Archive for the ‘Cooking’ Category
Thursday, May 22nd, 2008 |
To counter the rise of price of rice, eat porridge. Kihkihkih! Sounds like a tongue twister! This is dad’s favourite dish! So, when we eat porridge, mum must cook this minced meat with salted fish. This is a simple and healthy dish because it is steamed. The only sinful item on the dish is the piece of salted fish.
Reasonably easy dish, just mix minced pork with seasonings such as salt, light soy sauce, pepper, cornflour and a dash of cooking wine, flatten in a metal plate and add 1 tablespoon of water. I used to add some stock from the soup I was cooking, and loosen the pork with fork before steaming. The piece of salted fish was fried before steaming. It was not mashed and mixed together with the pork because it will be too salty then.
Tadaa! Steamed minced pork. Best eaten with porridge or white rice.
Popularity: 72% [?]
Posted in Cooking, Pork | No Comments »
Sunday, March 2nd, 2008 |
This is another dish I prepared for reunion dinner. Having not much experience with prawns before, I was worried that it wouldn’t turn out too good for an occasion as big as reunion dinner.
Pressures aside, this dish is easy to prepare in leisure, especially when you are lazy. All you need are prawns, cleaned and deveined, butter, chopped garlic, light soy sauce, sugar and salt to taste.
What I did was, I arrange the prawns on a baking tray and put them into preheated convection oven for a minute to let the liquid dry off. Then, I took the prawns out and spread butter on them generously. If you are lazy enough, just sprinkle some coarse sea salt onto the prawn along with the butter and return it to the oven to bake, and voila! Buttered prawn!
Since I wanted prawns with gravy, I skipped the salt sprinkle and let the prawns slathered in butter bake until they are cooked. Then I remove the prawns from the oven and arrange nicely on plates.
For the sauce, I heated some oil in a frying pan and fry the chopped garlic until fragrant. The soy sauce (add some water to the soy sauce) goes next, and when it is bubbling, sugar is added. Taste the sauce and adjust according to your taste. If the sauce is too thick, thicken with some flour and pour then over the prawns.
Serve hot.
Popularity: 40% [?]
Posted in Cooking, Seafood | No Comments »
Saturday, February 16th, 2008 |
My first time cooking pork knuckles, and surprisingly they turned out quite well! This dish is for the reunion dinner, so there was some pressure, but luckily they ended up quite well! Even my grandparents gave the nod, surprise!
I don’t exactly follow any strict recipe, so this is roughly what I used.
Ingredients:
1 pork knuckles
2 bulbs roasted garlic
20 black mushrooms, soaked
1 palm size cuttlefish (or dried squid?) for boiling soup, the thing called “tiu pin” in Cantonese
5-10 dried oysters (hou see)
1/2 cup abalone sauce or 1/4 oyster sauce (1 cup of chicken stock or equivalent)
1 tbsp dark soy sauce (add more if you think its not dark enough)
5 tbsp light soy sauce
A dash of black pepper powder
one thumb size of gula Melaka or 5-6 cubes of rock sugar
salt to taste
1 star anise
1 cinnamon stick
1 packet dried black seaweed (fatt choy)
Method:
Clean and blanch the pork knuckles in boiling water to remove the scum. Dish and drain. The pork knuckles were already cut into small pieces so I blanched them; otherwise if its whole I will cut criss cross on the skin and deep fry them for a while in oil instead. A whole pork knuckles would be nice for presentation, but it all boils down to how you want to have them, really.
In a big pot, put in cleaned pork knuckles, garlic bulbs, mushrooms, cuttlefish, star anise and cinammon stick. Add in the abalone sauce, light soy sauce, dark soy sauce, salt, sugar and a dash of black pepper powder. Then, add enough water to let all the ingredients sit nicely in the pot. Turn on high heat and let the water boil. When the water is boiling, turn the heat from medium to low and let the pork knuckles simmer.
In the meantime, clean and deep fry the dried oysters. This is done in order to preserve the shape of the oyster, as they turn mushy if boiled for too long.
Stew the pork knuckles for at least 2 hours, and add the dried oyster and dried seaweed (fatt choy) and hour prior to serving. Serve hot with white rice.
Popularity: 37% [?]
Posted in Chinese, Cooking, Festive Food, Pork | 3 Comments »
Friday, January 18th, 2008 |
Yes I know some are too brown. Doesn’t it gives you the authentic homemade feel?
Do you like beehive snacks, or as the Hokkiens called it “beet phang siew”? I love this snack, and we Cantonese refer to it as “mat fung tau”. For as long as I could remember, every year during Chinese New Year Auntie Khim’s mother-in-law will give us some of her homemade beehive snacks, and after much persuasion, she taught my aunt, and mum and I went to aunt’s house to get some hands on to make this snacks. Worry not, its safe and easy! I even provide the step-by-step procedure, complete with pictures.
The downside of asking and elder about recipe is, things are done in agak-agak (estimation). No matter, we will proceed! The ingredients are all shown in the picture:
4 eggs
3/4 bowl of sugar
milk of one coconut, squeezed fresh, approx. 1 small bowl
1 big bowl of rice flour
2 soup spoon all purpose flour
Step1: First, get a big pot, something that will most likely fit all the ingredients plus some room for movement. Crack in eggs and add in the sugar.
Step 2: Stir until egg and sugar mixture is mixed thoroughly.
Step 3: Add in the santan (coconut milk) and stir until it is evenly mixed.
Step 4: Now, add in the flour (Ohya, please mix the rice flour and all purpose flour thoroughly beforehand) and stir until everything is mixed.
Like this!
Step 5: Run the mixture through a sieve to remove clumps.
This, is the mould. You can get them in baking goods store, or even those old school shops selling kitchenwares.
Step 6: Here comes the tricky part. Heat up sufficient oil in a wok. When the oil is hot enough, leave the mould in the oil to heat it up. Dry the mould if you washed it beforehand, you wouldn’t want oil to spit at you, right?
Step 7: Transfer some of the mixture into a clean, deep bowl. Dip the heated mould into the mixture. The mixture will coat the mould because the mould is hot.
Step 8: Now quickly transfer the mould into the hot oil. Gently shake off the mixture, and the formed beehive snack will separate from the mould. Do as many times as you wish until the mixture finishes.
For the first few beehives you might not get it right. Try to get the perfect beehives by experimenting with the temperature of the oil.
Step 9: It is important to have someone to look after the frying beehive snacks while another one make more beehive snacks. Remember to Scoop and throw away all those stray dough or they will burn and stick to the beautifully fried beehive snacks.
Step 10: Oh, do prepare some kitchen towels on plates to let the beehives cool down. The kitchen towel also helps soaking up excessive oil.
Store them in airtight container and wait until Chinese New Year! Don’t finish them all in one sitting!
Popularity: 40% [?]
Posted in Chinese, Cooking, Snacks | No Comments »
Friday, January 11th, 2008 |
Yu sang, or yee sang, is the familiar dish every family “lou” or toss thoroughly during Chinese New Year before consuming, hence it is also called “lou sang”. This colourful dish, which is eaten after a hearty toss by everyone with a pair of chopsticks bears auspicious meaning, promising a smooth sailing year ahead.
The lou sang for my reunion dinner last year.
While most restaurant serves this dish with either raw or smoked salmon and other types of fishes, and even jellyfish, I normally shy away from having the restaurant version because they contain a lot of junks that are made by fried coloured dough. Very unhealthy, and hard to stomach. Similar version of lou sang could be bought conveniently from the supermarket, but nothing beats the healthy, homemade version of this auspicious dish, and I am very fortunate that every year ever since I could remember, my aunt would make this this for the whole family to savour, and I am going to write down the recipe based on what I could remember.
Rest assured that everything is natural and healthy, and it contains no colouring and additives 
Ingredients:
The colourful raw stuffs:
While the restaurants use colourful crispy dough, we use these stuffs, and they must be grated. So all you need is a grater, and teamwork
A grater makes your life very much easier.
1 radish
1 cucumber
2 carrot
2-3 red chillies
Red and white pomelo
1/4 red pomelo or 1 grapefruit
1/4 white pomelo
The garnishing:
white sesame seed - toasted
peanuts - deskinned, toasted and chopped
The crispy crackers:
flour
margarine
cold water
a pinch of salt
Either one of these, or all of them, as you like:
jellyfish, cleaned and seasoned in lemon juice, and cut into thin strips
raw or smoked salmon, cut into thin strips
For the sauce:
One bottle of plum sauce
Juice of 1/2 a lemon (use the leftover from the lemon you used to prepare the jellyfish)
Method:
Clean and grate the radish, cucumber and carrot. They must be in thin strips, like those thin cucumbers strips in the temaki. Arrange them nicely on a big platter. Likewise, slice the red chillies thinly (You can’t possibly grate them, no?)
Separate the red and white pomelo from their skin, and separate them sac by sac. (Did you get the idea?). Arrange them depending on your creativity, together with the ingredients you grate into thin strips just now.
As for the crackers, you can skip and have them store bought, or you can make them. I have to confirm the measurement though. Add the salt into the flour. Rub the margarine into the flour and add cold until a workable dough is formed. Flatten with rolling pin and cut into the strips. Heat up sufficient oil in wok and deep fry until the crisps are golden brown. Dish and drain on kitchen towel.
Prior to serving, gather everyone around. Spread the toasted sesame seed, chopped peanuts and crackers onto the raw vegetable. Drizzle the sauce generally, and let everyone take part in tossing.
Let the fun begins!
Popularity: 60% [?]
Posted in Cooking, Festive Food | No Comments »
