Okay, about time.
09:24It slips in. It's so so so so thin. It's so slippery. It's such a nice complement to the broth and the
09:40wontons themselves because really this bowl is just the same couple of ingredients, the pork, the shrimp,
09:45the eggs, over and over again in different textures and different layers. It plays really really well with
09:52the broth itself. The broth is robust. It's got it's it's very very clean, but but it's not milky,
09:59like creamy like hongkotsu. So for a thin noodle, I think this is the best way to eat it. Thin soup,
10:05thin broth, thin delicate noodles.
10:14The Hong Kong style wonton is bigger with a little bit more filling, oftentimes at least one whole shrimp,
10:21and the tail is either of this length kind of medium
10:26or non-existent. A whole piece of shrimp, a little bit of fattiness from the pork
10:32to counter the natural sweetness of the shrimp.
10:39Yummy. The wonton wrapper is so silky smooth that counteracts the bite of the noodle itself. It's kind of like a bit of a contrast,
10:48but on the other hand, it's also comparative and it's also
10:52synergistic with the same shrimp and pork products that are inside of the broth itself.
10:56It's all sort of stacked on top of each other for this ecosystem, this bowl of flavor.
11:01When I was young, eating the Hong Kong noodle chops, I always preferred the more robust flavors,
11:06the beef briskets and the softer things, the velvety sort of like rice noodles.
11:10But as I'm growing up, I've come to appreciate the delicacy and the cleanliness of something like a wonton noodle.
11:16Those thinner noodles just really carry what is so incredible and difficult to pin down
11:23about Cantonese cooking. It's taken us long enough to cover the bamboo noodles.
11:29Everybody who comes to Hong Kong looks for that perfect bowl of bamboo or wonton noodles.
11:35And it was great to see the process because I know that this is a bit of a dying art.
11:42Only two or three places are still doing this. If you're looking for that Hong Kong take on the bamboo
11:47noodle, that spring, that chew, that elasticity, that flavor, this is the place to be.
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