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This is virtually Hong Kong’s national dish. The name literally means “blacken and burn”, but it’s neither. The tender fillets of pork are roasted and glazed in honey and spices, and hung in the windows of specialist roast meat shops.Cha siu isclassically served thinly sliced, with steamed rice and strips of vegetables.

Made of moist pastry and various fillings, including lotus, taro, adzuki bean, whole egg yolk and occasionally coconut, the delicacy also has a quirky history: revolutionaries in imperial China used to smuggle messages to each other hidden in a moon cake’s dense filling.

In Hong Kong, fish is almost always dressed very simply, using only peanut oil, soya sauce, coriander and chives. To maximize freshness, restaurants keep live fish in tanks, killing and preparing them to order.

Comprising chunks of steamed chicken, served slightly warm or cold, and dipped in an aromatic oil made with spring onions and ginger, this dish has become everyday comfort food. It is traditionally accompanied by a rich chicken broth, a few vegetables and rice steamed in chicken stock for flavour.

Requiring up to eight hours of slow cooking, preparation of this Hong Kong classic is an art. Households and restaurants guard their individual recipes, but all involve the classic five Chinese spices, rock sugar and tangerine peel. It’s served in an earthenware pot as a main course, or as a topping for rice or noodles. Given its richness, it is particularly enjoyed in winter.

The leafy, hollow-stemmed vegetable can be prepared with various seasonings, from the quotidian oyster sauce to garlic and shrimp paste. At its best when stir-fried with potent chillies and semi-fermented tofu.

Done properly, this marvellous prawn and pork ravioli is poached in a stock made from shrimp roe, aniseed and other spices, and served with fresh egg noodles and soup.

A daily food for many Hong Kongers, either on skewers as snacks or served with noodles in broth to make a meal. Traditional restaurants eschew machine production methods, and still shape these balls of minced fish, white pepper and other spices by hand, before poaching them in seafood or chicken stock.

You may have encountered the disastrous and greasy travesty of fried squid served up in Western Chinatowns. Banish that unpleasant memory from your mind, and prepare to discover the gloriously crisp original. Fresh squid is scored, lightly battered and flash fried with lots of salt, white pepper, chilli and garlic. The result is an addictive combination of tangy textures.

Chinese bread is shaped into buns, not loaves, and steamed rather than baked – giving it a beautifully soft and fluffy quality (no gritty whole grains here). There are many varieties of sweet bun, butlai wong bau is the reigning favourite, the kind of treat that children will clamour for. These buns are filled with milk, eggs, coconut and sugar. Try them piping hot on a cold winter morning.