Cantonese to please

Seafood is one of his specialties, and especially abalone. He has mastered braised whole South African abalone, double-boiled fresh abalone-chicken soup in coconut, poached abalone in rice soup with minced pickled Chinese cabbage and oven-baked whole abalone puffs with diced chicken.

The abalone for the puff is stewed for three hours before it's added to the diced chicken. The puff is then baked until it's crisp and topped with a spoonful of abalone sauce.

His signature dish is stewed pork belly with abalone and truffle. Pork belly is prepared differently throughout China. For instance, it's spicy in Hunan province and sweet in Shanghai.

Li believes the key is to select the right slices with three layers of fat and two layers of lean meat. It's fatty but not greasy when cooked.

Li uses a spray gun to remove the villi and then blanches the cuts to make the meat more compact and tastier. The pork is steamed for half an hour.