Onde Onde

I recently met with and interviewed Norman Musa, a self-taught Malaysian chef who has opened a restaurant in Manchester. Ning is the name of Norman's restaurant and the menu comprises some of  Norman's favourite Malaysian classics, most of which he learnt from his mum. You can read more about him in my upcoming article in StarTwo on Monday (May 10). (Will post the link up on Monday).

The focus of my meeting with the Penang-born cook was his debut cookbook, called Malaysian Food. The book is slightly pricey (it retails at £19.95 which translates to about RM90++) and I wish there were more recipes to try but those that he included  are fool proof, even if you're a sometimes cook.

Flipping through the book, I wanted to try almost all the recipes. Although only a handful of the recipes were vegetarian, I adapted most of the others (even the Rendang Daging or beef rendang) to make them vegetarian. In the case of the beef rendang, I used mushroom stalks instead of beef. Those fungi stalks taste pretty meaty and if you marinade them, they retain flavour really well. Yummm.

The first of his recipes I tried was my all-time favourite: Kuah Kacang (peanut sauce) usually  a dipping sauce for satay. I don't know if you agree but I find really tasty peanut sauce hard to come by. Especially kuah kacang that does not have belacan (soooo not a vege-friendly option) in it. Norman's recipe is purely vegetarian. And so, I decided to try his  recipe for Kuah Kacang before attempting any of his other recipes: if his Kuah Kacang rocked, chances were high that his other recipes would too.



Guess what? It rocked. It was nutty (the portion of nuts indicated in his recipe was generous), not too oily (as most store bought sauces are) and had a good sweet-hot balance -- although, being the chilli addict that I am, I added a little more chilli paste. I liked that he used palm sugar, many recipes now opt for white sugar, or worse, peanut butter. How not authentic is that??? Inspired by the success of the peanut sauce (yay, now i can make it anytime I have a craving for it) I decided to explore further. I made the Bayam, Tofu & Cendawan Goreng (Mushroom and spinach stir fry) next which took all of ten minutes (and another fifteen mins prep). Unlike many vegetable side dishes which incorporate dried shrimp, fish sauce or even tiny chicken pieces or beef in it, Norman's vegetable dishes are purely vegetarian. He uses mushroom sauce in place of oyster sauce and there are no meat add-ons. It's a simple vegetable dish which tastes good. You can get the recipes for this on Monday's article.



Next, I tried the recipe for onde onde. If you have never eaten/tried making this delicious dessert, try Norman's  recipe cos it works and its not complicated. Glutinous rice balls with cubes of palm sugar in them is what onde onde is. The balls are plonked into boiling water and when they rise to the surface, they're done! Thats all. The trick is making the dough just right and putting just enough sugar into the balls (so they aren't too doughy) . Once out of the water, coat the balls with fresh coconut or dessicated coconut+ a pinch salt.

There are many more recipes I want to try: the Pajeri Nenas is next on my list as is the Rendang Ayam Pedas which I will attempt for my strictly non veg partner. If they turn out like the ones I've tried so far, I'll be one happy camper. Thanks, Norman Musa. Now here's the recipe.

Buah Melaka @ Onde Onde

300 g glutinous rice flour

225 ml water

1/2 tsp salt

200g gula melaka

2 litres water (to boil)

For Coating

200g fine dessicated coconut

1/2 tsp salt

For extract

4 pandan lea♥es

150 ml water

1. Male extract: Cut pandan leaves into small pieces and put them in the blender with the water. Blend till ground, squeeze the extract out with a sieve or strainer. Set aside.

2. Cut the gula melaka into small cubes. Doesn't need to be identical in size. Set aside.

3. Mix dough, 225 ml water, salt and extract into a dough. You know the consistency is right when the dough doesn't stick to your fingers.

4. Form the dough into small balls, about 1 inch in diameter. Press the middle of these small dough balls with your thumb. fill the depression with a cube or two of the gula melaka. Seal the ball well and reshape them into perfect balls. Note: if you dont seal them well, the sugar will seep out and your dessert will lose some sweetness and wont look as pretty.

5. Put the water to boil. Once it comes to a rolling boil, lower the heat a little and start gently dropping the small dough balls in. The onde onde is ready when the balls darken in colour and rise to the top.

6. Spoon them out with a perforated ladle and let them drain. Then roll them in the coconut+ salt mixture. Set them aside to cool before serving them.

Love Letters

With less than a week to Chinese New Year, I am truly getting into the spirit of the season. No, I don't technically celebrate Chinese New Year. But what I do every year is join some friends who so celebrate the New Year  and gamble the night away. (Girls, we're on for the 15th eh?). But more than just gambling, I love all our  celebrations because these are times when people forget about potty politics and silly scandals. It's all about family, food and fun and that's what life should be about.

Now Chinese New Year would not be Chinese New Year without kuih kapit or love letters. This year especially, since the first day of New Year falls on Valentines day. Now, I'm not a soppy person. I think I have actually only written an actual love letter once in my life - a silly adolescent crush and a mopey letter I wish I had never written. Anyway, I decided to take my good friend Melody's suggestion and be corny and make some love letters.

I found a recipe for Kuih Kapit in an old recipe book of my aunt's - The Malaysian Cookbook (Preston). I also decided to go online and counter check the recipe with some others. There were slight variations but they were all the same for the most part.

So, first things first. I bought my mould from my trusty neighbourhood sundry shop: Peng Soon.



Got all my ingredients: Rice Flour, plain flour, eggs, vanilaa essence, oil (for greasing the mould) and a tall glass of water (standing over the fire is exhausting).

Sift the flours together (70 g rice flour, 15g plain flour) and whisk in the sugar (75 g castor sugar). Slowly stir in the coconut milk (3/4 cup) and mix until you get a smooth batter. Break in the eggs (2 eggs) one at a time and mix it in. Add a drop of vanilla essence.

Grease the mould with some oil. Traditionally, the love letters are made over a charcoal fire. But I didn't have charcoal and I don't have a barbeque grill so I just heated it over my gas stove fire. It still works.

Pour the batter onto one side of the mould (about 1/2 cup), make sure it's not too thin a layer but not too thick either or it won't be too crispy.

Close the mould and press tight till extra batter flows out. Place mould on fire for a few minutes, until batter is light brown. You will have to test it out a few times to get the hang of it.

Remove from fire and with a thin knife, peel of  the cooked kuih kapit from the mold and fold in half and then again in half. Press down hard and store in an air tight container.

Repeat. You'll get about 35 pieces per batch of batter. Unless of course you spoil more than the 5 I did.



My first few love letters were either not cooked enough or burnt; I had to get the timing right. It just takes  a few minutes for the batter to cook and crisp but even an extra minute may burn the batter so be vigilant.

If I were to rate my love letters, I'd give them an A for taste and C for appearance. The edges of my kuih lapis were singed (kinda like the love letters of yore -- yellowed paper with singed edges or maybe a pirates treasure map ... nevermind) and some of them were a tad pale.  I need more practice but I will get there.

Fried Turnip Cake

Stir fried Chai Tow Kway is really a Malaysian/ Singaporean street food version of the Cantonese style Loh Bak Koh you find in dim sum restaurant which includes Chinese sausage and other things. This Turnip cake is made plain then stir fried. You can either make the turnip cake yourself see recipe below or buy a lump of the steamed cake from Chinese supermarket.


For the recipe of the plain turnip (mooli) cake,

Ingredients:

About 800g of peeled mooli or daikon
280g oriental rice flour
50g tapioca starch
500ml of water
1 tsp of Knorr chicken granules
1/2 tsp of salt
dash of sesame oil

about 1 tsp of cooking oil for greasing


Method:
Grate the mooli fine as you can (I use a coarse Microplane). If not you can blend small chunks the mooli in a food processor to a smooth paste.
Cook the grated/blended mooli in a large pan till hot and bubbly.
While the mooli is cooking, mix both flours with water.
Pour the flour batter into the mooli add remaining ingredients. Continue cooking on gentle heat and stirring all the time till the mixture looks like thin porridge. Heat off.
Grease a large Pyrex casserole, about 2 litre size. Pour mixture into dish and smooth the top.
Steam for about 1 hour or till cooked through. Take the cake out, cover and leave to cool completely or overnight.


For the stir fried Chai tow kway. Serve 2

Ingredients:

a little fragrant oil left from frying crispy shallot or plain cooking oil with 1/2 tsp of minced garlic
1/4 of the above qty of turnip cake or about 500g
handful of bean sprouts
4 - 5 strips of preserved radish (chai bo) - optional if you don't like this leave this out
2 -3 stalks of spring onion
some red chilli
2 beaten eggs
dash of ketchup manis or dark soy
dash of soy sauce

some crispy shallots
some sambal tumis or your favourite chilli sauce


Method:
Cut the turnip cake into chunks.
Chop preserved radish. Chop chillies and spring onion too.
Heat wok with some oil and stir fry turnip cake and chopped radish for couple of minutes till hot. Add dash of ketchup manis and soy to taste, add beaten egg and fry till egg is dried. Add bean sprouts stir briefly then add spring onion and chilli. Plate up and sprinkle on some more chilli and spring onion if you wish and some crispy shallot. Eat with a dollop of sambal tumis or some chilli sauce.

Wontons

Wontons
In Chinese various names depending on region:
餛飩(Mandarin, mainly from northern or north east china, pronounced as 'hun tun')
雲吞(Cantonese, pronouced as 'won ton' as we all know),
抄手(only in Sichuan, pronouced as 'chau shou')


Wontons are quick and easy snack for a lot of Chinese. I haven't met anyone who doesn't like wontons.
I like them deep fried or boiled as dumplings with a spicy sauce Szechuan style, with a Cantonese style sauce or in soup with or without noodles.

You can make your own pastry if you have a pasta machine, but it is so much easier to buy from Chinese supermarket, chilled or frozen. Cantonese wonton pastry is usually yellow in colour while Shanghai or Szechuan wonton skin is usually creamy white, and wonton skin is always cut in square not round.

How to wrap wontons:
There are various ways, the most common is these two.
1. Fold diagonally into a triangle then with both hands squeeze the pasty toward the centre, pleating and sealing it at the same time. See slide show . I like this method for deep frying.

2. Fold diagonally again, press the pastry gently right outside where the meat filling is, then pull both pointed ends of the folded side downward and to meet each other, wet the inside of the jointed ends, press and seal. See slide show. I like this method for wonton soup.


I had some wonton and noodles soup yesterday with some left over meat filling from the stuffed cucumber. Good stock is important don't use instant stock cube, boil some chicken or pork bones and flavoured with some salt, dash of light soy and some ground pepper. Many chinese like to add a little of Knorr chicken stock granules to make the soup base more tasty. Wonton and noodles soup is always very basic just good soup base, fresh chilled cantonese noodles from the chinese supermarket, wontons and some chinese green (cook with the soup base or boil with noodles till tender) with a sprinkling of pepper and maybe few drops of sesame oil or garlic oil before serving. Always boil the noodles separately in a large pan of boiling water, never boil with the soup, only takes about a minute, same with wontons if they float they are cooked.



To go with the noodle soup I had deep fried wontons with S&S sauce. My favourite snack or finger food. For the filling just seasoned pork or 50:50 pork and prawn, don't add any vegetable or spring onion, vegetable will make the pastry soggy. For the S&S sauce, no colouring like in takeaways or restaurant, just plenty of tomato ketcup, dash of favourite chilli sauce, dash of oyster sauce or light soy sauce, sugar to taste, about 3 times water to dilute, some cornflour to thicken and dash of sesame oil for a nice flavour. If you like the sauce tangy, add few tbsp of lemon or lime juice at the end of the cooking. For the wontons deep fried in about 1 cup of oil in several batches, for about 3 minutes till golden brown and crispy. Do not heat the oil too hot, if the pastry sizzle that is ok, if too hot the pastry will burn in seconds and the meat will not get cooked.

Almond tofu

Almond tofu is the Chinese version of panna cotta but much much healthier without the heavy cream and vegan friendly.

Almond tofu in Chinese is 杏仁豆腐 read as 'sin ren do fu' in Mandarin or 'hung yen dou fu' in Cantonese. This is a Cantonese cold dessert great for the summertime. Most Cantonese dim sum restaurants will have this dessert on their trolleys whizzing around you with all the other tempting dim sums.

Most recipes use milk and almond essence to make the tofu or jelly, normally set with agar. My recipe uses real sweet almonds and flavoured with Chinese bitter almond or apricot kernels. I used soy milk instead of milk.

If you like this dessert here is my recipe:

Almond Tofu 杏仁豆腐

Ingredients:

100g blanched almonds (skinless almonds)
30 - 40g Chinese bitter almonds 北杏 (apricot kernels)
1 cup warm water
2 cups of unsweetened soymilk (best use homemade), or you can use low fat milk
7 - 8g of agar strips
3 cups water, room temp or tap water
about 1/3 cup sugar (or enough to your taste)

Chinese bitter almonds 北杏

* If you cannot find Chinese bitter almonds you can use few drops of almond essence. If you hate the almond flavour you can leave the bitter almond or essence out.


Agar strips

*Agar strips are easily available in most Oriental grocery stores. You can also use agar powder but I am not sure how much you'll need to set the liquid to a medium soft solid.


Method:
Put both almonds together in a bowl and soak with 1 cup warm water for 2 - 3 hours to soften them. I use the soaking water later, it has a nice almondy fragrance.
Soak agar strips with some water for about 20 - 30 min. Drain off the water and chop the agar into small pieces. Soaking and chopping the agar strips will dissolve easier when heated.
Put almonds, the soaking water and the remaining 3 cups of water together in a liquidiser and blitz for about 1 minute or till the almonds are pulverised to very fine pulp. If you use a small liquidiser cup, blend in two batches. Filter the almond milk with a muslin or cotton bag see soy milk making or a large piece of muslin. Squeeze out as much milk as you can. The remaining pulp should be quite dry. You can throw it away or use to make cake or add to bread mix. I have a cake recipe to use this pulp. See recipe later.
Put the almond milk and soy milk in a pan, add soaked agar. Heat and stir till agar has completely melted (when you don't see any more translucent agar strips).
Sweeten with enough sugar, stir to dissolve. Pass the mixture through a sieve if you like to ensure the mixture is without any unwanted solids.
Pour mixture into containers. Can use small pudding containers, jelly moulds or two larger rectangular/square boxes ( I used plastic lunch box). Remove any froth/bubbles floating on top. The almond tofu will set when cooled to room temperature.
Keep in fridge till cold before serving.

To serve. Two ways.

To remove the almond tofu from the mould. Use a cocktail stick, glide it around the edge. Then tap it hard against a serving plate or bowl to pop it out. Serve with any fruits you like, fresh or canned. This picture I served it with canned lychee and mandarin with some of the juice/syrup. To make it pretty garnish with a sprig of mint. Lychee juice (syrup) is very tasty with almond tofu. For fresh fruits I like a mixture of different sweet melons. Sour or sharp fruits I find don't compliment the subtle flavour of almond tofu very well.




The other way to serve it is cut the almond tofu into small cubes. Mix with fruits, in this case canned cocktail fruits (like how they serve in restaurants) and some crushed ice to keep it really cold and refreshing.




To use up almond pulp

Almond and cherry cake - Sorry no picture. I made the cake but forgotten to take a picture before it was eaten!

The almond pulp should be touch dry and not wet.

about 100 - 110g almond pulp
180g softened butter
180g sugar
3 large eggs
150g self raising flour mixed with 1 tsp baking power, sieved
few drops of almond essence or grated zest of 1 lemon (your choice)
about 2 tbsp milk

180g glace cherries, wash to remove syrup and pat dry with paper towel, cherries can be halved or whole
about 1 heap tbsp plain or S R flour (to coat the cherries only)

handful of almond flakes for topping

If you don't like cherries you can leave them out or replaced with other dried fruits.


Method:
Cream the butter with sugar. Add one egg at a time, in between add in a little flour to blend. Mix till all eggs are added and flour mixed in.
Stir in the almond essence or lemon zest.
Mix in almond pulp. Add enough milk to make a dropping consistency.
Toss cherries with 1 heap tbsp flour so cherries are generously coated with dry flour. Very gently mix cherries into cake batter do not over mix or the cherries will sink to the bottom of the cake
Pour mixture into a greased or lined 20 - 21cm round cake tin. Smooth the top.
Sprinkle on handful of almond flakes.
Preheated oven, bake at about 165 - 170 deg C for about 1 hr - 1 hr 1o minutes. Test with skewer to ensure cooked through before taking it out to cool.

Chongqing hot & sour noodles

重慶酸辣粉 Chongqing suan la fen

Chongqing hot and sour noodle soup is one of the world favourite Chinese noodles, popular not only in Chongqing but also in Sichuan. I love it, it's spicy, salty, sour, garlicy and the noodles are soft and slippery. A bowl of red hot slurping goodness. This noodle soup can be a fast food, can prepare in minutes if all the components/ingredients are prepared in advance.


A. Soup base (stock)
Make soup base with pork bones or chicken bones. Boil bones with few slices of ginger and one/two stalks of spring onion. Do not add salt. Have the soup base heated to boiling before serving.


B. Spicy minced pork with Sichuan pickle

Ingredients:
200g minced (ground) pork
3 - 4 cloves of garlic, chopped
about 1/4 cup (chopped) Sichuan pickled vegetable, ya chai or preserved vegetables zha chai, I couldn't find ya chai so used zha chai
2 tbsp Chilli bean sauce (Pixian douban jiang)
1 tbsp light soy
2 - 3 tsp sugar
2 - 3 tbsp cooking oil

Method:
Heat oil add garlic. Stir fry till fragrant. Add chilli bean sauce, stir till oil is turning red.
Add pork stir fry till pork is brown and any liquid is drying up.
Add pickled vegetable. Stir
Add soy and sugar to taste.

C. Chilli oil

Can use bought or homemade chilli oil. Chilli oil is very easy to make at home and taste far better than bought. This is a recipe posted previously. And here is another simple way to make some.

Ingedients:
4 tbsp chilli powder* (coarse or fine powder)
2 tbsp Sichuan peppercorns
2 tbsp black rice vinegar
1/2 cup cooking oil

*level of spiciness depends of type of chilli powder used. Redder the powder redder the oil made.

Method:
Rinse Sichuan peppercorns and drain. (wetting the peppercorns help to release the flavour easier and delay burning in hot oil).
Mix chilli powder with vinegar in a medium size soup bowl.
Heat oil till warm. Add peppercorns. The oil will gradually get hot and sizzle due to the moisture in peppercorns. Fry peppercorns till oil is fragrant and peppercorns are turning brown.
Pour oil through a metal sieve directly into chilli paste. The oil will boil rapidly hitting the chilli paste with lots of bubbles. Stir and leave to cool.



D. Spicy sauce

Mix together 3 tbsp chilli oil with chilli solid, 1 tbsp roasted sesame oil, 3 tbsp Chinkiang black rice vinegar, 1 - 2 tbsp light soy, 1 tsp salt or Chicken bullion powder, 1/2 tsp ground Sichuan pepper, 1/2 tsp ground pepper, 2 - 3 tsp sugar.




E. Deep fried soy beans or dry roasted peanuts

Deep fried crunchy soy beans
Soak some soy beans overnight. Drain. Rub dry with clean tea towel. Deep fried at medium heat till golden brown. Remove and leave to cool.

Dry roasted peanuts
Dry roast peanuts with skin using a dry pan or wok. Stir continuously for about 8 - 10 minutes till peanut is medium golden brown. Remove and spread out to cool. Put peanuts in a colander, rub peanuts with hand and/or against the colander to remove skin, the skin will fall out of the colander. Best do this in the sink or outdoor to prevent mess.
You can also use bought roasted peanuts.

*Crunchy soy beans are the traditional condiments used. I am not too keen with them so I used peanuts.


F. Noodles

Use sweet potato noodles/vermicelli where possible. If you can't find sweet potato noodles use thick mung bean noodles or rice noodles. Here is one I used.



Soak the noodles for about 30 minutes or till softened. Cook with rapidly boiling water briefly till soft. Cook noodles just before serving.


Other ingredients:

Few leaves of green vegetables like choi sum or pak choi per bowl of noodles, blanched
some chopped ginger
some chopped garlic
some chopped spring onion (scallion)
some chopped coriander (cilantro)


To assemble the noodle soup:
Put noodles in bowl.
Add vegetables, ginger, garlic, spring onion and coriander
Add peanuts or crunchy soy beans
Add minced pork with pickle
Pour in enough boiling soup base
Add few tbsp of spicy sauce, much as you like. Taste before adding too much, or it can be too salty and spicy.

Korean spicy chicken stew

This stew is so easy to make. One of those recipes I have repeated time after time when I crave for a warm hearty stew but could not be bother or too tired to hang around long in the kitchen. All I have to do is cut the vegetables and chicken, then just add water and boil till just about tender then add spicy sauce. That is it. Couldn't be simpler, grease free cooking. It does look good with a bight red soupy sauce, lovely strong peppery flavoured but doesn't blow your head off.

The essential ingredients for this stew are Korean chilli powder and Korean fermented chilli paste called gochujang.

Korean chilli powder does look very red but it's quite mild - medim hot. Essential ingredient for making kimchi. I can find it easily at most oriental supermarkets.

Gochujang is a mild - medium hot sticky fermented chilli paste, quite sweet. It is  is available in most oriental supermarkets, usually in a rectangular red plastic box, like this




For this chicken stew here is what I did.

Ingredients:
about 650 - 800g chicken with bone (or 500g boneless chicken), leg or breast or any part of chicken
few potatoes, around 400g
2 - 3 medium carrot
about 300g daikon or mooli (I usually put this but this time I don't have any)
1 large onion around 180g peeled

Chicken marinate
1 tbsp light soy
2 tbsp Korean wine or Japanese cooking wine or sake
1 - 2 tsp sesame oil
** If I am too lazy I will leave out the marinate, just add plain chicken to the stew.

Sauce
2 - 5 tbsp Korean chilli paste, much as you dare/ I normally use about 3 - 4 tbsp
1/2 to 2 tbsp Korean chilli powder, much as you dare. I normally use about 1 tbsp
1 tbsp sesame oil
2 - 3 tsp sugar
2 tbsp light soy


Chopped spring onion for garnish
salt if needed


Method:

Cut chicken into chunks. Mix with marinate and leave for about 15 - 20 minutes
Peel and cut vegetable into bite size or chunks.
Mix all the sauce ingredients together
Put vegetables in a pot, add about 1.5 -2 cups of water. Boil/simmer till vegetables are almost tender.
Stir in the chicken. Simmer for few minutes then add sauce. Continue simmering till chicken is cooked. For boneless chicken in small chunks this will take about 10 - 15 minutes after adding the chicken. Chicken with  bone with take longer, from 15 - 25 minutes depending on size.  
When chicken is cooked. taste to see if you need more chilli paste, chilli powder, salt or soy to taste.
Its now ready to eat, If you are not in a hurry and the sauce is a bit too runny leave it for a while the potato will absorb some of the liquid. I find the stew actually tastes better sitting around for a while, potato and chicken will absorb the flavour much better.
Before serving sprinkle on some chopped spring onion.
Serve with rice.

Imperial yogurt

Yogurt was not common years ago in China. Yogurt has been and still eaten mainly by the upper northerners, Mongolia area or muslim population who raise sheep/goats and goat milk yogurt is quite common and traditional among them. Today many bigger cities in China are no difference to any cosmopolitan cities in the world, western style yogurt or yogurt drinks are available everywhere.

I don't want to talk about goat milk yogurt or western yogurt. The topic today is an imperial palace yogurt recipe, a favourite with the Empress Dowager Cixi 慈禧太后. This is a recipe over 100 years old. It's called Imperial yogurt (gong ting nai lao 宫廷奶酪). I think cow milk was precious in China hundred years ago thus it was good enough for the royals.



Gong ting nai lao is common in Beijing but I have not come across it outside China. I wonder why Cantonese ginger milk curd is common among Chinese all over the world but not gong ting nai lao. If you have a sweet tooth like mine and love this kind of custard like dessert like dou fu fa (soy milk curd), ginger milk curd, double skin custard etc.. you will like this gong ting nai lao.

This imperial yogurt is similar in texture but totally different taste to Cantonese ginger milk curd. Both must use full cream milk and have none of the sour taste like normal yogurt we know. Ginger milk curd is dominantly flavoured by ginger juice and set by enzyme from the ginger juice. Imperial yogurt main ingredient other than milk is juice from fermented rice called lao zao zhi 醪糟汁. This imperial yogurt is sweet with a fragrant rice wine flavour (like sake) more delicate than ginger. The ingredients for this low alcoholic milk curd is very simple just full cream milk, lao zao zhi 醪糟汁 and extra sugar if needed. I never add sugar, I find the sweetness from the fermented rice juice is enough to sweeten to curd. This mixture is heated till the milk is set. Traditionally the milk mixture was baked in a large wood barrel heated by charcoal. There are recipes using steaming, I have tried steaming and did not like it very much, the curd separated with a thick layer of clear liquid at the bottom, I reckon the heat was too high or I overcooked it. The easiest way I find is simply bake it at low temperature. I am still curious what makes this imperial yogurt set, is it the active friendly bacteria/yeast or the alcohol in the fermented rice juice reacting with milk with the help of heat.

If you have some fermented rice give this a try it's a lovely dessert.

I have followed recipes I found on the internet, normal proportion of milk to fermented rice juice (lao zao zhi 醪糟汁) is 2 : 1. I find the flavour too strong and too sweet without additional sugar. I have also lower the recommended temperature of 110 deg C after a few trials and errors, I find lowering the temperature is less likely to cause the curd to separate with a layer of clear liquid underneath.

This is my recommended recipe after trials and errors.
Proportion of full cream milk to lao zao zhi 醪糟汁 is 3 : 1. Use freshly opened milk that does not have any hint bad milk smell. If yes the milk has already started to turn and will curdle during heating.
Heat milk on the stove or microwave (I normally microwave) till milk is hot but not boiling. This is to kill any unwanted bacteria or nasties that may affect the curd. I normally make two bowls of this curd using 300 ml milk heated for about 4 minutes in the microwave on high. Cover the milk and leave to cool then sieve to remove any solids.
Take some fermented rice and put on a piece muslin cloth. Wrap and squeeze out the juice. Measure required amount (100ml juice for 300ml milk).
Mix cooled milk and juice together, add a bit more sugar if you like it sweeter. Stir and pour into ramekins, rice bowls or glass containers.
Put in oven at about 90 deg C for about 30 minutes or till you can see the surface has set, or when lightly shake the bowl the surface will wobble. Check after 25 minutes in the oven, then every 5 - 8 minutes later. If there is more than 0.5cm layer of liquid separated on the bottom it is overcooked, try again next time with a shorter baking time. To check the layer of liquid on the bottom best use a glass ramekin.
Remove from oven, cover and leave to cool. Chill in the fridge and serve.
If you like a firmer yogurt add 2 - 3 tbsp milk powder per 300ml milk. Mix this in before milk is heated or when the heated has cooled to warm temperature.

* Nai lao 奶酪 normally means cheese in Chinese but in the recipe it is a yogurt. Don't ask me why.

Sambal Tumis Telur (sambal eggs

Born and breed in Brunei Malay food and cooking play an important part in my foodie life. Authentic Malay food is not easy to find in the Western world. I am so glad I have learnt enough to cook myself some decent Malay food before hopping on a plane over here to England many years ago.

Clearing the cupboard yesterday I found a jar of sambal tumis I made a while ago. Sambal tumis is very versatile can transform a plateful of vegetables, eggs, tofu, tempeh etc... into something spicy and savoury instantly. I made this sambal in large batch whenever needed and stored them in clean sealed jam jars and no refrigeration, will last me for months and months.

With this jar of sambal tumis I made some sambal tumis telur (sambal eggs). It's 'cepat, senang dan sedap' fast, easy and delicious like the Malay saying. Here is the bowlful of red and delicious eggs.


Ingredients:

6 - 7 shelled hard boiled eggs
1 medium-large onion
2 medium tomatoes, cut into quarters
5 tbsp sambal tumis**
1 tbsp tomato paste
salt (if required)
a little sugar

about 1/2 - 1 cup oil for frying eggs*

*You don't have to fry the eggs if you don't want to. Fried egg tastes better and will coat the sauce much better.

Method:
Wipe the eggs with paper towel to remove excess surface water. Water will make oil spit. Heat oil till hot fry eggs at medium high heat, turning and browning evenly. Egg surface will blister a bit and light golden brown. Don't fry too long or the egg white will become tough. if you don't want to fry the eggs leave this step out.

Tip the sambal into a clean wok or pan. There is enough oil in the sambal no need to add extra oil to cook onion. Add tomato paste and onion and fry at medium heat till onion is softened. Don't let sambal burn, if heat too hot turn heat down or add a touch of water.
Add eggs and stir to coat with sauce evenly and warming the eggs. Add some water if sauce is too thick.
Add tomato pieces cook till slightly softened.
Taste to see if you need some sugar and a touch of salt to season.
Serve sambal tumis telur with rice, soft bread or flat bread.


**If you don't have a jar of sambal tumis you can make the spice paste with:

about 5 dried large chillies, de-seeded and soaked then cut into small pieces
3 walnut size shallots, cut into small pieces
1 large clove of garlic
1 tsp shrimp paste
l - 2 tbsp of tamarind juice extracted from a very small lump of wet tamrind and few tbsp hot water

Blend or pound the above to a fine paste. Cook with 2 - 3 tbsp of cooking oil till oil turning red and paste is fragrant, then add some salt to taste.

Hong Kong Cafe style breakfast

Hong Kong is a food paradise. When I was working there few years ago, I hardly ever cook. Dim sum with friends was the routine every Sunday. During the working week Cafe restaurants were probably where I went for breakfast, lunch and sometime dinner most of the time. I love HK cafe restaurants or 'cha chaan tian' 茶餐廳, they serve food and drinks all day long from egg and bacon sandwich, french toast, Portugese egg tart to stir fried noodles/rice etc....

One of my favourite cafe breakfast is 'chaan dan tung' 餐蛋通 to wash down with 'yin yan lai cha' 鴛鴦奶茶. Chaan dan tung is macaroni soup with fried spam and fried egg, while yin yan lai cha is a milky tea with coffee. Both sound very strange but really quite tasty and reasonably cheap.

Here is what I do to recreate this at home occasionally for weekend late breakfast.

For the chaan dan tung 餐蛋通, all you need are these ingredients then assemble together

some tasty chicken or pork stock

cooked macaroni

one fried egg per person

2 slices of fried spam or Chinese luncheon meat per person

some blanched Chinese green (like choi sum) or iceburg lettuce

light soy and ground pepper to taste

Heat the stock add cooked macaroni and seasoned to taste then top with fried spam, fried egg and some veg.

For the yin yan milky tea coffee 鴛鴦奶茶

Blew some tea, preferably Lipton, Ceylon red tea or any far east brand English tea. If not use normal Tetley or other English tea.

Blew some light fragrant coffee like Arabica or Columbian, freshly ground is better but can also use instant if you like

Some hot milk or evaporated milk

some sugar (optional)

Mix 50:50 brewed hot tea with coffee add plenty of hot milk or some evaporated milk. Evaporated milk gives a distinctive S E Asian tea/coffee taste. I don't normally add sugar to tea or coffee but yin yan tea coffee is nice with some sugar.

Yin Yang tea coffee is nice too cold with plenty of ice. If you fancy you can add crushed iced, black pearls to make bubble tea 珍珠鴛鴦奶茶, serve in a tall glass with extra wide straws.

Dou fu fa (beancurd jelly) - traditional recipe

Dou fu fa (or just 'dou fa') = doh fu hua (or just 'doh hua') = tofu fa = doh now = beancurd jelly = soy milk curd

In Chinese this dessert is called 豆腐花 or 豆花, read as 'dou fu fa' in Cantonese and 'doh fu hua' in Mandarin, translated as tofu flower. There is another name for this dessert called 豆腦 'doh now' in Mandarin, translated as 'soy brain' because it is as soft as brain and look/texture similar to brain.

This soy milk curd is similar to the one used to press solid tofu.

This recipe posted today is the traditional method using gypsum or plaster of paris or calcium sulphate to set the soy milk. There is one minor difference between this recipe and the one for pressing tofu, i.e. tofu fa also has cornflour (cornstarch) to help set the curd and making it less likely to bleed with water.

The extraction of soy milk and boiling the milk is exactly the same as making soy milk.

I love dou fu fa, it so soft and silky. Similar to a set yogurt without any sour taste. Love it anyday anytime. There are many ways to eat this soft curd sweet or savoury. Will give you some examples later.


Here is the recipe how to make this traditional Chinese dessert. On the picture above, the yellowish bits are the ginger boiled in syrup.


For the soy milk
225g (8 oz) dried soy beans
1800 - 1900ml (1.8 - 1.9 litre) water

See this thread how to extract the milk and boil the milk.

You may be able to use shop bought unsweetened soy milk, not sure with concentration though and also bought soy milk may contain preservatives which may affect the setting. You can try if you like but I won't guarantee the result. Boil the milk.


Turning the soy milk to curd prepare this:
1.5 tsp level spoon (4.5g) of gypsum powder* 石膏粉
2.5 tbsp cornflour (cornstarch)
1/3 cup water (room temp. water)

* do get the gypsum from Chinese grocery store, do not use the plaster of paris from the DIY store. Try to measure the gypsum accurately, too much can make the curd texture coarse, to little the curd will not set adequately.

Mix water with gypsum and cornflour.

Once the milk is boiling with lots of bubbles, then gently simmer for another 5 minutes. Turn the heat off. Use a small clean sieve and dip into the milk, moving it about to remove any solids in the liquid and bubbles floating on the surface. Remove sieve and have a slotted spoon ready. Just before ready to pour the gypsum mixture into the milk, stir it vigorously again this is because gypsum can settle onto the bottom of the cup very quickly. Stir the hot milk with the slotted spoon while pouring the gypsum mixture from a height of about few inches from the liquid surface. When all in, give the milk a very quick stir again for about 1 - 2 seconds. Cover with the lid and leave it to rest without disturbing. The milk should set in about few minutes. Leave it for about 15 minutes before serving. Will stay hot for about 1 hour. Using a ladle and scoop large lumps of this curd onto serving bowls. Small lumps can lead to curd bleeding with water.

Can serve hot, warm or cold. The longer you keep this curd the more solid and rougher the texture will become, i.e. more water separated from the curd.


Here is a pot of dou fu fa.



There are many many ways to serve with this dou fu fa:

Sweetened
Most common is with a gingery syrup. Boil 1-1/4 cup of sugar with 1/3 cup water and about 40 -50 g very thinly sliced peeled ginger. When the syrup is rapidly boiling, continue boiling for another 2 - 3 minutes, heat off and leave to cool. Spoon on as much syrup as you like.
Another S E Asian flavoured syrup is boiling the same syrup as above, replacing ginger with few pandan leaves.
Add some fresh soy milk to curd then add syrup (ginger or pandan)
Boil some soaked aduki beans till very soft with water, sweetened. Spoon cooked beans on the dou fu fa.
Boil some skinned raw peanuts with water till softened then sweetened with sugar. Spoon this cooked peanuts on the dou fu fa.
Sprinkle on Chinese red sugar on the dou fu fa.
Spoon on some osmanthus flower syrup 桂花醬 on the dou fu fa.
Make some sweetened black sesame thick soup 芝麻糊. Dry roast black sesame seeds, blend till very fine, add water or milk and cornflour/ground rice. Cook till thickened then sweetened with sugar. Then spoon on some this black sesame soup onto the dou fu fa.

Savoury
Sprinkle on soy sauce and some fried garlic and shallot in oil and ground pepper.
Spicy Sichuan style called red oil doh hua 紅油豆花. Sprinkle on some Sichuan spicy dressing; made with chilli oil, Sichuan pepper oil, ground Sichuan pepper, soy sauce, black vinegar, pinch of sugar, roasted sesame seeds and spring onion.

Mapo Tofu

Recipe will serve 4

Ingredients:

400 - 500g (about 1 box) chinese tofu from chinese supermarket from the chiller cabinet soaked in water
200 - 250g of minced beef or pork
2 tbsp of cooking oil
2 fat clove of garlic, chopped
1.5 - 2.5 tbsp of chilli bean sauce (I normally use this brand and about 2.5 tbsp, I like it spicy)
0.5 to 1 tbsp dried fermented black bean or yellow bean sauce, roughly minced with spoon(most people like black beans, I like yellow beans)
1 medium mild chilli, chopped (optional if you like it spicy)
1 tsp dark soy sauce
0.5 to 1 tbsp oyster sauce (optional, not authentic but I find it tastes very nice with this dish)
1 tsp of sugar
good pinch of freshly ground pepper
0.5 cup chicken stock or water
1 heap tsp of cornflour mixed with a little water
2 stalks of spring onions, chopped
2 - 3 tsp of chilli oil or sesame oil
a little roasted and ground sichuan pepper (optional)

Extra chopped spring onion and fresh chilli for garnish.

Method:
Heat oil in wok add garlic, stir for 10 -15 sec, add the chilli bean paste and yellow bean paste (or black beans) stir till fragrant, add mince, stir till browned then add soy sauce, oyster sauce, sugar, ground pepper, stock and chopped chilli (optional).
Cut tofu into chunks, add to meat sauce, stir gently and simmer till hot. Add cornflour, when thickened add chopped spring onions. Sprinkle on chilli oil or sesame oil but don't stir. Transfer onto serving dish, sprinkle with Sichuan pepper if like.
Sprinkle with more spring onion and fresh chilli.
Note: qty of all types of sauces is a guide, you can add as much or as little as you like, don’t add too much, it can be salty. You can always add more after you add the stock. Many people like to add loads of oil or chilli oil, I don't like it bathing in oil but if you like it use much as you like.


For a vegetarian version, sub beef with chopped shitake (handful after soaked) and some chinese preserved vegetable like this. If you use zha cai either soaked to reduce the saltiness or reduce some of the sauce.

Braised duck with beancurd stick and shitake

Ingredients:

1 whole duck or large duck crown or few duck legs (about 1.3 - 1.5kg)
1 x 200g pack of dried bean curd sticks 腐竹
60 -70g Shitake or Chinese black mushrooms
1.5 - 2 tbsp red fermented beancurd (南乳 nam yue) - about 3 small squares or 1.25 large square depending on brand
1.5 tbsp of the red pickling juice from the red fermented beancurd
2 tbsp of chopped garlic (about 5 - 6 cloves)
3 shallots (about 1 inch wide)
1 chuck of ginger (about thumb size)
3 tsp five spice powder
1/4 tsp ground pepper
3 star anise
2 tsp of sugar
1.5 tbsp of dark soy sauce
1 tbsp of light soy sauce
1/4 cup of Shoashing or Chinese cooking wine
1 - 2 tbsp oyster sauce
1 heap tbsp of cornflour with 2 tbsp water
Cooking oil

Method:
First cut the duck into large chunks (they will shrink a lot so don't cut too small) with a cleaver or meat scissors. Then marinate the duck with dark soy sauce and half of the five spice powder, leave aside for 30 min - 1 hour.
Soak the mushrooms, clean and cut into thick slices. You can reserve the soaking water for braising.
Break the beancurd sticks via the u bent. Then cut each stick into half again with scissors (scissors makes a cleaner cut then breaking with hand). Heat the wok with 1 cup of oil till quite hot, put in 2 - 3 pieces of the dried beancurd sticks, the sticks will blister immediately in contact with the hot oil, turning them around and fry till golden brown around 10 - 15 seconds. Take them out to drain. When finished frying the whole batch, soak the lot with boiling water till softened then washed and squeezed lightly several times with warm water to release excess oil. Then cut them into 3 (about 5 cm long)
Chop the garlic and shallots. Cut ginger into slices.
Get ready the red fermented bean curd. See all the prepared ingredients below.
Remove the frying oil. Clean the wok.
Heat the wok till hot, without any oil. Then lay the duck pieces skin side down and fry them till most of the fat is released and duck pieces turned brown, turn over and fry for another minute or two. Take them all out. Remove most of the duck fat except for around 2 tbsp. Scrape off any burnt sticky bits. (keep the marinate)
Add in the ginger, garlic, shallots and star anise, stir fry till fragrant. Add in the red fermented bean curd with its juice, mash the beancurd with back of the wooden spoon or any cooking utensil. Stir frying for a minute of two, add in remaining five spice powder, the meat marinate, ground pepper, cooking wine, sugar and light soy. Stir then add in 2 cups of water or mushroom soaking water. Let the mixture come to the boil.
Add in the duck pieces and mushrooms. Stir and let the liquid boil again. Then remove most of the scum floating on top. Heat down to low, cover and let it simmer for about 15 minutes then add in fried and soaked beancurd sticks. Continue simmering for about half hour or till the duck pieces are tender.
Add in enough oyster sauce to taste. Heat up high and add in the slacken cornflour, stirring and reducing the sauce to the consistency you like.

Here is the result. Great with rice and some stir fried vegetables.

Stir fried blistered green chilli

I was pleased to find some large green chillies from the market. I asked the store keeper if they are spicy he just shrugged his shoulders how helpful! In the end I bought a handful (just over 1/2 lb) to try in case they are not as nice as I thought. These chillies were quite long about 12 - 15cm long.




I love Sichuan Hu pe jian jiao 虎皮尖椒 or stir fried blistered green chilli but it is not easy to find the right type of chillies. Here is my chance to try this recipe with these green chillies. The name of this dish is translated as tiger skin pointed chilli. Tiger skin here refers to the blistered or charred skin of chillies.


Hu pe jian jiao 虎皮尖椒

For the recipe, remove the stalks. Cut a slit near the stalk, remove the white pith and shake off the seeds. I then cut the chillies into half.
Heat the wok without any oil till very hot. Throw in the chillies, stir fry till chillies are charred/blistered with black spots.





Push the chillies to one side of the wok or pan, heat some oil and add about 1 heap tbsp of chopped garlic, stir till fragrant.
Add 1 rounded tsp yellow bean sauce and 2 - 3 tsp chilli bean paste (douban jiang), stir and mix with the chillies.
Add a dash of cooking wine and sprinkling of ground Sichuan pepper.
Add a little water, stir for a short while.
Add some sugar to balance the flavour. Done.

The green chillies were quite mild. Together with the chilli bean paste the completed dish was spicy enough for my taste. Tasty!

note: If the green chillies are very spicy, sub chilli bean paste with yellow bean sauce or sweet bean sauce 甜麵醬. Taste the chillies before stir frying to select the right sauce.

Macanese style Portuguese chicken

Macau is part of China now, it was the first and last European colony within China. Portuguese traders had settled and colonised Macau from the 16th century till its handover to China in 1999. Because of this, Portuguese had strongly influenced Macau's architectural buildings, culture and food. Macau has long famous for its tourism, gambling and food.

I'd been to Macau few times while I was working in Hong Kong. It's easy to get there from Hong Kong, just hop on the ferry. I love this place a lot. Every time we went there we were food crawling all day and all night till we dropped. My favourite Macanese food are fried pork chop buns, crab congee (rice soup), Portuguese style egg custard tart called 'po tart', all the Macanese snacks, Macanese chilli crab, African Chicken and Portuguese Chicken.

Macanese food many are Chinese - Portuguese fusion. I am very surprised not to find many Macanese recipes in books and on the internet.

Portuguese chicken (Po Kok Gai 葡國雞) is Chinese - Portuguese fusion. I don't think anyone can find this recipe in Portugal. This dish is like a mild chicken curry with Portuguese/Spanish ingredients like chorizo and olive. Very unusual combination, it works and delicious.




Here is the recipe, will feed 5 - 6 people. Can reduce quantity to make a smaller portion.

Ingredients:

900g chicken pieces (thighs and drumsticks)
1 tsp salt
1 tsp chicken stock powder (bouillon)
pinch of pepper

50g (about 0.5 cup) plain flour
1.5 tbsp turmeric
2 - 3 tsp paprika
2 - 3 tbsp water
0.5 cup cooking oil

450 - 500g potato, cut into small chunks
1 large onion, cut into chunks
125g Chorizo, sliced
70g pitted black olive
2 large tomatoes, about 350g, cut into bite size
2 - 3 bay leaves

200ml or more fresh milk (for richer flavour can use evaporated milk)
175ml coconut milk
1 tsp salt
0.5 - 1 tsp chilli powder

few tbsp dessicated coconut


Method:
If chicken pieces are large cut into half. Season chicken with salt and pepper and leave for 30 minutes - 1 hour. Then mix with plain flour, turmeric powder, paprika and some water to evenly coat chicken.
Boil potatoes for few minutes till almost cooked through. Drain and set aside.
Heat wok with oil. Fry chicken pieces in two batches till brown for few minutes. Do worry if not cooked through. Take them out to drain off excess oil on kitchen paper. Remove oil from wok and clean wok.
Use 1 - 2 tbsp of the chicken frying oil and stir fry onion, garlic and chorizo till onion is softened. Then add chicken, bay leaves and potatoes. Then stir in milk, coconut milk, chilli powder and enough salt to taste. Stir and cook for a minute or two till the sauce is hot and thickened, if sauce looks too thick add some water or more milk. Then stir in tomotoes and olive.
Put all this in a large baking dish. Sprinkle with dessicated coconut. Sprinkle a little water on the dessicated coconut to prevent coconut browning too quickly. Bake at around 170 - 175 deg C for about 30 - 40 minutes till the whole dish is hot and bubbly and coconut is browned.

Chinese five spice doughnut

This Cantonese fried bread is one of my favourite chinese bread. This doughnut is a pinwheel bread spread with a salty spicy mix. It's is spicy, salty and chewy.


This recipe make about 13 - 14 pieces

Ingredients:

For the dough
400g white bread flour
1 tsp of easy blend yeast
300 - 315 ml of water
1 tsp of salt
3 tbsp of sugar

For the spicy spread
2 squares of red fermented tofu (南乳) - about 1 tbsp
2-1/2 tsp of salt
3 tsp of five spice water
2 tsp of water

Frying
2 cups of cooking oil

Method:

1. Mix the dough ingredient together and knead for about 10 minutes (I use bread machine)
2. Leave the dough to rise till double in size. Punch down the dough.
3. Spead working area with dusting of flour and roll the dough into 13" x 10" square, about 8 - 10 mm thick.
4. Mash the fermented tofu and mix the spread ingredients
together.
5. Spread the mix evenly on the dough using a spatula. (see picture)
6. Roll the dough up like a Swiss roll.
7. Cut the rolled dough into 13 - 14 pieces.
8. Coat each piece of dough with flour and press it down flat to about 5 - 8 mm thick. (see picture)
9. Cover and leave to rise for about 20 minutes.
10. Heat 2 cups of oil in a large pan or wok till quite hot.
11. Scope each dough up with a spatula and lower gently into the hot oil. Fry for 1 minute, turn over and continue frying and flipping till both sides are golden brown.

Xinjiang chicken stew

Xinjiang chicken stew 新疆大盤雞
Xinjiang da pun ji 新疆大盤雞, translated as Xinjiang big plate/bowlful of chicken.

Xinjiang is the North West part of China, Muslims majority. I found this chicken stew recipe a while ago, very similar to Sichuan spicy flavour which I like a lot. What special is no water is needed just plenty of beer to stew the chicken. I just got to try this recipe.

Ingredients:

1 - 1.25kg of chicken with bone, cut/chop into chunks Chinese style with a cleaver or cut with pair of scissors. I used half a large chicken. You can also use drumsticks or chicken legs.

about 400g potatoes, cut into chunks

big handful of mild large green chillies (similar to this), I could not find this so I sub with 1 small green pepper and one small orange pepper, cut into chunks

3 - 4 large cloves garlic, roughly chopped

thumb size chunk of ginger, sliced

2 star anise

1.5 tsp cumin seeds

l medium-large onion cut into bitesize

2 - 4 tbsp chilli bean sauce ( I used Pixian douban 郫县豆瓣 better flavour), more chilli bean added hotter and redder the stew sauce, also can be salty too, adjust to your taste

1.5 tbsp Sichuan peppercorns

some dried chillies, remove stalks and seeds, cut into small chunks then rinse. I used 6 large dried chillies medium hot, can use small dried chillies usually much hotter

about 4 - 5 tbsp cooking oil

some light soy to taste

about 1 tbsp sugar, more or less to taste

about 500ml light flavoured beer, any type

about 1 heap tbsp cornflour mix with a little water for thickening

few stalks of spring onion (scallion), cut into 2 - 3 cm long


Method:
Put oil in wok, fry the Sichuan peppercorns for a little while till fragrant. (You can remove Sichuan peppercorns if you hate biting into them, crush some with pestle and mortar and add to the stew later) Now add cumin, star anise and dried chillies. Stir till you get a pungent scent and before chilli burnt.
Add garlic, ginger and onion, stir for a little while.
Add chilli bean sauce, stir till oil turning red.
Add chicken and stir fry for about 5 minutes.
Add potato, stir.
Add beer. Cover and let the liquid come to the boil. Turn the heat down and simmer for about 20 - 30 minutes till chicken and potatoes are tender.
Season with enough light soy and sugar. Taste before adding light soy, chilli bean sauce can be salty.
Add green chilli or sweet pepper. Continue simmer for another couple of minutes.
Thicken with slackened cornflour. Not too thick.
Finally add spring onion. Ready to eat

For the noodles: (can sub with tagliatelle )

I used pasta machine to make the noodles

about 300g white bread flour
1 large egg + water to make up to 125ml
1 tsp salt

Mix above together to form a dough. If dough is very dry add a bit more water. Dough should be firm. Leave to rest for about 20 minutes, knead till smooth.

Cut dough into 3 pieces. Dust with plenty of dry flour then roll out thin with pasta machine.

Then hand cut with knife into thick flat noodles.

Boil and serve with chicken stew.


*The flavour of the stew sauce was bitter (due to the beer) at first but did mellow down to a nice rich flavour with all the other ingredients.

Golden pumpkin cake Recip

Golden Pumpkin Cake

One of Cantonese favourite Chinese New Year's cake is lo bak goh (turnip or mooli cake). This year I subbed mooli with pumpkin. The cake has a mild sweetness and lovely pumpkin flavour. It has a nice golden colour. Gold or golden colour is auspicious during CNY to symbolise wealth and prosperity. So why not try this to celebrate with friends and family. I know it's a bit late but CNY is not ended till 17th Feb.

Ingredients:

3 sticks lap cheong (chinese sausage)
125 - 150g minced pork
2 tbsp dried shrimps or shredded dried scallop , soaked (optional)
handful of dried shitake mushrooms without stalks (about 20g), soaked
2 - 3 walnut size shallots
2 fat cloves garlic
pinch of ground pepper
0.5 - 1 tsp salt or to taste
1 - 2 tbsp light soy sauce to taste
some ground pepper
1 - 1.5 tbsp cooking oil
1 tbsp sesame oil

about 750 - 800g peeled pumpkin (choose pumpkin with firm and sweet flavour), can sub with butternut squash

about 1/2 cup water

280g rice flour
75g tapioca starch or potato starch
500ml water or room temp. homemade diluted chicken stock (or water with added chicken stock granules about 1 heap tsp)

Garnish (optional)
2 tbsp chopped spring onion (scallion)
1 tbsp chopped red chilli
2 tbsp chopped preserved radish (chai bo)

2 - 3 foil cake tins (round or oblong) or takeaway containers

Method:
Soak the lap cheong in boiling liquid for few minutes till soften then finely chopped.
Finely chopped garlic, shallot, soaked mushrooms and dried shrimps.
Grate pumpkin using a cheese grater or grate with food processor coarse grater attachment.
Mix rice flour and stock (or water) together.
Heat wok, add cooking oil and sesame oil and fry shallot and garlic till golden. Then add lap cheong, minced pork, mushroom and dried shrimps or scallop (if using). Stir fry till fragrant and make sure meat does not clump together then add remaining seasoning ingredients.
Add grated pumpkin stir briefly then add 1/2 cup water. Continue stirring for few minutes till the mixture is thoroughly heated through.
Stir in the flour mixture. Heat off. Continue stirring there should be enough heat to partially cook the mixture to a thick paste. Taste to check if more seasoning is needed
Grease 2 - 3 aluminium foil baking tins (round or oblong). Spoon cake mixture into containers, press firmly to ensure no air pockets in the cake mixture. Smooth the top with dampen fingers lightly touching the surface.
Ready for steaming. Preheat steamer till very hot. Put cake in steamer loosely covered with baking paper, steam at medium heat for about 1 - 1.5 hours depending on thickness of cake. Cake less than 1.5 inches thick will take about 1 hour, cake about 2 - 2.5 inches thick will take about 1.5 hours. Test with a skewer around the centre to see there is no whitish paste to ensure it is thoroughly cooked through. Covering cake with baking paper is to prevent condensation collected on top of cake and making it soggy wet.
Once cooked, take the cake out, lightly brush with oil and cover loosely then leave to cool.  Brushing with oil is to prevent surface drying. This cake is too soft to cut when hot. Better put in fridge after cooling.
Turn the cake out. Garnish with chopped spring onion, chilli and preserved turnip. This salted turnip gives a salty taste and a bit of crunch.
Cake can be eaten while warm better still cut into slices after cooling (chilling) and fry with a little oil till golden.
* If without a large enough steamer can cook the cake in the oven using a water bath (large roasting tray filled with some boiling water) covered with foil.