We had Saturday dinner at Daisy Chang in Howick. Small menu, the usual South-Asian suspects and from the photos it was hard to tell how big the portions were, because certainly, wasn’t $10 for four dumplings too much? At the night markets you could get 15 for $5.

But I like looking (discretely) around the moment I enter a restaurant, and I happened to see two baos being brought out of the kitchen and even at 15 feet I could see that they were huge. From that, we were able to make a determination that two items would be sufficient. We all ordered fried chicken (I wanted squid but they’d run out) and baos (I picked pork belly). For sides, we had the charred cauliflower stems and fries.

Charring is another big trend and there is something about it that lends vegetables, a perfect foil to their freshness especially when the only seasoning is salt and paper and a modest dressing of hoisin. I would happily be charring all my vegetables except that cauliflower stems or even broccolini are rarely available in the supermarkets. You either hunted them down at Farmer’s markets or grow your own.

I remembered that I still had the Chines broccoli that Berta gathered from the week back as well as half a kilo of pork belly leftover from the week’s previous dinner so I whipped up a dish that could happily be included in Daisy Chang’s menu. The Chinese broccoli were a bit limp now, but they still had crunch, and a bit of peppery bite reminiscent of arugula. To lighten the hint bitterness, a splosh of lemon juice before serving.

Since they were just a handful, I got savoy cabbage which I haven’t had a chance to cook until now, in about 50 grams of butter and sea salt and they’re now my favourite cabbage.