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Showing posts from April, 2010

An interlude

I realise how boring my blog is lately. Food recipes food recipes food recipes. What else has been going on in my life??? I'll think about it and let you know eventually. In the meantime, here is an interlude to help break the monotony, someone who has been... ...taking over the couch inch by inch, ...not allowing himself to be ignored, ...still somewhat suspicious of 'the mouse', ...and frequently having his private 'pee time' invaded by lewd people!
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Stewed pork belly: a sure winner

I can’t think what to say about this except you MUST try this. Not difficult to make and will guarantee make your husband/family/children fall down on their knees in ecstasy. This is the recipe I used: About ½ kg skinless pork belly, about 2-3cm wide strips 2 tbsp light soy sauce 2 tbsp dark soy sauce 1 tbsp shaoxing wine 3 tbsp sugar 2-3 cups water Arrange pork belly in a pot, pour in sauces, shaoxing wine (don’t put in the sugar) and add the water, just enough to cover most of the pork belly. Bring the liquid to a boil then adjust heat to simmer gently. After half an hour, check the water level and flip the pork belly to cook the other side. Check again after another half an hour. The pork fat should be very soft to an almost melt in your mouth texture. At this stage, be careful when pushing the pork around to make sure you do not squish the fat. Add the sugar and turn up the heat to reduce the liquid to a thick gravy-like, syrupy consistency. Allow the pork to coo...
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Steaming to keep warm

With that ‘wintery’ feeling starting to descend on us, we’re looking for ways to keep warm… Apart from right next to the gas heater, the other warmest spot in the house is the kitchen. Usually baking would be a good way to keep warm, but I decided to try something a bit different. Freshly steamed mantou buns! So simple to make… and I know I’ve probably overused this phrase, but it’s really amazing what you can whip up with just four ingredients . All you need is: 3½ cups plain flour 3 tablespoons sugar 1 teaspoon yeast 1 plus ¼ cup water My breadmaker came in handy here. All I needed to do was to combine the ingredients and set the machine to mix and knead the dough. If you’re doing it by hand, first dissolve the yeast with ¼ cup water and set aside for a few minutes. Meanwhile, combine the flour and sugar. Add the yeast mixture with the remaining cup of water to the flour and sugar and mix together until a dough forms. Knead the dough for ten minutes then set aside...
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More traditional toothsome treats

This weekend’s project is ‘ondeh-ondeh’ It’s one of those recipes I came across when browsing through the net and I bookmarked it to try it out. It didn’t look to difficult, so I had in mind to prepare it for cell refreshments or some other occasion like that. However hubs said (with a cunning grin) " you’d better test it out first for practice ". So I bought/prepared the necessary ingredients: 1-2 tspn pandan essence (or blend 8-10 pandan leaves with some water and strain out the juice) 1½ cups glutinous rice flour + a pinch of salt ½ cup boiling water ½ cup grated coconut A few drops of green food colouring (optional) Filling: ½ cup gula melaka + 1 tbsp brown sugar Similar to making tang yuan , just mix the flour, water, pandan juice/essence (plus optional green food colouring) until you get a soft dough. Transfer to a floured work surface and knead Pinch of a bit of the dough, shape into a ball. Then use your thumb to create a cavity and...
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And for dessert…

Homemade muah chee which is surprisingly quite easy to make. Using the four ingredients theme : Dough = a cup of glutinous rice flour + 3-4 tablespoons of water Add water bit by bit until a the mixture becomes doughy. You can add a bit of sesame oil to make it easier to handle. Form the dough into balls and drop them into a rapidly boiling put of water. The dough will rise to the surface when it is cooked. The other alternative is to steam it. Peanut coating = half a cup of peanuts + a quarter cup of sugar Toast peanuts for 10-15 minutes in the oven, the blitz it up if a food processor with the sugar. Use scissors to snip the dough up into small pieces and coat with the peanut and sugar mixture. Hubby was totally enraptured with this. I had quite a bit of peanut mixture left over, so for breakfast the next day, I tried my hand at making apam balik … those yummy peanut pancakes found at the pasar malam or snack stalls in Malaysia/Singapore. I was debating whethe...
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Where can I find fresh enoki mushrooms?

Today is the last day of our Good Friday/Easter long weekend. I’ve been very productive in the kitchen, and so I’m about to have one of my blogging ‘spurts’ where I post up a load of pics and updates in one go. Incidentally, I decided weekends SHOULD ideally be four days long… Friday is to recover from the work week, Saturday is for housework, Sunday is to go out and catch up with friends and Monday is for finishing off everything you haven’t done over the weekend and to mentally prepare yourself for another work week. I found this lovely sounding recipe online on Saturday: steamed silken tofu wih enoki and beech mushrooms. I just HAD to try it. So I added the necessary ingredients to my shopping list for later. The tofu easy enough to find… but as for the enoki and beech mushrooms… not a single strand to be found for the love of money. The search continued until Sunday even at a different store. The lau pan niang at Kongs Supermart told me that the supplier in Perth was havi...
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