Ugly Duckling & the Swan - Recipes: Steamed Meat Cake and Salmon with Black Bean Sauce

In the food world, the story of the Ugly Duckling and the Swan is also often played out. There are just some dishes which do not stand up particularly well presentation-wise, but are nonetheless delicious. Take the Chinese steamed meat cake, which is a staple in most Chinese homes. Simple ingredients, clean in taste, it used to be one of the dishes I would ask for as a kid when I was sick. Unfortunately, it also happens to look...well, like a pale, diseased lump of clay. I promise you however that it tastes much better than it looks.

Ingredients:
500 g of minced pork, with a little fat
1 tbsp tung choy (preserved vegetable) or spring onion, minced
2 tbsp light soy sauce
1 tsp dark soy sauce
2 tsps sesame oil
2 tsps Shao Xing wine
Dash pepper
Pinch of salt
1 tbsp corn starch

1 egg, lightly beaten
1/4 cup water

Combine minced pork with the seasoning ingredients and mix well with your hands. Press mixture into glass pie or steaming plate. Add in egg and pour in water to cover. Steam over high heat for about 10-15 minutes. Serve hot

And then you have dishes such as pan-fried salmon, with its lovely pink colour and crsip skin. Garnish it with a couple of springs of coriander and the whole thing looks pretty elegant and dinner-party ready. Seems rather unfair doesn't it, that some dishes are just "born beautiful" (haha), regardless of the chef.

I made a black bean garlic sauce to accompany the fish.

Ingredients:
Sesame oil to glaze
1 tsp minced ginger
1 tsp minced garlic
2 tsps minced spring onions
3 tsps sherry or Shao Xing wine
1 tbsp black bean garlic sauce
1 tsp oyster sauce
2 tsps sugar
1/4 cup water

In the same pan used to fry your fish, drain off excess oil and drizzle sesame oil to glaze the pan. Stir fry ginger, garlic and spring onions until fragrant, add wine, black bean garlic sauce, oyster sauce and sugar. Add water and boil for a couple of minutes until the sauce reaches the consistency you like. Serve over fish or on the side.

A morning out at Jacob Ballas Children's Garden

Doesn't this picture make you want to smile?

I was fortunate enough to tag along a field trip this morning to the Children's Garden at the Botanical Gardens. I have to hand it to Singapore, its management of public facilities is excellent for the most part. Entrance is free I believe, but you need to be a kid to get in. Here are some photos which I managed to take.

Recipe: Steamed Tofu with Assorted Mushrooms and an Unexpected Visitor

I am not one to be overly superstitious, but I have noticed that every year around the Chinese New Year I get a visitor in the form of a moth. The first time I noticed it was the year after my paternal grandfather passed away. The Chinese believe that our ancestors visit the living, taking on forms such as the moth. That year, a beautiful, black and white Atlas moth visited our home. It came again the next year, and the year after that.  As a child, I believed it was my grandfather watching over us, year after year. At that time, Damansara Heights was still a place that was lush and protected. I remember fondly that when we first moved there in the early 1980s we could still find fireflies at night. I woke up to the sound of Myna birds in the morning. Many of those mystical, green spaces have given way to high rise condominiums over the years.

I woke up this morning and noticed this brown moth in my living room. In a place as "biodiversitically-challenged" as Singapore, it left me with a sense of awe and amazement. As I grow more cynical with age and try desperately to rationalise and to find neat and simple answers to everything, incidents like this remind me that some things just cannot be explained. The moth later followed me to the kitchen, above my preparation station where this picture was shot. I guess, it knew my favourite spot in the house.

As a cook, one likes to try new dishes at restaurants and replicate it at home. I have created a simplified version of a dish that is often served in Chinese restaurants, Tofu with Braised Mushrooms. Though the tofu is often deep-fried first, this version which is steamed and thus uses less oil is pretty good.

Ingredients:
1 block of soft tofu
4 dried shitake mushrooms, soaked in about 1/2 cup of hot water for at least 30 minutes to soften
1 pack of enoki mushrooms, cut off roots and separate
150 g button mushrooms, sliced
150 g oyster mushrooms, sliced into halves if they are large. Leave small ones whole.
2 tsps minced ginger
1 tsp minced garlic
1 tbsp Shao Xing wine (Chinese rice wine)
1 1/2 tbsp oil
1/2 tbsp sesame oil

Seasoning:
1 1/2 tbsp vegetarian oyster sauce
1/2 tbsp light soy sauce
1/2 tsp dark soy sauce
1/4 tsp white pepper
1/2 tsp sugar

Thickening: (optional)
1 1/2 tsp corn starch
2 tbsp water

1/2 tbsp chopped spring onions (optional)

Method:
Drain black mushrooms, cut off woody stems and slice thinly. In the same bowl used to hydrate the shitake mushrooms, combine seasoning ingredients and mix well.

Over high heat, steam tofu for 10 minutes. (Alternatively, microwave on high for about 2-3 minutes). Drain excess liquid.

Heat oil and sesame oil in skillet on medium-high. Add garlic and ginger and saute' until fragrant. Add in black mushrooms and Chinese wine, and stir fry briskly. Add in button and oyster mushrooms, stir fry for about 2 minutes, and then add seasoning ingredients and cover. Lower heat and simmer for about 5 minutes. Lift cover up and add in enoki mushrooms. Simmer for another 5 minutes.

Finally, add in cornstarch slurry, if desired, (I usually skip this, as I am a saucy gal, haha)  stir, and pour over steamed tofu. Garnish with spring onions and serve hot.

Solve the mystery

Lately my friends have been wondering why I've been showing up in class with books that have all their edges gnawed away. It's quite a mystery, I tell them. Theories abound. Any guesses? :)

Recipe: Chicken Chop with Mushroom Sauce

This is one of those dishes I grew up with. It is sort of standard fare in most pseudo-"Western" restaurants in Southeast Asia, alongside Spring Chicken and steak. Among the many Chinese dialects that settled in Malaya, the Hainanese (men, in particular) are especially known for their superior culinary skills. During the colonial period, the British hired Hainenese chefs to work in the kitchens of their exclusive country clubs and restaurants. You can still find the remnants of these colonial vestiges in Kuala Lumpur, for example, at the Coliseum restaurant, with its wine-stained white table cloths and smoke-filled cigar room, albeit the staff is much more multicultural these days.

I suppose you cannot really go wrong with fried chicken, especially one that is boneless and therefore easy to cut. I've been experimenting with this for several years now and last night, decided to bread it before deep-frying.

Serves two
Ingredients:
2 boneless chicken legs

Marinade:
Dash Worcestershire Sauce
Dash soy sauce
Dash Maggi seasoning
Dash pepper
Pinch of sugar

Marinade chicken for several hours or overnight if possible.

Breading:
Plain flour
1 egg, beaten lightly
1 cup of breadcrumbs, mixed together with 1 tbsp cornflour, 1 tsp baking soda, and a pinch of salt and pepper

Heat oil in deep fryer until hot. Drain chicken, and dust lightly with plain flour. Dip into egg and then breading. Deep-fry until crust is set and golden brown, about 7-10 minutes. To test if cooked, prick the chicken with a fork. The juices should be clear. Drain.

Mushroom sauce:
2 tbsp butter
1 small brown onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
5-7 button mushrooms, sliced
1 bay leaf
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1 cup water or chicken stock

Seasoning
1 tbsp oyster sauce
1/2 tbsp light soy sauce
1/4 tsp dark soy sauce, for colour (optional)
1 tsp chicken granules
1/2 tsp sugar
Freshly cracked black pepper and salt

Cornstarch slurry:
2 tsp corn starch
2 tbsp water

In a skillet, melt butter. Add chopped onion and garlic and fry on low-medium heat until soft. Add in mushrooms, season lightly with salt and pepper and add thyme. When mushrooms have released their liquid, add stock/water, bay leaf and seasoning ingredients. Simmer for 5 minutes. If you like your sauce a little thicker, add cornstarch slurry, stir, and dish up.

Serve chicken chop with sauce.

p.s. You might have gathered by now that my brother has a rather healthy appetite. The dainty portions in the above picture were just to make everything look pretty. I woke up around midnight last night and he remarked sheepishly that it was all gone. :)

The real deal

Recipe: Cabbage Stir-Fry, Indian Style

Despite what I read in history books on Malaysia, I believe that by far and large, the Malaysian society we see today is a reflection of our shared history of immigration. Simply saying, "we were here first, relative to others," overlooks the fact that despite the challenges we face today as a nation, we were once bonded by a common identity. Our forefathers left the shores of India, Indonesia, and China in search of a better life, fell in love with the Malayan culture, life and landscape, and made it their home. It is a thread that we have chosen not to acknowledge, for far too long. As a result of this history, Malaysian food is a wonderful mesh of flavours, textures and colours, adapted from our forefather's land of origin. It is impossible, almost, to define what Chinese cuisine means to Malaysians, for example. We have adapted Hakka, Teochew, Hokien, and Cantonese dishes, among others, to suit the ingredients readily available in Malaysia. Likewise, "Indian cuisine" in Malaysia traces its origins to many parts of India, although predominantly the South. That's why it perplexes me that the Malaysian tourism Minister had the audacity to claim recently that certain dishes such as chilly crab, nasi lemak and laksa were ours, and not to be confused with "Singaporean." Sorry, YB, but we are the same people, and I for one, do not believe in denying our shared history. 

Banana leaf rice is a popular lunchtime treat in Malaysia. It consists of plain white rice and an assortment of three or four vegetable dishes, plus a meat dish and gravy of your choice and topped with pickles and pappadum. A cabbage stir-fry is one of the most popular offerings. I've made this on many occasions and adjusted the recipe along the way. It goes well with most Indian dishes.

Ingredients:

Half a head of medium sized cabbage, shredded

1 carrot, shredded

2 medium sized red onions, chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 stalks curry leaves

2 dried chillies, cut into halves

1 tsp urad dhall

1 tsp mustard seeds

3/4 tsp turmeric powder

1 tsp salt or to taste

Grind together (A)

1/4 cup grated coconut

1 tsp cumin seeds

2 green chillies, minced

Heat 2 tsbps oil on medium-high in a wok. Add curry leaves, urad dhall, dried chillies and mustard seeds and fry. Add onions and garlic and fry till wilted. Add the cabbage, stir around till slightly wilted and then add carrots. Pour in 1/2 cup of water, add turmeric and salt to taste. Lower heat and simmer, covered for 5-10 minutes or until cabbage is soft.

Add in A stir well to combine. Simmer on low for 3-5 minutes (there should be very little liquid).

Serve hot.

Sunday Mornings

I love going to the market on weekends. It is my mother's influence. I've always admired how methodological she was in creating her grocery list (and checking it twice) and shopping for the week's food. As a child my job was to help pick potatoes and onions, since I was pretty hopeless at being able to pick out fresh fish. Even after I moved out of my parents' house I continued to go to the same market in KL. It was nice to bump into her in the market on Saturday mornings. Some of the sellers have seen me grow up over the years.  I enjoy looking at the fresh vegetables and fruit on sale, and talking to the people who sell the produce. This morning there was a community event at the Bukit Timah Market in preparation for Chinese New Year. It was a visual feast.

Recipe: Braised Pork with Wood Ear Fungus

Elephant ears?

I'm sure you are quite familiar with the story of the annoying tag along - the younger sister who wants to go everywhere, do everything, and meet everyone that her older sister knows. Well, I used to be quite the pesky little rodent.

Truth is, my older sister Elaine has always been incredibly sisterly, she took me under the wing the moment I popped out. When we were kids, she tolerated my incessant appetite for trying just about everything that she had acquired, whether it be piano, or ballet or tae-kwan-do. I was so impatient to grow up. We shared so many things together back then - not just extra curricular activities, but space as well as friends, and I realise now that I never thanked her for being so generous in letting me be part of her world.

Do you know how memories from your childhood are often a collage of blurred images, sounds and emotions. In response to something you may see or feel, the mind sharpens a particular image from the past. I was thinking about my sister the other day as I was taking the MRT to Sommerset. Well, for whatever reason, I have this memory of me tagging along to one of my sister's play dates at her friend's house. I must have been only 8-9 years old. Up to that point the kitchen had always been somewhat of a forbidden place. But on this particular occasion, I snuck into the kitchen and found my friend's mother cooking.

The Chinese pepper their food with a play of imagery, symbolisms and analogies, perhaps more than any other cuisine that I know....Buddha jump over the wall, ants climb a tree, pock-marked lady's tofu, etc. It sparks the imagination. I asked her what she was making and she told me that she was making a dish of elephant ears. I went home that evening and tried to ask my mother whether I had really eaten elephant ears. While she assured me that I hadn't, I wondered for many years about what that chewy, rubbery thing I had eaten was. Turns out, it had been wood ear fungus, a common ingredient in Chinese cooking and one that lends itself well to braised dishes because of its neutrality and texture. It is a vegetable rather than an animal, and I love it to this day.

Here is a recipe that I made yesterday called "Hakka char yoke." The critical step in this dish is making the sauce from scratch and marinating and deep frying the belly pork first to retain its moisture. I adapted it from Lily's Wai Sek Hong.

Ingredients:

Nam Yue Red Sauce

8 pieces fermented red bean curd (nam yue)

3 tbsp chopped garlic

3 tbsp chopped shallots

1 tsp chopped ginger

2 star anise

5 cm cinnamon stick

3 tbsp oyster sauce

2 tbsp sugar

1 tsp sesame oil

2 tbsp shao xing wine

500ml water

4 tbsps oil

Heat oil, sauté chopped shallot and garlic until fragrant. Add in the remaining ingredients and bring to boil on low heat until thick. Remove the whole spices and keep bottled, in the fridge for up to a week. I used half the portion and froze the rest.

Braised Pork with Wood Ear Fungus

Ingredients: 

400g pork belly, sliced thickly

A handful of wood ear fungus, soaked in warm water to soften. Remove hard bits and cut into large pieces

2 tbsp Hakka Nam Yue red sauce

2-3 cloves of garlic, smashed

2 shallots, sliced

1 tbsp oyster sauce

Soy sauce and pepper to taste

2 cups water

Marinade:

2 tbsp Hakka Nam Yue red sauce

1 tbsp plain flour

1 tbsp corn flour

1/2 tsp pepper

1 egg

5 cups of oil for deep frying

In a medium sized bowl, whisk together flours. In separate bowl, beat your egg till lightly mixed. Add to the flour and beat until combined. Add your pork belly and marinade, preferably overnight. 

Heat oil in deep-fat fryer or wok. When oil is hot, add a few pieces of pork belly,  and deep-fry until golden brown. Make sure you shake excess marinade before adding the pork to reduce spluttering. Fry in batches. Dish and drain on paper towels.

In a claypot or skillet, heat 2 tsps of oil, add the garlic and shallots and fry until fragrant. Add Nam Yue sauce.

Add  pork belly, fungus and water and bring to a boil. Add oyster sauce and stir well. Lower the heat and simmer, covered, on low heat for 45 minutes, stirring occasionally, or until the pork is fork tender. 

Adjust seasoning and add additional soy sauce and pepper, if necessary.

Spicy Sunday - Recipe: Potato Masala

From left to right: Mustard seeds, cinnamon stick, cardamom and black peppercorns

I love Sundays. It's usually the one day of the week I get to spend as much time in the kitchen as I want. And what better way to do that than to spend it whipping up some Indian dishes. I am partial to spicy food, and among the many Indian spices I particularly love the fragrance of cardamom. Though you can get many of these things prepackaged these days, I still take the time to grind my spices fresh, thus I usually need twice or three times the amount of time than would be the case if I were to cook the equivalent Chinese dish. I guess I'm quite old-fashioned in that sense.

My brother only eats five types of vegetables, I kid you not - broccoli, cauliflower, carrot, french beans and potatoes. Thus, it sort of stretches my creativity in creating different dishes with all or some of the five types of veggies in any given week!

Here's a simple recipe for Potato Masala which is really one of the most basic Indian vegetable dishes. It is usually served as part of a tiffin meal but it is sometimes used as a filling for dosas or samosas.

Potato Masala

Ingredients:

5 potatoes, halved (I used Russet)

4 tablespoons oil

1 teaspoon mustard seesd

1 dessertspoon urad dhall

2 stalks curry leaves

2 onions, minced

1 clove garlic, minced

2 green chillies, minced

1 tomato, minced

5-7 cashew nuts, chopped fine

1 1/2 cups water

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 -3/4 teaspoon turmeric

3/4 cup frozen peas, thawed

Coriander leaves to garnish (optional)

Peel potatoes and dice into 1 inch cubes. Set in large pot of cold water with a pinch of salt on medium-low heat. You want to maintain the water so that it is barely below boiling. Cook until soft (about 15-20 minutes). Drain well. If you like, mash the potatoes. (I kept most of them in cubes but mashed a few for texture)

Heat oil in large skillet. Add curry leaves, mustard seeds and urad dhall. The mustard seeds will splutter. Then add onions, garlic, chillies and tomatoes and fry till wilted and soft. Add cashew nuts and potatoes. Stir around for three minutes and then pour in water. Add salt and turmeric powder. Add your peas and mix well. Simmer until gravy thickens.

Season to taste. Serve garnished with coriander leaves if desired.