During any major festival, the kitchen in this centuries-old clan hall, blackened from years of wood-burning, is filled with the smell of fermented beancurd.
Here in Yuen Long’s Tong Fong Village, in this decrepit-looking kitchen of no more than four hundred square feet, indigenous villager Tang Luen-hing is cooking up a storm with his big wok. He diligently tends to the fire, as his ancestors for three generations before him have done, in order to make a traditional poon choi.
Tang Luen-hing started following his father in the kitchen as a teenager, officially taking over as the poon choi master when his father grew old. He still sticks to the traditional way of making it, only using the freshest ingredients, and continues to use old methods to cook the pork, eel and fishballs. How to arrange and present the poon choi is an art in itself too.
Tang Luen-hing and his wife are physically sore from cooking poon choi day in day out, year after year. Luckily, their son Jeff, who returned home after studying overseas, has started to learn the art of making poon choi from his father on weekends, ready to continue the tradition of the Tang family.
每逢大時大節，在有數百多年歷史的祠堂內，一間被柴火煙燻得黑漆漆的廚房，總會傳來一陣陣的南乳香。
在元朗屏山塘坊村的原居民鄧聯興，埋首在這間只有三、四百呎、看來頗殘舊的廚房，舞動著那特別訂制的大鑊、巨鏟，時而蹲下，默默地加柴、撥火，做著那三代留傳下來、以柴火烹調的傳統盆菜。
鄧聯興十多歲便跟老父出入廚房，直至鄧老先生年紀漸大，他正式接棒，成為新一代的盆菜師父。當坊間的盆菜已朝著車仔麵方向發展，可以任由配搭，鄧聯興卻忠於傳統，不重食物矜貴，只重新鮮和手藝，當中以古法炆煮的新鮮豬肉、工序繁複的炸門鱔和魚丸最考功夫和心思。當然，盆菜每一種材料的配搭、擺放次序、甚至盛器，都大有學問。
日復日、年復年地煮大鑊飯，鄧聯興與太太都已周身酸痛，幸好在海外讀書回來的兒子鄧健鵬(Jeff)，亦不想正宗圍村盆菜白白失傳，現在每逢假期，都跟爸爸學師，準備肩負起鄧氏家族伙頭將軍的重任。
