Archive for the ‘Pork’ 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: 68% [?]
Posted in Cooking, Pork | No Comments »
Wednesday, March 12th, 2008 |
肉 骨 茶 bakuteh, or directly translated as pork bone tea, is a deliciously aromatic pork soup stwed with herbs and other ingredients. This dish originated from Klang where it was the staple food labourers working in Port Klang. As of today, Klang still serves the best bakuteh.
Drinking hot Chinese tea is a must after eating bakuteh. This is to rinse the oiliness from the mouth and intestines. aid digestion. Teas are strictly self service. The server hands you a packet of tea leaves and you make the tea with the tea set on the table and boiling kettles of hot water located conveniently near your table. Beware though, if you have kids, don’t let them run around. Its dangerous.
The teacups are so darn small that you need to drink a lot more cups.
Ever since dad relocated to Klang years back, we had bakuteh more often than ever, and it is usually either in Foong Keow or Teluk Pulai in Taman Rashna, since they are near. This bakuteh is served in claypot.
There is also another school of bakuteh where the bakuteh is cooked in big stainless steel pot, whereby it will be laden into plastic bowls prior to serving, depending on which part of the pig that you want. The most famous stainless steel pot bakuteh shop is said to be Mo Sang Kor, and they have a few branches in Klang.
You get to pick which part you want,regardless if you are eating in the shop that sells bakuteh in claypot or not, subject to availability. Don’t worry, the waitress will ask you.
After tucking the vegetable nicely, the claypot revealed more goodies! Mushrooms, black mushrooms, soy bean sheet and soy bean puffs, bones, meat and more meat! Additional ingredients request can be done, and Foong Keow even serves additional ingredients (gar liu, keh liao, 加 料) such as seafood and abalone, upon requests.
Nonetheless, nothing beats pork in bakuteh, not even abalone, right?
Popularity: 43% [?]
Posted in Chinese, Eating, Local Delicacies, Pork | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, February 19th, 2008 |
My paternal grandma’s birthday is always celebrate in our family whereby we will have a nice dinner with her. Since she was born around the lunar New Year, every new year without fail all of us will celebrate with her.
Strictly speaking, this is a gastric inducing dinner for me. The wait was so long that I actually took pictures of, errr, pickled green chilli, and clutched my stomach to sleep later in the night.
Thank goodness the food was up to the par. Makes waiting more worthwhile. The dish above was the must have birthday noodles, which were egg noodles in thick gravy. The specialty of this noodle is that, the strands are all very long, and it symbolizes longevity. The combination of long strands of noodles and dark coloured sauce has been unkind to my light coloured outfit that day. 
This is the pork knuckles with hou see and fatt choy. The pork knuckles are cooked in whole, unlike my version, which was all cut up.
The chicken dish. Fish paste were stuffed in between the chicken skin and flesh before deep frying, and those strands on top were deep fried Dahfa (lightweight fish flavoured strips)
Stirfried assorted mushrooms.
Mango kerabu fish. Seriously, this is the signature dish of the restaurant! Very nicely done.
Sambal asparagus. By this time I was stuffed full. Argh, I don’t want to mull over the bad of being so hungry and so full in a short period of time!
Overall, it was a great dinner. The food was good and most of them were my favourite dish, especially the pork and the fish!
Popularity: 39% [?]
Posted in Chicken, Chinese, Eating, Noodles, Pork, Seafood, Vegetables | 2 Comments »
Monday, February 18th, 2008 |
Spring rolls are one of the must-haves on the reunion dinner menu and its no different this year! While its not hard to make, my grandparents usually get them from this particular vendor who sells awesome spring rolls along with phoenix balls.Spring rolls are made by rolling grounded pork and vegetables in bean curd skin and deep fried. The incorporation of pig’s fat, which looks like a web of white, oily substances in between the meat and the bean curd skin prior to rolling makes the spring rolls taste very much better.Phoenix balls are basically made with the same grounded pork mixture but a salted egg yolk is wrapped with the meat and then shaped into an oval shape and wrapped with bean curd skin, and then deep fried.
The spring rolls came in rolls, and all we had to do is to heat them up in the convection oven before cutting and serving them. I avoided using microwave to heat up the rolls because the skin will be soggy. using the convection oven, however will make the skin crispier.Some day round I will try make my own spring rolls. Right now I will just enjoy this particular spring roll with my family because they are just so sinfully delicious! 
Popularity: 23% [?]
Posted in Chinese, Festive Food, Pork | 2 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: 32% [?]
Posted in Chinese, Cooking, Festive Food, Pork | 3 Comments »
