Yam Cake

This is my first attempt at making a dish i learn at the dim sum course...

The receipe my instructor gives out is superb!!! Her hints and tips are so good, its almost impossible to fail...

The receipe below yields one tray 21cm baking tin but 1 yam the size of my hand sold in supermarkets is approximately 1kg with skin on. I bought 2 so after removing the skin, i have approximately 1800gm of yam so i made 3 portions and yield 4 baking tins of yam cake.

With 300gm more yam, i simply add them to the fried diced yam without increasing the amount of flour and it worked out fine.

What do you need

Ingredients A:

Rice Flour 300gm

Tang mien flour (Wheat Starch) 75gm

Water 300gm/330ml

Ingredients B:

Yam without skin 500gm

Dried scrimps 50gm (Wash, Soaked, diced)

Chinese sausage 1 piece (Skinned, diced)

Chinese mushroom 4 pieces (Wash, Soaked, diced)

(Keep all the water from soaking scrimps and mushroom and use its as 'water' later in the cooking)

Seasoning:

Salt 20gm

Msg 20gm (i omit totally)

Sugar 40gm

1/4 tsp pepper

1/4 tsp five spice powder

1 tbsp sesame seed oil

Preparing the yam:

Skin yam with potato peeler. Wash whole. Take 300gm of yam, slice thinly and place in baking tin with water covering it slightly. Steam until its soft and mash-able. Steaming takes approximately 15 mins. Pour out access water before mashing. Mash immediately while its hot. Slowly add more water if required. You should get a fine mash.

For the remaining 200gm of yam, dice into 1.5cm by 1.5cm cubes.

Fry in oil until golden brown. Set aside.

How to do it?

In a separate bowl, whisk ingredients A and seasoning until you get a smooth mixture.

Armed with the ingredients below, we can now start to cook the yam paste.

Heat wok with oil (i used oil from frying the yam earlier combined with shallots oil from frying shallots. Fry dried scrimps, chinese sausage and mushroom until the mixture becomes fragrant and the oil becomes foamy.

Add fried yam (the foam will all disappear) to make it crisp again.

Adding 1000gm/1110ml of water into wok.

By now, the mash yam should have absorbed all the water and is a very thick and lumpy.

Add 200gm/220ml of water, mix well and you will get a watery yam paste again.

Add yam paste into the wok, mix well. Bring to boil.

Take bowl with ingredients A, whisk up the flour and seasoning that has settled to the bottom of the bowl. Scoop 2-3 ladles of the soup from the wok into the flour mixture and mix well.

This will increase the tempreature of the flour mixture.

Turn off heat.

Pour flour mixture into wok and quickly mix well. You will get a lumpy, sticky yam paste.

Scoop yam paste into baking tin (greased with oil).

Steam over water for at least 45 mins. Only place the tin into the wok after the water has boiled.

The final product. Dont worry about the yam cake being soft and wobberly when hot.

It will harden when cooled.

Flip the yam cake over onto a plate (it will slide out effortlessly from the tin cos we coat the tin with oil) to cool faster.

Rou bao (Meat bun)

I learn 2 techniques about making pork patties from this lesson and i can now apply it when i make meat balls and other dishes involving minced meat....

You will read about the techniques in the process of preparing the meat below.


What do you need for the meat filling?

- Pork 500g, cubed finely (or use minced pork)
- Water chestnut, 6 pieces, cubed
- Mushroom, soaked and diced finely
- Spring onion 1 stalk
- Potato starch 2 tbsp
- Salt 1 tsp
- Sugar 3 tsp
- Oyster sauce 2 tsp
- Pepper
- Sesame seed oil 1/2 tbsp
- Cooking oil 1 tbsp


How to prepare the meat filling

In a large bowl, combine pork, salt, 2 tsp of water and starch powder. Mix well.

First technique

Continue mixing and tossing the meat into the bowl for 5 - 10 mins until the minced pork has a starchy and sticky texture. Pork (similar to prawns) has a natural ability to generate a starchy texture after kneading. If you cannot achieve the texture, add more water and starch powder. (Mixture 1)

Once you can lift the entire ball of pork in a ball using your hand and it doesnt disintegrate, the pork is ready for use. The end product is meatballs that has more bite and the meat holds it shape after you bite into it.

Second Technique

In a separate bowl, combine mushroom and water chestnut. Add sugar, pepper, osyter sauce and mix well. (Mixture 2)

We all tend to add the above ingredients and seasoning to the pork and mix together. BUT according to the instructor, if you mix them separately before adding to the pork, the pork just taste different.

Shared with hubby this technique and he thought of a scientic explanation. Water chestnut and mushroom will release water and at the same time, absorb the marination better. If you add the to pork directly, the pork will soak everything up. Makes sense, dont know...

Combine mixture 1 and 2, mix well.

Add sesame seed oil, cooking oil and spring onions, mix well.

Spoon the conbined mixture into 22 balls of meat and place them onto the tray. Keep them in the freezer and freeze it for 10 mins as frozen meat balls are easier to wrap into the dough later.

What do you need for the bun skin (dough)?

- 300g plain flour
- 50g sugar
- 5g baking powder
- 5g yeast
- 5g white oil
- 1 egg white
- 120g water (approximate)

How to make the dough?

Place flour into a bowl, make a hole on the centre of the flour.
Add sugar, baking powder, yeast, white oil and egg white into the hole, mix it with a bit of the surrounding flour until mixed.

Adding water very slowly, bring in the flour from the sides of the whole and incorporate the flour into the dough. Adding water slowly each time to incorporate more flour.

When all the flour are added to the dough (the bowl will be clean), remove from bowl into a clean table top and continue kneading.

If the dough is dry during kneading, cut the dough through the centre, flatten it, wet hands and rub hands over the flatten dough. Fold in the dough from the sides and continue kneading.

You will need 5 - 10 mins for the sugar in the dough to dissolve and the action of the yeast to kick in. The completed dough should have a smooth surface and springy to the touch.

Once the dough is ready, roll out into a long 'rope' and pinch it out into cubes of 20g each. the dough can make 22 balls of 20g dough.

Flatten dough using the palm of your hand. Using a rolling pin, roll out the sides until you have a flatten circular shaped dough. The centre of the dough should be thicker to be able to hold the meat.



Please frozen meat balls onto the dough and pinch the sides of the dough to wrap meat inside the dough, seal tightly.


Place completed bun onto a piece of paper and let it rest for 20 mins before steaming.


Steam on high for 10 mins and you will have freshly steamed bun from the steamer


View cross section of the bun here.

Red bean agar agar

What do you need?
- 1 packet of agar agar strips (37.5gm net weight, see packaging)
- Fine sugar 600g
- Coconut milk 500g
- Red bean, uncooked 150g (cooked 250 - 300g)
- Corn flour 200g


How to do it?

Cook red bean beforehand:
Soak red bean overnight or at least 1 hour
Bring pot of water to boil before adding the red beans (according to instructor, if you add red bean in water and bring it to boil together, the red bean takes much longer time to cook)
Cook red bean until soft. The beans should be whole and not broken. Takes 45min - 1 hour.
Drain red bean from red bean soup, keep both beans and soup separately.

Making red bean cake
Soak agar agar strips in water for 1 hour.
Drain water and cut agar agar strips into 2 inch lengths

In a separate bowl, add 600g water into cornflour (Corn flour mixture)

Add more water into red bean soup until total weight is 1600g.
Bring to boil with agar agar strips until agar agar dissolve totally into the soup.

Add coconut milk and sugar. Bring to boil.
Turn off the heat.

Add in corn flour mixture. (Check on corn flour mixture, if the flour has already sinked to the bottom of the bowl, stir it up before adding)

Keep stirring/whisking until well mixed. Turn heat back on and continue to stir until the mixture thickens and boils again.



Add red bean and mix well, careful not the break the beans.

Pour into small cup moulds or tray immediately.
When cool, put in fridge until it hardens totally.

Dim Sum class #2

In lesson 2, we learn to make red bean agar agar and rou bao (meat bun)


Red bean agar agar is similar to the chestnut cake, you may think. But there is a reason for the instructor to teach us both. The chestnut cake requires steaming whereas the red bean agar agar does not require steaming and will harden upon cooking.

Teaching us both will give us options as well as compare the 'kueh' like textures.



You may notice the red bean agar agar in the picture above is different from the picture here.
The picture above is the versio of the red bean agar agar cut out from the tray whereas the other is into small cup moulds.
In the above picture, its clear that the red beans are whole and its nice to chew on...

Dim Sum class #1

Photos incomplete as my camera run out of battery...

remaining photos need to get from my fren.

not in the mood to blog so upload photos first.

Will come back and edit this another day!

Sushi making

Went to Telok Ayer Green Hong Lim Community Centre today to learn sushi making.

i was late for 15 mins and i DID NOT MISS anything.

Paid $18 for course fee, $4 for materials fee. To kick start, she first show us a platter of sushi she made and 'force' everyone to try.

She collect money from everyone, then use bare hands to touch the sushi, then ask pple to eat....

Then she talk about how to cook rice (while the rice is already cooking in the cooker)

when the rice is cooked and when she took it out, i have to admit.... i was pretty impressed.

The whole room smells great! she uses kelp (a kind of japanese seaweed) to cook her rice and it just makes it smells different from normal rice!

while she is scooping out the rice into a wooden container, she went on to say that she bought the wooden container many yrs ago for $70+ and now it cos around $120... but of cos you dont need to buy lah, just any bowl or container as long as not stainless steel....blah blah blah...

While she is scooping, a chuck of rice fall out of the container onto the table. She pick it up with her bare hands and throw back into the container.... **roll eyes**

then she show us how to mix the rice with the vinegar mixture and then demo how to roll.
Funny thing is, while she is demostrating, she ask her assistant (i think its her maid) to demostrate together with her.

The maid went on to do her own and end up making the california maki (the one with seaweed inside, fish roe outside) and while she is rolling her own maki (seaweed outside).

She grumble grumble and say that her assistant should do the same, then say never mind.. say her assistant can show us how to do the california maki cos she is very good at at it and is even better then her!

duh! i come her learn from assistant or learn from her?! **roll eyes**

then she take half the rice, open a can of seaweed mix thingy (say its ex, $4.70 per bottle) and then pour half a bottle in to mix with the rice. she then demo using the daiso moulds to shape out rice balls using the flavoured rice while emphasising at least 5-10 times
"this is make for children"
"this is for children to play and make their own"

She then went on with her sales pitch....say she also make to sell, and of cos she sell cheap cheap only -_-""

After that, she insist everyone try their hands at making 2 rolls (one each) but there is not enough table space for everyone! so we patiently stand around and wait... pple go up to her and ask questions...

but after each of us makes one roll, there is no more rice! *faintz*

No more rice... end of playtime, so we all go wash hands... the maid started cleaning, she ask if we bring container... then big hoo ha... some nice auntie went out and find some styrofoam boxes and started distributing... then the instructor started cutting the first roll into small pieces to demo how to cut sushi.... after she finishes cutting the first roll into bite size pieces, she said "i cut the roll into half and u all bring home and cut yourself okay?'

'come to the front and take from me".... then halfway through she add "after you take you can go home'

its only 9pm....and the maid has already clean the room, pack the stuff, the sushi distributed and she is already asking us to go home!

the course is 730 - 930 leh! cheat me of my money!

so i went home with half roll of seaweed maki, half roll of california maki, 2 pieces of flavoured rice for dinner.

oh, for the record, this is my instructor's credentials posted on the OnePA website:

Trainer's/Operator's Qualifications/Awards
OW FONG CHAN ELIZABETH
Certification:
Cert (6 Jul -4 Aug 07)
Cert (5 Mar - 24 Apr 07)
Cert of Attainment (20 - 22 Jul 05)