The chef Amy Poon is a known and respected face in London. She grew up between London and Geneva and today runs the much-loved Poon’s, reestablishing her old family business as a pop-up restaurant, wonton maker and sauce shop in 2018.
Her “wontoneria” residency currently resides at No 23 Charlotte Street, a side hustle from Carousel, a kitchen and restaurant space that hosts chefs from around the world for two-week stints.
The original Poon’s restaurant was founded in London’s Chinatown by her parents, Bill and Cecilia Poon, in 1973, and closed in 2006 when the couple retired. In the decades it was open, it enjoyed a cult following, attracting everyone from Mick Jagger to Barbara Streisand, and won a Michelin star in 1980. The family opened Poon’s de Genève on the Rue de Lausanne in Geneva in 1985, where Amy spent a lot of her time.
Amy has talked in the past of her family and it is clear her connections to food run deep. Apparently a distant relative was a private chef to an emperor, while another, she has claimed, invented the stock cube.
In more recent memory, the chef’s grandparents ran a restaurant in Macau, while her father started cooking young, entering the family kitchen before venturing out on his own. Later, in Hong Kong, he trained with a Swiss pâtissier before arriving in London in the mid-1960s in pursuit of Poon’s mother.
Today, Amy continues the family legacy, through the business and through recipes. This one is classically European in nature – a piece of white fish, breadcrumbed, served with a creamy garlic and spinach sauce. The Chinese element is the Poons’ chilli oil crust – a nod, perhaps, to Amy’s family industry, but a powerful one.
Baked white fish with a crunchy chilli oil breadcrumb crust
Serves 4
For the fish
75g crustless white bread
1 garlic clove, roughly chopped
3 tbsp Poon’s extraordinary chilli oil (or equivalent), plus extra to grease
25g grated Parmesan
A big handful of parsley, finely chopped
4 x 150g sustainable white fish fillet, skin removed
For the spinach
30g butter
1 large shallot, chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped
500g spinach leaves, washed
80g crème fraiche
40g grated Parmesan
Method
Preheat the oven to 200c/180c fan/400f/gas 6.
Place the bread and garlic clove in a small food processor and whizz until finely chopped. Add the chilli oil, Parmesan, parsley, ½ teaspoon of salt and a generous amount of pepper. Pulse blitz to combine.
Line a baking tray with baking paper and drizzle with a small amount of chilli oil to grease it lightly. Pat the fish dry, then sit on the baking tray and pack the breadcrumb mix on top of each piece, squeezing and shaping so you have tight, neat crusts.
Place in the oven for 12-17 minutes (depending on the thickness of the fish) until the flesh is opaque.
Serve the fish with a little extra chilli oil if you like.
