Peng's Home style Bean Curd

 

This is quite a delicious bean curd dish with very 'Chinese' taste. It has a well mix of meat, bean curd and greens and yet not too spicy - which would make a perfect dish for me to make for my Dad when I go back to Singapore next month. This is the recipe from Fushia Dunlop's book which I have used extensively with great success.

Ingredients

75g boneless lean pork, thinly sliced and marinated with 1 teaspoon of Shaoxing wine and 1/2 teaspoon salt

1 block firm bean curd, drained (about 550g)

1 large or 2 medium leeks, green parts only

2 fresh chillies

1 tablespoon finely chopped garlic

3 tablespoons black fermented beans, rinsed

200ml stock/water with a little chicken stock granules

1/2 teaspoon dark soy sauce

salt to taste

1/2 teaspoon potato flour mixed with 1 tablespoon cold water

1/2 teaspoon sesame seed oil

Cooking oil for deep frying

Steps

1. Marinate the pork and set aside while you prepare the other ingredients.
2. Cut the bean curd into oblong slices about 1cm thick each.
   
   
   
   
   
3. Slices the leeks (original recipe calls for spring onions, green parts only) and chillies into thin diagonal slices.
4. Heat the oil for deep frying the bean curd over high heat and fry each slice until just tinged golden brown. Drain and set aside on kitchen paper to absorb excess oil.
   
   
   
5. Pour off the oil from the deep frying pan, reserving about 3 tablespoons and reheat over high heat until smoking. Add the garlic and chillies and let it sizzle for a few seconds until fragrant.
6. Add the pork and as it becomes half-cooked, throw in the black fermented beans and stir fry well. Add in the leeks towards the end and mix well.
   
   
   
7. When all is fragrant, pour in the stock/water, add in the deep fried bean curd and dark soy sauce and let it come to a boil.
8. Reduce the heat to medium and let it simmer for a few minutes so the bean curd absorbs the flavours of the sauce, season with salt if necessary.
   
   
   
9. Add the potato flour mixture and stir into the sauce, thus thickening it giving it a nice glossy finish. Turn off the heat and stir in the sesame seed oil before serving.
   
   
   

Grass Jelly Longan 凉粉龙眼

This is again a 'quick' way of making a quite famous dessert, I would say in Singapore. It may look scarey to some, but it's definitely one of my comfort food. I found the powder mix in the Asian store in Malmö recently and was quite happy making it for myself (Johan doesn't like it) for the hot summer - it's perfect! It goes by a few names but here's a more detail description from Wikipedia.

Ingredients

Grass jelly mix

1 can of longan

Ice cubes

Steps

1. Follow the instructions on the package, I only used half this time as it makes a lot.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
2. Chill it in the fridge until set, then you can do two things - make a drink or make a dessert.
   
   
   
   
3. If you want to make a drink, just grate is coarsely and add enough sugar syrup with ice cubes.
   
   
   
   
   
   
4. To make the dessert, cut into large cubes and place in a bowl with as much longan as you want (that's the benefit of making your own dessert) and add some syrup from the longan can and ice cubes.
   
   
   

 

Chicken and Chirozo Paella

This is actually my second paella, the first I did was a seafood version. This one that I adapted from taste.au was much better and easier and really worth a try for those paella-novice. I placed some prawns towards the end at the same time I added the green peas but you can choose not to, or add other kind of seafood if you prefer.

Ingredients

500ml chicken stock (I used 500ml hot water and a chicken cube stock)
125ml white wine
1 pinch saffron threads 

3 chorizo sausages, thinly sliced
400g chicken breast, cut into 2cm pieces
1 red onion, finely chopped
1 red capsicum, seeded, finely chopped
8 cherry tomatoes, finely chopped
2 teaspoon sweet paprika 

220g paella rice 

150g fresh or frozen peas

15 prawns, with shells

Parsley leaves, to garnish

 

Steps

1. Combine the chicken stock, wine and saffron in a small saucepan over medium heat. Bring to a simmer. Remove from heat and set aside.
   
   
   
   
2. Heat a large frying pan or paella pan over high heat. Add the chorizo and cook, turning occasionally, for 2-3 minutes or until golden. Transfer to a plate.
   
   
   
3. Using the same pan with oil from frying the chirozo, add half the chicken to the pan and brown it. Transfer to the plate and set aside.
   
   
   
   
   
4. Turn the heat down to medium high and add the onion and capsicum to the pan and cook, stirring, for 5 minutes or until onion softens.
   
   
   
   
5. Add the tomato and paprika and cook, stirring, for 1 minute or until aromatic. Return the chorizo and chicken and stir to combine.
   
   
   
   
6. Sprinkle over the rice evenly and pour over the chicken stock mixture. Bring to the boil. Reduce heat to low and cook, uncovered, for 15 minutes or until rice is tender and liquid is almost absorbed.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
7. Scatter the peas over the rice and arrange the prawns over the peas, cover for another 5 minutes or until liquid is absorbed. Remove from heat. Garnish with parsley and serve hot.
   
   
   
   
   

 

Nonya Rice Dumplings 娘惹粽

Happy Swedish National Day! Or Happy Duanwu Jie (端午节)!The Chinese Dumpling Festival happens to fall on the same day as Sweden's very quiet national day so I thought I will make some of my favorite rice dumplings. I prefer these Nonya dumplings because they have less fatty meat and normally have a more pepperish/spicy kick to it. I took this recipe from Patsie Cheong's Homemade Nonya cookbook but halve the recipe and omitted some ingredients that I didn't have, but still made about 10-12 medium-size dumplings. One thing I would say, wrapping dumplings require practice and patience, and this Youtube video clip can get you started on the former ;)

Ingredients

(A) 600g glutinous rice, soaked for 3 hours

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 tablespoon sugar

2 tablespoon cooking oil

(B) 250g lean meat, poached and diced

40g chopped dried shrimps

125g candied winter melon strips, diced

15g dried mushroom, chopped

(C) 30g shallots

15g garlic

1.5 stalks of lemon grass

15g galangal

1/4 tablespoon chili padi, 

(D) 1/2 tablespoon soy bean paste

1 tablespoon sugar

1/2 tablespoon chili boh

25g coriander powder

1/4 teaspoon white pepper

1/2 teaspoon salt

Two boiled bamboo leaves for each dumpling, with corresponding number of straws to tie them.

Steps

1. Drain the rice and mix it with the rest of the ingredients in (A), set aside.
   
   
   
2. Pound or process the ingredients in (C) as finely as possible.
   
   
   
3. Heat up 2 tablespoon of cooking oil in a pan and fry (C) until fragrant.
4. Add the dried shrimps to the frying pan and fry until they are slightly roasted.
   
   
   
   
   
5. Add the meat, mushroom, candied winter melon and stir fry it until it is well mixed, this will be the filling. Let it cool before using.
   
   
   
   
6. Wrap the dumplings with rice-filling-rice sequence, using a deep pot, boil up half a pot of water with 1 tablespoon of salt. Add the dumplings in when it is boiling, then turn it to low heat and simmer for up to 5 hours. (Mine is still simmering away as I am posting this)
   
   
   
   
   
7. When they are done, hang them up on a hook to drain, eat when hot. You can reheat them by steaming of microwaving.