Cantonese to please
The live abalone from Dalian are cleaned and boiled in warm water for two minutes. Li then makes an abalone sauce, which is the key to his signature dish.
The pork belly is cut into 50-gram cubes and deep-fried before it's boiled again with yellow liquor, soy sauce and rock sugar for an hour.
Finally, abalone sauce and abalone are added to the pork belly. It's soft and sweet with a strong truffle flavor.
"Abalone is seafood, and truffles are fungus. And both match well with pork belly," Li says.
Spotted grouper is prepared in various ways. Li steams it whole, deep-fries the bones and wok-fries the fillets.
Li's signature spotted grouper dish is a seafood soup ideal for winter.
The chef also experiments with ingredient combinations to give traditional pairings a new twist-for instance, foie gras with Chinese chives and wok-fried prawns with fermented black garlic.
