Going underground

The fresh shrimp will be cooked medium to well done and served in a clay pot, which will finish cooking in the pot once it reaches the table. "I add the garlic and chili to the olive oil that I used to cook the shrimp in, which makes a good dipping sauce for the pre-meal bread," says the veteran chef as he shares some insider tips on how to finish a dish.

The ham-and-mushroom croquets look like a simple dish, but in fact takes Qin days to prepare. He first of all chooses four kinds of mushrooms and Iberian ham and chops them into small cubes before frying them in olive oil. The following day, he melts butter with flour and adds the minced mushrooms and ham, forms them into balls weighing around 20 grams, and then freezes them. And the next day, when guests order the dish, Qin fries them into croquets to order.

"The secret is to control the heat when melting the butter with the flour, and always to add some milk after you put the mushrooms in," Qin says.

Crispy suckling pig is Qin's signature dish. He uses three-month-old big-eared pigs which have been recently weaned, and cuts each 5-kilogram pig into six pieces. After being marinated, the pig is slowly cooked for 12 hours before being placed into cold water.