Panna Cotta Amara Con Caramello

Panna cotta amara con caramello

Or 'bitter cream pudding with caramel sauce' although the pudding's not bitter but the caramel syrup is, slightly, but you won't taste it. Anyway, that's the translation of the popular Italian dessert in a cooking class I attended given by Chef Oscar Pasinato at Tanjung Aru Beach Resort in, er, 1999. Gosh, time flies.

I loved this dessert immediately because I love cream. This is a truly super delicious dessert that anyone can make. If I had a dinner party coming up and I'm too hassled with the cooking to bother with an elaborate dessert, this is it. This is the easiest dessert you can ever make without compromising on taste. Just make the cream pudding a night or half a day ahead, do the caramel syrup hours before and assemble just before serving and your guests will be awed but only you know how little work went into the creation. You don't tell, I won't either.

I recommend (okay, it was Chef Oscar who first recommended. I heartily agree) using a tartish fruit in season, such as starfruits or even oranges (as he did), or berries. There's the cream, giving you a smooth silky texture, there's the caramelly sweet syrup and then there's the tartish fruits to temper the richness of the cream and sugar. If you don't want the slight bitter taste, just don't overcook the caramel. I've tried splashing Bailey's (not good) on the pudding but prefer rum although it is not necessary. We're having Korean sam gyub sal tonight instead of finissima di bue con parmigiano e sedano and gamberoni in guazetto di cannelini al porfumo di balsamico with the panna cotta. Chef Oscar would faint if he knows. But this is the way I like to mix my food--not the muddle of today's fusion dishes, but different cuisines in one meal.

Oh, another thing. There are dozens of panna cotta recipes out there but I haven't seen any that uses gelatine leaves. I have tried using gelatine powder, and somehow the panna cotta texture is not as smooth and satiny.



Panna Cotta Amara Con Caramello (4 medium servings)

500 ml* fresh dairy cream
3 pieces gelatine leaves**

* I have reduced this from 700 ml because of our hot weather.
** from cake ingredients shops.

--Put the cream into a small pot, add the gelatine leaves which have been briefly soaked in cold water (15 sec or until just turning soft). Heat and stir the cream until the gelatine is thoroughly melted and pour into individual molds, preferably metal molds which are easier to ease out. For big parties, I make a huge mold for guests to help themselves with.

70gm sugar
25 ml water (edited!)

--Put water and sugar into a small pot and heat it (do not stir!) until it becomes golden brown (too brown and it will be bitter) and bubbly-thick. Very carefully, using a long ladle and gloved hand (because the hot syrup will sputter), add about 50 ml of cold water dripping onto the inside of the pot. This is supposed to prevent the syrup from hardening. Let it cool.



To Serve:

poppy seeds & mint leaves (optional)
fresh fruits

--Sit the panna cotta mold in very warm water briefly and it can be turned out easily. I've found that thick glass molds are not suitable because it's hard to get the pudding out. Decorate with the fresh fruits, poppy seeds and mint leaves.

Men Tiao (Noodle Strands)

Men tiao

I've always wanted to post this recipe because each time I eat this, I'm thinking of all those single or away-from-home students who'll appreciate this because it's so quick to cook yet absolutely delicious. If you are tired of instant noodles and don't have time to soak your mi fen or rush out to buy fresh egg noodles, this is it. All you need is an egg, plain flour and water and you'll make slippery-smooth, soft yet el dente noodles in less than 5 minutes! No kneading or rolling, no pre-cooking of the noodles and most of all, no additives or preservatives (other than what's already in the flour). Slice some meat and veg and you can prepare a very tasty bowl of wholesome, home-made noodles. Serve it with a chili-lime-Maggi soy sauce dip, or Sichuan hot chili and peppercorn oil, and it's comfort food like no other.

This is what my Shanghainese MIL cooks now and then for lunch, and we love it. Sometimes she cooks it with pork slices and Taiwan bok choy and sometimes minced pork and xue cai, a preserved veg. Today I used seafood (squid, fish and prawns), pork liver and watercress. Basically whatever I have in the fridge so I don't need to run out into the hot sun. I love knowing that every morning for the rest of my life when I wake up, it's not going to be -20 C and snowing, but it's been scorching hot these couple of weeks and I miss dark, gloomy, rainy days when I can sit out and sip my coffee.

It does take a bit of practice to get evenly-thick strands of noodles and I got my MIL to demonstrate making men tiao for us today. I wonder how many of you out there has eaten this noodle before? If not, try it, you'll thank me I'm sure!

Men Tiao (serves 2-3)
250 g plain flour
1 egg
3/4 to 1 cup room temp water

1. Mix everything together in a bowl until batter is very smooth. It should be very thick. If too thin, the noodles'll be soft and the soup cloudy instead of clear. Depending on the flour used, the batter may be thinner or thicker so you have to add more flour or less water to make a very thick batter. MIL said it's best if you leave it to rest at least 1 hr. I have had an experience where I used flour with higher gluten (like Blue Horse) and an hour later, the batter was too sticky to use. So, I usualy leave it for 15 min. before cooking but I have also used it straightaway without any sdverse results.

2. Meanwhile, you can prepare your soup ingredients: any meat slices and veg. Season the meat with sesame oil, white pepper, salt and a little bit of cornflour.

3. Put 6-7 cups of chicken stock/water into a pot (you can fry some shallots in oil until soft and then add the water/stock, for extra flavor if like) and when it boils, add the pork if using that. If using seafood or beef or chicken, I like to put them at the end after all the noodles are in so that they don't toughen.

4. Now hold the bowl and tip it until the thick batter is at the rim of the bowl. Using one chopstick, 'cut' the batter and let it drop into the stock. When batter has dropped off the chopstick, dip the chopstick into the water/stock to wet it so that the next noodle will drop off easier.





5. Repeat until all the noodle is done, stirring the noodles now and then so they don't stick together. You must have your soup at a full boil (mine wasn't because I cooked it in my outdoor kitchen and it was rather breezy today) and work quickly so that the noodles cook at the same time. Do not cook more than this amount of batter each time or you'll take too long and the soup will be cloudy.

6. Add the seafood/chicken/beef, let it boil and add the veg and switch fire off. Season to taste with salt.

Archie De Corner

Black pepper sirloin steak.

Archie De Corner has been around for quite a while, serving local western food such as chops and steaks. Right now located at Kedai Kopi Sin Hing Fatt in the Taman Cantek shoplots (behind Lido), the restaurant is the typical plastic chairs and tables non-air-con coffeeshop with bright fluorescent lights and menus stuck on the wall. Not exactly where he should take you for a romantic dinner, but perfect if you feel like greasing your tummy with the most unhealthy but cheap and tasty western food. I say unhealthy because the meal is greasy, with your chicken chops and fries deep-fried in over-used oil that looks as black as soy sauce, there's no fresh fancy veggies with your orders but canned baked beans and pineapple (both very sweet), and the salt and sugar levels can push you into a stroke or diabetic fit before you've even finished your meal. Having said all the negative, now let me show you the positive about Archie:


Chicken chop, RM13/US$4

The two biggest pieces of chicken wing-breast portions I've ever seen, battered to absorb all that black oil. Wey could only finish one piece of chicken.


Sirloin steak with black pepper sauce, RM25/US$8.

This tasted nearly like those American steakhouse steaks: nicely charred outside and quite flavorful (but don't expect too much; this must be frozen meat) considering the price and the fact that at about 3.5cm thick, it was the thickest steak I've ever eaten in KK. I've eaten much smaller and less flavorful (by that I mean the meat, not the sauce) steaks in fancy hotels for more than twice the price, so this is quite something. It was tender, a little too cooked inside (although we asked for it to be done medium) and therefore dry, and the black pepper sauce was good but too salty for us. I asked that they spare us the fries.


Grilled lamb chops RM14/US$4.40.

Again, these are the thickest (nearly 2 cm) lamb chops in town and I love that they're not pathetically 1cm thin like everywhere else. This is Archie's best item, hands down. The chop was tender and so tasty so that even though the mint sauce was too sweet, Archie's forgiven. Fries were waived at our request, price remained the same.

When you consider the fact that only the meat is worth eating, the price is still very reasonable. The only thing that stops me from eating there more than once a year would be the thoughts of clogged arteries and hospital bills. If you aren't bothered with that, this place is pretty good especially the lamb chops.

Note: On a return visit, we found Archie's pork belly chop very very delicious (but salty)!

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.

Prawns Etouffee

Prawns etouffee

The only southern US city I've been to is Knoxville, Tennessee and even back then, they were already 'hispanised' because when I worked (I was on summer hols from Canada and was on visitor's visa. Got caught and ran away as far as I could on a Greyhound bus that took me to New York--and my wallet was picked while I slept in the bus, leaving me with only small change when I arrived at The Big Apple--to Montreal and Quebec City, but that's another story for another day) in one of the U of Tennessee's cafeterias, I remember dishing out enchiladas and tacos alongwith Southern fare like fried catfish and fried chicken. And meatloaf, which is not Southern. I have never eaten prawns etouffee (French word meaning to smother or suffocate; so elegant-sounding for a violent word) until I cooked it today. Come to think of it, I have never eaten much southern food, including that most famous Creole dish, gumbo. I think the only Southern thing I eat once in a while is cajun-spiced chicken when we do barbies.

Tealady cooked up a mean plate of crawfish etouffee a few posts ago and I decided to cook that for dinner tonight. Instead of crawfish, which isn't available here (I didn't know until now that crawfishes are freshwater crustaceans; I thought they were some kind of lobsters. Wait, aren't they?), I used small tiger prawns which of course gave a less authentic version of this Louisiana dish. According to Tealady and information I gathered on the net, an essential ingredient which gives crawfish etouffee its flavor and color is crawfish fat. Since there isn't any crawfish within the next 10,000 km, I boiled the shells of the prawns in water to get a stronger flavor, an idea borrowed from our own Malaysian prawn noodles. I used paprika (which turned my sauce brown instead of red. Must be an inferior import) instead of cayenne because Wey can't take hot so I had a bottle of hot sauce nearby for myself.

So what was the family's verdict? Like Tealady's tale of guests who wouldn't eat her etouffee, my son Wey, who hates prawns, forced dinner down his throat because etouffee was the only thing (plus a plate of greens and soup) on the table tonight. When I was cooking the dish, he came into the kitchen and joyfully said,"I smell chicken a la king!" Ming also asked if the etouffee was prawns a la king. They were right, etouffee is similar to chicken a la king in the way it's cooked and even taste except there's no cream added. Somehow I just found the sauce was lacking in something, something that will bind all the flavors together and so a spoonful of heavy cream was added and we all thought it was great! I also think a spoonful of tomato puree would perfect the dish, but then it would be very unauthentic.

Prawns Etouffee
1/2 kg prawns
3 stalks celery, chopped fine*
1 large brown onion, chopped fine*
1 large green bell pepper, chopped finely*
1 T finely chopped garlic
1 cup Swansons chicken stock
1 cup prawns stock (from boiling the prawns' shells)
2 T butter + 3 T veg oil (or use all butter)
3 heaped T plain flour
salt and pepper to taste
1 T paprika or cayenne

Garnish: parsley & finely chopped spring/green onions

* called 'the holy trinity' of Cajun/Creole cooking

1. Shell the prawns, remove dirt veins with a skewer. Boil the prawns' shells with 1 cup of water.

2. Heat up heavy pot, add the butter and oil and lower the heat. When butter has melted, add the flour and stir well. It will be liquidy. Stir it all the time, until it is brown (like color of cappucino) and add all the veg, sauteing until veg are soft. Add the prawns stock, the chicken stock and the prawns and cook over low heat for 10 min. If the sauce is too thick, add more water.

3. Season with the paprika/cayenne, salt and pepper. Sprinkle parsley and spring onions over. Serve hot with plain white rice.

Note: not authentic, but a spoonful of heavy cream improves the sauce.