By ALICE YONG
VEGETARIAN dishes are beginning to garner more attention in restaurants these days, due to greater consumer demand and the rising trend towards healthy and clean eating.
Also, many devotees of the Nine Emperor Gods Festival, or ‘gau wong yeh’ in Cantonese, will observe a strict vegetarian diet in honour of this major Toaist religious celebration.
Each year, hordes of devotees will flock to the Nine Emperor Gods temples located in Ampang in Selangor, and Butterworth in Penang throughout the nine days of the ninth lunar month.
Elegant Inn Hong Kong Cuisine at Menara Hap Seng in Kuala Lumpur is one of the rare Chinese restaurants in the city to offer a special vegetarian set menu to mark this festival, which falls this year from Sept 28 night till Oct 7.
Elegant Inn proprietress Jeanette Han said: “Our vegetarian menu is increasingly popular with diners who adhere to vegetarianism during the Nine Emperor Gods Festival.
“Personally, I’m not fond of leafy vegetables, so I challenged my chefs to create nice vegetarian dishes for the set menu. Our aim is to serve something unique besides ordinary stir-fried greens.”
The set begins with a delicate, airy-light truffle radish puff with twin purple sweet potatoes. Surrounded by petal-shape slices of lightly battered, crisp purple sweet potato, the flaky puff with truffle oil-infused shredded radish and carrot stuffing is an artful creation redolent with sweet-savoury accents.
Similar to a traditional Teochew mooncake crust, the outer layer is a feather-light, crisp pastry that is a delight to eat.
Next, some expert carving skills result in a beautiful beancurd ‘blossom’ immersed in a bowl of double-boiled soup of tofu blossom with fresh beetroot and carrot.
The wavy tendrils of the ‘blossom’ appear almost otherworldly in the delicately earthy-sweet soup that has been double-boiled for no less than six hours.
Meanwhile, an appetising dressing of lychee vinegar and sesame sauce perfectly enhances the main course of trio treasures stuffed with organic beancurd and quinoa.
Essentially a clever interpretation of ‘yong tau foo’ (stuffed beancurd with fish paste), the Elegant Inn team has stuffed wedges of brinjal, bittergourd and red capsicum with mashed organic beancurd mixed with quinoa before pan-frying them.
This is sure to be a crowd-pleaser, thanks to the dish’s palateable textures and tantalising dressing.
The simplest, albeit most interesting, speciality has to be groundnut sprouts wok-fried with sweet peas and premium cordyceps flowers.
A new ingredient in the local food scene, the plump groundnut sprouts yield a nice crunch similar to that of asparagus. Paired with sweet peas and cordyceps flowers, the sprouts should go down well with those who are averse to greens.
Rounding off the savoury main selection is delicious premium wild porcini noodles. Here, springy hand-made noodles are stir-fried with porcini mushrooms, greens and a dash of truffle oil.
A dessert duet of double-boiled snow pear with chuan bei and citrus peel complemented by Yan Xi lotus bloom pastry brings the meal to a subtly sweet conclusion.
The former is a soothing broth with snow pear, chuan bei mu (fritillaria bulbs prized in traditional Chinese medicine for its lung-soothing efficacy) and snow fungus, while the latter is a pretty floral-shape pastry inspired by the popular Chinese drama series, Yan Xi Palace.
Priced at RM138++ per person (minimum two diners per table), Elegant Inn Hong Kong Cuisine’s Emperor Gods Festival Unique Vegetarian Set is available from Sept 29 to Oct 7.
Alice Yong is a freelance writer/blogger at www.jommakanlife.com. She can be reached at jommakanalice@yahoo.com.
