Yong Liew – Yong Tou Fo (Update)

Julie Olive — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 09:21:58 +0000

The hubby’s

Awhile ago I wrote a post on Yong Liew. In this dish, you stuff fish paste into different vessels. Then you fry them or cook them in your chosen broth. Please refer to this recipe here

Today I have an update. I tried this combo a few times. I found I really like it. Good fish paste is very hard to get in the UK. More often than not, I am most disappointed. Can’t even get the fish I want most times when I feel like making. So I decided to combine chicken and prawns and I found it very palatable. So this is a new take on Yong Liew I am not posting again my recipe again. Please use the link above as guide. Instead this update will be all pics with guidelines.

This paste is 500g chicken meat, 500g prawns, 1 tsp shallots oil, 2 heap tsp cornflour, salt + pepper to season and half cup water.

The Paste

This type of aubergines is best for yong liew

Slice half and flip the toufo pop over

Fat aubergines

I stuff bak choy and red chilies too

The cut out toufo and leftover paste …..

……used to stuff 2 mushrooms

As I am frying the stuffed vegetables, I decided to fry some prawn crackers first. This not only flavoured the oil but less wastage because I will bin the oil after.

TIPs 1 – Put in more oil in the beginning when frying the prawns crackers. Then remove as I go on.

TIP 2 – First fry the inside out stuffed toufo-pop. They need more oil to crisp all round evenly.

TIP 3 – Then comes the stuffed aubergines as they also needs more oil to fry. If you have stuffed the paste well, the stuffing will remain intact. Your pot must be just right for the pieces to sit up close and personal. This ensures the stuffing does not break loose or fall out.

TIP 4 – When frying the toufo, it is a MUST to handle gently and this soft toufo breaks easily. Remove some oil before placing the toufo in stuffing side down. Leave them to fry for a good 2 minutes before flipping gently or you will mess them up, aka breaking.

TIP 5 – Remove even more oil before frying mushrooms and chilies. When you tidy your chilies to stuff, you must consider which side to place them. This way, they can be placed stuffing side down in the oil. You literally only need to fry the paste side. Remember you do not need to fry the vegetables. This means your paste stuffing will NOT fall out of your chilies.

TIP 6 – You can stuff bak choy and anything you wish. Just needs to gently press the paste into the nooks and corners. Again you make sure oil is only like 1cm deep. Just fry the paste side for 2 minutes. Then flip and remove. The residue oil will wilt the leaves.

TIP 7 – You can freeze toufo-pop because they freeze well for months. You can also freeze ‘hard/tough’ vegetables like bitter gourds. But soft vegetables like aubergines, bak choy, long beans, do not freeze well. They become horribly soft and mushy when defrosted. Well, you can if you like baby food.

Side Note – After you stuffed your vegetables they are all in room temperature. When hot oil hits them, they cook in minutes. Please do not fry too long. This is especially important for the toufo-pop if you want to freeze them and air fry another day. Today I braised some with ginger and yellow beans because hubby is nursing a bad tooth abscess. Hence all the soft toufo goes to him but he loves the stuffed chilies too.

Prawn crackers with <3 from Kuching

Inside out toufo-pop

Up close and personal so no place for gaping

this one threatened to divorce the filling so I said if it does I will eat it first so it stayed

This is my plate. I don’t want rice and my hubby don’t like aubergines – Perfect!

The post Yong Liew – Yong Tou Fo (Update) appeared first on Just Julie.

Cod cheeks in yellow beans sauce

Julie Olive — Wed, 08 Feb 2023 13:12:25 +0000

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.

Ingredients

2 kg Cod cheeks
Ginger
Garlic
Shallots
Spring onions
Red chillies
Coriander

Seasonings

Whole yellow beans
Freshly ground Salt & Pepper
Dark soy sauce
Oyster sauce
Rice wine
Water + corn starch
Pinch of sugar

Fry the ginger, garlic and shallots and remove most ot them

Add in your roughly chopped yellow beans and fry a minute or so

This is the whole grain Taucu I am using. Roughly chopped with a pinch of sugar

add in cod cheeks

Dark soy sauce

Oyster sauce

a cup of water

rice wine and corn starch slurry

Heat off and add on fresh red chillies and spring onions – Done

The post Cod cheeks in yellow beans sauce appeared first on Just Julie.

yellow beans Archives - Just Julie

Yong Liew – Yong Tou Fo (Update)

Cod cheeks in yellow beans sauce

Ingredients

Ingredients

Seasonings