Gai Yong Yu Tou: A Lost Cantonese Street Food
Dawei (Steph's Dad) teaches us a lost Cantonese Street Food from the 1920s
So this week, I wanted to teach you how to make a dish that you’ve almost definitely never heard of before – Gai Yong Yu Tou. Why so confident? Because in China these days, the dish’s already kind of an endangered species.
If you’ve followed these posts at all, there’s been a couple recipes from “Dawei”, Steph’s (the other half of these posts) Dad. Cantonese guy, grew up in Guangzhou, ended up moving over to a neighboring city later on in his life. He’s an excellent cook, and really the ultimate source for a number of the techniques we communicate here. For the longest time, he’s been wanted to show this certain soup – Gai Yong Yu Tou – that’s one of the dishes that he’s the most proud of.
Gai Yong Yu Tou is an old school soup that uses puffed pork skin to mimic the texture of fish maw (a famously expensive ingredient in Cantonese cuisine). Apparently, back in the late 1920s to early 1930s there were a number of street vendors in Guangzhou that’d make the dish, and there was one vendor in particular that was Dawei’s father’s favorite. So every day after school he’d go over to the vendor, hand over one copper coin, and get a bowl of Gai Yong Yu Tou to slurp on. Sometimes though, the vendor’d be out, and so Dawei’s father asked their family’s chef (Steph’s father’s side was a merchant family in Guangzhou, long story) to make the soup for him. The chef mimicked the vendor’s, then eventually taught Dawei’s father. Dawei quite liked the dish growing up, and his father ended up teaching him.
So this is a dish that’s really steeped with meaning to Dawei… so for the accompanying video, I thought it’d be most appropriate for him to speak for himself. It’s a totally different style than we usually do so it might feel a bit tough to follow, but yeah.
Ingredients
Puffed Pork Skin (浮皮), 40g. Ok, let’s get the weird ingredient out of the way at first. This is what the stuff looks like, and is probably… on the super hard to source. Let’s not panic though. What puffed pork skin is is pork skin (that’s been thoroughly, thoroughly washed) and puffed by being buried under insanely hot sand. While not 100% the same, I would imagine some plain chicarron/pork rind – something akin to this style only without the seasoning of course – would do the job. It’ll be tougher to rinse the grease off, but I think would still do the job.
Chicken breast (鸡脯肉), 100g.
Chicken liver (鸡肝), 80g.
Egg, 1 medium. To make egg drop at the end.
Dried Shiitake Mushrooms (冬菇), 15g. Or about ~4-5. Soaked overnight in ~1 cup water – reserve the soaking liquid, it’ll go into the soup.
Water -or- Chinese chicken stock -or- Clam stock, 800mL. So Dawei just uses water in the video, but you could equally use a chicken or clam stock as the base of the soup if you prefer.
To season the soup: 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp sugar, ½ tsp white pepper powder (白胡椒粉) together with an optional ~1/2 tsp chicken bouillon powder (鸡粉). Dawei’s instructions were to taste the soup at the end, and if you feel it’s not umami enough, to add a bit of chicken bouillon powder. Bouillon powder, for the unaware, is chock full of MSG… so usually in these recipes we prefer cutting out the middleman and using MSG straight. Generally, bouillon powder is more common in home kitchens in China, while MSG is more popular in restaurants. If you prefer to use MSG, swap the optional 1/2 tsp of bouillon powder with a sprinkle of MSG (be sure not to overdo it).
Slurry of 2.5 tbsp water chestnut starch (马蹄粉) mixed with ~1/2 cup water. Ok, so water chestnut starch is a classic starch for thickening Cantonese soups. If you can’t find it, I’d try either tapioca starch or potato starch… both of those tend to hold up slightly better than cornstarch. In a pinch though, I think cornstarch would work, but Steph’s disagreeing with me. Just use water chestnut starch if at all possible – you can buy some online and it’s a great choice for slurries in general.
Toasted sesame oil (麻油), ~1 tsp. Drizzled in at the end.
Process
Ok, high level overview at first: reconstitute the puffed pork skin and the shiitake mushrooms, poach the chicken, boil the pork skin and rinse to remove the grease, julienne everything, make a soup with everything but the egg, thicken with a slurry, do an egg drop.
Reconstitute the puffed pork skin and shiitake mushrooms overnight. Cool water soak, separately of course. Do about ~1 cup of water together with the shiitake mushrooms – we’ll be using that later on.
Boil the puffed pork skin for ~5 minutes. This’ll help continue to soften the skin, and also (importantly) remove the grease.
Rinse the puffed pork skin under running water, squeezing it at the same time. Do this for 2-3 minutes, or until your hands no longer feel greasy. Then, squeeze it dry. As you’re squeezing it dry, you should no longer feel any grease on your hands – if you do, continue to rinse/squeeze.
Simmer the chicken breast in boiling water for 3 minutes. Then, shut off the heat and toss in the chicken livers. Cover, let sit for ~5 minutes. Both the chicken breast and the livers should be slightly undercooked here, as they’re going to be going into the soup again in a bit. The chicken breast should be slightly pink in the middle.
Julienne the shiitake mushrooms, the chicken livers, the chicken breast, and the pork skin. To julienne the shiitake mushrooms, first snip off the stems, then squeeze any extra moisture out. Slice horizontally in 2-3 sheets, then the other direction for a julienne. For the chicken breast, first slice into sheets, then take one ‘sheet’ and forcefully press it flat with a cleaver, then cut into a julienne. For the pork skin, slice it horizontally in half, then julienne – a tough wider than the chicken and the mushrooms, roughly the same width as, say, Tagliatelle.
Beat the egg. Really go at this… beat the egg until there’s large bubbles, and they’re no stray strand of egg white remaining.
Make the slurry.
Make the soup. First strain the mushroom soaking liquid into a pot and mix that with the water/stock. Then swap the flame to high and:
Immediately toss in the pork skin. It needs to go in while the water is still cool.
Cover, bring to a simmer. After simmering for five minutes, check the texture of the pork skin.You want the pork skin to still have a slight bite to it – it should be soft, but not quite ‘melt in your mouth’ or anything.
Season with salt and sugar.
Add in the mushrooms, the chicken breast and the chicken liver.
Stir, and bring to a boil uncovered.
Season with white pepper powder and (optionally) chicken bouillon powder. Make sure the soup is at a rapid boil before moving on to the next step.
Drizzle in the slurry bit by bit to thicken.
Once thicken, make the egg drop. Stir the soup vigorously while drizzling in the beaten egg in a thin stream, bit by bit.
Heat off, drizzle in the sesame oil, quick mix, out.