Babi Masak Assam (Assam Pork Stew)

This recipe was taken from kuali.com by Amy Beh. The assam gave the pork belly a tangy taste and together with the green chillies and preserved soya bean paste, the result was a dish that dh and I loved. I will surely cook this again. The recipe is also very easy to do. This is a Nonya (Peranakan) dish.

Here's sharing my adaptation of the recipe with you .....

Ingredients :

600 g pork belly, cubed.
40 g assam(tamarind) pulp, mixed with 300 mls water and sieved to get juice out.
4 nos green chillies, seeds removed.
50 g sugar (or to your taste)

Marinade pork belly with .....
1 tsp dark soya sauce
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper

Ground ingredients together ...
6 shallots
2 cloves garlic
2 tbsp coriander powder
2 tbsp preserved soya bean paste

Method :

Heat up 3 tbsp of oil and saute the ground ingredients till fragrant.

Add in the pork cubes and fry till pieces are coated with the ingredients.

Add in the tamarind juice, chillies and sugar and bring all to a boil.

Reduce heat and cover the pot.

Simmer until the pork belly is tender ( one hour).

Drunken Prawn Soup

Friday night, dh and I visited Giant at Tampines and happened to chance upon these fresh prawns. Since it had been quite a while we had eaten prawns, dh mentioned that it would be nice to have them for supper. So here was what I did .....

Boiled about 2 cups of water mixed with 1 cup of Chinese cooking wine. Add 4 pieces of ginger and a handful of kei chee. Process 400 gm of fresh prawns and season it with a tsp of sugar and salt and a little pepper for about half an hour. Once the wine mixture boiled, I threw in the prawns and waited until they all turned orange and ready. This should take about 5-10 minutes.

We had a yummylicious supper of prawns and soup that night :-)

Xiao Loong Bao Part 1

You think the pic looks good? Dh said it looks good eh ....BUT..... the skin and meat filling got to improve ....
I made the mistake of not putting in all the gelatin chicken stock cubes cos I thought that they were overwhelming the minced meat. So the result was a pretty dry XLB except for a few of them which happened to have more than the usual amount of gelatin cubes.

According to dh, the xlb skin should be able elastic enough to withstand the dangle test when pinched at the top and one can see the soup practically swimming inside the skin.
Gosh .... I didn't know about this so called test, so I guess that I've failed on all the aspects required to pass it.

Will definitely be trying to make it again; so watch out for part 2 :-)

I got the recipe from HERE.

And there is a demo video on how to pleat the XLB HERE

Mango Chiffon

Here's another one of my chiffon cakes adventure. This chiffon has the lovely aroma of mango and it is also pretty soft and moist. Taste wise it is for one who loves the taste of mangoes, sweet and tangy at the same time.


Ingredients:
(A)
4 nos. large eggs yolks
1 tsp Mango essence

(B)
80 mls Corn oil
80 mls UHT Milk
80 gms Mango puree

(C)
110 gm Top flour
1 tsp baking powder

(D)
4 nos. large egg whites
100 gm C aster sugar
1/2 tsp Cream of tartar

Method:

Pre-heat oven at 170 degree C.

Separate egg yolks from whites.

Use a fork and beat up (A) till well mix.

Mixt all ingredients in (B) till well blended.

In a mixer bowl beat up (D) till stiff peak forms (i.e. when bowl is inverted the beaten egg whites remain inside).

Add in (A) into the mixer bowl and mix well, then add in (B) and also stir well.

Add in (C) and fold in gently till well blended.

Pour batter into a 20 cm. chiffon cake pan.

Bang the pan on a hard surface to release the bubbles.

Bake for 35-40 mins.

When the cake is ready, remove from the oven and give it a bang on a hard surface.

Then invert the pan and cool the cake.

When the cake is completely cool, remove cake from the pan using a very sharp paring knife.

Zi Yin Run Fei Tang

Here's another round of soup for dh who is on his way to recovering from a nasty cough and throat infection. This time the soup was black due to one of the ingredients. This soup was supposed to be good for the recovery of the respiratory tract. Ingredients and instructions were all printed on the back of the packet for easy reference. I boiled the ingredients with lean pork meat for about 2 hrs. and added a little salt to it. I strained the hot soup before giving it to dh. This time round dh enjoyed this soup even better than the last soup I made for him.

Pan Fried Satay

It's just another of those day that I was lazy to think of what to cook that I took this out from the freeze. After thawing it out, I just quartered an onion and fried it in a tablespoon of oil before adding the seasoned thawed meat. I pan fried it for about a minute or two and then added a quarter cup of water and fried till the gravy dried up a little. It's then ready to serve after dishing up. The taste was acceptable and I even bought the other alternative which was satay beef.

Vinco Doughnuts

Dh, dd and I took a walk at Vivo City last Sunday evening and came across a queue that was stretching about 20 persons long. I couldn't resist taking a peek at the front and realised that the queue was for doughnuts. So many people queueing for the food, so it must be good ... right? Also the people were buying these doughnuts by the dozens. So I got into the queue and after about 20 minutes I finally bought half a dozen flavoured doughnuts at $6.

So here are the doughnuts ...there's Stormy Peanuts, Chocolate Delight and a whole lot of other fanciful names which I can't recall but they tasted wonderful.

The doughnut itself was soft, almost like the sweet bun dough kind of bread and not oily at all. With the chocolate toppings, nuts toppings , dessicated coconut toppings and some even had grated cheese on them, they were definitely different from those we find at the bakery shops. I wouldn't mind buying them again for supper.

Pepper Chicken Kicks

This is really convenient cos' all I had to do was to make hot by boiling the packet in hot water or use a microwave to make hot. No cooking is needed here.

The pepper chicken is reasonably tasty and I would buy it again for emergency use and also for lazy days when I can use it to supplement my other dishes.

I bought this packet from the Fairprice supermarket.

Xue Er Run Fei Tang

Last week was a terrible week for dh cos he had been coughing his lungs out due to a throat infection. He self medicated with Manuka honey, Listerine, Strepsils and Robitussin cough mixture for about three days before he decided to see the GP for antibiotics. Now he's definitely coughing less and is on the way to recovery. His appetite is still not very good cos the medicine he is taking sort of wiped out whatever taste sensation he has and everything tasted bland to him.
But he has been asking for soups. So here's what I found at the supermarket ...

Chwee Song's Xue Er Run Fei Tang .... boil these ingredients with chicken for about 2 hrs and drink the soup which is supposed to be good for the lungs and the respiratory tract recovery.

The packet contains sweetened dried figs and dates, sweetened prunes, white fungus and polygonatum odoratum. The result soup is a sweet soup and I added a little salt to enhance the taste. Dh finished up all the soup :-) and even ate the chicken meat.

Pleating the Xia Loong Pau

Hugbear demonstrates how to pleat the Xiao Loong Pau.

Click Here to see the video.

Pleating the Har Gao / Guo Tie

Here's the video on how to pleat the har gao.
Hugbear demonstrates with her nimble fingers and thumb.
Click on the phrase below to view the video. Enjoy!

Pleating the Har Gao

IK Gathering Mar 07

Yes, it's IK gathering again and this time we had the ever gracious hugbear who shared with us her skill in rolling and pleating dim sums like har gao, guo tie and xiao long pau. Also we had the generous yochana who allowed the group to use her kitchen for the gathering. Ah ...the camaderie of learning, sharing , chit chatting and eating always allow the bonds of friendship to develop. There's always a warm and fuzzy feeling after the gathering is over . Once again I got to know more names to nicks and put faces to their names .

Look at all those yummylicious food. My contribution this time was a baked pasta.

Rolling the dumpling skin

Here's the video on how Hugbear rolls out the dough to form the dim sum skin.
You just use a rolling pin and turn the dough.
Click on the phrase below to view the video. Enjoy!

Rolling the dim sum skin

Mocha Banana Chocochips Muffin

I remember my dd and ds J eating this muffin when I brought them home from a gathering at IK. The lady had also kindly posted the recipe at IK which she got from Allrecipes.com. You can find the link HERE
It's a sweet and moist muffin with the aroma of banana and coffee flavouring.

Chick Peas

Sometime ago at the M4M forum, a lady called B posted her steamed chick peas and the memories of this kacang came flooding back to me. This was my favourite whenever I had the chance to buy from the kacang puteh man some student days ago. Nowadays the kacang puteh man has became a rarity in the streets of Singapore as the government doesn't encourage street pedlars. I do see a new breed of kacang pedlars at the pasar malam stalls seller these steamed chick peas and peanuts.

This is easy to do .
I just soaked overnight the entire packet of chick peas in a large container with three times the volume of water and 1 tsp of tumeric and salt.
The next morning, I drained off the water and rinse the chick peas.
Putting the chick peas in a bowl, I covered them with just enough water.
I then added a tsp of salt before I put the chick peas in a boiling steamer.
Steam for about half an hour and check for chick peas softenening.
Once the chick peas softened, remove the container and cool.
It is then ready to be eaten by itself or put you can put them in a cucmber salad with Japanese mayonaise.

Citrus Chiffon

I got the recipe from HERE .
This was my second attempt to improve on the texture of the chiffon as I like the chiffon cake texture to be softer and more moist. I finally did it and what I did to improve the chiffon texture was to use the combined volume of 125 mls. of orange cum lemon juice and 50 g of corn oil instead of the original volume and weight in the ingredients. I also added a tsp of both lemon and orange paste to give the chiffon a more intense color of orangy lemon.