Black Pepper Chicken Chop

Could you recognise these two black pieces without reading the title? ;)
Normally I would pan fry the marinated chicken chop and cook some black pepper gravy seperately.
But this time I cooked a dryer version of black pepper chicken chop.
The chicken chop was marinated overnight with oyster sauce, dark soy sauce, light soy sauce, sesame oil, coarsely grinded black pepper and sugar.
Then it was placed with skin facing upward in a non-stick pan under low heat.
The chicken had fat in it, so there was no need to use frying oil.
Turned the chicken after one side was cooked.
Pretty simple right?

The making of kaya

I had posted some kaya photos before, but not the detailed steps on making kaya. We made commercial quantity to be distributed together with the alkaline dumpling(kee chang). So you might want to consider only 1/4 of the ingredients below.


Beat 25 eggs in a big pot.


Add in 4kg sugar and double boil the mixture. Keep stirring until the sugar has dissolved.


Add in 4kg of filtered coconut milk.


Add in pandan leaves. The more the better.


Stir for another 5-10 mins. Then cover the pot for double boil.
The double boil process will take about 4 hours.
In between, stir occasionally(~every 30 mins).


Boil a cup of sugar together with a cup of water with medium heat.


Boil until the water has evaporated and the sugar turned into dark brown caramel.


Add the caramel into the kaya for coloring purpose.
Double boil for another half an hour and it is done.

Stuffed Bitter Gourd

"Bitter gourd has excellent medicinal virtues. It is antidotal, antipyretic tonic, appetizing, stomachic, antibilious and laxative." Source

But not everyone like the taste of bitter gourd. Someone even told me that he will feel dizziness after eating bitter gourd. Haha. Hard to believe. So, I decided to take up the challenge. The result? He finished 3-4 stuffed bitter gourds. :)

Here is the recipe.

Preparing the stuffed bitter gourd....
1) Wash and cut the bitter gourd into 1 inch thickness rings.
2) Remove the center part of the bitter gourd.
3) Do not wash the bitter gourd again, else the filling will not stick to the bitter gourd.
4) Fill with fish and meat paste.
5) Pan fry both side of the bitter gourd until slightly browned.
6) Remove and set aside.

Preparing the gravy....
1) Remove some oil if it is too much. With the frying oil, stir fry minced garlic, minced shallot and minced ginger until fragrant.
2) Add in fermented bean paste, light soy sauce, pepper, sugar and water.
3) Place the bitter gourd and cook until it is soft.
4) Take out the bitter gourd.
5) Thicken the sauce with corn flour and drizzle on the bitter gourd.

Alkaline Dumpling(Kee Chang)

The next morning, we continued to make another type of dumpling, the alkaline dumpling. It was much easier compare to the meat dumpling. Read the full story then you would know the reason.


My auntie used alkaline rocks instead of the ready alkaline water in bottle. She told me that bottle type would give stronger alkaline taste. So, we had to dissolve the alkaline rock in water. You could just use alkaline water if you could not find the alkaline rock.


The day before, we had to pick out all the white rice from the glutinous rice so that we have pure glutinous rice. We did not soak the glutinous rice, but just washed it. The glutinous rice was then mixed with alkaline water and cooking oil until it was light yellow in color.


Do not add too much alkaline water, else it would have strong alkaline taste.


We could not find the exact leaves for alkaline dumpling so we used the same leaves as meat dumpling. We used the bigger leaves for meat dumpling and kept the smaller leaves for alkaline dumpling.

This time I managed to capture the step-by-step photos for the wrapping part.


My alkaline dumpling did not get rejected this time. Yesterday, my auntie had to check my dumplings one by one and re-wrapped some of them. I would say it was much easier to make alkaline dumpling.


We finished turning all the glutinous rice into alkaline dumpings before noon time.


Then, my auntie placed all the dumpings into the boiling water.


The boiling process took about 4-5 hours. I will blog some photos of the unwrapped dumplings if I have time.

Meat Dumpling(Bak Chang)

My auntie makes very delicious dumplings. So every year my family will just enjoy the dumplings from her until I decided to learn making dumplings from her this year. I reached my hometown on Saturday 2.30 in the morning, set my alarm clock to 6.30, which is basically 4 hours later. So, I was at my autie's place before 8 in the morning, feeling sleepy. :p

First of all, let us look at the ingredients for meat dumplings.


Chestnut(blanched and drained)


Dehusked mung beans(blanched and drained)


Mushroom(washed, soaked, blanched and squeezed dry)


Glutinous rice(soaked for more than 4 hours, drained and seasoned with salt)


Kidney bean(boiled for 10 minutes and drained)


dry shrimp(washed and removed any hard shell)


Pork belly(marinated overnight with light soy sauce, oyster sauce, five spice powder, oyster sauce, sugar and corn flour)


Salted Egg Yolk(halved or quartered)
I forgot to take the photos of the salted egg yolk until it was almost finished.


Shallot(minced)


Garlic(minced)


Dumpling Leaves(washed and drained)


Bamboo string(Soaked)


Heat up some lard in wok.


Stir fry some garlic and shallot until fragrant.


Add in chestnut, continue to stir fry.
Season with light soy sauce and five spice powder.
Mix well and stir fry until fragrant.
Remove and set aside.




Repeat the same for dried shrimp, kidney bean and dehusked mung beans.


Do the same for pork belly, but do not season with light soy sauce.
Season it with sesame oil only.




For mushroom and glutinous rice, season with both light soy sauce and sesame oil.


Darken the glutinous rice with some deluted dark soy sauce. At the end, mix the kidney bean with glutinous rice.


The ingredients need to be cooled down before they can be used for dumpling.
Start with glutinous rice as base, then only add in other ingredients.


Top with glutinous rice until full.
Press hard, wrap into triangle shape and tie hard with the bamboo string.


Cut away the redundant string.


Dumplings ready to be boiled.


Boil the dumplings for 3.5 hours in the water.
The water should have 1 tablespoon of salt.


Remove the dumplings from water and hang the dumpling until they are dry.

It was a tiring but fruitful day. Tomorrow, no, actually today(it is already passed 12), we are going to make alkaline dumpling(kee chang). Will blog about it later.

Banana Pancake

Original recipe is from Home Cooked Recipe, but I did make some notes after the cooking session. I did not mean your recipe is no good, ok? ;)

1. I do not keep self raising flour. Most of time I substitute it with normal flour + baking powder. Ratio is roughly 150g flour and 2 tablespoon baking powder.

2. Do not cut down quantity on the banana. If you think your banana is smaller than medium size, use 4 bananas to be safe.

3. No need to worry about the sugar. If it is not sweet enough, serve the banana pancake with honey. It is a perfect match.

4. I used non stick pan instead of griddle. It worked as well.

5. This recipe can make 5 normal size pancakes, good enough for 3-4 person.