My Humble House, the rooftop restaurant serving nouvelle Chinese cuisine, is unique in many ways. It happens to be the first restaurant in a ITC hotel that is not an in-house brand, but a collaboration with an award-winning Singapore-based one. Over the years, it has managed to carve a niche for itself, even among Dum Pukht and Bukhara regulars at the ITC Maurya, Chanakyapuri.
The reason is not hard to see—Ken Ling, the Executive Chef of the chain of restaurants—who has won over gourmands and award committees, from Beijing to Tokyo. A man of few words, not the least because of the language barrier, he reminded me of a fortune cookie with his short, terse, often aphoristic pronouncements. Like the fortune cookie—of Japanese stock, but indelibly associated with American-Chinese takeaways—serendipity is his métier. Born in Malayasia, raised in Singapore and Hong Kong, he specialises in applying French techniques and fresh, local produce, to recreate Chinese cuisine in surprising packages. Here for a food festival, he’s a hands-on culinary artist, and fidgeted through our conversation, translated by COO Ricky Ng, eager to rush back to the kitchen and let his cooking do the talking.
Inevitably, as I later realised, he has no formal training in French cuisine, having picked up ideas from various chefs during his long career—ideas, from which he has taken irreverent inspirations. Based out of Singapore, the unofficial gastronomic capital of Asia with its cosmopolitan and affluent clientele, it was only natural that he tried to marry diverse influences. What singles him out is his imaginative use of these influences.
Recognising the need for novelty, but not succumbing to gimmickry, he has tried to understand the need of his well-heeled, globe-trotting clientele, and what he describes as the disadvantages of traditional Chinese restaurant fare, to focus on reducing the sauces to jus that intensify flavours and bypass the messy stickiness of thickening agents like flour. This was wonderfully showcased by the penultimate item in the six-course set menu of the festival (`3,600 for non-veg, `3,200 for veg)—the Roasted Rack of Lamb in Lamb Reduction, served with fresh chilli-mint chutney and Singaporean Fried Rice. But more of that later. I began the evening’s fare with Crisp-fried Peking Duck Skin with Five Spice Foie Gras wrapped in Egg Crepe. That one morsel encapsulated Chef Ling’s philosophy, with the skin, the highlight of Peking Duck, fried by ladling hot oil over the whole duck to render out the fat while keeping the flavourful skin crisp and succulent, the slab of foie gras that replaces duck meat, broiled with Chinese five-spice rub rather than pan-seared, and then assembled over a wafer-thin egg crepe instead of a rice pancake. It was an elegant display of painstaking and clever technique and beautiful presentation that should win over even the most finicky connoisseur.
Another of his signature innovations, unfortunately not present in the festival menu, is his deconstruction of the Pork Belly. Rather than sear the belly on a griddle and then braise it under a hot grill, which he found to retain too much of the fat while not letting the aromatic spice rub infuse the meat, he marinates the belly in the spices, and cooks it in suet for 48 hours at a low 58°C.
So why does he prefer calling his style New Chinese Cooking and not fusion? Pat came the reply, “Too much fusion creates confusion, whether it is Chinese or Italian. I always wanted to retain the Chinese identity of my food, and yet have an element of surprise in it.” Unsurprisingly, his Molten Lava Pudding, a colonial relic that is now a honorary staple in Chinese cuisine, uses lychee to substitute vanilla as the flavour-substrate.
The measure of his confidence in his judgement was amply displayed in his proclamation, that he found Indian lamb much more flavourful than its antipodean cousins. Which brings me back to the Roast Lamb Rack. Before I could cry scandal, he made good his words—producing the dish with flourish—a breathtaking falling-off-the-bone sweet-and-savoury creation that left me speechless. Here is an artist at the peak of his powers. Savour his ephemral creations while you can.