Do you like to eat fowl? No I don’t mean eating while you are in a foul mood but what I meant is that, do you like to eat game birds such as duck, pheasant, grouse, or squab? One of my favorite bird dishes is Peking Duck, which I must say; we can get very good if not better Peking duck in Thailand than in Hong Kong. I have also cooked Peking Duck in my restaurant in The United States when I was there. I put it on the menu and it went like hot cakes. My restaurant in Rehoboth Beach Delaware was not even a Chinese restaurant but we wanted to try to do something different long before fusion food came into being.

               It is very time consuming to make Peking ducks and I am not sure if you knew what processes we had to go through to make Peking duck, you would want to eat it. First you have to marinate it and rub it with all kinds of herbs and spices.

               Then you tie a rope around its neck, making sure you have enough rope left to hang the duck in an airy place over night to form a skin. You then grab these ducks by the rope and dunk them into a very large aromatic pot of boiling liquid to separate the fat from the skin of the duck. You have to dunk it a few times before you hang them over night with a fan blowing and swaying to allow the skin to dry. Then the next day you roast the birds in the shelves of the oven with a dripping pan in the bottom to catch the fat that comes off the bird. You make a sauce with honey, soy and a few other ingredients and brush the skin of the ducks until they are done and the skin is almost black and shiny.

               In Hong Kong they carve the Peking Duck tableside with the duck meat attached to the skin and you eat it wrapped in thin pancakes with sweet Hoisin sauce, green onions and cucumber. But in Thailand we like to eat only the skin and take the meat of the duck to make another dish or two. I don’t know why I am so partial to these fatty menu items and with everyone being so careful not traveling to countries that have SARS I am very unhappy not to be able to go to Hong Kong to eat another one of my favorite bird dishes.

               Yes, I love squabs or pigeon. In Shatin district of Hong Kong they serve the best squabs in the whole wide world. I have tried squabs in Chinese restaurant in Bangkok and have not, until now discovered a place that serves squabs as good as in Shatin in Hong Kong. Finally I am very happy that Hong Kong squabs have come to Bangkok without SARS! I was taken to try these delicious birds at a restaurant in Chinatown, which I had already written about, in the Nation a while ago. Do you remember Kum Long, which is a Chinese restaurant in Chinatown? Well, they have improved and expanded their menu. I have been back to eat at this place twice in one week. The first new menu item that they wanted me to try was squabs. The way you prepare squabs is pretty much like the way you do Peking duck.

               I was use to get very small squabs in Thailand but the squabs at Kum Long are imported from Hong Kong. They are very large and very juicy! The skin is very crispy while the meat of the bird is still very moist and very aromatic because it has been marinated very well. If you enter the restaurant from the back or from the parking lot you will have to go through the kitchen and as you enter the kitchen you will be greeted by pigeons handing from the ceilings ready to be fried. For me it is quite a sight and mouth started to water as soon as I see these birds. The owner of Kum Long also created other new dishes like crispy fried duck tongues and stir-fried shrimps with sweet battered fried custard. There is also the whole shrimps fried in its shells and topped with a sauce made with the yolk of salted eggs. Talk about a high cholesterol diet but once in a while it is worth it. How about a small plate of steamed ground pork with salted fish? A perfect accompaniment to a hot bowl of rice. Then there is the marinated steamed scallops with asparagus tips served with their own homemade oyster sauce dip. I guess I can go on and on about the food here but what I wanted you all to know is that this restaurant has been enlarged into another shop-house next door so you won’t feel that you have to squeeze yourselves in to eat there anymore. I hope that you also get some idea of how much a process it is to make one single squab or a Peking duck. In this way you would either appreciate what you are eating more or be completely turned off by it! I certainly hope it is the former case and I do hope that you won’t wait until SARS is under control before you venture out to have a Hong Kong style squabs. We finally have it in Bangkok.