Yum Woon Sen - Thai Glass Noodle Salad

I've tried this dish when I was in Bangkok about 2 years ago. This salad really 'opens' your appetite. We wanted to learn to prepare this dish since we had extra glass noodle in our cupboard. However, we didn't know what is it called in Thai. So, we started googling and googling... and finally, we managed to google out the dish! Happiness and excitement filled us as we read the recipe and watched some videos about it too!

It turns out that this dish requires some time and effort for the preparation although ingredients were easily bought in any supermarket. And so the preparation begins with cutting up some garlic, wood ear fungus, tomatoes, bird's eye chilli, coriander and basil leaves. Squeeze out lemon juice from a lemon and if you like, you can grate some zest for it too!

Next, prepare the mince pork in stock. What I did was stir fry the pork for a couple of minutes. Then pour in water with chicken cube and boil them for about 10 minutes. If you have pork cubes, I think it would be splendid : ) While letting the pork simmer away, blanch the wood ear fungus and some shrimps. And, not forgetting the important ingredient - the glass noodles need to be boiled until it is cooked (it will turn transparent).

Once all the preparation is complete, this is the simplest part - mixing them all together. And also this is where your saliva will start drooling too!!! Hehehehe... it affected both of us at this stage : P

Firstly, put in the garlic and chilli into a mixing bowl. Then pour in equal amounts of lemon juice, fish sauce and sugar. This means that if your lemon juice is 5 tablespoons, then it will be 5 tablespoons of fish sauce and sugar. When you mix the lemon juice and fish sauce, my oh my, the aroma is so good that it makes your taste buds tingle and the sudden flood of saliva in your mouth too! (This is speaking from experience...lol) Give it a good stir to mix up the stuff, and taste. If you find it too sour, add in some sugar to balance it out. 

Once the 'dressing' is good enough for you, put in the rest of the ingredients. Snip the glass noodle a couple of times so that it helps to 'trap' the goodness from the dressing and other condiments when you are mixing the ingredients in your bowl. If you find the noodles are abit dry, pour in a couple tablespoons of stock from the pork. And... voila! It is completed!

I feel this is one of the most tedious dish I have ever made. Lots of chopping and blanching but the outcome was very fulfilling. We noted that the chilli and garlic were very strong and we'll probably need to reduce the portion for both. Apart from that, it was a success and we're looking forward for another round of this fantastic salad!

TheLoyalFan says: 'Very yummy... especially in the cold. I like that they call it a salad. Allows me to eat more... hehehehe'

Steamed Fish with Soy Sauce

I think fish is quite a tricky ingredient or even a dish to cook. First, one needs to know how to select a good & fresh fish. Then one needs to know methods of cleaning and relevant ingredients to prepare a dish. To be honest, I roughly know how to select a good fish but I'm still not sure how to clean it. But I'm sure the fishmonger will be able to help me on that.

I like to eat fish. OK, correction - I like to eat seafood! So anything that is from the sea, river or farmed fishes from the pond, I like to eat them. Yum yum! We tried cooking steamed fish with frozen cods and haddocks but somehow the texture of the flesh is not nice : ( This time, we went to the market to buy fresh fish, specifically cod fish! 

And the steaming begins!

First, make sure the fish is completely thawed to room temperature. Give it a rinse to remove the ice and if you find the fish is too big, cut into half portion and lay them out flat on a plate. Sprinkle some finely sliced ginger on top of your fish and steam it. There are 2 ways of steaming fish (that I know of) - via the microwave or the conventional water steam method. I did the conventional steaming method and timing is very important for fish. If you steam too long, the flesh might become too 'rubbery' and rough. Hence, I always follow my father's method of steaming fish - small fish, 7 minutes; medium, 9 minutes. To be safe, always check the fish whether it is cooked completely. Once done, we can now prepare the sauce!

I've learnt this recipe from my father... hahahaha! Well, my father is really pro at steaming fish. He can even watch TV while steaming it : ) Anyways, fry some garlic and little bit of ginger in sesame oil (vegetable oil is fine too!). Be generous on the oil as it helps the frying alittle, perhaps add on another tablespoon. Then, pour in soy sauce and fry it. Quickly pour in some wine and remove from heat. Add alittle bit of water to dilute the sauce, otherwise, it can be quite salty. And that's it!

We really enjoyed our steamed fish. You can actually 'taste' the freshness and sweetness from the flesh. Plus the meat texture was soft and melts in your mouth. Mmm~ 

TheLoyalFan says: ' There is nothing better than a steamed fresh fish except maybe a bigger steamed fresh fish : )'

A Special Treat for Us

A special day needs a special recipe. Well, I'm just kidding. I feel that any day can be a special day to cook up a special meal. However, we thought of taking this opportunity to treat ourselves with the real thing - beef steak!

We have tried Heston's method of cooking a steak with pork chops last month. This time, we got steak and tried it again. The outcome was indeed lovely and great! No gravy needed ^_^

The salad was drizzled in home made honey mustard dressing. How is this made? Simples! All you need is garlic, honey, mustard, oil and some balsamic vinegar. Chop finely a clove of garlic and mix it together with equal portion of honey & mustard. Add slightly more oil to make the dressing smoother. Generally, I think this dressing has a thicker consistency compared to vinegrette which is more diluted. So don't worry if the dressing is thicker.

The brown sauce on the potato mash? I cheated on that... hehehe. Well, you can make your own brown sauce by frying some onions, add in some oyster sauce / soya sauce, followed by flour that is diluted in water. Because we bought an instant brown sauce granules, we are trying to finish them but we did some modifications - added some port in it : P Cooking wine would be fine too!

This meal has made us really stuffed and contented. We are also pleased with our 'western food' skills too. After staying in the UK for about 5 months, we are able to cook some western meals without the need of going to spend a fortune : ) This meal only costed us RM35 for both of us and I'm sure you cannot get this rate for 'Valentine's Menu' at many restaurants. Maybe Mamak shops or Chinese coffee shops. LOL!

TheLoyalFan says: 'Steak and friends sure were good!'

Friends? Well, they did complimented each other : )

Till then, keep nomming!

Pork Braised in Vinegar

I've heard some different terms for this dish... Pork trotters braised in black vinegar, Ginger Vinegar (direct translation from Cantonese) but the outcome of these are all the same with 3 main ingredients - pork, ginger and black vinegar.

This is a 'famous' dish for confinement ladies. If I'm not mistaken, the Chinese believed that eating more ginger will 'heat' up the lady's body so that she does not catch a cold. At the same time, the ginger also 'removes' wind within our system as well. It's like some herbal remedy for confinement; you must eat ginger for 1 month! : )

But we're not here to talk about confinement. For me, this dish can be considered as comfort food. I like vinegar and whenever I have the braised seafood soup in the 2nd course, I would pour in a spoonful of black vinegar. Yum yum yum... As far as I can remember, I always perceived that this dish is a difficult dish to prepare and cook. So I thought of giving it a try...

Cut pork into cutlets. The proper part used in traditional cooking is the trotters but it's kinda difficult to buy it from supermarkets here. Furthermore, it's quite fat : P So we mixed ours with pork belly and pork chops for some 'pork fat' but not too much of it. Then, smash ginger (lots and lots of it). Fry the ginger with some oil in a pot until it is fragrant. Add in pork and stir fry until the outer layer is cooked. Then, pour in the vinegar and some water if you wish to dilute the sourness / sweetness. Let it simmer for an hour and a half and served it warm.

As you can see, my sauce is very black because I didn't use black vinegar. Instead, I used sweetened vinegar. I also added in water because the vinegar was very sweet but not sour. Hence, I've added some vinegar into the dish to make it sharper. Another thing to note is this dish should be braised in a claypot, if possible. I'm not sure how true is this, the reason this dish is braised in a claypot is to avoid 'metal' taste in it. This is due to the nature of the vinegar and may corrode some 'metal' from the pot. 

Well, although I've braised mine in a stainless steel pot, the outcome was still good. The pork was soft and tasty. We enjoyed it very much with our rice.

TheLoyalFan says: ' Anyone can enjoy this even if you're not pregnant... ho ho ho!'

One more dish checked in my list and I'm surprised that this dish is not difficult to prepare. You don't need to hire a professional in order to eat this. All you need is time to braise it : )

Pork & Leeks with rice

Have you tried chicken/fish/pork fried with ginger & spring onion? It is a common dish in all chinese restaurants. Trust me, no matter how 'high class' or simple coffee shops that you've visited, this 'ginger & spring onion' combo is definitely in their menu : )

However, it is rather not 'value-for-money' when you buy spring onion in the UK. Hence, as an alternative, we decided to replace spring onion with... leeks!!! You see, 1 packet of leeks can cook up 3 meals whereas the spring onion is just merely a garnish for a dish - not so worth it : P

Anyways, we have tried to cook this once and it is quite tasty. So I thought of blogging this up and here goes:

Marinate diced pork with pepper and soya sauce. Then slice up ginger and leeks. Heat oil in a pan and stir fry the ginger until fragrant. Thereafter, add in the leeks and fry for a while. Put in the pork, season it and add some water for some sauce (compliments well with rice. YUM!). You can add some wine for a nice 'sweet' taste. Well, I like to put wine in almost all dishes that I cooked.

The outcome? Slurp slurp SLURP!!! It is 'TOO GOOD, mind blasting' as Rusell Peters would say. When you boil the leeks, it will soften and caramelise. This thickens the sauce. With some sauce onto the rice, mmm... speechless! The leeks give a slight different texture than spring onion although they're from the same family (i think). Leeks are more robust and can be cooked longer, i.e. stewing. No need to worry about overcooking : )

TheLoyalFan says: 'So good with rice!!! It was so difficult to stop eating more.'

As the weather becomes colder and bitter this week, food like this just makes you all warm and fuzzy... Ahhh!