Homemade fish balls

We were supposed to go to Hard Rock Penang with family friends today. The mummy is my ex colleague, the daddy is working in our ex company and their son Darren is Phin Zhe's classmate. But unfortunately Darren is down with fever and Phin Zhe is having runny nose too. So, no Hard Rock for everyone and I made fish balls for lunch.

I used threadfin, cantonese called ma-yao(马友), hokkien called ngo-wa. Scrape off as much meat as possible from the fish. I used a knife and a fork to do the job. Then, use a food processor or even BREAD MAKER to beat the meat with 1/2 tsp salt, 1tsp sesame oil, 2tbsp iced water and some pepper.I used a bread maker today and it did a pretty good job.

While waiting for the fish paste, pan fry the fish head and bone with a little bit of oil. Then, add water and boil for at least one hour. Filter the soup, season with sea salt and pepper. Now you have your fish broth ready.

So, this is how the fish paste looks like. This is the very basic fish ball recipe, you can add mushroom, green onion, carrot etc if you want. Today I just made plain fish balls.

Use yr thumb to squeeze into ball size. You don't have to place into a plate, just squeeze into the broth directly. Save a plate. ;)

Fish balls in fish broth.

I added some blanched brocolli to make it a balance meal.

So, home made fish balls and brocolli in fish broth, serve with dry version organic thin noodles. Isn't it simple? :)

Toddler menu #3(at 17mo)

 

Here is an example how I used the same ingredients to cook for both adults and toddler.

Old cucumber chinese red dates soup - no extra seasoning at all

Stir fry carrot and siew pak choy with garlic - toddler version is sliced thinner and cooked longer. Both uses extra virgin olive oil, simmer over low heat. Adult version is lightly salted.

Stir fry shimeji mushroom with minced pork - No seasoning required  for toddler version because ghee is used. For adult, I added some pepper, organic light soy sauce, organic thick soy sauce and simmer with some water. It is also lightly thickened with corn flour before served.

Braised Pork Rib with Mushroom and Water Chestnut

Usually when I asked what meat dish he would want to have, he would usually go for pork rib. He said the pork rib dishes in restaurant are not only expensive, but also come in very small portion. Furthermore, I will buy the more expensive soft rib. But after I have repeated the same few rib recipes many times, one day I decided to try something different.

Marinate the pork rib with light sauce sauce and white pepper for an hour. Mix with some corn flour and stir fry with some cooking oil. Set the rib aside.

Leave some oil in the wok. Stir fry some minced garlic and sliced ginger until fragrant.

Add in mushroom, oyster sauce, salt, light soy sauce, sugar and water. Bring to boil.

Pour the mixture into the pot with pork rib and simmer for an hour. Half way, add in water chestnut. Then, open the lid and turn to maximum heat for a while to get a slightly thicken sauce.

I like this dish very much. Although it is a meat dish, but I don't feel that heavy with the water chestnut. I think it will appear on my dining table again and again.

the simple 3 dish meal we had that day

Fried Egg with Mint Leaves

One Saturday we had Assam Curry Salmon Fish Head for dinner, it was so satisfying. Nowadays Jusco Queensbay does not sell salmon fish head, according to them the salmon fish arrive without a head. So, my only source of salmon fish head is from the wet market. Most of the time, they only have one salmon fish, which mean one salmon fish head every Saturday.


I did not finish all the mint leaves. So, the next day I decided to try some a dish with it. I have heard of fried egg with mint leaves and mint leaves egg soup. So I asked which one he prefer and he picked fried egg. After I tried it, I found that onion is a must. The sweetness of the onion matched with the mint flavour. I shall try the mint soup next time. :)


Ingredients
handful of mint leaves
1/2 - 1 onion
2-4 eggs
light soy sauce
pepper
cooking oil


Basically you just need the three main ingredients, mint leaves, onion and egg, but the quantity does not really matter.


Method
1. Fry the onion in cooking oil.
2. Then pour in the eggs.
3. Season with light soy sauce and pepper.
4. Add in mint leaves.
5. Turn the egg and fry for a while.
6. Ready to be served.

Seafood Porridge

I woke up very late on Deepavali, about 10.30am. That's a record for me! But then recently I found out that I need more sleeping hours. :p
Lazy to go out for lunch, so I decided to make use of whatever was available in the freezer. I found 2 pomfrets and 2 flower crabs. My family gave me these seafood, normally I won't freeze crab. But glad that the crab still looked fresh.

I boiled 1 cup of rice with 5 rice bowls of water and 1 teaspoon of sea salt. Once it was boiled, I turned it to medium heat and slow cooked for at least an hour. Meanwhile, I cleaned the seafood and cut them into smaller pieces. I did not have any spring onion, chinese coriander or even ginger with me. So I skipped everything and just prepared some crispy garlic. By the way, remember to stir the porridge once in a while. When the porridge was ready, I placed in the seafood(crab first then fish) and covered the lid for 2 minutes. Then, it was served in a casserole, sprinkled with some crispy garlic and pepper.

The taste was surprisingly good and the seafood was still fresh. The portion was for 3-4 person(filled two casseroles), but two of us managed to finish it. Try this recipe! The two important tips are:


1. You need to slow cook the porridge for at least an hour to get the right texture. Don't speed up this process by using higher heat.


2. Use fresh seafood, promfets, crab, prawn.

Braised Pork Ribs in Hong Shao Sauce

I could not imagine my last post was dated last year Nov. I better make a post now before it hit one year. :p


Recently I tried to eat more healthy food, therefore most of my home cooked meal are steamed fish, blanched vegetables and chicken/pork rib soup. It was until last Saturday when I finally get bored of steamed fish and decided to have something different for dinner. I braised 1kg of pork rib and finished it in two meals. Like it! A good change from the "tasteless" healthy food. ;)

Stir fry minced garlic, minced shallot and minced ginger in cooking oil until fragrant. Then, add in star anise and cinnamon stick. This was followed by adding in pork rib, oyster sauce, light soy sauce, salt, sugar, pepper and enough water to cover the pork rib. Once the sauce is boiling, turn to medium heat and cover the wok. Simmer for an hour but open and check every 15 minutes to make sure that it did not dry up. Add more water if needed. Ready to be served after an hour when the pork rib is soften.

Pork Rib and Lotus Root Soup

This version of Pork Rib and Lotus Root Soup is from Krystal Coffee Shop, Pulau Tikus, Penang. Whenever I visit this shop, I will always order a bowl of Pork Rib and Lotus Root Soup. Their soup has more different ingredients compare to other shops, maybe this is the reason why their soup is so clear and yet so flavourful. I cooked this soup one rainy night, just the right timing.

The claypot in the above picture is my new toy, La Gourment Truly Oriental Claypot. :)
For the ingredients: 600g blanched pork ribs, a bowl of bamboo roots, red dates, groundnuts, red bean, dried tangerine peel(陈皮), dried cuttle fish and 2.5 litres of water.  Slow cook all the ingredients for 4 hours.

Salted Fish & Pork Claypot 咸鱼花腩煲

Can you recognize this dish? It is a popular dish in central Peninsula Malaysia. We used to order this dish when we were in Kuala Lumpur, but now that we have moved to Penang, we could hardly see this dish in Chinese restaurants here. I adopted a few recipes and modified to my own version, but definitely it was a proven working recipe. ;) This dish goes well with white rice, so remember to cook more rice. The only constructive comment I received was the lack of burnt flavour from claypot. So we will get a claypot soon! :)

For the salted fish:

Cut the salted fish into small cubes. The quantity should be double from the above picture. Fry until golden. Set aside.

For the meat:

Cut 300g 5-layer pork into thin stripes. (It is easier to cut into thin stripes when the meat is slightly frozen. For this, place the pork into freezer for 20 minutes.) Marinate with 1/2tsp sugar, 1/4tsp salt and 1tsp light soy sauce for more than 1/2 hour. Add in 1tsp corn flour and mix well. Blanch with hot oil. Set aside.

For the sauce:

Use medium heat for the whole process. Stir fry 6 ginger slices(It was not captured in the pictures), 1 onions and 8 dried chillies with some cooking oil left from frying the salted fish. Then add in meat, 1tbsp oyster sauce, 1tbsp shaoxing wine, 1tsp sugar, 1/2tsp sesame oil and 1/4tsp pepper and enough water to cover the meat. Add in enough black soy sauce for colouring. Simmer with lid on for 40minutes. Add in half of the salted fish. If it is too dry, add a bit of water and simmer with lid on for another 15minutes. By now the gravy should have thickened(if not turn to maximum heat), add in 2 stalks of green onion and remaining of the salted fish. Mix well and serve immediately.

Tomorrow is Public Holiday and we will have 3 days long weekend! Happy weekend everyone!

Taiwan Sytle Silver Needle Noodle

，

It is a recipe from Taiwan TV program(料理美食王). A very simple stir fried noodles, but different ingredients and seasonings from our usual Malaysia version. I personally feel that it is healthier with the use of luffa. It was unexpectedly good even though the recipe only require salt and pepper for seasoning. Hard to believe huh? Let's look at the ingredients.

Ingredients(serving for two):

Silver needle noodle 300g

Luffa cut into stripes

Dried shrimp(soaked)

Mushroom(soaked and cut into stripes)

pork stripes(I used 5 layer pork)

shallot

celery(cut into stripes)

Oopss! What was missing in the plate? I forgot to take a picture before I dumped the shallots to the wok.

 frying shallots

Method:

1. Fry shallots over medium heat until crispy. Remove aside.

2. Leave 2 tbsp oil in the wok. Stay with medium heat.

3. Add in with sequence, mushroom, dried shrimp and pork stripes.

4. Stir fry for a while before add in luffa and silver needle noodle.

5. Add in a small bowl of water, 1/2tsp salt and dash of pepper(add more if you like pepper).

6. Turn to medium low heat and cover you wok with a lid for 1-2 minutes.

7. Open the lid. Now you should expect not much water left, and the silver needle noodle is slightly covered with thick and transparent gravy.

8. Add in fried shallot and celery. Mix well and serve immediately.

noodle in wok

Herbal Salty Chicken

I need to come out with more free range chicken recipes as I always bring back some chicken from home. Free range chicken has very firm meat, so not all chicken recipe is suitable. Besides the usual Ginger Chicken Misua Soup and Ginger Chicken, I have decided to cook Herbal Salty Chicken last Saturday. When I tried to make salty chicken last round, I bought 3kg of coarse salt. This time, I opted for a simplify recipe.

Simply rub the chicken with sea salt. I used 2tsp for half chicken. Then steam the chicken with some red dates(红枣), Codonopsis(党参) and Lycium(枸杞) for 45 minutes.

And it is ready to serve. Note the burnt marks on the chicken skin. They are similar to those on Ipoh Salty Chicken. :)

Sweet & Sour Pork

I could still vividly remember that my mother used to cook 1kg of pork(sweet & sour pork) for dinner and we(M&D, two brothers and I) would just clean the plate. If you cook, you would definitely know that it was a big big plate of sweet & sour pork. Anyway, we were at our teenage that time. :)

Back to sweet & sour pork, it is one of the most popular(or widely accepted) Chinese dish in Western. It is a dish easy to cook, hard to fail. :) And so, I cooked this for the recent potluck dinner at my place. Guess what, it turned out to be the third delicious dish. But there were only 3 main dishes that night. Sob. Sob. Never mind, I will try harder next time.

The ingredients:

5 layer pork(lean, fat, lean, fat, skin) view picture

Onion 

tomato**

Capsicum**

Pineapple**

The seasonings:

Salt

Sugar

Pepper

Egg(added right before cooking)

Corn Flour(use for coating)

The Gravy ingredients:

Plum sauce

Tomato sauce

Chili sauce

Sugar

Water

Corn flour & water (for thickening)

** Optional. Skipping one or two of this item will not degrade the dish.

Cooking Steps:

1. Cut the pork into small cubes.

2. Use the back of the knife to soften the meat.

3. Marinate the pork with the seasonings. Set aside for more than an hour.

4. Mix the marinated pork with one beaten egg.

5. Coat with flour and fry until golden in color. Remove aside.

6. Remove excessive oil from the wok, leave about 2 tablespoon of oil.

7. Stir fry remaining ingredients until fragrant.

8. Add in the gravy ingredients.

9. Bring to boil.

10. Add in the fried pork.

11. Thicken with corn flour and water.

12. Serve immediately

Bean Sprouts with Salted Fish

I am from Ipoh, the town of bean sprouts. ;) In Ipoh hawker stalls, it is very common that the owner will throw in a handful of fresh, crunchy and fat(yes, fat! Ipoh bean sprouts are fat!) bean sprouts whenever it is possible. But, I seldom cook this dish as I prefer green leafy vegetables. But after I got some very nice salted fish from Kuala Kurau, Perak, this dish appeared in my mind.

Here is my recipe:

Fry the salted fish stripes until golden and crispy. Remove aside. With the remaining frying oil, stir fry some shredded ginger until fragrant. Now switch to maximum heat. Add in 300g bean sprouts, 2-3 stalks spring onions(cut into reasonable length), little bit of salt(the salted fish is salty enough, the salt is just to make sure that the bean sprouts alone do not taste too bland), enough pepper to your liking. Stir fry for a while(less than a minute), serve immediately with salted fish on top.

Shallow Fried Fish

**This is a shallow-fried fish**

I know that many do not like the thought of frying, especially deep frying in their kitchen. They will straight away scrape off the idea once they think of the oily mess. But this dish requires shallow frying, which means less oil needed, less fat produced and of course less oily mess. So, let's move on. :)

First, you would need to clean the fish. Pat dry with kitchen towel. You would also need a small bowl of finely shredded ginger. The ginger will shrink later so make sure you have more ginger.

Ok, next heat the non steak pan with some oil, just enough to fry the ginger. Fry the ginger in medium low fire until golden, but not burnt. Remove the ginger. Use the existing oil to fry the fish, both sides. This time turn the fire to medium high. Since we are not doing deep fry, the fish skin are not crispy. Hold the fish with one side of the skin facing down for 15 seconds. Turn upside down for another 15 seconds. Then you could have the result of deep frying. :)

Place the fish and ginger as the above picture. Mix 2 tbsp soy sauce and 1 tbsp oil(use the remaining oil). Drizzle the mixture to the fish. And it is ready to be served.

Sweet & Sour Crab

Finally, it is over which mean I have more time to spare in kitchen. :)

But too bad that I have to post some very bad quality photos because I have left my camera in office again. :( But please believe me, it actually tasted better than what is in the photo. ;)


Coat the crab with thin layer of corn flour and fry it.
I did not do deep fry because I did not want the crab roe to be overcooked. So I only fried one side of the crab.


The sweet & sour sauce.
Stir fry garlic, ginger, spring onion and bird's eye chili until fragrant.
Add in chili sauce, tomota sauce, plum sauce, oyster sauce, light soy sauce, sugar and water.
Place in the crab, mix well and thicken with egg.


Serve with fried and steamed mantou(Chinese bun).

A wonderful dinner with Sweet & Sour Crab, served with mantou.

Chinese Medicine Chicken Soup

When I was clearing my refrigerator(it is always full), I saw few packets of Chinese medicine. These packets have different Chinese medicine in the correct ratio for Chinese soup. It is very convenient for lazy people like me. I could not remember when did I buy it. Luckily Chinese medicine can last for years. It just happened that I had Silkie(or people just call it black chicken) in the freezer. So, I just dumped everything in with 3 rice bowls of water and let it cooked for 11/2 hours.


ready packet.


the ingredients....


Haft silkie or black chicken


served with meesua


the soup was so sweet and nourishing


home made black soy drink

Dinner gathering with university friends

Yes, I know. I know I had abandoned this blog for a very long period. September and October are busy months for me. I went to Vietnam in September and 2 days later, I will be going to China. I spent a lot of time doing research for my trips. Furthermore, new project had started so everyday I go back from office very late. Honestly, I do less cooking. Even if I cook, I cook easy and repeated dishes. No more new recipes. I hope that after October, everything will be back to normal and I can cook daily.

About a week ago, my university friends came to my place for dinner gathering. I had to prepare dinner for 9 person. It was a challenging task to me. Tell you, I will get panic when everyone has arrived and I still have many dishes to cook. :) So, I decided to cook few dishes that could be prepared earlier. There were Pork Belly with Yam(芋头扣肉）, Pig Tribe Pepper Soup(胡椒猪肚汤） and Chinese Spinach in Superior Stock（上汤芫菜）. Then at night, I only had to cook Clam in Kam Heong Sauce(甘香拉拉） and Crispy Eggplant(脆炸茄子）.

Thanks god, there was no big mistake. If not, we had to order Pizza. Everyone gave nice comments to my dishes. But deep in my heart, I know I still need more practices, especially preparing food for bigger group. Anyway, it was fun to cook and great to meet up with friends.

A note of thanks to:
Lam, who took the above photos as I was busy with food.
Lee Peng and Anne, who cleaned the mess after the dinner.
Other attendants, a perfect gathering with all of you.

Looking forward to the next gathering.

Porridge with meat balls

I like this type of porridge, example would be Macau Sam Un or Canton-i Queensbay. So I made use of my secret paste, and cooked a pot of porridge with it. It was so simple, just need to scoop the paste into the boiling plain porridge. I added some sesame oil, soy sauce and pepper when served. I think I will cook this again very soon.

Jelly Mooncake Recipe

With no indications, my hard disk submitted resignation letter to me two hours after my previous post. Even tough I have most of my data backup, but I still lost some of the recent works. So, no more jelly mooncake photos to share(see previous post for photos). :( Anyway, here is the recipe that I have promised earlier.

Egg Yolk(Make about 50)
=======================
Ingredients:
50g lotus paste
250 water
1/2 tbsp agar-agar
100g sugar
90g fresh milk
1/4 tsp salt

Method:
Mix all the ingredients and bring to boil. Add few drops of orange coloring. Pour the mixture into the mould. Remove from the mould when it is set.

Filling(Make about 24)
======================
Ingredients:
240g fresh mango paste/sweet corn paste(canned)/red bean paste/lotus paste
480ml coconut milk
130-150g sugar
1tbsp agar-agar powder
100ml fresh milk
1/4 tsp salt

Method:
Mix all the ingredients and bring to boil. Pour the mixture into the small mooncake mould and place the egg yolk in the center. Remove from the mould when it is set.

Mooncake skin(Make about 24)
============================
Ingredients:
21/2 tbsp agar-agar powder
2l pandan flavoured water(Boiled water with pandan leaves)
120-150g sugar
4 tbsp condensed milk 4

Mango filling: mango essence(optional) and yellow colorings
Sweet corn filling: green colorings
red bean filling: rose essence(optional) and red colorings
Caramel lotus filling: 4 tbsp instant nescafe

Method:
Mix all ingredients and bring to boil. Add related flavours and colorings. Pour the mixture into the big mooncake mould until 80% full. Slowly put in the filling when the mixture is half set. Remove from mould when set.

Jelly Mooncake

Mid-Autumn Festival is approaching and it is time to savour mooncakes again. There are many selections in the market, the traditional mooncakes(baked skin) and the modern mooncakes(snow skin, jelly or ice-cream). Do you notice that we could have dumplings(bak chang) all over the years, but not mooncakes? Mooncakes are only available for 1-2months in a year.

For the recent long weekend(Mederka Day), I spent most of my time making 4 flavours of jelly mooncakes. This time my mum suggested to make it. After my first attempt 6 years ago, there will be request to make it every year. One of the year, I even made more than 100 boxes. Even tough I was a bit relunctant and was complaining all the way(I was not feeling well), but I was very happy with the outcome.

My recipe made 20-24 boxes. For this recipe, you will need egg yolk mould, small mooncake jelly mould and big mooncake jelly mould. I had 2, 3 and 6 of these moulds. We split out the works to 3 days. On Saturday, we made the egg yolk(2 rounds to get enough egg yolks). Then on Sunday, we prepared the 4 fillings, red bean, mango, sweet corn and caramel lotus. So on Monday, we were more relaxing(not quite also). We made the mooncake jelly(4 different colors) and packed them in boxes.

I would suggest to split the works to at least two days. One day for egg yolk and fillings. Another day to finish the mooncakes. I will share my 6-years experience recipe in the next post. Meanwhile, here is some of the photos taken during the making. Enjoy!