My family loves yellow bean sauce and recently I am able to get the brand that my mother has been using since I was a child. I only remember her using this brand and Yeo’s brand and not any other. She also always used the whole beans and she insisted that it is not actually hard work to roughly chopped the beans and they taste much better.

Now that I am all grown up I have decided there is logic in what she said and so I followed suit since. Today I cooked cod cheeks with yellow beans sauce as both the hubby and daughter are a big fans of fish without bones.

As usual I always said my recipe is a guide so make the dish your own with my TIPs. Enjoy.

TIP – When cooking fish and seafood always incorporate ginger, in slices if you don’t like to eat ginger, so you can easily remove them; julienned and fried crispy if you like to eat them like we do.

TIP – Bring the cleaned cod cheeks out from fridge to room temperature before cooking. Do not overcooked.

TIP – Please add a pinch of sugar to balance the taste.

TIP – Add the red chillies at the last minute, the spring onions and served topped with the earlier fried ginger, shallots, garlic slices and coriander.

TIP – After you added in your cod cheeks, at high heat your cook should be just about 5 minutes to dishing up.

Every year during hubby’s birthday I will cook a special meal for his departmental colleagues which is usually around 15 to 20 people. That is all I can manage as the entire building will have a couple of hundreds personnel! (pre pandemic) Everyone does the same on their birthdays but mostly the food is shop bought so they all looked forward to my hubby’s birthday each year.

I enjoy doing it as I am weird. I actually enjoy the planning and executing more than eating the food itself. I was talking to a friend the other day and she roll her eyes at me. kekekekekeke I enjoy introducing the majority British colleagues with what I like to think a true Malaysian hospitality and cuisines. I also have to plan what I can cook that can travel, easy for hubby to carry in the boot of his car. Luckily his office is just 10 minutes drive away.

When the colleagues come back and tell my husband they went to this and that restaurants and order the same food I have made for them but they tasted totally different, not enough ooooomph….it makes the hubby proud and make my heart sings lah (honestly) That is why I like to plan, execute and give them different food each year; introducing them to our Asian, Malaysian cuisines.

It had been 2 years now that they missed their treats – This was in 2017

Tri-coloured nasi pulut with chicken tikka masala, tomato chachumbar, mango raita, cumin potatoes and spicy vegetarian aubergines with mock chicken for the vegetarian.

Yesterday was not a birthday or anything but the colleagues have missed hubby’s birthday twice due to the pandemic so the boss asked hubby if he could ‘persuade’ me to cook them something for their first “meet & greet”. The only annoying thing is I have 2 days notice!!! Darn it! Hubby forgot to tell me and it cuts down my pleasure of the ‘planning & executing’ process joy!

However I have to plan something the colleagues have not tried from my kitchen before and must be Covid19 friendly. I decided on individual boxes and must be dry not wet food. So I came up with Mee Siam for main. I have not been able to find a vendor to cater to my taste so far outside so I have to cook. I did not plan to write this recipe out as it all agak-agak and I cooked 3 packets of vermicelli noodles yesterday and the last wok I added some egg noodles. However to my surprise a few persons asked for my recipe so I am scaling down this recipe for 1 wok full or 1 packet of rice vermicelli. I also served crispy wantons for starters and cupcakes for desserts.

So please bear in mind to taste and TASTE your sauce before you add in your noodles to suit your taste. Mine is extremely sour and spicy or one of my friend who ate it said ‘zingy’ kekekekekekeke I am very liberal with my lime and tamarind juice. Over the past decade the hubby’s colleagues know that I do not compromise on taste for them. They can have red faces from the spiciness and still they will eat. Very funny.

TIP 1 – Do not boil your vermicelli noodles or over soak them. Just soak in cold tap water. When soft, remove and drain before use. (Ignore what is written in the packet)

TIP 2 – I do not use any soy sauces, dark or otherwise because I do not like the colour too dark and to me it is not necessary.

TIP 3 – Whole grain fermented yellow beans smashed, taste a lot better than the ready mashed ones. Half and half is perfect.

TIP 4 – Place half the eggy strip before the gravy runs dry so they can soak up the taste a bit.

TIP 5 – If serve immediately please gives the vegetables a toss with the hot noodles before serving BUT if you are packing for people aka tapau do not do so. Residue heat will cook the vegetables to crunchy perfection. Overcooked limps beansprouts and vegetables just look so unappetising to me.

COMMON SENSE –

1 – More sauce – wetter Mee Siam so less sauce drier Mee Siam. It is entirely up to your taste!

2 – Making more of the sambal paste and serving some separately is also nice for those who can eat extra spicy. If you are serving sambal please add a pinch of sugar.

Char Siu Baozi ( 叉烧包 ) taste a heck of a lot better with charcoal BBQ char siu. I will not make (叉烧包) again with char siu make any other way. With sesame seeds and coriander, this is how I remembered it used to be when I was young, hmmmm…..when I was younger? Some 30+ years ago.

This type of baozi fillings can hardly be found anymore. My son used to love the char siu bao when we have Dim Sum and when I buy home the ready made bao. However in recent years they are so full of fat pork and only taste sweet that he has gone off them. He was so happy when I made these for him with pork shoulder. The hubby who don’t like fats pork appreciate them too.

I have been hankering to make myself some for ages as I just could not get fillings I like and the filling is always wanting. Then it occurred to me it is missing that BBQ charcoal taste. So last week I made 2kg plus of char siu with extra marinate to make the sauce and saved some for today. For my char siu recipe please click here https://www.julieolive.co.uk/2020/07/22/char-siu-chinese-bbq-pork-ala-julies-recipe/

It is much better to make your char siu, cubed them, cook with the saved marinate (please refer to link) adding cornflour slurry to thicken then place in a shallow container with lid in fridge to use the next day.

TIP – Do not add the sesame seeds and coriander leaves until it is time for you to wrap so the coriander stays green and the sesame seeds stay light. Much prettier looking. I do like pretty looking food. Eat with the eyes first for me.

Next is to figure out the easiest way I can make the ‘bun/skin’ making as I still cannot use my left shoulder and hand that much still due to my frozen shoulder. I have been thinking of a simple way in bed resting each nights. kekekekekeke

Finally I tried doing everything using my Kenwood titanium and I only wrap. Trial and error until it is ok to write out a recipe – hence the easy char siu baozi is born! It also takes only 3 hours max from starting to tummy!

I must have made this about 5 times now in so many weeks. Before I only ever make baozi once in a blue moon as I can easily buy here in London. Lockdown ……punya pasal. We have to make everything ourselves. Luckily I like cooking.

TIP – I will take a pic and update when I can get the flour I preferred. I made a second round for these pics yesterday using cake flour and it was not too bad but not as white as the other bao flour with a green cabbage in front of the packaging. You can get the flour from most Chinese supermarket in UK. Any low gluten bleached flour is all right to use. Just your baozi will be less white.

Update 07/01/2022 This is the flour I used besides the cake flour in the old pics.

A friend recently is very interested in learning this dish. Maybe because she sees I eat a lot of this. It’s my go to lazy dish. When I am wrapping, I tend to wrap a big batch and bagged them into my freezer.

Then when I am hungry and want some food I would just make an easy chicken or mushroom stock, add a few of these babies from my freezer, some fried shallots with oil and any vegetables I can find in my fridge. Sometimes I add in an egg or two. Lunch or dinner is served within 20 minutes.

This brand of wrappers is the bigger ones so perfect for wrapping Sui Kow as I like to put in a lot of big bits of prawns. No I am not making my own wrappings though at one time when these wrappers were no on sale for 6 months I thought I might have to. Phew…..not that hardworking but was considering buying a pasta machine.

If you can only find the smaller wrappers then chop your prawns smaller.

As for my broth I use anchovies powder or mushroom powder or chicken powder if there’s no home made stock in my freezer. The mushroom stock I buy from the Japan is very good. It is entirely up to you of course.