Taro & Pork Ribs Congee

I couldn't find taro in the market or supermarket so I waited for the Donggongon tamu (a local market that is held on Thurdays and Fridays in Donggongon). Look at the stuff I picked up there this morning:

    Baby jicama, RM5 per kg.

    An Indonesian fruit called salak, RM2 for all that. 

    Taro, RM4 per kg.

    No idea what this is but it's sour and the vendor said it's for cooking fish.  RM1 for all that.

   Rm3 for the sweet corn (pretty expensive for 4 but this is Malaysia), RM2 for the limes, RM2 for the very fresh and young petola and RM1 for each bundle of tender Chinese spinach and long beans.

When I got home from the market, the congee that Vero cooked was purplish in color. She had added pulut hitam (black glutinous rice) because we had run out of brown rice (we are mostly on brown rice now because my mom's diabetic). It was too wasteful to cook another pot of congee so I went with what Vero had cooked. When we sat down for lunch (congee for lunch in tropical weather is a big mistake), the kids wondered if the congee was savory or sweet.

Surprisingly, it was good congee. Taro never fails, never.

Taro & Pork Ribs Congee

400 to 500 g pork ribs, chopped into 3 cm pieces & blanched with boiling water & drained
400 to 500 gm taro, peeled and cut into chunks 3 cm square
1 1/2 cups white or brown rice, washed
2 cloves garlic, 1/4 of a small brown onion and a very small knob of fresh ginger, all smashed and chopped finely

1. In a heavy-based pot, fry the garlic, onion and ginger in about 1 tablespoon of veg oil until soft and fragrant but not brown. Add the rice and stir, then add water about 15 times the volume of the rice. Cover and simmer, stirring once in a while. Add more water to make the congee thinner if like. Note: Do not add water to ready cooked congee or it will turn watery when cold. Some congee purists (usually HK people) start with the right amount of water and never add anymore, controlling the consistency of the congee by controlling the heat.
2. After one hour, add the spare ribs and simmer again for 30 minutes. Usually, at this point, I like to turn the heat off and let the congee swell. If you are doing that, you can add the taro now. It will cook but if it doesnt go soft enough, go to Step 3.
3. Add the taro and simmer until the taro is tender but not too soft. Season with salt and pepper. Let congee steep for a while before serving.

Hangzhou Pian Er Chuan Mian

Pian Er Chuan Mian (I can't decipher the meaning) is a popular noodle dish in Hangzhou, China and I've always wanted to make it but I couldn't get hold of yellow chives, fresh winter bamboo shoots and fresh straw mushrooms at the same time. With Chinese New Year a month from now, most supermarkets are stocking their shelves with Chinese goods, including veggies. Thai Seng next to Kian Kok School is busy with shoppers and I enjoy going there for Chinese veggies such as lotus roots, sweet pea sprouts and kailan stems. Sometimes they even bring in yellow chives, a very fragile veggie that wilts and sweats almost as soon as it is unpacked from the box. I think yellow chives are grown the same way as white asparagus, that is, without sunlight and so both the green and yellow/white variety are the same specie. Tastewise, yellow chives are sweeter than ordinary green chives and more tender. Chinese chives, btw, are not the same as western chives. Chinese chives are flat-bladed and have a strong garlicky smell, and are even more pungent than green Chinese chives.

Right. To make this noodle dish, you need the following ingredients:


Upper row, left to right: straw mushrooms, yellow chives, fresh wheat noodles.
Lower row, left to right: pork, Chinese ham, xue cai, fresh bamboo shoots.

The noodles are fresh wheat noodles, much like ramen noodles. Do not use Cantonese wonton noodles or local oily wheat noodles. This is one tasty noodles dish, especially with some thick chili oil paste.

Hangzhou Pian Er Chuan Mian (serves 4 or more)

500g fresh wheat noodles
300g lean pork, in thin slices
150g fresh straw mushrooms, sliced into two or three slices
150g xue cai ("snow veggie", a preserved veggie)
100g fresh winter bamboo, in thin slices
30g Chinese ham, in thin slices
10 cups chicken or pork stock
2 T lard + 2 T veg oil
salt and white pepper to taste

1. Marinade the pork with 1 T light soy sauce, 1 t corn starch, 1 T water & 1/2 t sugar for about 1 hour. Fry the pork in 1 T veg oil until just cooked. You can do this ahead.
2. Simmer the stock with the ham in a covered pot for about 1/2 hour. Top up the stock if it is reduced. This can also be done ahead.
3. Bring a large pot of water to the boil and cook the noodles, stirring well to loosen the strands and cook evenly. (While noodles are cooking, keep the soup simmering in another pot.) Check by breaking a strand of noodle with your fingernails. The noodles are cooked when there's no white uncooked dough in the center. Do not overcook. Drain the noodles.
4. Heat up a wok, add the lard and oil and fry the xue cai, mushrooms and bamboo shoots. Add the stock and season with 1 T rice wine/ Shaoxin wine and salt and white pepper to taste. Bring to a rolling boil and add the chives. Turn the heat off.

5. You can serve the noodles in individual bowls or in one big pot, adding the boiling soup to the noodles in the bowls or pot. Serve immediately.

Japanese Stewed Pork Leg With Soybeans

Pork leg with soy beans stew--so so yummy.

My MIL's Shanghainese pork leg and soy beans stew is a dish we look forward to find on her dining table when we eat dinner at her house on Saturdays but after tonight, MIL's pork leg stew looks like it has stiff competition from the stew cooked by my son Wey. To add insult to injury, it was the first time Wey had ever cooked the dish, and first time he ever handled a pork leg, which disgusted him a bit.

This is a great dish for one-pot dinners when you are too lazy to cook a banquet. Just add a soup and stir-fried veggies and nobody should complain. I don't cook pork leg often but once in a six-month while I do, especially when I see my face getting drawn and thin. Pork leg has lots of collagen and gelatine so go easy on that expensive jar of SK II and eat pork leg instead. Wishful but you never know.

This recipe is adapted from an old Japanese cookbook and all the ingredients are the same as my MIL's except sake is used in place of Shaoxin wine and Wey added a bunch of scallions and a tablespoon of dark soy sauce. If the skin and ligament are not stewed soft enough, the gravy or sauce will not have that slight stickiness which is desirable (the stickiness) and makes the dish tastier. If the skin and ligament are cooked too soft, there won't be a bite although my son Wey prefers them that way. The best texture is when there's still a slight bite in the skin and the ligaments come off without you having turn your face to one side and to use your fingers to pull them off. What I do is cook the pork to a stage where the skin is still a little bit springy, turn off the heat and let the sauce and flavor seep into the meat and then after an hour or so, timed about half hour before dinner is served, re-heat the stew.


Japanese Pork Leg With Soy Beans
1 medium-sized pork leg, about 1.7 kg bones on
350 gm dried soy beans, washed well & drained
6 T light soy sauce (I used Lee Kum Kee's)
1 T dark soy sauce
3 T sake
2 T veg oil
2 large stalks of spring onions or leeks, washed & tied in a bunch each
1 knob of fresh ginger (about 20 gm), washed n smashed lightly

1. Have the butcher clean, shave and cut the pork leg into large fist-sized pieces. Put the pork leg into a bowl and scald with enough boiling water to cover. Stir, then drain the water away. This step will clean the leg of any dirt or hairs and also gives a clearer gravy instead of a cloudy gravy later.
2. Marinade the pork leg with 3 tablespoons of the light soy sauce and the sake for about 1/2 hour.
3. Heat a heavy-based pot (such as AMC's) until smoking, add the oil, the ginger and spring onions. Fry until the onions are wilted. Add the pork leg (keep the marinade liquid) and stir fry until the skin is tightened and seared.
4. Add the soy beans to the pork leg, stir to mix well. Add the remaining 3 tablespoons of light soy sauce, the 1 tablespoon dark soy sauce, the marinade liquid and enough water to just cover the pork leg and soy beans. When the stew boils, turn the heat down to low and simmer, covered, for 1 1/2 to 2 hours, depending on how you like the texture of the skin and ligament. There's no need to add anymore water but if you are cooking longer than 1 1/2 hours, you may have to add 1/2 cup of water. However, if there's too much liquid. turn the heat to medium high and take the lid off to reduce the liquid. The gravy/sauce should be runny  and just a little bit thicker than water. Taste and season with more soy sauce if necessary. Serve hot with rice. This dish gets better the next day.

Corned Beef Noodles

I'm having problems uploading the photos from my memory card. I really want to post my photos quickly because in 10 days Yi and I'll be off to Spain, France and Italy. Heather, if you are reading this, we'll likely be in Florence around 9th July. Meet us there!

We're going to Bruges, Belgium tomorrow, stay a night, and then go to Antwerp where Yi has been aching to go because of the shopping. I'm worried for her upcoming exams but she's not. Last week was extremely tiring for me. She started out asking if I could glue some plants onto her model and before long I was cutting windows with a cutter ("because the laser cutters are all booked") and finally the night before her presentation, I was making whole apartment units. Just when I thought I could sleep at 3:30 am, she said weakly "I still don't have roofs..." and so Martyr Mom spent the next 3 hours cutting roofs. I wanted to watch her presentation but couldn't get up on time and got to the room 5 minutes after she presented. She did well btw, coming in third which was a surprise considering that her work was so 'raw' and she was on her own without a team mate.



Yi got me hooked on buffalo mozzarella. Hub and I had samples of the freshest and tastiest buffalo mozz ever at an Italian market. Yi eats them straight but I like to eat them with tomatoes (oh, Italian tomatoes are THE BEST!) and anchovies. We get 200 g buffalo mozz at 69 euro cents here , crazy cheap.



Remember the men tiao that I like to post and re-post because I can't emphasize enough on how easy and tasty it is? When I was at uni and out of fresh meat, I used to cook mee fun (fine rice noodles) with canned corned beef, bean sprouts and top with a dollop of marmite. It was my comfort food. Yi remembered that I cooked it once and wanted it again. I never thought I'd post this but I will because some of you may just love it as much as we do. It's super easy to cook and you can add other meat and veg. The corned beef here is from Brazil and super creamy and delicious. I think I'll ship some home. I don't like the mee fun here (too bleached & bland) or the rice (too 'loose'; they don't hold together) so I used flour batter as for the men tiao. Just boil some water or stock, add pork belly slices or other meat (optional), cut the flour batter in, add the veg, the corned beef (the canned one, not the one in a chunk), season with salt n pepper and that's it. You must try it, esp on a cold day.

3-Mushroom Clay Pot Rice

L to R: oyster mushrooms, tea tree mushrooms & Chinese black mushrooms.


3-mushroom rice

I should watch more TV. There are so many great travel and food programs and yet I never seem to sit long enough to watch any. In fact, I'm relieved that The Little Nyonya is over. It was fun grabbing an hour every night to watch the show but I got obsessed and started missing important appointments and dinners just to stay back for the show. And for all my effort, the ending was such a bummer too. She was so nice to everyone but so ruthless to him. I hate bad endings.

So yesterday I happened to catch a program on the food of southern China, and I immediately planned to visit China the minute the PMR exams are over. I used to be pompous about my holidays in western countries and avoided China but after the first visit, in 1999, I knew I had been prejudiced. China is so big, every place has something interesting to explore and the food is fit for emperors. What we think we know of Chinese food is just a small grain of sand compared to the food we can find in China.

One of the dishes I saw on the program was a mushroom clay pot rice. I happened to have 4 kinds of mushrooms in my fridge so mushroom clay pot was just what I cooked today. Although the recipe wasn't given, I think my version is good enough to share. Instead of a vegan dish, I added some beef strips to give extra flavor and to make it a one-pot meal that is quick and convenient to cook. I liked it so much I had 2 bowls, and I never eat so much rice for lunch so that's something.

You can use any combination of mushrooms that you like although to keep it authentic, don't use white button mushrooms. I had some enoki or golden mushrooms but I didn't use them just in case they overpower the other mushrooms. You can keep the pot of rice vegan, or you can add the meat of your choice for a complete meal. This dish took only 20 minutes to prepare and cook so I'm really pleased with it. If you don't have a clay pot, get one because it is an indispensable piece of cooking utensil for cooking rice and Oriental stews. I use a 'bioClaypot' my friend B gave me and it saves on electricity and, unless the clay is not as pure as the company claims, there's no non-stick material or aluminium to worry about. This pot has an extra inner lid to keep the heat in, which is why the heat can be switched off once the rice boils for about 2 minutes. Great pot.



3-Mushroom Claypot Rice (serves 4)
A handful each of 3 kinds of mushrooms
300g lean meat (beef or chicken or pork)
2 1/2 cups long grain rice, washed
1 T garlic, minced
3 T veg oil
water
splash of sesame oil (if like)
spring onions for garnishing

Prep: Trim & wash the mushrooms quickly. I know many chefs tell us not to wash mushrooms, but I can't not wash them--there's all those dirt and woody stuff. Tear or slice the larger mushrooms into strips (not too thin) and lightly squeeze out some of the water, if any.

Cut the meat into strips and season with: 1 T shao xin or rice wine, 1/4 t salt, 1/2 t fine sugar, 2 t light soy sauce. 1 T Lee Kum Kee premium brand oyster sauce, 1 T corn flour, 1 T water & a few twists of white or black pepper.

1. Put 1 1/2 T oil into a heated wok, add the meat and stir fry until half cooked (fully cooked for pork). Remove onto a plate.

2. Heat the remaining 1 t oil in the same wok and add the garlic, fry for two seconds, add a small pinch of salt and then add the mushrooms. Stir fry until mushrooms just begin to wilt. Add the meat, toss a couple of times and remove onto a plate. It will cook again in the pot so there's no need to fully cook it but don't make it too raw too.

3. Put the washed rice and enough water (you can use chicken stock if not using oyster sauce) for the water level to be 1 cm above the top of the rice into a large claypot set over high heat. When the rice boils, lower the heat to medium-low and let it cook about 5-7 minutes. Take off the lid of the claypot and quickly check if the rice is more than 90% done. The water should have been absorbed by the rice. If the rice is almost done, quickly tip the fried meat and mushrooms on top of the rice, level it and cover. If so, switch off the heat now. If not, let the rice cook a further 2-3 minutes, then add the meat and mushrooms and switch off the heat and let the rice sit with the lid on for 5 minutes.

4. Fluff the rice with a wooden paddle to mix the meat, mushrooms and rice. Serve hot, garnished with spring onions and a drizzle of sesame oil if like.

Coriander Chicken Rice

One of my fav quick meals is the Shanghainese cai fan, a pot of rice cooked with loads of veg. All you need to go with cai fun is a meat dish and a light soup, or you can even add some fried meat such as chicken or pork or Chinese sausages into the rice while it cooks and that's a meal. Another quick meal I like to do is the men tiao. This is home-made noodles made instantly, and cooks faster than dried mi fun. I like my men tiao cooked in chicken stock, with a couple of slices of fresh fish and some iceberg lettuce. Another version I like to do is men tiao with pork slices, pork balls, liver and sayur manis.

One-pot rice casseroles are the easiest thing to cook if you are out of ideas/lazy/on a budget/all three. My fav rice casserole is of course dried Chinese mushrooms with chicken, flavored with plenty of soy sauce and garlic. Last week I cooked a coriander chicken rice casserole (a recipe from The Australian Women's Weekly) which was okay, meaning it won't give you lots of compliments. I'd make some changes to the recipe if I cook this again: I'd chop the chicken into smaller pieces and cook them in the stock to make the chicken moister and more tender. I'd also marinade the chicken and mushrooms together so they are better-flavored.


Coriander Chicken Rice Casserole
4 large chicken thighs or 1/2 chicken, chopped into large pieces, with or w/o skin
2 cups long grain rice, washed
8-10 dried Chinese mushrooms, soaked & sliced
1 brown onion, chopped
1 can chicken stock or enough home-made chicken stock
1 T coriander seeds (ketumbar), toasted lightly & pounded
3 T fish sauce
4-5 cloves garlic, minced
1 t ground tumeric
oil, salt, white pepper

1. Marinade the chicken and mushrooms with the fish sauce, 1/4 t salt and some white pepper for an hour.

2. You can choose not to fry the chicken and mushrooms. Frying them will give better color and flavor. Just put about 1 T oil into your wok or fry pan and fry the chicken and mushrooms. When browned, add the marinade sauce and about 2 T water and cover, cook for 2-3 minutes.

3. Heat 1 T oil in a claypot or casserole pot, add the onions, garlic, coriander seeds and fry in low-medium fire for a minute. Add the rice and tumeric powder and stir well until fragrant, another 2 minutes or so. Do not burn the rice. If you are using an electric rice cooker, you now tranfer the fried rice to the cooker.

4. Top the rice with the chicken and mushroom (and any liquid) and add enough chicken stock so that the water above the rice is about 1.75 cm.

5. Heat the pot over the stove until rice boils, decrease the heat to low and let it cook another 10 minutes. Switch off and leave rice to finish cooking.

6. Sprinkle finely chopped (instead of cutting coarsely like I did) fresh coriander over the rice and serve hot.

Re-post: Taro Rice

Another post from 2007:

(Update: this recipe was amended on 24/11/07 to include mushrooms)

I can't remember if it was Meatball or Chickyegg who asked for a taro rice recipe. Frankly, I've never had taro rice before. I think it's a very West Malaysian dish, probably Fujian or Chowzhou in origin?

We had a couple of friends stay over the last few days and lunch was always a quick meal outside. Yesterday Ming found a large piece of plastic wrapper, complete with a sticker of the shop and name of the manufacturer of whatever it contained, in his soup noodles. I had wild imagination of what it held inside, and I'm totally put off eating outside. So I decided to try cook yam rice for lunch today. It turned out pretty good, tasty and fragrant, and I'm sharing the recipe (with some changes) from Betty Yew's The Best Of Chinese Cooking. Funny thing about Ms Yew's baking recipes - I never get good results, but her chinese dishes work fine.

Taro Rice

600g taro (weight after peeling), peeled and cut into 3/4" cubes or smaller
400g pork/chicken fillet, cut into 1/2" or 1 cm cubes
4 cups long grain rice, washed & drained
1/4 cup dried prawns, washed well

5 dried chinese mushrooms, soaked and sliced into slivers
6 shallots, sliced thinly
1/2 cup finely chopped spring onions
2 red chilies, sliced thinly
1 can Swanson's chicken broth
1 T light soy sauce
1 T dark soy sauce
veg oil

Meat seaoning ingredients:
1/2 t salt
1/2 t sugar
dash or two of white pepper
2 T light soy sauce
1 T dark soy sauce
2 t sesame oil
1 T shaoxin wine
2 t cornflour

1. Marinade the meat with the seasoning ingredients.
2. Fry the shallot slices till golden and crispy. Put aside.
3. Deep-fry the taro in 3 batches till lightly golden. Drain on kitchen paper.
4. Pour away the oil used for frying the taro until about 1/3 cup remains. Fry the dried prawns till brown and crispy, add the mushrooms, fry a minute and add rice and fry, adding 1 T light soy sauce and 1 T dark soy sauce (or more if you want more color), for about 1 to 2 minutes.
5. Put rice into a large rice cooker, add the chicken stock using a rice-measuring cup and measure out 3 1/2 cups (add water to make up to that amount), adding to the rice as you go. Add meat on top. Switch cooker on.
6. As soon as rice boils, add the taro. Do not stir to mix.
7. When the 'cooked' indicator is on, test a grain of rice to see if it's fully cooked. If so, fluff and mix the rice and taro thoroughly. Serve rice garnished with crispy shallot slices, chilies and green onions.

Dolsot Bi Bim Bap

Dolsot bi bim bap

What a funny-sounding word, bi bim bap. Those three syllables, I've found out, means mixed rice and dolsot is the stone bowl that the rice and veg are cooked and served in. When I eat Korean, I'd always go for their soups, stews and bulgogi. My son Wey however will invariably go for sam gyup sal (thin slices of grilled belly pork) and bi bim bap but it has to be in a dolsot, or he won't eat it.

Bi bim bap looks colorful and impressive but tastes rather boring and bland to me but to some, especially the semi-vegans, it's the best Korean dish. Home-made dolsot bi bim bap tastes far better than the restaurants' mainly because you wouldn't scrimp on the ingredients at home. Bi bim bap is a very complete meal, with lots of vitamins and fibre from the colorful veg plus rice, beef and egg all blended with a dollop of sauce made of hot chili soybean paste. The dish is not only easy to prepare, it is quite cheap too because like jap chae (bi bim bap tastes almost like a rice jap chae because the same seasoning is used), a little of this and that add up to a lot.

Since I don't have any dolsot, I used my claypots which don't retain heat as well as the beautiful granite dolsots used in Korean restaurants. I wonder if our local granite pestle and mortar bowl will do. This is a good dish to serve on chilly days because the stone bowls keep the food, and your hands, hot for a long time. Serve it with a simple seaweed or miso soup and a small plate of kimchi and you'll be purring after the meal.



Dolsot Bi Bim Bap (for 4)

1)150g beef tenderloin, cut into thin strips or minced

Marinade the beef with:
2 T light soy sauce
1 T finely chopped garlic
1/2 T fine sugar
a pinch of black pepper
1 t toasted sesame seeds
1/2 T sesame oil
1 T finely sliced spring onions

Fry the beef in veg oil until just cooked.

2) A selection of veg to your liking:
a small bunch of big soy bean sprouts
5 dried shiitake/chinese mushrooms, soaked and cut into thin slices
a small handful ofgosari or fernbrake, cut into 4cm long
1/2 cucumber, cut into thin julienne strips
1/2 carrot, in thin julienne strips
1 small zucchini, in thin slices
1 piece of lettuce, sliced 1 cm strips
1 small bunch of spinach

For bean sprouts, boil for 10 min until soft, squeeze water out and mix with a dash of sesame oil and pinch of salt.
For dried mushrooms, fry in sesame oil and a little sugar and light soy sauce.
For dried gosari, soak until softened, cut it and boil for 10-15 min. Squeeze out water and add sesame oil and a dash of light soy sauce.
For cucumber, salt it for 15 minutes, wash and squeeze dry and fry in a little bit of sesame oil for a couple of seconds.
For carrot, boil for 2 min and drain.
For zucchini, fry in a little sesame oil & salt it lightly.
Lettuce is left uncooked.
Blanch the spinach, squeeze out water, cut into 4 cm strips, sprinkle with sesame oil, salt n sesame seeds.

3) Boil 2-3 cups of rice ahead (depending on how much rice 4 of you can eat), keep warm. Tell you my secret: I use diluted canned beef stock to cook my bi bim bap rice! You don't have to; it's not authentic to do so but hey, that's my secret to a tasty and flavorful bowl of bi bim bap.

4) Gochujang sauce

2 T gochujang (red chili bean paste)
1 T fine sugar
1 T sesame oil
1 T toasted sesame seeds
1/4 cup beef stock

5) Garnish:
Toasted sesame seeds
Toasted nori, scrunched or cut
4 raw eggs

Cooking the bap:

1.Place your dolsot or claypot over the stove and let it heat up. Splash in some sesame oil and use a kitchen tissue to spread the oil all over the sides and bottom of the pot.

2. Spoon the desired amount of cooked rice into the dolsot, arrange the veg side by side around and over the rice, leaving a space in the middle for the raw egg. For a pretty bi bim bap, arrange the colors to contrast with each other. Cover and let cook over low heat about 10 to 15 min. Crack the egg into the middle or, crack it in earlier if you don't want it too raw although remember the hot rice and veg will cook the egg when you mix it all together.

3. Sprinkle sesame seeds and nori over, drop a spoonful of gochujang sauce on the topping and serve. Serve additional gochujang sauce on the side for people who want a hotter and saltier taste. Be careful handling the dolsot: it's BURNING HOT.


Bi bim bap, all mixed up and ready to eat.

Chicken Claypot Rice

Chicken claypot rice. This is a healthy (but not any less delicious) version where less oil is used and the rice is not first fried.

Chicken claypot rice (CCR) is not something easily available in KK. I can only think of two places that serve CCR, and one of them technically should be disqualified because they use a stainless steel pot instead. The other one is a half-shop at 'old' Foh San, next to the egg tarts shop. I went there for the first time 2 weeks ago and was impressed with their CCR, which was cooked by a lad of about 15/16. I was also impressed that the whole family was helping out--little bro taking the orders and little sis bringing the food, mom in the back cooking noodles and older bro in the front whipping up delicious CCR. It is rare to find Malaysian-Chinese working in restaurants anymore. Now that the Govt has pledged to seek out and expel the illegal workers in this country, maybe we'll see more locals in restaurants. I don't know why it is not our culture to have our kids working part-time jobs. The irony is when they go overseas to study, they willingly work there even if it's sweeping the floors. I hate it when some (illegal) waitress carries my bowl of soup noodles with half her thumb washing in it. You know how 'good' our Fomema people are in doing health screening. In fact, do you know that after a certain number of years in the country, the foreign workers do not need to be health-screened? Let's hope the Govt can do what they say they'll do. Anyway, let's have a happy post this morning.

I admit I have never cooked CCR before. I have of course cooked the electric rice cooker version but never thought of attempting using claypots until Nee posted on it. And you know folks, it's a cooking epiphany: once you've faced your fears of cooking a certain dish, the fear is gone. CCR turned out to be nearly as easy as cooking instant noodles! Not only that, there's hardly any frying and there's minimal washing too because you cook and eat from the pot. I'm thinking claypot everything now. Btw, my beautiful claypots were hand-carried from Guangzhou last year, which is dumb when I read that Nee bought hers locally for about RM4/US$1.25 each.

So I watched the young boy cook CCR and learnt a few tricks. One is to apportion the chicken & mushrooms topping so that the pot cover is opened only briefly when you add the topping because the cooking liquid will evaporate quickly. Soak your rice and the whole dish will cook in 20 min only! I upped the little fella and added fried shallots oil to the rice for extra aroma and you can add fried garlic too if you like.



Claypot Chicken Rice (4 big servings)

The Topping:
1/2 chicken (1 kg), chopped into small pieces
8 dried chinese mushrooms, soaked & stems removed
2 chinese sausages , sliced
1 T fresh ginger strips
1 tsp mui hiong salted fish

1. Mix all the above (except sausage slices, or even the salted fish if you don't want it mixed in) together with 1/3 t salt, 2 T light soy sauce, 3 T dark soy sauce, 1/2 T sesame oil, 1/4 t white pepper, 2 T shaoxing wine, 1 T oyster sauce and 3 T water.
2. Fry the sausage slices or if you are a health-freak, toast it in the oven like I did.
3. Divide the chicken, mushroom and sausages into 4 equal portions, including the marinade sauce (or play favoritism like me and give Son no 1 more chicken and Son no 2 more sausages).

Other ingredients:
3 1/2 cups fragrant rice
5 shallots, sliced
chicken stock or water

1. Wash the rice and soak it in water for 1 hour. Put 2 T veg oil in a pot (you can even do this in the claypot, dividing the shallots equally) and fry the shallots until slightly browned.



2. Place the claypot on top of the stove at high heat. Pour away the water from the rice and divide the soaked rice among 4 claypots, stir in the onions and oil (omit the oil if you are health-conscious) and pour chicken stock or water to cover the rice upto 3/4 cm above the level of the rice. When the water boils, let it do so for 2 min, then lower the heat to as low as it can get and add the topping with the marinade sauce and quickly cover the lid. If you like your CCR dark, add another splash of dark soy sauce over the topping in the pot. Let the rice cook for 20 minutes. Do not open the lid until it's time. If you smell burnt rice too early on, the fire's too high. I found that the rice gets cooked in 15 min but you need the extra time to get the funjiao, which is the bonus at the bottom of the pot.


Funjiao, the crunchy fragrant burnt rice at the bottom of the pot, is essential to a good pot of CCR.

Oden

Oden in the early stages of cooking and before addition of fish cakes, fish balls and cuttlefish (in place of octopus).


Leftover oden, two days later.

I was reading Blue Lotus' wonderful blog recently and she did a post on oden, a Japanese dish that is available in the street stalls of Japan in the winter. Bento Pet had also raved about oden, and I thought I had never seen or eaten this until I decided to cook it, and that's when I realised that I have seen simmering pots of oden in small conveniences stores in Tokyo and also at Hyatt Hotel where it is placed near the kitchen counter during their weekend Japanese buffet. I have tried it once or twice but was more into eating all the money for value dishes (buffet remember) like teppanyaki beef, sushi and tempura.

With the recent rainy days and temperatures at night in the nearly low to mid-20s (cool compared to the usual high 20s), I cooked oden last Sat for my sister and family, and friends Linda and Arthur. When I announced that dinner was to be 80% root veggies and tofu products, Arthur nearly stormed out of my house, the meateater that he is (okay, I exaggerated. Again.). But he stayed and ended up having at least 3 large bowls and didn't even bother much with my side dish of boiled organic chicken, alongwith two cans of Tiger Stout so I think it went down well with him, literally. It helped that it rained and we had a great time discussing the upcoming elections and the exploits of the super hunk from Canada, E.Chan (what an entertaining world).

Oden is basically a soupy stew of winter veggies such as those you see in the pics above. Meat is limited to beef tendons, octopus and surimi or processed fishpaste (I think that is one of the worst culinary contribution by Japan, in terms of health) in various forms. According to Blue Lotus, some restaurants in Japan have been using the same stock for generations, replenishing the soup and veg daily I suppose. Like most stews, oden gets richer in flavor and tastes better after a day or more as the veg and surimi soaks in the broth and at the same time add flavor to it. Because of that, I started cooking the stew at 2 pm, then switched off the fire after 2 hours to let the veg steep in the broth. An hour before my guests arrived, I started simmering the stew again, adding the softer and easier to cook ingredients then. This dish can feed an army; a bit of this and that will add up to an unwieldy stew and I needed a big wok and a pot to cook all that stuff you see in the first picture.

Next time you have eaten too much meat, and you need to detox, oden is a good dish for that. There's no oil or meat except for the processed fish products. I don't like processed products which are basically made of flour, flavorings and color so I made fresh fish paste into fishballs and slices. Actually my helper Vero made that; she makes the smoothest and springiest fish balls (all gone in the first round!) so to this day I haven't mastered that skill.

Choose a rainy/cold day and some good company (who need to detox on meat. Haha, that's why I invited you, Arthur and Lim), set the oden stew over a small stove at the table and let the small talk begin.

Oden
dashi granules
sake
Kikkoman soy sauce
salt
2 large pieces of Japanese kelp

Use veggies such as carrots, radish, potatoes, lotus root, dried shiitake mushrooms, tofu products such as semi-soft tofu, fried tofu balls, fish paste products, hard-boiled eggs and--fun to eat--konnyaku jelly.

1. Put the kelp in a large pot of water and put on the heat. When it begins to boil, remove the kelp. Add the seasoning and then the harder to cook veg such as lotus root, mushrooms and radish and let it simmer, really simmer under low fire, for about 1 1/2 hours. After that, add the other veg and ingredients in stages according to their tendency to soften and simmer again. Adjust the soup with more seasoning or water. The soup shouldn't be too salty; it's a soup not a gravy. I cheated a bit. I used the water in which I boiled my RM86, 5kg home-reared meant-for-CNY chicken.

2. Meanwhile, make a ponzu dip of soy sauce, mirin and lemon juice . I wouldn't add dashi because the soup's dashi-y enough. You can go Malaysian and serve with a chili-lime sauce like I did.

3. When oden is ready, tranfer a portion of it into a claypot and set it over a small stove at the dining table. Serve a bowl of rice to each person to go with the oden.

Chinese Steamboat

(This post was updated with pictures on 8/11/07)

Steamboat is an informal way of eating, with everybody cooking their own or one person cooking for everyone.

As requested by Marie and Angel, here's my steamboat recipe. I got my mom's birthday wrong so won't be doing steamboat this weekend, but I thought I should still give you the recipe. Will update post when I do steamboat.

Steamboat is a boat anywhere else but in South East Asia, where it refers to that Cantonese way of cooking at the table in which raw meat and veg are dipped into a pot of boiling stock and each person will then help himself to the cooked food. In China, 'firepot' is a term that includes steamboat as we know it, and all other ways of cooking at the table, including frying and stewing.

If and only if, I have to eat steamboat in restaurants, I always look out for fresh unprocessed meat. If a place serves mostly processed stuff like fishballs in different shapes, or weiners or surimi (imitation crabsticks), I get out quickly. No point in stuffing my body with all that rubbish. My father was a true Cantonese, always preferring steamboat on special occasions. His steamboat dinners are legendary--my hub still remembers that the first time he ate at my parents', the steamboat consisted of 30 to 40 kinds of ingredients. For steamboat, Dad would take the trouble to prepare fresh beef tripe (sweet, crunchy-chewy!) and pig stomach (also crunchy, but in a different way) which I've never eaten prepared that way anywhere else. He had strict rules to not mix all the different meat and veg together, but to cook each separately so that you can savour the flavor, sweetness and texture of each ingredient. Another thing he did differently was to marinade all the meat in soy sauce, pepper and cornflour.

The rainy weather recently is perfect for a steamboat dinner. Although there's quite a bit of preparation, it is a fun way to eat with friends and family, and it's inexpensive too. One way my friends and I used to tackle the problem of having to prepare so much was to get each person to do certain things. R, who doesn't shop, would bring the fruits, V would do the seafood, W would do her dip, CL would make fishballs and PL would do the beef. Y, if she comes, would get the drinks because she can't cook, or so she claims.

Here's a list of ingredients you can serve in your steamboat party. Just choose a balanced list in terms of flavors and texture and remember my cardinal rule: quality, quality, quality!



Soup
Put the bones from the chicken, the fish and whatever chicken feet and necks you have into a big pot. Fill with water, add 2 chinese carrots/radishes (lobak) which have been cut into small chunks and simmer for at least 1 1/2 hours. Strain away all the bones, keeping the radishes in the stock. You can add some salt and pepper. I don't because the dips are good enough.

Meat
1. beef fillet, or sirloin, sliced thinly & marinaded with light n dark soy sauce, cornflour & pepper.
2. corn-fed chicken, deboned, sliced, marinaded above (I now prefer on the bone; not so boring)
3. lamb, sliced thinly
4. fish (7-star garoupa is good), sliced thickly. Marinade is optional.
5. prawns, shelled but tails on, marinaded with salt n pepper
6. fresh squid, scored n sliced, marinaded as for prawns
7. dried squid, soaked in water + baking soda for two days, scored n sliced
8. salted jellyfish, washed well n soaked with frequent changes of water
9. pig kidneys, prepared by butcher, sliced & marinaded as for beef
10. pig liver (ask butcher for 'powder liver'), sliced
11.fresh scallops
12.fresh oysters
13.beefballs
14.fishballs (NEVER buy; make your own)
15.porkballs
16.fishmaw, soaked & blanched
17. stuffed tofuballs (half the balls so they'll cook faster)
18.yuefoo (recipe given in November 9th post)
19.wontons (parboiled)
20.quail eggs (boiled, shelled)
Note: Cut all meat (except fish & chicken) thinly but in large pieces. If cut too small, it'll tear and break up easily. For beef, no need to marinade if using imported beef. I prefer sirloin because even though it is not as tender as fillet, it is more flavorful and does not break up easily. Get fish that doesn't break up easily, and leave skin on.

Veg
1. Chinese cabbage
2. tung ho ('chrysanthemum leaves')
3. lettuce
4. kangkong
5. spinach
6. chinese celery
7. choysum (mustard greens)
Others
1. tofu, in cubes
2. fresh shiitake or enoki mushrooms
3. foojook (beancurd sheets)
4. mifun, ho fun etc, soaked and blanched

I don't use yellow noodles because of the coloring and the weird taste they give to the soup.
Dips
1. Wendy Dip (named after Wendy, of course)
-fry minced garlic and small red onions in oil till soft. Put into bowl and add (here I've changed her recipe) Maggi soy sauce and dark soy sauce.
2. Chili Padi Dip
-mix together chopped chili padi, Maggi soy sauce and calamansi (kit jai) juice.
3. Oyster Sauce
-Get the Lee Kum Kee Brand, with a lady rowing a boat.

Method:
1. Cook each item separately, starting with the best meat or ingredients. After a few meat items, start on the veg and mushrooms because the umami from the meat would have made the soup very tasty by then.
2. Do not add noodles until everybody is done. This is because noodles fill you up (and you don't want to be full of carbo) and dilute the soup. The soup's the best at the end so leave some room for it!
3. Either use a big scoop and scoop out all the cooked food onto one or two serving plates so all can help themselves from there, or give each person his own scoop
4. Cook and eat slowly. My father always reminded us that steamboat is to be enjoyed, and in Pingnam, Guangxi where he was from, people eat steamboat from evening to dawn in the winter to keep warm.
5. Wear loose clothing. You'll know why.

Yosenabe

Marie (Yi's friend?), you'll have to wait a while till I get into the mood to do chinese firepot/steamboat. But I did a simple Japanese firepot tonight and I hope you'll try cooking it too. Yosenabe is one-pot cooking (there's also sukiyaki, mitzutaki, teppanyaki, shabu shabu, all one-pot table cooking) at the dinner table, and it is a great way to eat with close friends and family. Be careful. It's so good and fun, you can eat till everything is finished and you can't walk straight. That's why we are lying around like seals instead of going out to watch the Merdeka Day fireworks.

Yosenabe

Chicken, cut into small pieces
prawns, deveined
fish (salmon, any firm white fish), in small chunks
clams or oysters or scallops
mushrooms, shiitake (cut an X into the caps) and enoki
white tofu, in small chunks (pare off the outer skin to get a silkier tofu)
harusame noodles, soaked
carrots, in small slices
leeks, sliced diagonally
spinach
chinese cabbage

soup:
2 litres of dashi stock (boil 2 litres of water, add 2 1/2 T of dashi granules)
3 T Kikkoman soy sauce
3 T mirin

--mix above to make a light stock.

Dip:
1/2 daikon (white carrot), grated finely
juice from 1 lemon
1 T grated fresh ginger
1/2 cup of the above dashi stock

--mix together. this is 'ponzu' sauce, for eating seafood. Serve Japanese 7-spice powder on the side.

1. Cut cabbage, separating the harder stems from the softer leaves. Blanch spinach and leaves of the cabbage briefly. Squeeze water out. Lay the spinach over the cabbage and roll up. Cut into 2 cm lengths.

2. Arrange the ingredients nicely in a flame-proof ceramic or Japanese iron skillet. Do not overload because you can cook in batches.

3. Put skillet onto a table top burner, add some stock, cover and boil. Eat the chicken last as it takes longer to cook. Add water or stock as you continue cooking the next batch. This is not sukiyaki; stock should be light, not too salty and should just cover the veg and meat.

Note: Each person should be given his own scoop and ladle. Serve rice with yosenabe.

Shanghai Vegetable Rice (Cai Fun)

This is similar to the Cantonese chicken and mushroom claypot rice in that everything is cooked together. Since it has protein, carbs and fibre/vitamins, all you need is to add a good soup and its a complete meal. Simple yet very good. I always swear I'd stop at one bowl and end up eating two. This recipe, from my Shanghainese mom-in-law (MIL), has been adapted for cooking in the electric rice cooker. You can opt to omit the sausage or meat because true Shanghai veg rice is just that--rice and veg. To go with it, you need to serve other dishes but at home we often add sausages and meat and that, with a good soup, makes a simple meal.

Shanghai Vegetable Rice

4 cups long-grain uncooked rice (serves 4-6)
4-6 chinese sausages, cut into 1 cm chunks
1 kg 'pak choi' cut into 2 cm lengths
1/2 bulb garlic, chopped fine
1 chicken stock cube or home-made stock
1 1/2 t. salt

1. Fry the sausages till lightly browned. Remove. You can use the oil that has seeped out from the sausages (saturated animal oil but fragrant!) or use veg oil, then fry the garlic 30 seconds, add the veg and 1/2 t. (teaspoon) salt and fry till veg is reduced to half, or wilted. Remove.
2. Wash the rice, add stock/water upto level 2 1/2, top it with any water that has seeped out from the veg. (Remember that the veg will give out more water as it cooks and you don't want a soft mess, but you also don't want rice that's too hard or uncooked in the middle). Add the sausages, remaining 1 t. salt and crumble the stock cube (if using) over the rice. Stir and set it to cook.
3. Let rice cook till it is almost done boiling. Add the veg; do not stir. Quickly close the lid and let the cooking continue.
4. When the rice is done, press the cook button again to let it cook a while longer.
5. Before serving, stir the rice well to mix everything together.

Note: If concerned about the lard in the sausages, reduce the sausages to half and make up with lean diced pork marinated with salt and white pepper. My MIL now omits the sausages altogether and uses pork or chicken, for health reasons. By the way, Shanghainese food is known to be the oiliest (not getting back at my MIL; its a fact) among all Chinese food so don't scrimp on the oil when cooking this. In fact, the traditional way to cook this dish is to fry the uncooked rice in oil before boiling it but really its extra work plus extra oil. In my pic the rice is too soft; blame it on my helper, Vero!