ABC Soup

You may wonder... How did this soup got its name. What ingredient represents A, B or even C? My mum calls it ABC soup; my mum-in-law calls the same name too. Hmmm, I guess maybe because it is really, really easy to prepare and it is just as simple as ABC ^_^

Firstly, cut up some carrots, potatoes, tomatoes and an onion (heehee the words rhyme!). If you have Chinese cabbage in your fridge, you can chop some up too! The Chinese cabbage adds sweetness in the flavoring. 

Before that, boil a pot of water with some chicken or pork. Preferably parts with bones such as drumsticks, thighs, ribs or the porky's legs. Once done with the chopping, put all the veggies into the pot. Let it boil for about 20 minutes and turn down the heat to let it simmer for another 30/40 minutes. You can add in a chicken cube for seasoning, or salt / soy sauce is fine as well.

And that's it! Your soup is ready to serve and be eaten! XD

Have a great Thursday and weekend will be here sooner than you think. ^_^

Tata!

Fried Nam Yee Pork

Nam Yue or 'nam yee', is fermented bean curd that is sold in bottles or in tins. This bean curd is fermented with salt, rice wine, sesame oil or vinegar and red yeast rice. Do not be confused with Foo Yue, which is also another type of fermented bean curd. The difference is that the foo yue is not soaked in dark red brine. Both of these are easily available at Chinese or Asian supermarkets. Here's a photo of the nam yee that I bought earlier this year : ) Usually back home, the nam yee that we buy is in bottles - small or big bottles. 

Nam Yee is the tin on the right. Wordings and picture are shown to ensure you have bought the right thing : P

Many chinese dishes use this ingredient for cooking such as the vegetarian dish that we eat during Chinese New Year, stewed nam yee pork and... fried chicken wings/ pork belly/ ribs at Chinese restaurants back home!  I had some extra nam yee and decided to make fried pork instead : )

This dish is really simple and anyone from any age can do it. First, take a cube of nam yee and mash it up into a paste. You can scoop out some red sauce and pour into the same plate. Then, marinate your pork pieces and let the marinate seep into the meat for as long as you want. Some people leave the marinate in the fridge/freezer a day or longer, and for some, I think half an hour will do the trick too! (That would be me... all excited to fry them and eat them up! Yums.)

Heat up the oil in a pan or wok, just like how you would prepare for deep fry. While waiting for the oil to heat up, place the pork pieces into a batter. This time, I prepared my batter on a separate plate and I used plain flour and corn flour. I wanted to try which method will be nicer (wet or dry batter).
Once the oil is ready, then let the frying begin! *Feeling all excited*

As you can see, mine are a little burnt. LOLS! Apologies on that. I forgotten to lower down the heat for the oil while frying. Hence, the burnt. The proper method would be, when heating up oil - high heat; and when you start frying, medium heat. Reason being is to ensure your meat is thoroughly cooked. When there's too much heat, the crust will be cooked very fast but the core may not be cooked. Hence, the burnt porkies. Poor porkies...

Aside from the burnt, the pork is super yummylicious. Tasty, aromatic and crispy! As for the batter, dry batter would produce a crispier texture on your meat. However, dry batter would cause a thick of layer of sediments in your oil as it is easier to come off from the meat.

TheLoyalFan says: 'Very crispy and it reminds me of economy rice back home...'

Well, our nam yee supply has finally finished and we're off to try another ingredient... soon!

Have a great weekend folks!

Garlicky Pork

Since there is only pork in our fridge this week, I found a recipe on a blog (Lily's Wai Sek Hong) that was recommended by my cousin. Go check them out if you like to try some Chinese cuisine : )

This dish is very simple. First, smash up some garlic, cut them into slices and fry with oil in a pan. Once the garlic is quite fragrant, put in sliced pork (pork chops or pork bellies) and give it a good stir. When the meat has become brown on all sides, season it with white pepper, soya sauce and sugar. Continue frying until the sauce has dried up and left only oil in the pan.
Finito!

Although this is a very simple dish, it turned out to be really delicious! The oil that seeped out from the pork complemented well with rice too! Yum Yum! Also, you might think that the meat would be dry and tough. But it was completely the opposite - it was juicy and tasty... Truly a chinese dish...mmm~

TheLoyalFan says: 'Taste like caramelised siew yoke. The fatty bits were yummy!'

Oh yes, the fatty bits were really soft and melts in your mouth. *slurp*

Till then, keep nomming and have a wonderful weekend!

Pork Curry Noodles

Curry. Malaysian's all time favorite dish. Ahh, yes and now the Brits too! I think their favorite is Tikka Masala which I haven't had a chance to try it yet... but soon I will try : )

Anyways, I think curry can be either easy or tricky to prepare. The easy version - just get instant curry paste. It's foolproof and definitely taste good. The tricky version - fry your own curry powder. I've tried this once and I burnt the powder because TheLoyalFan had told me to fry the powder until the oil 'seeps' out of the powder, which it didn't happened at all and the powder became black and burnt : (

This time, we've decided to give it another go although we do have the curry paste. And, we're trying to finish our ingredients here before our rental ends in September...

Let the Curry cooking begins!

First, fry up some ginger and onions with a generous amount of oil. Perhaps double the portion of your usual meat frying oil volume. Then, pour in some curry powder. If you want more spicy, you can add in some chilli (fresh / dried ones) or chilli powder. Give it a good sitr fry for about 1 minute and pour in your meat. I use pork today because... there is only pork in my fridge. LOL!

While frying the pork and the curry mixture, you may need to add some water to prevent your curry from getting burnt. Add a little bit of water to make the paste more 'smooth' rather than lumpy during the frying. Then add more water. This will depends on how thick you want your gravy. More water will dilute the gravy and the spiciness. Let it simmer for about 15 minutes or until the meat is thoroughly cooked. Season the curry with salt and pepper to ensure there is enough taste. Add in some milk / coconut milk / yogurt (either one will be fine) into your curry, give it a good stir and serve!

This is the usual method for our curry cooking - simple and simply delicious!

As you are simmering away your curry, it is nice to have some carbs to compliment them. We've had spaghetti for this and we've fried a dish of celery for a balance meal ^_^ Bon appétit! 

I'm glad that this time I didn't burn the curry powder. Thanks to my mother-in-law's advise when she was here. However, I OD-ed the curry powder a little and we were having watery nose and a glass of milk for me to reduce the spiciness : P We concluded that 3 tablespoons of curry powder would do the trick for a 2 persons' curry. Also, if you wish to make extra portion for your next meal, it is better to use milk than coconut milk. Apart from that, it was really, really, really good and satisfying!

TheLoyalFan says: 'As close as we can get to Curry Mee lah! Hehe...'

Om nom nom noms... Curry dish checked and on to the next dish!

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!

Sweet & Sour Pork with Rice

It is time to celebrate! TheLoyalFan's exam has finished and we can celebrate C.N.Y. without any worries or stress. For that reason, we made one of our favourite dishes back home - 'Kou Lou Yoke Fan' or simply Sweet & Sour Pork with rice.

This recipe was made by Mum when she came to the UK for Christmas last year and I thought we shall give it a try... weeee!

The preparation was split into 2 parts - frying the pork and making the sauce. First, marinate the pork that has been cut into cubes with pepper and soya sauce. Then coat the pork in batter. For this, I put equal amount of plain flour and corn flour onto the pork - malas to make the batter in a different plate (LOL!). Once the pork cubes are coated evenly, deep fry them until golden brown.
Next, fry the onions with the same oil used for frying but just 2 or 3 tablespoons will do. Then stir fry the tomatoes and cucumbers (and capsicums if you want) for a short while. Pour in some water and season with tomato ketchup, vinegar and sugar for the sweet & sour taste. And... voila!

We just LURVE sweet & sour pork! I think it is one of my default dishes when I needed to tapao dinner for myself. Ahhh... I miss Brickfields Sin Kee's food. But now that I know how to make it, it will treat my 'missing Malaysian food' illness. hehehe...
However, one thing to note from this dish was the taste of the sauce should be concentrated and fuller so that when it is mixed with pork and rice, you can still taste the sweet & sour effect.

TheLoyalFan says: 'Very crispy pork... I wish there were more...'

The pork was very crispy indeed! We'll be making more supermarket trips this weekend to look for some ingredients to prepare more Chinese dishes for the C.N.Y. period : )

Till then, have a great weekend and keep nomming!

Can we cook like Heston Blumenthal?

One of Heston's episodes that we watched a couple of days ago was about beef and we tried to cook our pork chop the same way like he did for his steak... hehehe, well, it's all about experimenting and we thought of trying this method : )

For the conventional method, it takes 3 to 4 minutes to 'sear' one side of a steak and then turn the other way. But Heston cooked differently - instead of leaving the meat to 'sit' on the pan for that amount of time, his was slow and easy, turning the sides at every 15 to 20 seconds. Hence, to start off with our experiment, pour in the oil and make sure the oil is super hot, like 190c (he has a thermometer to check it... but I, just agak agak only : P). Then I seasoned my pork chops with salt and the searing began. With a pair of chopsticks on my right hand and a frying spatula on my left, I turned the pork chops based on the timing until it is cooked completely. Then I season some pepper and pour in a glass of port & a knob of butter into the pan and let it boil for a short while and remove the pan from the heat. Let the meat rest for about 5 minutes and it is ready to serve.

The pork chops turned out to be really nice! It was juicy and it is slightly brown on the skin. However, I should have poured in more port as mentioned in the recipe though... the sauce was really sweet and it complimented with our veggies and mash : )

TheLoyalFan says: 'The wine sauce goes very well with the pork...'

So, back to the question... Can we cook like Heston? Can... but it would be nice to have a thermometer though... hehehe.

Pork Mooli

Tonight, I've tried to cook Mum's pork mooli (raddish). Its flavour is a combination of sour and spicy but I prefer it a little more spicy : )

So here goes: fry the onions in a pan or a 'wok' until fragrant. Then put the marinated diced pork and fry until it is cooked. Continue to put some dried chillies. If you prefer alittle spark instead of the full on spicyness, remove the seeds. After that, you can put the cut mooli, a couple of assam keping and water. Be careful on the ratio between the dried chillies and the assam keping though. When I was cooking this dish, I needed to 'balance' out the taste because the sourness was quite intense. Hence, I would suggest maybe 2 dried chillis and 1 assam keping - that should do the trick : ) If it is too sour, not to worry, just put sugar to reduce the sourness. Add oyster sauce and pepper for seasoning.
Let it simmer for about 20 to 30 minutes or until the mooli is soft and cooked (it will be transparent). I like my gravy to be lesser so I will let it simmer without a lid  for a while longer to reduce liquid from it.

And the final product would looked something like this:

The final verdict? Oh it was good! It warms your body up due to the spicyness and it feels really, really good. 'Happy days' as quoted by Mr. Jamie Oliver. Oh well, it definitely was 'happy days' for me and TheLoyalFan during this cold season.

TheLoyalFan says: 'Very good with rice!'

Ingredients: Pork, Mooli, Onion, Dried Chilli and Assam Keping.
(Measurements? What kind of cuts? No specified lah, boss... all agak agak only, ala our mothers' cooking method ^_^)