Thus far I have cooked 2 dishes. – Salted fish steamed with pork belly

Salted fish braised with toufo.

Fry toufo after coating with a mixture of rice and corn flours before frying garlic and shallots. Add the carrots and a whole head of Chinese leaf cabbage. Including the soaked mushrooms and the soaking liquid. Seasoned with a touch of oyster sauce, salt and pepper and light soy sauce. Hubby loves it.

Slicing, frying and packing.

Signed Sealed Delivered – All mine

Zeepers – Keepers

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When I am gifted something, I like to make the best use of it. I like to think ummm……’out of the box’ sort to speak and I enjoy tremendously the drafting period.

I was given some chayote fruits and I wanted to cook something different with them. I have 2 ideas and today I used one fruit to make ngoh hiang. My only criticism is that next time I would not use my nakiri knife. I would avoid julienning them so finely because I missed the ‘bite’. Hence next time I shall slice thicker if I use them like so.

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The joy of hubby working from home is having lunch with him in the garden. Such a day as today makes it special. The sun is shining, the hubby though British enjoys and loves my cooks and can take spicier than me!

Step A – blend onions and garlic and fry in your pot slowly.

Step B – blend the Fresh Chili, dried chili, curry powder, lemon grass whites and tauchu (fermented yellow beans). Add a tad of the mashed sweet potatoes to help blend easier.

Step C – blend the washed and soaked dried shrimps.

Step D – After frying everything for about 15 minutes, it’s time to rinse the blender out. Make sure all the steps from A – C are done. Rinse it with some water and add in your chicken stock. Use any other stock you want but I happened to have and prefer chicken stock. I do not like my kuah rebus to look brown. Add in your mashed sweet potatoes. Allow everything to come to a boil. Then, let it simmer on low heat for 30 minutes.

Optional – Today the sweet potatoes are a tad stringy. I decided to blend them a little. Hubby does not like the stringy bits. I am going to be extra kind to him. I saved half a poached chicken breast from the chicken rice the other day for him. He don’t know it yet but he is going to buy us tickets to Malaysia for Christmas – hahahahahahaha

It is much easier to cook mee rebus than say, curry chicken. Once you blended A, fry in pan, then B and so forth. When your broth is simmering, tidy the stuff into the dishwasher. You can then go watch television and pick your beansprouts. To assemble, just boil some water in your kettle to rinse your noodles and beansprouts. Put the prawns fritters into the air fryer to crisp up and then just serve on top of your dish. Make the dish your own family recipe but adding or taking anything out you do not like.

TIPs – Seasoning is the time you adjust to your taste. A pinch of salt, sugar, more chili if you need spicier. I added some black pepper freshly ground in the frying process. We are now told turmeric and black pepper are good for us. Have fun cooking and making the recipe your own.

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This is an update post to my old post HERE with TIPs I have learned with age. I like to think with age come wisdom? I much preferred to make it this way nowadays. It is easier and for me a lot more convenient. My recipe remains the same but cooking method differ. I do not do everything in a day.

One day to wash, portion my chicken and marinate. Another day to cook and lastly to assemble and steam. I usually make quite a few to gift to friends and feed my freezer.

I don’t like my rice mushy but al dante. I actually give my chicken a spa treatment, chopped and marinate them beforehand, 2 days ago. I stored them in vacuum sealed containers. I also cooked the chicken and mushrooms yesterday and soaked my rice last night. Today it is only a matter of slicing the Chinese sausages, assembling and steaming them. I made 2kg of glutinous rice and a whole big fat chicken it takes two rounds of steaming. Tasting and packing takes time.

TIP – Save some of the chicken oil to oil your stainless steel tin ramekins.

TIP – I have discovered it is better to use water chestnut flour. Corn starch turns your stock watery but water chestnut flour would not.

TIP – When you fill your stainless steel ramekins, tap it on a chopping board but do NOT press hard. If you press hard you will have uncooked rice in the middle! Tapping is done at a slight angle so your rice don’t jump out.

TIP – Arrange your filled ramekins on your steamer. Then add the soaking rice water to just barely noticeable on top. That would be enough if you have soaked overnight.

TIP – I prefer a 40 minutes steaming on medium heat after water boiled. If you plan to freeze and steam again before eating adjust your time accordingly.

With all my love – enjoy making. They freeze extremely well. To eat just defrost in fridge overnight and them steam for like 10 minutes. Double the time if steam from frozen but common sense prevails – aka depending on the size of you LMK

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I cooked a simple one pot braised dish tonight but thought I will blog it for my son. He bought his own place and moved out for a few years now and he has picked up some cooking skills along the years. In fact in the last year he has been cooking his own food a lot and so his skills is much improved, The wonderful thing is he is actually enjoying it. He said cooking his own food saves him a lot of monies. I attribute that to his frugal mum and her Chinese teaching! On the other hand my gal is not that interested in cooking except learning the few dishes she loves! Alamak!

Many a times I get a text or a call, “mum how do I cook this or that” or even “mum, I remember that sauce you cooked for…., how do I cook it?” I have to admit, it gladdens my heart. One gained a bit of knowledge here and there and a lot of peoples’ post a recipe for others to follow but I noticed they never give out the “important” tips! I like to think I am not like that at all. I share everything I know because to me there is actually no point in keeping the knowledge I have gained as secrets, for each individual cook will ultimately turn out to be different. No one can replicate another cook exactly even if the recipe is followed to the letter.

Tip – Rinse the bought fried toufo with hot water and drain before using. This will remove the “factory oil” taste.

Sauce – Water from the soaked mushrooms, sieved to remove impurities. Oyster sauce (1 tbsp), salt & Pepper, pinch of sugar and I used water chestnut flour instead of cornflour to thicken. It might be an age thing but I have moved away from using a lot of soy sauces or cooking anything with thick, sweet, sticky sauces. Not sure why but I have gone off those for the moment. I have been using water-chestnut flour more instead of corn-starch for sauces. It is lower in carbohydrates too. It cannot be a substitute for all food but for sauces it is fine.

TIP – It is important to freeze your beef beforehand to harden it a bit and use a very sharp knife to slice to 1mm thickness or in the case thinness! Actually if you learn to handle beef well, there is no such thing as tough beef, well not in my book anyway!

TIP – Just before you add your beef to your pot, you can marinate with anything you like, salt & pepper, soy sauce, cornflour if you want velveting but I did nothing today. I tend to stay away from using ‘tenderiser’ powder like bicarbonate soda etc. If you slice thinly you just do not need it. However the most important thing to remember is to add a couple tablespoon of oil and mix well just before adding to your pot as this will separate them nicely and they won’t clump together. I used shallots and garlic oil. Of course you may use sesame oil.

All my TIPs are based on my experiences of cooking almost daily for nearly 3 decades. Enjoy.

Topped with some forages from my garden. Wash and soak in cold water with a touch of vinegar before using.

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Salted chicken is so easy to make at home. This is the simplest no fuss recipe. You buy the chicken and unlike the British people, we Chinese like to clean our chicken with salt and rinse before eating. In the winter this is a good dish and easy to prepare and steam on lazy days when you are a bit cold and lazy. My chicken was marinated for 3 days. Adjust your salt to suit. If marinate longer, less salt and so forth. Not actually rocket science but cooking experiences is useful.

You can actually vacuum sealed your chicken and cook it in a Sousvide machine if you like. A simple way as I don’t like to use a lot of other ‘brown’ sauces. I like the clean look, not muddy brown look so no soy sauce, oyster sauce etc. A nice chicken won’t need all those. Eat clean and simple better. Of course you can add ginseng, mushrooms, red dates etc but today I am just lazy and I just want to show off the near perfect cornfed chicken skin.

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Today I treated my family to a special noodle dish from Sarawak. It’s been awhile since I made this and although it is called Red Kolok Mee, no colouring was used. Well at least not me. As for the steps of cooking please have a read here –

https://www.julieolive.co.uk/2019/08/22/kampua-mee-kolok-mee-pok/

Nowadays you can make char sui anytime in the air fryer and it’s quite fast and no frills like I did today. However if you did not marinate your pork overnight feel free to liberally poke it with a sturdy fork before marinating. I did it as soon as I went down to the kitchen this morning. Some days you just do not know what to cook and I just decided this was going to be today’s dish, right before I fell asleep last night!

The char sui was roasted in my air fryer for 30 minutes at 190C, from room temperature. 20 minutes on one side and I flipped over for another 10 minutes. I set my temperature and time according to the thickness of my pork belly. Give it a go as practise makes perfect. I actually wanted to light the BBQ to char them but was too lazy and the family were starving. So I just took the char sui to my garden on a tin plate and torched them a bit to get the char with an industrial blow torch.

Print

Sarawak Red Kolo (Kolok) Mee 哥罗面

Notes

TIP – Noodles need to be drenched in boiling water and then immediately into cold water to give them that ‘bouncy’ or QQ texture.

TIP – Invest in a blow torch and use them to torch your char sui and other meat. It brings out a better taste and looks better. Do not buy the expensive silly cooking blow torch. Get one from the DIY shops. They are the best! 

TIP – make your mince with added pork lard for the little ‘crackling’ for a much better taste. Add in garlic and shallots.

For my char sui recipe —–> https://www.julieolive.co.uk/2020/07/22/char-siu-chinese-bbq-pork-ala-julies-recipe/

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Today I dismembered a cornfed chicken and used half of it to stir fry blackbeans. The hubby and daughter are big fans of blackbeans. I, myself can either take it or leave it. However we all love leeks and carrots. As such this dish was born. Just a simple stir fry but very satisfying to see them both enjoying it.

As I amble towards the twilight years of my life, I noticed a slight change of style in my cooking. I find myself using less sauces be it dark or light soy sauce, oyster and all manners of prepared bottled or jarred paste or sauces. I noticed this as I do not need to replace my cupboard staples often. I am also not sure why myself. I am an avid follower of cooking reels and the amount of oil, sauces, sugars etc they used really puts me off. I don’t use much ready made paste because it is just as easy for me to make a batch and freeze myself. Then I know there’s no E numbers in what I eat, the bad stuffs you know.

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I planned to start using up all the purchases I have brought back from my recent trip back to Malaysia. There seem to be an overkill with my shopping spree. However it means I need less shopping now. Only the normal groceries like milk and vegetable top-ups.

So it is out with the waxed meats and a tin of abalone. Soaked the amazing huge Japanese mushrooms and dried scallops. Soaked the rice for an hour and it is then just a matter of assembling. Today I am just using Jasmine rice. Luckily I have shallots, garlic and ginger oil all ready with all the crisps. For reference to my other post of Lap Mei Fan the link is here -> Lap Mei Fan Below are pics with guide and tips.

p/s I used 3 cups of rice so the liquids I used (mushroom soaking liquids, the dried scallops soaking wine and the abalone sauce) all about 3 cups, same as the rice 1:1 ratio.

The post Claypot waxed meat Rice (Lap Mei Fun) 腊味饭 – made simple appeared first on Just Julie.

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House Special Devon crabs fried rice

Ingredients

• Garlic and shallots flavoured oil
• White crab meat
• Brown crab meat
• Ginger
• Shallots
• Minced garlic
• Yellow bean paste
• Salt, Sugar
• Drizzle of rice wine
• Coriander and spring onions

Instructions

• For instructions, please refer to pics

While frying, taste and season to your taste buds. Pinch of sugar, salt, pepper and rice wine round the side of wok before heat off. DO NOT add soy sauce, fish sauce, sesame oil, oyster sauce etc etc. I want the clean taste of CRAB

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