Lava Egg (Ni Tamago)

Posted by Vivian in Egg, Japanese

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It is not an exaggeration if I say that making this egg is akin to precision engineering. From getting it to the right consistency to removing the shell off without nicking it is no mean feat. Ensuring the yolk stays runny and not overly cooked but yet getting the white hard enough such that it doesn’t get mangled when de-shelling is an intricate balance.

I have been trying to prefect it but there are obviously still much room for improvement. If I do get it right, then I believe it is because of some divine intervention. Ploughed through quite a few sites to look for some tips and tricks. Unfortunately, I have not uncovered any magic. Everyone seems to be working with the same recipe. Am I missing something or most people just don’t bother whether the egg white stays whole? Perhaps it is high time for me to come to terms that “it is the inside that counts” and nothing else matters.

Luck was on my side last weekend with one particular egg out of the seven I made. It was decent looking enough for me to have it featured in the photo above. And so after more than 50 eggs and a good one and a half year of attempting to perfect my skills for this recipe, I am finally writing down what I think might work. Probably will still need a few attempts to convince myself that this is it!

Ingredients:

• 7 to 8 medium size eggs (cold and just out from the fridge!)
• 8 tablespoons of  light soy sauce
• 6 tablespoons of water
• 6 tablespoons of Mirin
• 4 tablespoons of Sugar
• 2 tablespoons of dark soy sauce

Preparation:

• Bring to boil a pot of water enough to cover eggs.
• Reduce heat until the water is just bubbling. 
• Lower eggs gently into water using the help of a ladle.
• Allow the eggs to boil for 9 minutes (most recipes call for 6 to 8 minutes but I find that even for 8 minutes the egg white is too soft to allow the shell to be easily removed).
• Remove eggs and immediately place them into an ice bath.
• Transfer the eggs in the ice bath to a fridge and let it sit for 3 to 4 hours.
• In the meantime, combine all remaining ingredients in a pot and bring to a simmer.  Allow marinade to cool.
• Once the eggs are done with the "ice bath", make a small crack on one end of each egg and place the eggs back to the water for 1 to 2 minutes. I personally find that this allows the water to seep through between the shell and the egg, so that the shells remove much easier.
• Remove shells from egg.
• Marinate the eggs with the marinade overnight and turn the eggs at least once or twice during the process to ensure the eggs are evenly coated.
• Before serving, remove the eggs from the fridge and allow the eggs to warm up room temperature.
• Drain and halved the eggs.

Seafood Crispy Noodles (海鲜生面)

Posted by Vivian in Chinese, Noodles, Seafood

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One miserable post for the year thus far… that’s truly a record low!

Planning a meal has been quite a challenge this year. Being pressed for time on most days is only but one reason. Logistic arrangements, from transportation for grocery shopping to other activities taking priority on most weekends, complicate matters as well. So it has been “back to basics”, and nothing fancy has came out from the humble kitchen of mine for many moons now. I used to bookmark interesting recipes and will attempt to get to it when I find the opportunity to. Convinced myself to stop doing that because it will only make me more depress with an ever growing list, as if a promise made to own self that I couldn’t keep to.

Even the recipe below is nothing terribly exciting - same recipe for Hor Fun except for some very slight changes. At the very least, it satisfy myself that I won’t end the year with only one entry!

Ingredients:

• 5 pieces of crispy noodles 
• 200 gm of lean pork or chicken fillet (sliced)
• 1 medium size squid (sliced) 
• 2 fish cake (sliced) 
• 15 medium-sized prawn 
• 1 bunch of choy sum 
• 4 cloves of garlic (diced) 
• 5 cups of chicken stock 
• Oyster sauce 
• Light soy sauce
• Sesame oil 
• 2 eggs (lightly beaten) 
• Cornstarch (4 tablespoons of cornflour mixed with a small bowl of water)
• Cornflour

Preparation:

• Marinate both chicken/pork and prawns with corn flour, sesame oil and light soy sauce. 
• Heat up oil  and stir-fry garlic. 
• Add chicken to pan and stir-fry until it is almost done and add in prawns and squid.
• Remove ingredients from pan when cooked. 
• Add chicken stock, 2 tablespoons of oyster sauce and 2 tablespoons of light soy sauce to pan. Bring to boil. 
• Add in choy sum and fish cake.
• As soon as the choy sum is cooked, lower heat and add in cornstarch and bring to boil.
• Once the sauce thickens, return all ingredients back to pan. 
• Turn off heat and stir in beaten egg. 
• Dish gravy over noodles. 

Number of Servings: 5

Braised Cola Chicken Wings

Posted by Vivian in Chicken

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Finally, finally, finally I managed to try something new after taking a good few months break since the last posting... even that was more like an improved version of an earlier dish.  I foresee that this year will be another unproductive year in this regard, with the family into a new routine and me having lesser time than before to run my kitchen experiments.  I need quick fixes when it comes to planning meals and more often than not it meant falling back to what I am already familiar with.  Not to mention that I got lazy with hopping around food blogs for inspirations as well in recent months.

But I have to admit that this one caught my eyes a few weeks back - simple enough with condiments that do not require hunting around for.  Slight tweaks were made to this recipe which was picked up from NoobCook.


Ingredients:

• 8 chicken wings (drumlet separated from mid-joint)
• 2 tablespoons of light soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon of dark soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons of sesame oil
• 300ml of regular coke
• 300ml of water

Preparation:

• Marinate chicken wings with light soy sauce, dark soy sauce and sesame oil overnight.
• Heat oil in pan and brown the chicken wings lightly (in batches if necessary).
• Return all the wings to the same pan or transfer to another pot.
• Add in coke, water and remaining marinate sauce to pot / pan.
• Let simmer for 20 minutes.

Braised Ee Fu Noodles with Conpoy (瑤柱干烧伊府面)

Posted by Vivian in Chinese, Noodles

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Finally after so long, I get to put on a new posting. I seemed to be running out of luck with my photos lately and often ended up chucking the whole lot. It was either due to the lack of natural lighting or the entire composition just doesn’t look right and the photos turned out to be in a total mess. Plus, I haven’t sighted any new recipes recently to get me excited and had been working perfectly fine just recycling what I had collected in the past.

Actually this recipe is just a variation to the Ee Fu Noodles I posted on months back. Some time ago, I bought a packet of Ee Fu Noodles with conpoy that cost me $30 and could barely feed two. I was really expecting something double that size If not for the free cash voucher I bought it with, I would have let out a big and long ouch. What’s more, there were only 2 miserable dried scallops in that box of noodles. I know dried scallops are expensive but still I felt cheated.

I decided that I was too cheapstake to pay $30 bucks for something that would only cost me half the price for double that portion if I whip it up in my own kitchen. And what’s more, a recipe that is almost idiot-proof.

The only additional step to the original recipe is to add in the shredded dried scallops with the other ingredients during the frying process. Simple as that.

6 to 7 mid-sized dried scallops were soaked overnight, and shredded using finger tips just before cooking.

Dried scallop also known as conpoy is viewed as a delicacy in Chinese cuisine.
Often added to congee and soup for added flavor

Cantonese Style Soy Sauce Chicken (酱油鸡）

Posted by Vivian in Chicken, Chinese

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Sometime back I attempted this same dish (the recipe came from some source that I cannot recall by now) which turned out to be an utter failure and got tossed out of the window... I mean the recipe not the chicken!

I guess that I wasn't passionate enough and didn't continue in my pursuit for the right recipe until recently when I got lucky and managed to find the one without much fuss.

To round up the meal, I paired the chicken off with Hong Kong style egg noodles and Choy Sum, drizzled with the sauce leftover from stewing the chicken and made it "See Yao Gai Min" （酱油鸡面）

The following recipe is adapted from Rasa Malaysia.

Ingredients:

• 10 chicken drumsticks
• 2-inch ginger (skin peeled and lightly pounded)
• 4 cloves garlic (lightly pounded)
• 2 stalks scallions (cut into 2-inch lengths)
• 2 star anise
• 1 cinnamon stick (about 2-inch length)
• 200 ml of light soy sauce
• 150 ml of dark soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon Shaoxing wine
• 3 dashes white pepper powder
• 4 tablespoons of white sugar
• 4 cups water

Preparation:

• Add all ingredients (except the chicken) into pot and bring to boil over high heat for 15 minutes. 
• Add the chicken into the pot and boil over high heat for another 10 minutes. 
• Lower the heat and allow to simmer for about 30 minutes.
• If possible, leave chicken in the soy sauce mixture for at least an hour to soak in the flavor.

Wantons - the improved version (云吞)

Posted by Vivian in Chinese, Pork

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Since the last post on wantons, I have gone on to make this repeatedly and experimented with different tweaks by adding different ingredients or condiments.  By far this are the best tweaks combined to deliver the best result:

Tweak #1 - Instead of cooking the wantons in a big pot of soup, use chicken broth.  The wanton skin takes on a different flavour.

Tweak #2 - Add minced shrimp to the minced pork for a better bite.  Mix well and preferably with (clean) hands in a kneading motion.

Tweak #3 - Replace ginger water with concentrated chicken stock.

Stir-Fried Scallops and Pacific Clams with Broccoli (花开富贵)

Posted by Vivian in Seafood

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I have been doing some "sitting on my butt" for way too long. This was supposed to have made its way here before Lunar New Year was over, obviously it didn't quite happen.  Days, turned into weeks and weeks into a month.  My mind has been preoccupied lately with battling stuff and unfortunately people, and it leaves me completely drained.  Plus the house is falling apart with things turning wonky all at the same time.  Well... at least the Daikin folks are taking much longer to fix the air conditioner than me getting this entry up.

Anyways, back to this dish with a auspicious-sounding name that describes nothing but spring (which by the way I also found out that there are many other dishes out there with the same Chinese name but boy do they all look different!).  Obviously, this was deliberately dished out with Chinese New Year in mind and also because I bought a can of pacific clams and wanted to make something different other than pouring the whole can into a big pot of soup.  So I bought a bag of scallops to go with the pacific clams... think buying a dress to pair up with the shoes.

If you ask me, the taste didn't quite wow me.  It tasted almost like this shrimp and broccoli dish.  Probably because I was hoping for something very different.  Almost like a mismatch of expectation and reality.


Ingredients:

• 1 can of pacific clams
• 15 pieces of fresh scallops
• 1/3 stick of carrot (thinly sliced or cut into flower shape)
• 1 bunch of broccoli (stem removed and cut)
• 5 cloves of garlic (minced)
• 3 slices of ginger
• 2 stalks of spring onion (ends only)
• 1 teaspoon of Shaoxing wine
• 1 cup of chicken broth
• 1 tablespoon of oyster sauce
• 1 tablespoon of light soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon of sesame oil
• Corn starch (100ml of water mixed with 1 level tablespoon of cornflour)

Preparation:

• Blanch broccoli and set aside.
• Saute garlic (half of above indicated quantity), ginger and spring onion with a little bit of oil until fragrant
• Sprinkle with Shaoxing wine and add in chicken broth.
• Once the mixture starts to boil, add in scallops and allow to cook for about 2 minutes.
• Drain and remove scallops,  Set aside for later use.
• Using a clean pan, stir-fry the remaining minced garlic.
• Add carrot to the pan and when it is half done, add in pacific clams.
• Stir-fry mixture until thoroughly cooked.
• Mix in oyster sauce, light soy sauce and sesame oil.
• Return into the pan.
• Turn the heat down and add in cornstarch. 
• Let simmer until the sauce thickens.
• Transfer to serving plate and garnish with broccoli.

Number of servings: 4 to 5

Steamed Tofu with Minced Meat

Posted by Vivian in Chinese, Tofu

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I personally find that the hardest dishes to get to perfection are usually the simple fanfare.  Take for instance, frying an omelette to the perfect hue and flipping it over without breaking the egg apart, or making an onsen tamago with the right consistency - runny yolk with harden egg white, and peeling the shell off without  nicking the egg (a separate post will be dedicated to my onsen tamago soon).

Egg aside, my main lead for this post is just as bad.  Getting the tofu out of its packaging in one whole piece without breaking a corner off is harder than stir-frying sliced beef to the right doneness!  Unfortunately, the tofu didn't turn out to be as presentable as I had pictured as a result, but at least I wasn't disappointed with the taste. 

This recipe was inspired by my mum.  It was one of those quick-fix dish that she fed me and my siblings with when we were little.  No fuss, low budget but full of proteins.  I tweaked it a little by making a base sauce to go along with the tofu, but otherwise it is still fine on its own.

Ingredients:

• 1 box of tofu (either sliced into 8 pieces or used as it is)
• 100 gm of minced meat (pork of chicken works fine)
• 1/2 tablespoon of light soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon of cornflour
• 1 teaspoon of sesame oil
• 2 cloves of garlic (minced)
• 1 packet of Shimeji mushroom (roots removed and separated)
• 150 ml of chicken broth or water
• 1 tablespoon of oyster sauce
• 100 ml of cornstarch (100 ml of water with 1 tablespoon of cornflour)

Preparation:

• Marinate minced meat with light soy sauce, sesame oil and cornflour for at least 30 minutes.
• Spread the minced meat evenly on top of tofu.
• Steam tofu for 10 minutes or until the minced meat is thoroughly cooked.
• In the meantime, heat 1 tablespoon of oil in frying pan and add in garlic.
• Add mushroom to pan and stir fry until well-cooked.
• Pour in oyster sauce and chicken broth and mix well. 
• Lower the heat and drizzle in cornstarch.  Let simmer until the sauce thickens.
• Once the tofu is done, remove from steamer and transfer to serving plate.
• Ladle sauce over tofu and serve.

Steamed Minced Meat on the spoon for someone who thinks that he will get poisoned for eating tofu!


And the kids asking that I take a photo of them with the minced meat.....