Bak Kut Teh - Pork in Herba Soup

For the uninitiated, BKT in general sense is Malaysian Chinese pork stewed in medicinal winter herbs (ironicaly, there is no winter in Malaysia, but in the early days, i.e. before global warming, getting stuck indoor during the monsoon season is a pretty cold affair).

To prepare Bak Kut Teh (BKT) is actually a very simple process, the complicated process is actually in the cleaning and preparing the pig gut and intestine, which needs to be cleaned thoroughly.

To prepare a good BKT, you will need,
a. pre-packed herbs, any brands will do, but my personal favourite is in the featured image. If by chance, if there is a good Chinese drug store in your neighbourhood who knows what is BKT, they will be able to prepare the herbal mixture

b. Garlic, it works best with the smoked type (i.e. the ones with the black peels)

c. Pig gut (tripe), which is cleaned throughly, (we will talk about this later), BKT is not BKT without this

d. Other very welcomed ingredients (classical ones are served without, but tasty ones are served with), including, mushroom and fried tofu

e. Coriander (no BKT is garnished without this, again,.... it ain't a BKT untill it is garnished with coriander)

How to cook this dish?, just follow the following steps,

a. Put the herb, garlic, pig gut (add intestines too for the full authenticity), lean pork (or flower pork, if you prefer some extend of fat, which actually adds to the taste)

b. Add water, and cook to boil with medium heat

c. Upon boiling, let it simmer in low-medium heat for 1 hour (at least), this will ensure the flavour of the herbs will be infused into the pork and the other ingredients. Watch the water level, a good benchmark will be, the water level to be exactly the same with the ingredients.

d. Before serving, add some chopped coriander to the stew, and you are all done

e. If by chance you have access to some Chinese fried oil stick (commonly known as Yow Char Kuay - in Cantonese), that will definitely deliver the killer blow!

The end result,



How to prepare the pig gut (or pig tripe), the goal is to remove a layer of film on the tripe which somewhat acts as a skin,
a. Trim out the fat on the gut using a pair of scisors, rinse through water once it is done (somewhat within 5 minutes)
b. Rub the inner surface (turn it inside out) and outer surface with coarse salt and rinse, do this twice. (somewhat done within 5 minutes too)
c. Rub with corn starch then with cooking oil thoroughly and rinse (pretty fast)
d. Scald with ginger, spring onion, and 1 table spoon of white vinegar for 3 minutes
e. And now, with a knife, scrape of the layer of film on the pork tripe (done somewhat within 10 minutes)
f. Cook it in the BKT mix!

Read More

Seafood Marinara Penne

Pasta is really the easiest thing to cook. It is so simple & delicious. The most important things is children love pasta. I find my child is always in a big mess when she eat spaghetti. Nowadays I prefer to cook penne or tri colour rotini when she is around during weekend. Less mess for me to clean up. The way Italian cook are quite similar to Chinese in terms of cooking a big pot to feed the whole family.

When use seafood for cooking pasta- pls use freshest & high quality seafood.
This will definitely give the "wow" factor to your pasta.

Recipes:

Handful of fresh prawn - Keep the shell intact, but slit & remove the vein from behind
Frozen mussel (from NZ)
Fresh squid or cuttle fish
Good quality olive oil
Salt & pepper
Garlic
1 Jar of organic pasta sauces or whole plum tomato
Parmesan Cheese (optional)

Method:
1) Cook pasta according to the packet instruction, keep half a cup of the pasta water
2) In a separate saucepan, heat about 2 tbsp of olive oil, garlic in.
3) In all the seafood.
4) In the pasta sauces, let it simmers to cook the seafood thoroughly.
5) Stir in the cooked pasta for 1 min, season with salt & pepper. Garnish with Parmesan cheese.

Read More

Summer - Blueberry Baked Cheese Cake

Summer has arrived. Let's get the ingredient ready & starts baking to celebrate summer.
Blueberries/ Cherries are some of the best summer fruits that I enjoyed.
1st: It is healthy
2nd: It has high antioxidants - make you looks younger
3rd: It is delicious

I have decided to baked a blueberry cheese cake.
A very simple one. In fact, I think this is a good recipes for the beginner.
Remember simple is good.

Recipes with reference to :
http://www.rte.ie/food/2008/1104/bakedcheesecake.html

There....that's my kitchen helper. Helping herself to the blueberries. That's the reason why the blueberries is missing. I have caught her with this pic.

Just follow the recipes & you won't go wrong because it is so simple. Lay the biscuits based nicely. It seems I did a great job. Evenly laid out the base.

Pour the cheese cake egg mixture in the tin ready for baking.
The baked cheese cake just out from the oven. Let it cool in the tin. Do not remove immediately.


Cosmetically dust the cheese cake with icing sugar. Nice~


Can't wait to cut a slice, served with more fresh blueberries.


A closer look. Anyone can bake a cheese cake. Enjoy~


p/s I love the bursting blueberries in my mouth when I take a bite. So good.....

Read More

Shrimps for Father Day Celebration

Love shrimps. It is really tasty on its own. It is really fast to cook shrimps.

Come to think about it, I do feel pity for the shrimpers affected by the BP oil spill in South America. The environment disaster at such magnitude is way out of hand & it will take ages to recover to its normal state. I don't think any animals or sea creatures can survive in such disastrous environment. Therefore, people should be always thankful to the environment for providing food source to human beings & play our roles to conserve it.

Okay. Let's back to the foodies talk. Deep fried shrimps is always my favorite.

Recipes 1:
Dip the cleaned shrimps into egg whites
Coat it with the "kentury multipurpose frying flour"
Shallow fry or deep fry it.
Be careful not to overcook it.

My 6 years old just love these.

You can make your own flour mixture :normal all purpose flour, mix with some spices - dried basil/ oregano/curry powder/ cajun spices , pepper, salt
Or use any store bought crispy multipurpose deep fry flour mixture.

Recipes 2: Sambal Prawns
Sambal is one type of chili based sauces that is very common in Malaysia, Indonesian & Singapore. It can be very spicy. If I have time, I will make my own. Otherwise, just pick your favorite brand from the stores.

Store bought ready made sambal sauces
Lots of shallots/ small onion - cut in to strips
3 big chilies (de-seed it will make it less spicy)
Handful of fresh prawn
Salt

Method:
Heat oil in wok, stir fry the sambal with onion, in the prawn, a little bit of water, lid on, season with salt. That's it.

Tips: It is ok to serve cool for this dish, which mean you can prepare ahead of time.
It goes well with white rice. Yummy........


Recipies 3:
Oriental Chinese style steam shrimp

Sauces: Chinese wine, salt, pepper, ginger, sesame oil, chilies (optional)

Method:
Marinated cleaned shrimp with the sauces for 10 mins
Steam for 7- 10 mins depends on the size of the shrimps

Tips: You need to serve immediately for this dishes.

Read More

Stir Fry Vegetables

Everyone can stir fry vegetables. It is pretty simple. Do you know that it is more difficult to cook delicious vegetable compared to poultry/seafood. What I mean "delicious" is equivalent to the restaurant standard. The balance of flavor, the crunchiness of the vegetables, mix & match of different type of vegetables. The other main factor of success is the control of the "fire". Honestly speaking - a chef really need to master the "fire" element in order to prepare a great dishes.

I do noticed sometimes it is kind of boring when you only use one common sauce for all the stir fry vegetable dishes. When you have guests for dinner, it is good to prepare different flavor of vegetables that can offer more varieties.

Tip 1:
Use poultry - pork, chicken or beef to flavor the vegetables especially those non-leaf kind of vegetables.
Use slice fish cake for lighter version.
Recommendation: Ginger + poultry+ shoyu + salt

Tip 2:
Recommendation : only use Garlic - this is especially good for leafy vegetables - eg, choi sum, pak choy ..etc...I have stirred fry the fresh lily buds with garlic & the flavor is amazing.
Pls slice the garlic into pcs - it looks great & tastes great.
Just be careful not to burn the garlic. Don't forget the salt too.

Tip 3:
For richer flavor, you can also use stocks to flavor the stir fry vegetables.
Recommendation short cut if no poultry is available : Use chicken stocks/ ikan bilis stocks.

Read More

Stir-Fried Pork in Gochujang Paste

Gochujang - The classic Korean Paste call gochujang also uses soya beans as a base, but this time red chilies are added for spice, as well as powdered rice, salt and a little sugar, before the mixture is left to ferment in a warm place. This produces a dark, red, rich, concentrated paste which is used to marinate meat & is added to many cooked dishes to give them a spicy tang.

Serve 4:
Seasoning Sauces - mix all the below together
15ml sesame oil
50ml gochujang
2tbsp sugar
1tsp salt
1tsp light soya sauce
3tbsp Korean Chili powder

200-300g Pork/ beef
Garlic
Onion(Optional)

Pork, Onion & Gochujang seasoning paste:

Cube the onion. Onion will give the dishes some sweetness. I found that Korean love spicy too.
Prepare lots of garlic, you can put more if you like garlic. Otherwise, use 3 cloves of garlic will do.

Heat a work with sesame oil + any vegetable oil. Stir fry the pork/beef over medium heat.
Then, add in the garlic.
Add in the gochujang + 4tbsp of water to make sure the meat cook through.
Stir until it formed a sticky paste.

Then, garnish with some spring onion or sesame seed.
Closer look at the stir fried pork in gochujang paste.

My reference book: The Food & Cooking of Korea. Love it.

For the left over gochujang paste, we use it to stir fry the macaroni & it was really good.

Vegan recipes:
Beside that, you can make this into a vegan dish.
Just replace the meat with POTATO, CARROT, ONION, MUSHROOM or TOFU.
It goes well with rice.

I have lots of vegetarians friends & they would like to have some vegan recipes.
I will try to include the vegan recipes whenever it is possible.

Read More