Summer Time and the livin is easy...

It's a scorcher of a summer so far... at least it is now, after a tentative rather wet and cool start. With temps reaching 38C and our apartment catching the full brunt of the afternoon sun - we could be excuse for thinking we were back in the tropics.

Nearly... but thankfully not as hot! Strangely, this heat has fired an appetite for hot and spicy Asian food. Kimchi, Nasi Lemak...  curries with home made prata (Thanks to excellent instruction on Dr Tay's blog)

Roasted Char Siu

Anyhow, inspired by a recent FB post, we had a sudden longing for char siu  (叉燒 ) or chinese BBQ pork. I've never really been a fan of it because most of the time it is either dry and tasteless or covered with a lurid red dye. I do remember with fondness that it was one of the first things I remember my mother cooking and it seemed appropriate that I remember her on her birthday by cooking this. And she did make a really delicious version of it, moist and tender with crispy burnt bits that we all vied for as children.

I chose shoulder butt as it has a good mix of fat and lean - you need a bit of fat to keep the meat moist - and it mostly gets rendered out during the cooking anyway.

This recipe is best prepared the day before, so that the marinade has time to work its magic.

Ingredients:

• 1kg pork - cut into long strips about 3cm thick
• 2 Tabsp honey
• 2 Tabsp Hoisin Sauce
• 1.5 Tab dark soy sauce / kicap manis
• 1.5 Tab light soy sauce
• 1 tsp ground white pepper
• 1 Tabsp sesame oil
• 1 Tabsp Hungarian sweet paprika (for sweetness and colour)

Method:
Day before:

1. combine all the ingredients together in a non reactive bowl
2. place the pork strips into a large Ziploc bag
3. add 3/4 of the marinade into the bag and mix well to coat the pork
4. place in fridge overnight (or at least 4-6h)

Next day:

1. preheat oven to 350F
2. place a rack over a deep (2cm) baking tray and fill the tray with about 1cm of water
3. place pork strips on rack and place tray in the middle shelf of oven
4. roast for 45min

Reserved sticky sweet savoury marindae

Turn oven off and turn grill on

1. remove pork from oven and baste with reserved marinade and grill for 5min till nicely brown 
2. take pork out, turn over and baste again, grill other side for another 5min

Watch the meat! the sweet marinade leads to easy charring - but we do want a bit of that yes?

Once nicely brown, take the meat out, let it rest whilst you prepare the gravy

Pour meat juices into a saucepan and add the remaining marinade, reduce and season to taste - you made need to add a bit more soy sauce, some may wish to use a touch of cornflour to thicken and give it a sheen.

Slice pork as thick or thin as you desire, serve of fragrant steamed Thai jasmine rice. Mangia!

Char Siu Rice anyone?

Chinese Style Steamed Fish and Oysters

Coming to the end of the week and looking forward (?) to a weekend "on call" for work, I was hankering for a good chinese seafood dinner.

With the rather poor options for eating out in our little town, the best alternative was to cook. So, popped into the local - very good - supermarket (Ferraro's Foods), I picked out the freshest bit of fish I could see. And it so happened to be sole, a lovely bit of finely textured white fish, perfect for steaming. And it was on "special" too! Yay!
Hmm... the fillet was a bit small, so quickly asked for a tub of Fanny Bay Oysters also on sale for $3.90. Yum, this would make a tasty combo.

Once home, it was a simple matter of cooking some fragrant Thai Jasmine rice in the microwave whilst the seafood was being prepared. In the time it took for the rice to cook, all the prep work plus steaming of the fish was done and all I had to do was to precisely time the frying of shallots and garlic and pour the resultant hot oil mixture over the fish with a very satisfying sizzle!

The fish was done just right, flaked beautifully, melt in mouth tenderness, the mild flavour served as a foil for the aromatic green herbs and crunchy onion and garlic bits. The oysters turned out better than expected - plump, juicy and still with a slight crunch. Again the fragrant oils and green herbs complemented the briny almost metallic taste of the bivalve.

Would have gone very well with a chilled Riesling... but next time perhaps!

Ingredients:

• 1 large fillet of sole (or similar, halibut will do nicely too)
• Fresh oysters, (shucked, optional)
• Cilatro leaves, fresh, roughly chopped
• Spring Onions, fresh, finely sliced
• dried garlic flakes
• dried onion flakes
• 1 fresh red chilli, finely sliced
• fresh ginger - about 1 inch - finely juliened
• peanut oil - 4 Tbsp
• sesame oil - 1 tsp
• light soy sauce - 3 Tbsp

You'll also need a large wok with cover or a steamer

Method:

1. make sure the fish has been thoroughly deboned, cut into large portions about 5x8cm
2. lay fish in a heat proof dish (e.g. Pyrex)
3. lay the shucked oysters over the fish, generously layering juliened ginger in between and over all the pieces of seafood
4. bring water to boil in the wok, and place dish with seafood onto a steaming rack, cover and steam at high heat for 5min
5. Whilst fish is cooking, heat peanut oil in a saucepan, add dried onions and garlic to brown - this will take about 2 min, so time it to coincide with the end of the 5min cooking time for the fish
6. Once fish is cooked, remove from steamer, drizzle with soy sauce, sprinkle with cilantro, spring onion and red chilli and pour the very hot oil over the whole assembly. (it was sizzle and spit!)
7. Serve immediately - Enjoy!

comfort food..

I guess the last post gave some energy to overcome the inertia of not posting for such a long time.. Just a few days ago, dashing through the snow.. (not in a open sleigh) to the supermarket to pick up "any veg will do" for dinner, I chanced upon a pile of beautiful, plump, purple eggplants -  2 for 99c! Who would have thought to get such summer bounty in midwinter?
Grabbed 2 and gleefully drove up the hill, past semi trailer trucks floundering in the slushy snow. So thankful for 4WD.

But, this is a food blog, so back to my eggplants. I've cooked the first using a recipe that I've used over and over because it is so simple and the result is (IMHO) rather yummy. I use dehydrated onion and garlic for the garnish because they crisp up super fast

(Steamed) Eggplant drizzled with soy sauce & sesame oil

Ingredients:

• 1 large eggplant
• coarse salt - several teaspoons
• dehyrdrated onion flakes 1-2 tsp
• dehyrdrated minced garlic 1 tsp
• soy sauce 1 Tabsp
• sesame oil 1 tsp
• peanut oil 2 Tabsp

Method

1. Cut the eggplant into longitudinal strips about 2cm wide (some prefer to peel the skin, but I'm lazy and I don't)
2. Sprinkle salt over the eggplant and make sure all the cut surfaces are coated with salt
3. Leave aside for 15min or until the cut surfaces of the eggplant start weeping
4. Rinse off all the salt and gently squeeze the strips 
5. Place in heatproof dish and either steam till tender or microwave, covered for about 5-8minutes
6. Drizzle with soy sauce and sesame oil
7. Heat the peanut oil in a small saucepan and when the oil is hot, add the dehydrated garlic and onion and fry till brown - watch carefully - they brown and burn very easily
8. Pour hot oil and onion/garlic over hot eggplant - the sizzle is very satisfying!

Scrumptious Braised Pork Belly

Savoury porky stuff - Pork belly braised in Aromatic Soy Sauce

Recently I had braces put it (yeah, yeah, in adulthood) and everytime my orthodontist tightens them, I scratch my head and think of food that isnt a challenge to tender teeth. One can only eat so much whizzed up broccoli soup, pumpkin soup... Watties tinned Spaghetti (horror! - but hey, it isnt that bad, especially when I am at work and have to inhale my lunch in 5 minutes). A good Asian alternative is rice porridge accompanied by something nice and savoury... like Pork belly braised in Aromatic Soy Sauce


Ingredients:

0.5kg Pork Belly

8 dried shitake mushrooms
1/4 cup each dark & light soy sauce
1 cup water
2 cloves garlic (unpeeled)
1/2 tsp fennel seeds
1/2 tsp chilli flakes
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
2 whole star anise
4 cardamom pods
3 cloves
1 cinnamon stick
1/2 tsp white peppercorns
pinch of sugar
2 pieces hard tofu (tau kwa) cut into half

Method:

• Cut pork belly into inch wide strips, after making sure that all gristlehas been removed
• Wash dried shitake mushrooms and trim stems off (you can keep them for making soup stock)
• Place all ingredients into a pot, bring to boil then transfer to a slow cooker and braise at very low heat till meat is tender (about 2h)
• Remove meat, mushrooms and tofu
• Strain sauce to remove spices, season to taste
• Slice meat into 5mm thick slices (or however thick you like them), tofu into 2cm thick slices, arrange on plate, with meat and mushrooms
• Serve Sauce alongside

Chinese Radish Cake

Fried Lor Bak Go

Having eaten a rather poor version of "lor bak go" (chinese radish cake) recently at a chinese restaurant that I shall not name, I decided to re-create an old family favourite.

Obtaining the ingredients was not too difficult - there is a reasonably well stocked Asian supermarket about 45min drive away from home. Stepping into this grocery, one is greeted, no, almost assaulted with a heady aroma of dried shrimp, shitake mushrooms, rice, pickled vegetables - a visit to this treasure store of exotic foods always yields a basket full of goodies.

Ingredients for Lor Bak Go

Traditionally eaten during the Lunar New Year celebrations (at least by my family), Lor Bak Go is also a firm fixture on the dim sum menu of many Chinese Restaurants.


The difference between a bad lor bak go and a good one is like chalk and cheese. A bad one is almost always very stodgy, tasteless and has very little radish, much less chinese sausage, shitake mushrooms or shrimp. It also has the consistency of an eraser - rubbery.

Plain rice flour

A good one, on the other had, is light, flavourful and has plenty of shredded radish just about held together by rice flour, interspersed between the strands of radish will be nuggets of scrumptious chinese sausage (lup cheong), bits of fragrant shitake mushrooms and boldly flavoured dried shrimp. It can be eaten just fresh out of the steamer or cut into thick slices and pan fried. I just looooove the crisp brown edges of the fried version. Accompanied by a dollop of chilli jam and thick black soy sauce - absolutely scrumptious !!

So here's my take on Chinese Radish Cake:

Ingredients:
1 large chinese radish (daikon)
about 1kg 1.5 cups rice flour (approx 250g)*
6 dried shitake mushrooms
2 chinese sausages (lup cheong)
1/4 cup dried shrimp, chopped
1 tsp salt 2-3tsp light soy sauce
1 tsp white pepper 2 cups water
* this proportion of radish to flour (9:1) makes for a very soft but flavourful cake, a bit difficult to slice and fry. For a slightly firmer cake, add more flour but not more than 4:1.

Method:
1. Rinse and soak the shitake mushrooms.
2. Roughly chop the dried shrimp and cut the sausage into a fine dice. Do the same with the mushrooms once they are rehydrated. Reserve the mushroom water.
3. Grate the daikon (use the large grater - for better texture)
4. Heat oil in a large wok and fry the sausage till brown, then add the shrimp and mushrooms.
5. Add the radish and reserved mushroom water and cook over medium heat for about 5-10min, till the radish is cooked but al dente. Season with salt, pepper and soy sauce. It should not be too salty.
6. Mix the rice flour with about 1 cup of water.
7. Add the rice flour slurry to the hot radish mixture and stir till well mixed - the mixture will get increasing stiff - after about 5 min, turn the heat off.
8. Test fry a tablespoon in a small non stick frying pan. This is to make sure that the mixture is well seasoned and has the right proportions of water and flour. Add more flour or water as necessary to achieve your desired consistency.
9. Pour the mixture into well greased baking trays (this recipe makes 2 loaf tins) and steam for 1 hour.
10. Allow to cool before turning out. The lor bak go can be eaten as is or cut into thick slices and pan fried. For slicing, better results are achieved if the cake is left to firm up overnight in the fridge.

Enjoy!

Christmas Holiday in Auckland

We flew out on Christmas day evening to spend some time in the City of Sails. As I had to work on Christmas Eve, so the only flight we could catch was 5.30pm on Christmas day!



Visiting Auckland over the Christmas holidays was quite enjoyable, to our surprise. Being the “ulu sampah” country folk living in Wanganui that we are - the hustle and bustle, crowds and traffic fumes of NZ’s biggest city are something we try to avoid. Fortunately for us, the evening of Christmas was very quiet - most places were closed and indeed, we were worried that we would not find a place to eat.



Fortunately for us, opposite our hotel (City Life Heritage Hotel) was a very busy Chinese coffee shop. Its customers are mostly chinese locals and backpackers, but the more savvy local Kiwis come there too. As you can see, it has chinese roast meats as well as a very decent menu of stir fries, noodles, porridge and every order of rice comes with a generous potion of delicious soup made from bones and meat scraps. The portions are huge, so an order of roast pork rice or in my case, beef stir fried with bitter gourd and fermented black soy beans was large enough for 2 of us to share.



We ate our fill and took a “digestive walk” down to the waterfront - see the first picture and watched the sun go down over sailing boats and the Auckland Sky Tower. A particularly good watering hole (which also has excellent food and service, is Soul, down by the wharf.

New Zealand (like Singapore and probably many other places) is notorious for having sales. Pre Christmas sales, Before school holiday sales... Queen’s birthday sales. So it was no surprise that many stores were open on Boxing day and offered very good discounts on all sorts of goods. We bought some quick dry trekking clothes from The North Face shop and a couple of CDs from Marbecks.

After an energetic morning of shopping we stopped by for dim sum lunch at a local Chinese restaurant. The food was very good, pretty genuine (judging by the number of chinese patrons) and the egg tarts light and fluffy.

Since we were on holiday.. after a dim sum lunch, we decided that the best thing to do was to have an afternoon nap, which we did.

This rest gave us plenty of energy for a long walk to church and Spanish Tapas at a delightful restaurant called Limon by the water front for dinner.

There was real Spanish guitar music and a waitress that spoke Spanish (OK, she was from Argentina) and melt in your mouth Jamon Serrrano. Ole!