Macanese Minchi

Macanese minchi, usually eaten with rice and a fried egg..

So a few nights ago we were watching Anthony Bourdain eat his way through Macau  and everything seemed so exotic to me, from the streets to the food to the Portuguese Eurasians. Has Macau changed so much in the five years since I visited or did I not see the real Macau? I bet if you've been to Macau (one hour from Hong Kong, it's part of southern China that was leased to Portugal about 500 years ago as a trading port and returned to China in 1999), you'd have eaten those delicious Portuguese egg tarts and pork chop buns. But did you eat minchi? Do you even know that minchi is Macau's national dish? I didn't. I thought Minchi was a girl I knew back in university; never met her again after we graduated. Hey Mingchee of Sarawak, please FB me if you ever read this!

Yeah, so I thought I knew Macau but realized when watching the show that I have to visit the place again soon because Bourdain made it so different from the Macau I visited. The guy just looks like he has so much fun everywhere he goes, doesn't he? He's the coolest food traveller. Really, wouldn't you rather be him than Zimmerman or Chinn or Smith or Axian? It's not just the leather jacket. Bourdain makes food tasting travelling so...hippy chic.

Macanese cuisine is influenced by Chinese, European (especially Portuguese), Indian and South East Asian cuisines so other than stir-frying, Macanese food is also grilled and roasted. Seasonings include soy sauce, oyster sauce, spices, Worchestershire sauce, tomato sauce, coconut milk (see my recipe for Portuguese chicken) and even a fermented shrimp paste similar to the Malaysian belachan, called balichao.

Bourdain ate a version of minchi with Chinese black fungus. Black fungus are commonly used in Chinese cooking, especially in vegetarian dishes. The more popular version of minchi has potatoes instead of black fungus but of course Bourdain wouldn't choose potatoes over fungus.  Since I love both black fungus and potatoes, and I had no idea what's more authentic, I decided to include both in my minchi. There aren't that many minchi recipes on the Net but from what I've googled, minchi is a home dish and every mom cooks her own version which can be a mixture of beef or pork mince or one of those, potatoes or black fungus (which is either 'cloud ears' or 'wood ears'), and may or may not have cumin or cinnamon or oyster sauce or tomato paste but the basic seasonings are light soy sauce, dark soy sauce, Worchestershire sauce, salt, pepper and sugar. Oil can be veg oil or olive oil.


Cloud ears are softer and thiner than wood ears. Both are edible fungus said to improve blood circulation and lower cholesterol but I eat them because I've always eaten them. Black fungus has a nice light crunch, yeah, like ears.


1. Cut about 3 potatoes into 2 cm cubes (these were cut too small) and deep fry them until golden brown and crispy (mine were underfried). For a healthier version, do not deep fry but add potatoes after meat is seared.


2. Chop a large brown onion and 3 cloves garlic and fry them in veg or olive oil until soft.


3. Add 500 gm each of pork and beef mince (I prefer to buy the beef and pork and hand-chop them) and a bay leaf to the onions and garlic and stir fry, breaking up the meat.


4. Fry in medium-high heat until meat has turned white.


5. Add about 2 tablespoons of dark soy sauce, stirring well to mix.


6. Add 2 tablespoons of light soy sauce, stirring well to mix.


7. Add about 2 tablespoons of Worchestershire sauce (less if you don't like the tart taste), mixing well with the meat. Worchestershire sauce reminds me of Mrs Epps, a Eurasian-Ceylonese neighbor who taught me English when I was in Primary 3. I wanted to be like her--cook well, keep a nice house and dress well all the time. And oh, always have music in the house.


8. Some white or black pepper. Cumin and tomato paste too if like. Season with a bit of sugar.


9. Add the chopped cloud ears and 3 tablespoons or more of water. Stir well.


10. Lower the heat, cover for a couple of minutes, checking now and then to make sure the mixture doesn't burn.


11. Taste and season if necessary. Add the potatoes and dish up. Eat immediately or reheat before serving.


Macanese minchi.

Minchi is usually eaten with rice and a fried egg and it tastes yummy when just cooked but remember that this is simple, ordinary comfort food. I felt it was an Asian bolognese sauce but Wey said it's a little bit American chili. The next time I cook this, I'll omit the black fungus because the dish tastes better with potatoes, and I'd add more potatoes too.

Gyuniku Negimaki

Japanese beef rolls

Sushi Tei opened recently in KK and the whole town is checking the place out. We've been there twice, both times unplanned so I don't have photos to show. I must say that the restaurant is the most impressive Japanese restaurant in KK, with a good view of the sea and the nearby islands. The wait is long, especially for dinner. I found the food good (for KK standard) but portions are stingy. An example is the gyuniku negimaki or beef rolls, an appetizer I love.

Sushi Tei's beef negimaki is RM19.60 for 4 skinny rolls, if I don't remember wrong. We had two orders and that set us back by about RM39.20, before tax. I immediately set out the next day to prove to my kids that I can make enough negimaki with RM40 to make them wish they never crave for negimaki again.

I bought RM31 worth of shabushabu beef and 4 packets of enoki mushrooms at RM2.80 each. Ok, that makes a total of RM42.80. Each packet of enoki made 6 beef rolls, giving us 24 negimaki and that still left us with 1/2 packet of beef for our instant noodles. See how much restaurants make?

I sauteed the first batch of negimaki in butter and then glazed them with a thick teriyaki sauce. For the second batch, I noticed that the negimaki caramelized nicely and seared really well because of the teriyaki sauce from the previous frying and that's how I did the rest of the negimaki: melted the butter, added a spoonful of teriyaki sauce to the pan and sauteed the beef rolls briefly at high heat. That way, the teriyaki  sauce was cooked into the beef. Yum.

My kids found the spring onions too strongly flavored for the negimaki. You can leave the spring onions out and replace it with blanched asparagus or carrot strips or even french beans, or omit the veg altogether. I prefer steaming the enoki which keeps them in tidy little bundles whereas blanching them in water can make them soft and soggy. The enoki need to to pre-cooked because the beef will only take a couple of seconds to cook. You can use chicken breasts, flattened with a mallet, for toriniku negimaki but for the best negimaki, use wagyu sirloin. Oh boy.

And yes, my kids have had enough of gyuniku negimaki.







Gyuniku Negimaki
12 to 14 slices of paper-thin beef (the thinner the better; makes meltingly soft rolls)
2 packets of enoki
butter for frying

1. Make the sauce:
2 T light soy sauce
2 T mirin
1 T sugar
optional: 1/4 t dashi granules

--put everything into a pot or pan and cook until thickened but not too thick. Adjust the taste to your liking.

2. Trim the bottoms off the enoki. Pick any dirt off or give the enoki a quick wash. Separate into 6 to 7 equal portions. Lay on a steaming plate and steam for a couple of seconds only, just enough to slightly wilt them. The enoki in the middle of the bundle may not be wilted but that's ok. You don't want them too soft or they'll loose their bite and also be hard to handle.

3. Wrap a slice of beef snugly around each bundle of enoki. There's no need to secure the ends; cooking the beef will seal them.

4. Heat up a non-stick frying pan, add 1 t butter and 4 to 6 rolls. Add a spoonful of the sauce to the pan and sear (use high heat) the rolls on all sides. Do not overcook. Repeat for the remaining rolls.

5. Use a very sharp knife to cut the rolls into 2 or 3 each because the enoki is stringy if left whole.

Kalbi Jim

Korean beef stew, kalbi jim

I had to shop so I told Vero to boil the short ribs in the pressure cooker and prepare some blanched veggies, any veggies from the fridge, for dinner. When I came home, I added the seasoning ingredients, let the stew cook in the pressure cooker for a while longer and then switched the heat off to let the flavors develop. Dinner time, and Vero brought this plate of veggies to the table:

Isn't that a pretty plate of veggies? The lettuce looked like they were boiled to death but still, who would've thought, a plate of lettuce surrounded by purple cauliflower? I told Vero she did a good job and she dismissed it humbly.

When the weather's cool and rainy, I like dishes that warm the body. Stews do a great job warning up the body and stomach. The funny thing about kalbi jim is, the few times I cooked it, that it was either too watery and or too dry or too bland but this time, when I didn't bother to follow the cookbook, it turned out perfect. I found that with the pressure cooker, my stews turn out better when I get the meat half-way tender and then switch the fire off so that the sauce can seep into the meat while the meat continue to cook in the retained heat. After some time, I re-heat and let it cook without pressure to reduce and thicken the sauce. If I use the pressure cooker all through the cooking process, the stew doesn't turn out as flavorful. You can cook a good stew with the pressure cooker but by combining pressure and non-pressure simmering, your stew can be better than just good.

Instead of marinading the ribs, I cooked them until half-tender and then added the seasoning ingredients.  The family gave high marks for this, and I'm happy.

Kalbi Jim

1.5 kg beef short ribs, in 4-5 cm pieces

2 carrots, in small chunks

1 large white carrot/radish (daikon), in small chunks

 7-8 red dates, washed well

5 dried Chinese mushrooms, soaked & halved

1 small piece of ginger

1 T minced garlic

1 T sesame oil

1 T toasted sesame seeds

6 T light soy sauce

1 T dark soy sauce

1 T sugar

3 T rice wine

1/4 cup scallions or spring onions, chopped

2 T corn syrup

generous dose of freshly ground black pepper

1/2 cup pineapple or pear juice, preferably from the fresh fruit*

*in Korean cooking, pear or pineapple juice is often added to tenderize the meat.  I used the stem/heart of a fresh pineapple, because we had a fresh pineapple.

1. Trim the rib of any fat, wash well. Blanch the ribs with plenty of boiling water, drain.

2. Put ribs into a pressure cooker and add enough water to just cover and cook about 20 minutes after the pressure is reached. Turn heat off.

3. When the safety button drops, remove the lid and add all the remaining ingredients except a large pinch of chopped spring onions for garnish. Cover and simmer at normal cooking heat  without pressure for about 20 minutes. If there's too much liquid, leave the lid half-on, turn the heat to high and cook so that somw of the liquid is reduced. Cover and turn heat off.

4. After 20 minutes, re-heat the stew and let it cook under pressure for another 10-15 minutes depending on how tender the meat is.

Let the stew steep in the sauce until just before serving time. Re-heat, taste & season if necessary.The sauce shouldn't be too thin. If it is, leave the lid open and cook the stew at high heat to burn off some of the sauce to thicken it. Sprinkle the reserved spring onions over the stew and serve hot with rice.

Bud Chives With Beef

Bud chives with beef


Bud chives

There are western chives, which look like spring onions but are more delicate with a hollow center and there are Chinese chives, which are flat. Chinese chives are more pungent in flavor than western chives, especially the flat Chinese chives while the bud chives are less so. The flat chives flourish in our weather, and my patch of flat chives has been with me for about 10 years. These perennials can be cut down to the soil level and within 3 days they will put up an inch of new shoots. They never get eaten by snails or any insects and I suspect that they keep my veg plot free from pests. They do need a lot of fertilizers or they begin to look like weeds.


Flat Chinese chives in the middle.

Flat chives are usually cut finely for making omelettes. A special version of flat chives is the jiu hwang, light yellow chives, which are grown like white asparagus--under cover and deprived of sunlight so there is no color pigment in them. These are more delicate and sweet but not easily available because they deteriorate within hours of cutting. Bud chives are from China and are sweet with a nice bite. I suspect that bud chives are just the budding stems from the ordinary flat chives but Chinese farmers have a way of growing only stems with buds. My flat chives grow stems with buds too if I don't harvest them but those stems are too hard to eat. As a simple veg dish, you can fry up a plate of plain bud chives or better still, add some meat such as prawns, chicken or pork but they go best with beef. Like we all know, sometimes the simplest dishes are the most delicious, and this is one of them.




Bud Chives With Beef
120 g bud chives (about 2 bundles)
250 g beef tenderloin or sirloin

Prep: Snap the chive from the bottom. It will break at the point where the stem is too hard for eating. Throw that part away (into the compost!) and either cut or snap the younger stem into 4 cm ( 1 1/2 inches) lengths. Cut the beef into thin strips and marinade with: 2 t light soy sauce, 1 t oyster sauce, 2 heaped t corn flour, 2 T water, 1 T rice wine, 1/2 t fine sugar, some freshly ground pepper, 1/8 t salt and a splash of good (Korean is best) sesame oil. Leave for 5 minutes.

1. Heat 1 T veg oil into a wok, add the chives and a pinch of salt and stir-fry until chives are bright green or half-cooked, or fully cooked as preferred. Splash 1 T shao xin wine or rice wine over the chives, stir and remove onto a plate. All at medium high heat.



2. In the same wok, add 2 T veg oil, coat the surface of the wok up to halfway. Add the beef and use your frying ladle to spread the beef into a single layer. Let it fry at high heat without stirring for about 1/2 minute. Now use your ladle to turn the beef over and let it cook another 30-40 seconds without stirring. Too much stirring toughens the beef. Now the beef should have turned mostly pale instead of red. Use your ladle and stir the beef to mix well and add about 2 T water or stock, then either a) add the fried chives to mix & fry a couple more seconds (high heat) and remove onto a plate or b) arrange the beef on top of the fried chives.

Making Springy Meatballs

A little unrefined-looking, but these home-made beef balls tasted tons better than store-bought ones.

Chinese meatballs are totally different in texture from, say, Italian meatballs. Italian meatballs are loose and soft textured and a little coarse to the tongue while Chinese meatballs are dense, smooth and springy. Springy is the key characteristic of Chinese meatballs. Whether it is a fish, pork, squid or beef ball, if it doesn't give a springy bite, it is considered a failure.

My helper Vero makes super springy fish balls that sometimes are almost hard and definitely bouncy. I can never do fish balls so I don't bother. But I've always wanted to make beef balls, mainly because nobody seems to make them or know how to make them. Thank goodness for Google Search, from which I found two recipes that were the same except one used alkaline water and one didn't. I'm linking this recipe because it was published earlier than the other recipe, meaning the later one probably copied it without giving credit. And it worked while the copycat's didn't.


On the left, beef ground by machine and on the right, machine-ground beef paste that became smoother and finer by pounding with a granite pestle and mortar. Although the recipe doesn't say to put the ground beef through the pounding process, I saw it on some other sites and it made sense.


On the left, lighter-color, denser and smoother beef ball made using alkaline water and on the right, a darker, looser and coarser beef ball made without addition of alkaline water. So different.

I started with fresh unfrozen sirloin, putting it through a machine and then pounding it into a paste with a pestle in a mortar. I then added the necessary ingredients and swirled the beef paste round and round in a bowl with a pair of chopsticks like clothes in a washing machine to increase the stickiness and springiness of the meat paste. To be doubly sure, I slapped the paste hard against my wooden chopping board too, just as is done in making fish balls. So much hard work--do commercial meat balls makers have to do this?

In one sample, I omited additives such as baking powder and alkaline water (more correctly called lye water, the ingredient in toilet cleaners and drain openers because it is so high in alkalinity and therefore is very corrosive, just like Coca Cola is corrosive too). I boiled one beef ball and it was coarse and loosely packed, just like Italian meatballs. I was disappointed so I left the minced beef in the fridge for two days while I decided whether to add alkaline to it. I've read that alkaline water is used in making of century eggs, noodles, gan sui zhongzi and many cured food such as olives. I didn't want to resort to using alkaline water, but I had to find out The Truth About Meat Balls And Their Bounciness. So I bought a small bottle of alkaline water (lye water) for RM1.00 from the cake ingredients shop, scooped out 3 tablespoon of the beef paste and added 1/16 teaspoon of alkaline water. Magic! The beef ball was super springy and bouncy to the bite. Not only that, after cooking, it looked just like the commercial ones, light grey in color and smoother than the beef ball made without alkaline water. I felt very good. I felt like I've cracked a secret recipe. But I was left with 2 3/4 tablespoon of beef paste with alkaline water and about 250 g pure beef paste that doesn't make springy meat balls. I decided to risk it, since I generally eat quite healthily (I think) and can afford some poison once in a while. I mixed the two pastes together without adding more alkaline water and dropped one ball into the boiling water. After a minute, it rose to the surface, all puffed up. I bit into the beef ball. OMGoodness, it was the best beef ball I have ever tasted--springy, not too dense, full of beefy flavor and sweetness. It reminded me of the steamed beef balls with dried mandarin peel served at dim sums, only the beef flavor was stronger. Awesome! My niece who dropped by for dinner said that the beef balls were superb and utterly different from the coffee shops. Wey, who doesn't eat meat balls of any sort, ate one and liked it. And then--not to my surprise--he said that he tasted a slight bitter after-taste. I had tasted it too but I didn't say anything because I thought it was in my head. It was the same slightly saltish-soapy-bitter taste I find in yellow oily noodles but which nobody else seems to detect.

Now that I can make beef balls, I can make them BIG instead of those pee-wees in the shops. Beef balls have shrunk so much that they just don't feel in the mouth like before. They also lack beef flavor. I suppose I can make pork balls too, and pork dried squid balls. And all that advice the butchers give you about how you must start with meat that is so fresh that it is still warm? And how you have to slap the meat around? I've proven that it's rubbish. All you need is alkaline water and the meat will spring and bounce.

The following recipe is based on the recipe linked above, but slight changes to the ingredients and method were made based on my experimentation. It makes delicious beef balls without the starchy taste of those giant frozen beef balls in many Asian grocers overseas.


I suspect the tiny holes were caused by the extra water I added while fiddling with the sticky meat paste. In the recipe below, I've given the right amount of water.

Springy Beef Balls
300 g totally lean beef (any cut as long as it doesn't have lots of stringy fibers)
5 T ice water + 2/3 t salt, mixed to dissolve
1 t fine sugar
1/4 T veg oil
2 T cornflour
a few dashes of ground white pepper
less than 1/16 alkaline water* (gan sui)

* try using less than this by dropping about 5 drops with a skewer, then cook one ball to test the bounciness and add more if needed.

note: in the original recipe, fish sauce is used to give extra flavor but that may be more suitable for Vietnamese beef balls. You can substitute with a pinch of chicken stock powder instead. Commercially, msg is used and if you use that, just a small dash will do.

1. Cut the beef into small pieces, process it until a fine paste. Pick out any stringy bits. The meat will still be slightly too coarse so pound it into a homogeneous paste using a mortar and pestle or a rolling pin as I've seen in some sites. I'm not sure how the beef balls will turn out if you don't pound it. It may turn out just as good as long as you use alkaline water. You test and tell me.

2. Sprinkle all the other ingredients except the salt water over the meat paste. Add the salt water to the meat paste by the tablespoon, stirring after each addition until the water is absorbed before adding the next tablespoon. Stir the meat forcefully in one circular direction, just like making fish balls paste, for about 1 minute.

3. Chill the meat paste in the fridge for an hour to firm up.

4. Scoop or squeeze the meat paste into balls about the size of a large cherry or even larger and drop into boiling stock. When the balls rise to the surface of the boiling soup, let them boil a minute before serving. They will puff up when the water is boiling but they will deflate when the soup cools.

Gyu The Cow

Update: I have been informed that Wagyu imported into this country are those of Grades 6 to 9, 9 being the most marbled and priciest. It is recommended that Grade 6 (which may be graded as 7 by other wholesalers, making it hard to compare the price) be eaten as steaks while Grade 8 and 9 Wagyu are very marbled and don't give a bite so they are best eaten shabu-shabu or sukiyaki style.

'Wa' means Japanese, 'gyu' means beef in Japanese. Wagyu is beef from special Japanese breeds of cow which are now not only reared in Japan but also in Australia and the USA. Prized and craved for their marbled fat, which is due to genetics and the special feed and treatment, Wagyu has more mono-saturated fat than regular beef, meaning it is 'healthier' to eat than regular beef. Wagyu is the most expensive beef in the world, Kobe Wagyu (Wagyu from cows raised in Kobe) being the most famous.

The wholesaler only sells Australian Wagyu in 5 kg blocks, so three of us shared one block. At a discounted rate of RM150/US$50 per kg for Grade 6+ Wagyu, I got 8 pieces for RM330, Rm41.25/US$11.50 per piece, very cheap by restaurant standards. I waited until Kid No 1 and 2 came back on holidays to cook the Wagyu, (Kid No 3 had by then cooked 2 pieces of the steaks for his own consumption) which I have eaten in Japan and Shanghai but never cooked before. Since my Wagyu was cut into steaks, I figured that was the best way to cook Wagyu. I was wrong.

Wey recommended pan-frying rather than grilling steaks, based on his experience. He said somehow pan-fried steaks taste better. I believe the guy, so I pan-fried the 3/4" wagyu steaks for 5-6 minutes on each side for my mom and niece who didn't like rare steaks. The remaining steaks were again sprinkled with a pinch of salt just before frying and black pepper was freshly cracked over them during frying. I fried them about 4 minutes each side and they were rare, a little too rare but we didn't bother to cook them again because they tasted so good. Just before serving, they were given a small splash of red wine and sherry. I also made black pepper sauce, an Asian favorite.

We agree that Wagyu is best cooked rare to medium rare than well-done and medium. When cooked to medium-well, the beef tasted like good ordinary beef, only more tender. When done rare, each bite released juice that was buttery and smooth, after which you taste that bite of flavorful, tender meat. We ate very fast, not talking, finishing all the steaks first, clearing our palates with a great Spanish red wine in between bites, then dutifully ate the sides: taters and salad. Which actually was the right way because the meat was so good nothing else on the table was worth eating. Juicy, tender, flavorful and buttery-smooth is the only way I can describe Wagyu.

I obsessed about Waygu all night after that, thinking about ways in which this wonderful meat can be cooked to its best gastronomic potential. I felt that Wagyu shouldn't be eaten in a large chunk. First of all, because it was a big piece of steak, it got cold before I could chew half of it. With so much (cold) fat in it, I felt rather uncomfortable by the time I got to the last bite. Second, the seared part of the meat, the surfaces, were very flavorful but cooked as a steak, the surface area was limited. I remembered the thin slices--about 1/6" or 1/3 cm thick--of Wagyu in a Korean restaurant in Shanghai and how flavorful and delicious they were, grilled over a fire at our table and served with a flavored salt dip. That was one way to maximize the grilled surfaces of Wagyu, and I wished I had more Wagyu to experiment on.

The next day, I searched for my copy of 'The Man Who Ate Everything' by my food idol, Jerry Steingarten, because I remembered he ate everything and wrote about it. I wish I'd kept the food articles in all those Vogue magazines that I used to buy when Steingarten was the food writer. It wasn't for the silly fashion that I bought Vogue: I would read Steingarten's pages, savoring every sentence, before I looked at other pages.

Steingarten too had no idea what to do with his Wagyu so like me, he also made steaks out of them, and like me, he wasn't sure if that was the best way to eat Wagyu. But his job paid obscenely for him to find that sort of thing out, so he flew to Osaka, Japan to eat the best Wagyu dinner in a restaurant called Devon Steak (I know, ironic).

At Devon Steak, Steingarten ate Wagyu 2 ways: raw slices ("tasted more like tuna than beef") and teppanyakied strips, eaten with dips of soy, garlic, honey, miso and a spicy house dip. Steingarten declared that it was the best beef he had ever eaten.

That confirmed my suspicions, that Wagyu is to be cut into thin strips (but not paper thin unless it's for shabu shabu or sukiyaki, which was how we ate Wagyu in Tokyo and my memories of that meal is that I couldn't taste the beef because it was cut so thin and there was so little to go around...) or even cubes, sauteed on all sides not only to get the meat juice caramelized, as Steingarten put it, but also to sear the wondrous streaks of fat so that the flavor of the buttery fat is released. Cooked as steaks, the fat inside do not get seared which is a pity.

What I will do the next time I get my hands on a slab of Wagyu is to:

1. Have the Wagyu cut into 2" steaks. Thaw the steaks in a cool place for about 2 hours. Surprisingly, very little blood will seep out, maybe because there is more fat and less meat compared to regular beef.

2. Rub salt all over just before cooking, pan-fry them on a very hot griddle/grill plate until they are browned and crisp, turning once only, then slice them into strips or small cubes on the grill plate so that all sides can get seared, then sprinkle some freshly cracked pepper over, and finally douse them with brandy like they did at Devon Steak, count a few seconds for the alcohol to evaporate, then serve immediately. Mmmm. Heaven.

3. The fat can be left on the steak or cut off and sauteed separately. Be brave and taste some if not all, because Wagyu fat is the softest, sweetest fat you'll ever eat. Reminded me of foie gras.


I didn't use butter to fry the Wagyu, so I decided to put a thin pat of butter on the cooked steak, which was totally unnecessary.


Meltingly soft, tender, flavorful and sweet Wagyu.


Coated by a black pepper sauce, this piece of Wagyu was wasted because I couldn't taste the full flavor of the meat with all that cream, pepper, shallots and wine.

Steamed Beef & Waterchestnut Patty

Steamed beef patty on white rice

As a school girl, I loved coming home to find this dish on the table. Mom would cook this and beef liver with ginger and rice wine for those times of the month when she felt we needed some iron boost. This is a very humble home dish that only seems to be available in my family. I've asked friends when I was growing up and none of them knew this dish. I think the dish originated in Quilin, China where mom had studied, so most people here are not familiar with it as most KK Chinese are Hakka or Cantonese from Guangdong. Everybody has eaten a similar steamed meat patty of ground pork and eggs, one of the most homey Chinese dishes. These are dishes you don't find in restaurants but are eaten regularly at home.

It is best to use unfrozen tenderloin or sirloin, and the waterchestnuts must be fresh, not canned. Eat it with rice or congee. The flavor of the beef and the crunchy sweetness of the waterchestnuts, plus the ginger and doong choy goes very well with rice.



Steamed Beef & Waterchestnut Patty
400 g (or more*) lean tender beef
400 g (or more*) waterchestnuts
1/2 T ginger, cut into very fine strips
1 T doong choy (a preserved veg), washed well
1 egg, beaten
1 T cornstarch
2 t sesame oil
a shake of white pepper
2 t light soy sauce
1 t dark soy sauce
1/4 t salt
1/2 cup water
finely cut spring onions for garnish

* You can adjust these amounts to your liking

1. Chop the beef until fine. Do not use supermarket bought mince; too much fat.

2. Peel the waterchestnuts and chop them coarsely.

3. Put the beef, waterchestnuts, cornstarch, sesame oil, soy sauces, salt, pepper, egg and water into a shallow heat-proof dish and mix well (use fingers). Pat the patty until it is level. Drizzle about 2 T water all over the patty. Sprinkle the doong choy and ginger strips on top.

4. Steam at high heat for about 12 to 15 minutes, depending on the thickness of the patty. It should be about 1"/2.5 cm thick only.

5. Garnish with spring onions and serve hot. Optional: heat up a tablespoon of peanut oil until smoking and pour over the cooked patty. This will give extra flavor.

Taiwan Beef Soup Noodles

Since we're having 2 days of holidays (Hari Raya for the muslims), those of you who aren't out of town may like to practice your culinary skills with Taiwan Beef Soup Noodles, a dish normally eaten in restaurants.


Taiwan niu ro mien, a hearty meal perfect on a cold day.

Taiwan niu ro mien/beef noodles can be easily cooked at home, especially if you have a pressure cooker. We love the Taiwan niu ro mien at Taiwan Restaurant but the place is about 30 minutes away and Amy, the proprietress, not only has a bossy attitude, telling you where to sit or not sit, she also won't let you order more than what she thinks you can eat. She's bossier than me, and I'm not used to that. As if that's not deterring enough, it takes at least 30 minutes for the food to be served. So you can see why we don't venture there on purpose; usually we'll eat there if we were in the neighborhood. We like Amy's niu ro mien because the soup's very beefy and not too spicy, as in not too spiked with strong spices. Her niu ro soup is not hot-spicy as regular Taiwan niu ro mien soups are, and there's hardly any oil. The last time we ate Amy's niu ro mien was about a month ago, and the soup was the best ever. It was very very beefy and there was only a slight hint of dried mandarin peel. In previous meals, her niu ro soup tasted of Bovril, which was okay because I love Bovril.

I thought if Amy can cook it, so can I. I'm getting quite confident these days...If the soup doesn't turn out right, I'll just disguise it with Bovril I thought. Well, I am pleased to tell you my 3 guys loved my niu ro mien, and stopped me from adding Bovril to the soup. And so, here's my version of Amy's Taiwan niu ro mien, which is based on the recipes I read through on Google search:



Taiwan Niu Ro Mien (for 6-8 ppl)

2 kgs stewing beef* or beef ribs, or mixture of
1 piece ginger (40-50g), peeled & smashed lightly
1 bunch spring onions, tied
1/2 bulb garlic, peeled
1 piece dried tangerine/mandarin peel, 4 X 4 cm
1 1/2 star anise
1 stick cinnamon, about 6 cm long
1-2 T sugar (to your liking)
1/4 cup dark soy sauce (or more to intensify color)
1/4 cup T light soy sauce
freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 T white rice vinegar (optional)
(do increase the amount of whichever herb/spice you like)

* I used beef shin

Topping:
cilantro or Chinese celery leaves
chili oil

Home-made noodles for 6-8 people
-use udon or fettucine if you can't be bothered to make your own noodles.

1. Cook the soup early, say a day or half a day before serving. Cut stewing beef into small pieces, 3 x 4 cm or bigger if like. Beef ribs about 5 X 5 cm. If using ribs, blanch them briefly in boiling water, throw water away.

2. Put everything into a large pressure cooker (or heavy base pot) and add 7-8 litres of water or a mixture of water and beef or chicken stock (I used water only). When pot starts hissing, let it cook for 45 minutes. Turn heat off and let soup sit, covered. Soup tastes even better the next day, if you can wait. Season to taste. If you find that the soup's too thick, dilute it with some water but to me, it's best to leave it thick because when you add the noodles, it will be diluted a little.

3. Make noodles. Boil a large pot of water and cook noodles, two portions at a time so that you can control the texture of the noodles. Meanwhile, heat up the beef soup. If like, use a whisk or large fork to break up the beef for a thicker soup, but you can also leave the beef in whole pieces although most of them would be broken up into small pieces by now. Add some Bovril if like.

4. Put two portions of soup into a small pot, and when it boils, add the cooked noodles. Let it come to a boil and quickly pour into serving bowls. I find that cooking the noodles briefly in the beef soup makes the noodles tastier than just pouring the hot soup over the cooked noodles.

5. You can add blanched veg (Taiwan bok choy, iceberg lettuce etc) to the bowl of noodles but I prefer to serve the veg on the side so that liquid from the veg will not dilute the beefy goodness. Top with some cilantro or even better, chopped Chinese celery leaves. Have some chili oil ready for people who want it.

Jap Last Night: Gyudon

L to R, back: seaweed miso soup, gyudon and fried mixed veg.

L to R, front: agedashi tofu, shishamo (pregnant smelts)

Speed is the key these days. Who knows if there'll be another power outage. Bento's salmon donburi reminded me how I used to cook gyudon (beef-rice bowl) if I wanted a presto meal. This is the easiest Japanese dish you'll ever make, believe me.

Hong Seng at Damai, round the corner from Coffee Bean, is where you can get your Australian frozen beef sliced for shabu-shabu and sukiyaki. Some of my friends have told me they avoid going there because the people are so snobby and they won't even let you get away with 5 sen. I know what they mean. I once was totally out of change, and the lady boss waited for me to fumble through my bag, then go to my car to get the money. On top of that the shop's policy is to look as sour face as their faces allow. If you do get your beef sliced there, do expect to pay an extra RM5 per kg. Cutting it at no. 04 on their machine gives the best thickness (thinness?). I had my sirloin cut using no. 5 and it was too thick. I don't like the beef cut too thin either, as in the Jap restaurants. When cut too thin, the beef will clump together when thawed and tear when you handle it, and worst, it tastes like paper. If money's no problem, use ribeye. You must have the beef cut by the machine. Cutting by hand will give uneven thickness.

Cook your soup and other dishes first, and the beef last because being thin, the beef cooks fast and needs to be eaten hot before it cools and toughen. You can even cook it while your good sons and daughters set the table.

Gyudon (serves 4)
400 to 500g sirloin, sliced thinly n cut roughtly into 5 x 10 cm pcs
a big bunch of spring onions or scallions, in 3 cm lengths*
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup mirin
3 cups hot water
1 t dashi granules
1 t sugar (1T if you like it sweeter)

*spring onions have a dark fuchsia sheath on the bulbs and stems and are more tender than scallions which are bigger and white near the bulbs and stems.

1. When all your other dishes are ready, scoop cooked plain rice into large rice bowls and place bowls near your hob.

2. Put the hot water into a pot, add the dashi, soy sauce, mirin and sugar and when it boils, increase the heat to high and add all the beef, stirring well with a pair of chopsticks to separate them. Add the spring onions, remove from heat and stir to mix. The beef's best when there's still some red because if it goes beyond that, it will toughen. Mine was too done.

3. Put equal amount of beef and sauce on top of each bowl of rice and serve immediately.

Stir-fried Beef N Heirloom Tomatoes

Organic heirloom tomatoes
(This pic looks like it's taken with a dslr, doesn't it? The wonders of good lighting. From now on I will have to carry all my dishes into the garden.)

I don't know if these heirloom tomatoes are readily available in other parts of Malaysia, or the world, but these were the only tomatoes we had when growing up (I've been saying that quite a lot recently. It's called aging.) I used to eat these tomatoes with salt as a dip. We did get what was considered 'western' tomatoes (there's one in the pic above), the round red ones that are sweet, but the sour heirloom ones were more common. Now it's the other way around, and it's rare to get heirloom tomatoes, especially the really small ones with cracks near the stalk. Heirloom tomatoes can be found at weekend tamus (farmers' markets) and are usually home-grown and small. These ones were very big so I think they could be a new variety. I like heirloom tomatoes for the sweet-sour taste plus the intense flavor compared to round tomatoes which often lack flavor because they are picked while still green whereas home-grown heirloom tomatoes are usually vine-ripened.

I love tomatoes. I read that tomatoes, like mushrooms, are high in glutamic acid, from which you get msg, thus the savory-sweetness. Tomatoes are also high in beta-carotene (the pigment that makes them red and gives Vitamin A), a good anti-oxidant. So the Italians got it right when they came up with a cuisine heavily based on tomatoes.

This is the usual way my mom cooked sour tomatoes, other than use them in a soup with onions, carrots and potatoes. I loved coming home from school and seeing this dish on the table (in those days school's off by noon and we go home for lunch). The sweet-sour tomato sauce and the tender beef just goes so well with plain rice. This is one of those simple but absolutely delicious dishes only found at home or those quick-fry coffee shops.


(I bought a cheap macro zoom lens with a ring adaptor for RM50 last Sat, and it looks like "You pay a cent you get a cent's worth". The 1st pic above, one of my best pics in terms of color and sharpness, was taken without the cheap lens.)

Stir-fry Beef N Heirloom Tomatoes

300g sirloin beef, cut into thin slices of 3 x 5 cm
2 t cornflour
1/2 T dark soy sauce
1 T water
1/2 t salt, shake of black pepper
--mix above and leave 1/2 an hour

400g heirloom tomatoes, in small wedges
1/2 t salt
1 t fine sugar
a handful of spring onions or chinese celery, in 2 cm lengths

Mix to make a seasoning sauce:
1 T oyster sauce
2 t cornflour + 4 T water, mix well

5 T oil for frying

1. Heat up a wok, add 5 T oil and when it smokes, add the beef and spread it on the wok in a single layer. When the edges start to cook, turn beef over with a frying ladle, let beef cook a couple of seconds and stir quickly. This is the right way to cook beef so that it remains tender, according to my friend Su who learnt it from her fatherstir. Now stir fry quickly--the beef would be about 80% cooked- turn heat off, scoop beef out, straining off the oil so that oil remains in the wok.

2. Heat wok up and fry the tomatoes under high heat. Add the 1/2 t salt and sugar. When tomatoes are 1/2 wilted (or if you prefer, 1/4), add the beef and spring onions/celery leaves, stir, add the seasoning sauce (adjust seasoning) and when sauce thickens and is heated through, dish it onto a serving plate. Serve with plain rice.

Stirfried Salted Mustard Greens With Beef (Xiencai Nurou)

This is a dish you find at home but never in restaurants. Tell you a Chinese cuisine best-kept secret: many delicious Chinese dishes are never served in restaurants and only those who grew up eating them will know how good they are. I'm talking about 'home food,' jia changcai.

As a kid, whenever I got back from school and found that my mom was going to cook this dish for dinner, I'd be very happy. Another dish she cooked well was steamed beef mince with waterchestnuts. Very Cantonese. When I got married, I ate xiencai nurou often at my MIL's. Made me very happy also. Her version was more elegant (Shanghai ngin, you know), with more oil and no gravy, and slivers of chili and chinese celery for color which my mom didn't bother with. I like both versions but this is my MIL's version I'm giving here.

Xiencai Nurou
300g tenderloin or sirloin beef, cut into thin slices of ~ 3cm x 5 cm
--marinade with 1 T each of shaoxin wine, light soy sauce and cornflour
--also add 1/2 T fine sugar and a few dashes of black pepper
--leave 1 hour in fridge
300g (or more, if like) xiencai/humchoy, cut fine (1 cm lengths)
1 red mild chili, cut into fine strips
1 T fine ginger strips

1 T Chinese celery, cut into 1 cm lengths (optional)

2 t fine sugar

1 T oyster sauce

6 T veg oil

1. Soak the xiencai if too salty, wash a couple of times if not. Squeeze all water out.

2. In a wok, dry-fry the xiencai and ginger under medium heat without oil until all water is gone. This will take about 8 minutes. Add sugar and fry for another minute. Remove, wash the wok.

3. Put 6 T (or more, if you dare) oil in the wok, when it smokes, put the beef in and spread it on the wok in a single layer. When the edges start to cook, turn beef over, cook a couple of seconds and stir quickly. This is the right way to cook beef so that it remains tender, according to my friend Su who learnt it from her father. Remove beef when 3/4 done, leaving the oil in the wok.

4. In the wok (use very high heat) where you just fried the beef, fry the chili and celery for a second, then add the xiencai, beef and the 1 T oyster sauce, fry quickly mixing well the beef and xiencai and dish up.

Note: You can cook this dish with less oil and add cornflour solution (1 T: 5 T water) to thicken. This will give more sauce; my mom's method.

To make your own xiencai/humchoy, go to my previous post. I would advise that you not buy the xiencai from China, which has yellow coloring. The xiencai from our markets are free from coloring but remember they usually use leftover unsold veg and worse, they pickle them in plastic tubs and pails. All acidic food should be kept in glass containers which are non-reactive.

Japanese Curry

This is one of my lazy-day dishes. To those who don't eat any curry but Malaysian or Indian curries, this is not for you. Japanese curry tastes like a westernized curry stew. It is so easy to cook. Almost all the Jap curry mixes make good curries but some, like the S&B mix that I used, are slightly too sugar-sweet. I also find that you can add more meat and veg than the recipe calls for on the box.

Japanese Curry

500g meat (beef/lamb/boneless chicken/pork, in 3 cm cubes)
300g firm young potatoes, peeled & in 3 cm cubes
2 large carrots, in 3 cm chunks
1 large brown onion, in chunks
1 pkt Jap curry mix

1. I don't bother to fry the meat. Just put the meat (and the onion chunks if you like it all dissolved into the sauce) into a pot, add enough water to cover and simmer till almost tender.

2. Add the carrots and potatoes and simmer till almost soft. Make sure there's enough water to cover the meat and veg. Break the mix into small pieces, add to the pot and stir well. The curry will thicken. There's no need to season. Serve with white rice or bread.

P.S. Wey starts final exams today and we've been up late revising. I just feel so frustrated and angry with him for not doing his assignments throughout the year. I know it isn't the teachers' fault but I wish schools would call or write to parents about missed deadlines, especially if it's PMR projects. I can't even cook; so upset.