My daughter is interested to learning to make another one of her favourite, beancurd prawns rolls. She did learned how to make roast pork her mum’s style last year – Traditional Cantonese Crispy Roast pork belly – Siu Yuk, 脆皮烧肉. – Just Julie (julieolive.co.uk) and I am happy she asked to be taught. Slowly slowly lah.

I have decided to teach her the simplest ‘BASIC’ fillings with what we have on hand and letting her take notes on what other ingredients she can add in. Upon tasting she lazily said she preferred this basic recipe! Alamak but I guess it is better than nothing. Else if I have the privilege to grow old no one will make for me my kinda taste – kekekeke However I did inform her this way is the most expensive way as we only used prawns and nothing else to bulk up! She told me she ‘got it’ So next time she ask to make again I can ask her to pay for the prawns.

However I much prefer adding fish paste, jicama, carrot, spring onions or coriander and even fresh red chilli as I love colourful food. It is entirely up to you. This time I used chicken powder so I did not add salt as it is salty enough for me. I did add a lot of freshly ground Sarawak pepper because my family just love pepper. I am out of ginger so I did not add ginger juice. Instead I added sesame oil. As I often say, find your taste and make it your own. Enjoy. This is another one of my signatory beancurd wraps – Fu Pei Guen – 腐皮卷 (虾 & 鸡); prawns and chicken beancurd wraps – Just Julie (julieolive.co.uk)

NOTE – I have also found out that if you wait for them to cool and soften a bit, takes hours as they stay crispy a long time (at least 4 to 5o hours) then you can store them in ziplock bags and freeze. Just use the air fryer to heat up.

Alright, first question first. Who is old enough to remember this dish? It is normally served during a 10 course wedding or birthday dinner when I was very much younger. Second question is who has recently ate this dish?

I, for one have not eaten it for a long, long time nor have I seen people cooking it. I only remembered this dish because I bought some mustard vegetables to make Kiam Chai Buey the other day but found that I did not have much bones and stuff saved. This meant I have not been eating duck for a long time. kekekekekek I have to rectify that soon. So I have to rack my brain on what to do with the mustard vegetable and this dish of yesteryear popped back into the old grey cells suddenly.

Another reason I decided to cook this is because my hubby do not eat crabs, or so he insisted. I like to have a challenge and I like to think I am the winner today. He lapped up every bit of the sauce. I mean he is just a hair’s breadth short of sucking it up with a straw! It’s like when he said he don’t eat pork belly or prawns then I will mince pork belly with prawns to make crispy beancurd wraps or fried wanton and he would not be able to stop eating. All’s fair in LOVE and WAR in my book – kekekekekekeke

Today I cooked with more sauce because of the hubby, he likes a lot of sauce with his rice. I also made my garlic and crispy shallot rice to go with this dish because I cooked only one dish. I can’t cook another dish or there will be leftovers. Sigh…..now especially in the past year as age has creeped up on us, we are finding it hard to sleep if we have a big dinner. Ah….I missed them days when I can hantam a bowl of Belacan BiHoon, a plate of mee goreng, ice kacang and a tall glass of coke and probably a plate of rojak as well. Nowadays we have to do what I call ‘pace-eating’!

Note – I remembered in the olden days when this dish is served we were given a small container of Chinese black sweet vinegar but today I chose to use Apple Cider Vinegar as I try to find ways to get my family to take this.

Hope you try and enjoy this dish.

My daughter’s god-sister who love this dish wanted to make this but she could not find my recipe which was lost when I lost my old blog.

I promised her that I will do anther one for her. As I have recorded on Facebook this can easily be done.

As for me it is like ABC now. If you cannot or if you are not good in making any other kuih this is the one you sure can make as it is very forgiving. I normally don’t even need a recipe, on a good day when my brain works.

When shopping I will look out for 2 large mooli/daikon/turnip/loh bak or 3 smaller ones. I know when grated they will yield about 2kg thereabout in total.

Then I remember I need 450g of flours in total. Either 100g Wheat starch and 350g rice flours or 330g rice flour and sub 20g corn flour for a softer texture. It is entirely up to you.

This amount will yield 2 tins of 7×7 or 8×8. It is not be all or end all if you do not have the perfect tin.

The beauty of this loh bak cake is you can wrap portions nicely and freeze. It freezes very well.

Read my Tip for ensuring a smooth top with using a cling film.

Note – Use as much as 4 stick of lap cheong or less but you need to cut it small and thin. This is for your easy slicing later.

Note – It is must tastier if you have shallots oil for the tins.

Note – Taste the dough before you distribute to steam, making sure it is salty enough and meet with your taste buds. If not add salt & pepper. The lap cheong releases a sweetness, the dried shrimps the umami taste and I like mine with a touch more freshly ground Sarawak pepper.

Make it your own.

Last weekend a friend told me she has been hankering for cucuk udang. She asked me for my recipe and I realised that I have not made these for years. I am not sure if she meant just these crispy prawns ones which I love or the ones with beansprouts and kuchai. These are my first choice and those are my second loves.

However she got me thinking where did I put my recipe. One day many years ago I experimented with different combination of flours; with and without egg to find the combination I wanted. I have even fried with prawn stock, not water, the bit softer type and the crunchier types etc etc……… The MAD housewife – kekekekekeke

The final recipe I uploaded to my old blog which I have since lost. In my cooking I am often a bit like a ‘bee in the bonnet’ type of person. I will try and try and try and experiment and experiment BUT once I made it to my satisfaction I will lose all interest and only cook once in a blue moon. In this case it has been a few years. I have to dig around to find my recipe and Facebook recorded my mad moment was on 25th June 2011!!! Luckily I found it! Thus this is an old recipe revived with TIPs.

My husband do not like big prawns so I distributed to other families near me when I made yesterday for the pics taking. Luckily I have willing guinea pigs – hahahaha

IMPORTANT TO NOTE – If you want a crispier outcome then make the batter slightly thinner, ummmmm….like pouring custard consistency and if you want crispy sides and softer middle then make it thicker consistency like thick custard.

If you make very thin batter it is very good to eat with rojak sauce!

Of course if you want to add in beansprouts and beans or Chinese chives then you need the thick custard consistency.

Experiment and enjoy.

p/s I used left over batter + a bit more rice flour and batter chicken strips for my son who also like his Dad don’t eat big prawns. Sigh……… I just have to share my prawns fritters out when I make them.

The pipa ( Chinese: 琵琶) pronounced as ‘pee-pah’ is a four-stringed Chinese musical instrument, belonging to the plucked category of instruments. Sometimes called the Chinese lute, the instrument has a pear-shaped wooden body with a varying number of frets ranging from 12 to 26. Pipa toufo should resemble the shape of a pipa.

Every time I go outside to have food, admittedly not that often, I always order pipa toufo if it’s in the menu list. I love this dish a lot but I have always shy away from making it as I don’t like the frying bit. However as my old recipe was in the old blog which is lost, it is time to update into this new blog but with hopefully a new look. I wanted to make for some weeks now as I have not been in any eatery places barred once this entire year! (Covid19)

For the past few weeks I was really looking forward to cooking and eating this. Needless to say as you can see from these pics, today I am wearing a huge smile on my face. Recently I have been challenging myself to try and plate Asian food nicely, I am quite happy today with my amateurish attempt. One needs to try in order to learn right?

Actually with age come wisdom? Experiences of cooking thus far enable me to fry these babies with NO SPITTING at all. I tried my ideas today and it worked! So I will share my TIPs

TIP 1 – Steaming the pipa toufo the night before and allowing them to ‘dry’ overnight is helpful in the no spitting department.

TIP – Coating the pipa toufo and letting them rest for 30 minutes before a quick frying is double happiness to NO SPITTING

TIP – I always thought pipa toufo can look better. More like a pipa (琵琶) so I have decided to use a mushroom stalk and some chives. I am wearing a happy smile because it works. Well I think in my eyes my pipa toufo looks more like a pipa

TIP – You may and can change the protein but remember not to liquefied them or your pipa toufo will taste tough. Likewise you can add water chestnuts, spring onions and others. using celery is good too as it gives that extra crunch.

TIP – I used a shimeji mushroom for the pipa look and chives for the pipa strings.

Again use my recipe as a guide, mind my TIPS and own this recipe yourself. Good luck and enjoy cooking.

Disclaimer – Written quickly, if you find any mistakes please poke me as I am lazy to check now.

Some friends have been poking/nagging me to update my blog as it is still missing a lot of recipes from the old blog. I have also not updated this blog for a while. However, though I have been cooking, I just don’t think my daily cooks deserved or needed to be blogged.

Update : TIP – Not only must you not mince your protein and toufo too much you must also DRAIN your toufo well before mixing so your paste is easier to handle and not liquidly.

It is without a doubt that if you want to eat something to your taste or if you are fussy with your food then you have to learn to make it yourself. I have to admit I am quite fussy though my close friends will say I am extremely fussy.

I, on the other hand blame my parents for teaching me to eat well and my father-in-law, fish monger extraordinaire from Devon was a good cook too. So I have been influenced by the best from both sides of the world.

I am not sure how many times I have made this throughout the years but normally this is made with pork belly minced. I wanted to encourage a friend to add this to her menu repertoire so I created this chicken breast meat and prawns combo. I think this time this simple combo is actually not too bad judging by my food critic hubby. This is the 3rd time I made them in so many weeks and he still loves them! The first time was way too ‘tough’ and I realised I must not mince the chicken too much. I practise and learn as I have willing guinea pigs The family actually prefers beancurd skin to springrolls skin wraps.

Barred the rice wine this is actually halal. I am not sure what can be used to get that ‘alcohol’ taste but my friend would have to experiment that by herself kekekekekek

Featured in this post is my signature beancurd wrap with a piece of Nori wrap in the middle. My husband really loves this because he says it taste better! The umami ……

I actually prefers Fu Pei Guen – 腐皮卷 to Ngoh Hiang (五香 / Lor Bak) I think this is basically because I am not a big Chinese five spice fan. I do not mind a light hint of it but I hate it when I burrrrpppped an hour later and still ‘taste’ it.

Anyway my advise is use my recipe as a guide, add or minus as much or as little as your like to suits your taste and make it your recipe. The only warning I can give is that you don’t make your recipe too wet.

Enjoy.

p/s if you have read till here then I think you deserves a big HINT

HINT – if you do not want to use so much prawns and loves the prawns taste, you can soaked a handful of dried shrimps and blend them to dust and add to your fillings. You will NOT regret it.

Second HINT – Fry a tiny bit of the fillings and taste. See if you need to adjust the seasonings etc before wrapping.

Third HINT – After wrappings leave your wraps to dry a bit before frying. Wet = oil spitting.

Update – 8th October 2020 – I made another batch today with equal amount of chicken, minced pork belly and prawns. Everything else remains the same but I added fresh coriander and if you like coriander then it’s good.

Hubby requested I wrap smaller but with nori – my signature fu pei guen. He prefers the nori for the extra umami taste.

I have been hankering for chicken wings for the past month. I have eaten twice outside but they left me wanting.

I did not want the fried ones thickly coated with batter nor do I want the Korean type smothered with sickly sweet sticky sauce. I didn’t feel like the KFC spicy ones either as they seems to make me very thirsty.

Bought a packet of chicken wings yesterday for only 2.70 (pounds) and decided to make my own. However I am torn between roast or fried as I recently bought the smallest deep fat fryer of 1.5L oil only. There is a special reason for buying it. Watch this space!

So I decided to split my chicken wings 50/50 and cook them roast and fried. The roasted wings have an extra touch of maple syrup and the fried ones are just dusted with tapioca and baking powder just before frying.

TIP – I dropped a handful of king prawns into my zip-lock bag, utilizing the marinate already in there and re-dusted with some tapioca flour before deep frying them lastly.

Stir fry rice vermicelli with dried shrimps. My comfort food. While away for the last 3 weeks this is the dish I wanted to eat most. A simple rice vermicelli stir fry.

Woke up early today and could not get back to sleep. So I was already frying this at 7am this morning.

Luckily my hubby is one that is happy to eat this for breakfast, lunch and dinner. He’s extremely good when it come to food. Every so often I asked him if he is just eating to please me and his answer is always ‘not at all’

He eats with such total enjoyment and gusto that I just have to believe him. In fact a friend’s husband, also an Englishman recently commented that if he had not met and seen my hubby eats he would never have believed it, if told an Englishman loves Asian food so much and can eat so spicy. My friend and her husband visited for a weekend and we ate at mine and at restaurants too.

TIP – Do not add water to your noodles as there will be liquid from your fresh vegetables and beansprouts. I hate soggy noodles.

TIP – Only soak the noodles in hot water quick, do not boil them if frying. Again I hate soggy noodles.

TIP – If you like to eat the bottom burnt bit turn your fire to high for a couple of minute at the very end with a a few drop of oil to the side all round the wok. This will give you the happy crispy bottom. These are the cook’s perk!

TIP – If you have pork lard use it!