Innovation heats up classic cuisine

Award-winning chef breathes new life into complex, forgotten dishes to cater to contemporary foodies' tastes, Li Yingxue reports.

Once a Lingnan (a region encompassing Guangdong and Hainan provinces, the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, and parts of Yunnan and Fujian provinces) showpiece, Baihua Chicken vanished from menus, too complex and unprofitable to make. Skinned whole and stuffed with shrimp mousse, it was dubbed "chicken without the chicken", a dish chefs feared for its precision.

One wrong cut could ruin it all, but Hong Kong-born chef Homan Tsui, 43, returned the forgotten classic back onto the menu.

At MGM Macau Hotel's Imperial Court, he deep-fries the chicken skin to a golden crisp. Traditional honey is swapped for maltose syrup while the skin is bathed, air-dried, and pressed into a caramel-tinted sheet, making it crisp, elegant, and irresistible.