Cooling tea

Crazy weather... hot and cold and hot and cold. Plus the H1N1, flu bug in the air...

Time to make cooling tea. Last 2 attempts i only use lou han guo and chrysanthemum. Today i added another ingredient. Total of 3 ingredients...

Ginseng roots (Yang shen xu) - 1 handful - boil for 45 mins in 1 big pot of water.


2 lou han gou - Wash whole - Crush the shell, separate the seeds... Add to pot after ginseng roots has boiled for 45 min... let it boil for 20 mins.


Chrysanthemum - there are many types, this one is recommended by Fock Hua medical hall. Cost $5, use 1/5 pack...

Add to pot, bring mixture to boil and immediately turn off heat.
Cover pot with lid for at least 30 mins... let the chrysanthemum soak.
You are not suppose to cook/boil chrysanthemum.


End product after 45min + 20 min + 20 secs...
Big pot of cooling tea.

Dont be fooled by the pitch black. its actually sweet (i didnt add sugar!).
Lou han gou and chrysanthemum has natural sweetness.
Ginseng root leaves the 'gan' bitter sweet after taste. Yummy.


Dont throw the leftovers, boil a pot of hot water, pour over and cover for 1 hr.
This is be batch 2. Colour wont be black cos didnt boil the lou han gou.
See how pretty the chrysanthemum is... and how much bigger it has expanded after soaking.

Chicken rice - Lazy style

This is my version of the lazy chicken rice.
All in one dish.

My mum cooks the raw marinated chicken and raw sliced ginger with washed rice in the rice cooker directly. This method is more fuss free but results in mashy rice.

For me, i will stir fry the ginger, chicken and rice in the pan first.
With the rice grain coated in a bit of oil before cooking, the cooked rice will be grainy.
Of cos, its more work for me (have to wash extra wok)

Will cook this for dinner when all i have is chicken in the fridge.
Hubby always enjoy this dish cos it has meat (chicken) and meat (sausage)
Serve with prawn sambal on the side (hei bee hiam)
Mouth watering.


What do you need?
- 1 chicken breast (sliced)
- 1 cup of rice (wash and drain, serves 2 pax)
- 1 piece of ginger (size of thumb, sliced)
- 1 chinese sausage (skin removed)
- Pepper, soya sauce, sesame seed oil

How to do it?
Marinate chicken with pepper, soya sauce, chinese wine and sesame seed oil for at least 20 mins.

Heat wok, pour in 2 tbsp of sesame seed oil and fry sliced ginger over low heat.
Wait for ginger to turn crisp


Add 1 tsp of corn flour to chicken, mix well.
Add sliced chicken into wok and stir fry until brown. Push chicken to side of the pan, pour in uncooked and washed rice.

Add 2 tbsp of soya sauce, some pepper and chinese wine. Mix well.

Scoop rice into rice cooker.

Add water into rice cooker as if you are cooking plain white rice.

Place chinese sausage into rice cooker as well.

Cook rice in rice cooker as per normal.

When rice is ready, serve with chilli or sambal on the side.

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.

Red husk rice wine

Another of my 'chu' pattern stunt... wine making!

The teochew or cantonese use this to make 'ang cheow' wine and use the 'ang cheow' residue for cooking.

My grandma makes this wine for my grandfather to drink. After she knows that hubby's family cooks 'ang cheow' chicken, she happily gave them all to me (she used to have no one to give to and pass them to neighbours)

Magic proportions:
- 1 kg of glutinous rice
- 2 wine biscuits
- 2 'liang' of red rice husk

How to do it?

**IMPORTANT**ALL equipment must be dirt and oil free, wear gloves at all time or handle with clean dry hands**Failure to adhere to the above will result in contamination and the entire mixture will turn mouldy and wine will turn sour**

Cook 1 kg of glutinous rice in rice cooker as if you are cooking fragrant white rice. Put about 10-20% more water....

After rice is cooked, let it cook until it can be handled by hand.
Do not let it cook totally or else u will end up with a sticky hard lump of rice that is impossible to mix.


While rice is cooling, break 2 pieces of wine biscuit (chinese yeast) into fine pieces. Remember to store this in the freezer when not in use else it will lose its 'effects'.


Pair with two 'liang' of red rice husk. Crush them slightly.



Mix wine biscuit and red rice husk with glutinous rice and 1 cup of room temperature boiled water.


Place in a sterile container to ferment in air tight condition.

Day 1 and 2 - No change


Day 3 - you will start to see wine like liquid starts to fill in the empty spaces and air pushed out as air bubbles.



On the 4th day, the rice will suspend atop a layer of wine (about 1 inch thick) - sorry no photo

On this day, you are suppose to open the container, mix it well with another cup of room temperature boiled water. This is the last time you are suppose to open the container and touch the mixture.

Seal the container tightly for 1 last time and leave it to ferment for 1 mth (day 1 to day 30)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Update on day 7

**this post will be updated regularly until day 30**

Fried Tioman fillet

Simple saturday afternoon lunch. Healthy and hearty meal...

Rub fish with salt and wash off.
Slice fish horizontally midway.
Pat dry, sprinkle with salt and pepper to marinate.


Coat fish with corn flour before frying in shallow oil.

The trick to frying fish is to keep pan covered. This will ensure that the heat trapped in the pan penetrates the fish and cook it thoroughly. Only remove the lid to turn the fish.

Another advantage is that it will prevent the oil from splitter splatter. When cooking fish, the juice from the fish will seep out into the oil and cause it to splatter... scary....

However, you need to be careful when removing the lid as the water vapour accumulated under the lid will cause the oil to splatter if you accidentally drip it into the pan. Remove the lid in one swift and quick motion. Have a cloth beside the pan to allow water to drip onto the cloth before covering the lid again.

Another advantage is that because removing the lid is so dangerous, you will not want to do it many times. This will prevent you from checking on the fish too often and the result is a nicely fried crisp fish skin.

Remove fish from pan, drizzle dark soya sauce onto the fish immediately.
Serve.



My lunch... stir fried chye sim (stole 4 stalks from the 2 packets i bought for making suan chai - yes, its my 3rd attempt)... fried fish, fermented beancurd and a nice bowl of hot porridge.

Fried shallots

I bought a big packet of shallots from NTUC, after a few weeks they look like they are going to rot.

So i decide to make fried shallots. Saw my mum make this ten thousand times, but this is my first attempt.

1) Peel and wash shallots. The trick is to dry the whole shallots before cutting.
If you have no time to cut immediately, the whole shallots can be kept in the fridge for 1 week

2) Slice shallots thinly (my knife skills are not so good, so turn out to be pretty chunky)

3) Using a low heat, heat pan with oil.
Put shallots before the oil heats up. Pour oil until all shallots are submerged in oil.
Maintain low heat and about 5 mins later, the oil will bubble up nicely.



Maintain low heat and allow shallots to cook for 15-20 mins, stirring constantly.


When part of shallots starts to brown, keep a close watch.
From this...


To this... will take only another 2-3 mins

Turn off heat. Before scooping out the shallots, sprinkle 1 tspn of salt into the oil.

This will reduce the oil temperature and prevent it from further browning while you are scooping it out.

Place shallots on plate to cool... oil will cool in the pan.

You notice that the shallots turn darker brown after its removed from the pan.

Its because it continues to brown from the residue oil and from its own heat.

Once both the oil and shallots are cooled down to room temperature, put the fried shallots into a air tight container and you can use it to sprinkle over porridge, rice or noodle in future.

As for the oil, keep it for stir frying... will have the shallots fragrant if you are lazy to mince garlic.

I have another bottle that has fried shallots and oil combined. This is used to put into soupy dishes or porridge.

Suan chai with sliced pork

Using my suan chai from my 2nd attempt, I decides to cook it for lunch at MIL's place.

Usually we have porridge and this will be a good dish to go with it.
Furthermore, i have been telling her about my suan chai making... have to let her try it!

She told me previously that for preserve vegetables, there is always a funny smell and the only way to get rid of it is to pan fry it.

So I followed her instructions this time.

What do you need?
- Half a piece of lean pork (about 150g, sliced thinly)
- suan chai (diced - made from 2 packets of china chye xin)
- Garlic in oil
- Seasoning for the pork (Soya sauce, pepper, chinese wine, sesame seed oil)
- Corn flour
- Black vinegar
- Sugar
- Soya sauce

How to do it?
Marinate the sliced pork with seasoning. Set aside.

Heat pan without oil. When pan is red hot, add the suan chai and pan fry it. Simply toss the turn and fry and fry until the suan chai is totally dry and no water vapour is emitted.
Takes at least 5 mins.

Remove suan chai from pan and set aside.

Add 1 tbsp of corn flour into pork. Mix well.
Heat pan and add garlic in oil. When garlic is browned, added the pork.

Stir fry until pork slices are golden browned.


Add suan chai and continue frying. Add 1 tbsp of soya sauce, 2 tablespoon of sugar, 1 tbsp of black vinegar and 1/2 cup of water.

Simmer on low to medium heat until water is reduced to 1/10 cup or totally dry (up to you).

Serve.

Baby butterhead salad

After yoga one day, suddenly has craving for salad.

I have a small tub of honey mustard dressing from my Quizinos salad (they gave me 2 tubs, i only ate 1) and japanese sesame seed dressing at home.

Pop down to Cold Storage at Valley point and bought myself a box of baby butterhead (2 'head' in 1 box)

What do you need?
- 1 'head' of baby butterhead
- 1 handful of dried cranberries
- 1 handful of cheese crackers
- 1 tbsp of honey mustard salad dressing
- 1/2 tbsp of honey
- 1/2 tbsp of japanese sesame seed salad dressing

Dumpling soup

I had some leftover minced meat from making another dish for mother's day celebration.

So decided to make them into dumpling soup for dinner. All i need is to pop down to NTUC and get myself a packet of dumpling skin, 1 packet of fresh medium sized prawns and a packed of xiao bai chye.



What do you need?
- 1/2 packet of xiao bai chye
- 1 packet of dumpling skin (cost $0.80, 13 pieces)

For fillings
- 1/2 - 3/4 packet of minced meat (1 pkt cost around $2.50 - $3)
- 13 prawns (shelled and gutted, keep shells and head for making soup)
- 3 water chestnut (peel, diced)
- 1/2 handful of dried scrimps (soaked and diced)
- 2 dried mushroom (soaked and diced)
- seasoning (1/2 tbsp of oyster sauce, 1 tbsp of soya sauce, 1 tbsp of sesame seed oil, 2 tbsp of chinese wine, pepper)
- 1 tbsp of starch flour

How to make the prawn soup
Heat pot with oil (abt 1 tbsp), fry prawn head and shells until it turns red.

Continue to stir fry for at least 3-5mins untils its dry and fragrant. Add 1/2 tbsp of soya sauce into pot and let it sizzle.
Add 5 cups of water.

Reduce heat to low, simmer prawn soup for 30 mins. Reduced soup to around 3 cups (1.5 cup per bowl)


How to prepare the fillings
In a bowl, place minced meat and add starch powder and water.
Mix and toss minced meat until it has a starchy and sticky texture.

In another bowl, add water chestnut, dried scrimps, dried mushroom and seasonings. Combine well and add to minced meat. Mix well.

For full details of the techniques, see makings of filling for Rou Bao

How to make dumplings
Divide minced meat into 13 portions (as i only have 13 dumpling skins).
Wrap minced meat and 1 prawn in each dumpling skin.
Seal the sides of the dumpling skin with water or egg white.

Bring water to boil in another pot, add 1/2 tbsp of cooking oil and a pinch of salt into the water.

When water is boiling, add dumplings and cook dumplings until the dumplings are cooked.

How do you know when the dumplings are cooked?

The dumplings will float to the water surface.

Fish dumplings into bowl directly.

Fish prawn head and shells from the prawn soup.

Add xiao bai chai. Cook xiao bai chye for 2 mins.

Scoop xiao bai chye and prawn soup into the bowl containing the dumplings.

Serve.

You can replace dried mushroom with dried black fungus.

Soak dried balck fungus and cut into strips