Mushroom Cottage Pie

On a rare occasion of me sitting down in front of the TV recently, I watched Laura of French Chef At Home cook a vegetarian meal. Yesterday I was out with friends and we saw a big sack of fresh local shiitake mushrooms (make sure you get local shiitake because the ones from China can smell like sweat by the time they get here) and oyster mushrooms--the same mushrooms that Laura used for the mushroom pie, which had no lamb by the way so technically it isn't a shepherd's pie.

The resulting pie I baked, based on hurriedly scribbled ingredients (these days it isn't cool to give a list of ingredients on food programs *sigh*), was a hit. The mushrooms were meaty and delicious and the red wine gave a wonderful aroma and taste to the dish. I love this pie and although Wey prefers pies with meat in them, he still ate half the pie. I underestimated the amount of mushrooms needed so the pie was more mash than mushrooms but that was okay. I think the pie had a bit more gravy than Laura's but as the pie cooled, the gravy disappeared. We had Hungarian bratwursts and a leaf salad with the pie and it was good enough for a simple Thursday night dinner although by 11 pm I was hungry again. But I am determined to loose those 2 kgs by the end of November because the loss will make way for more food to be eaten in December! I know some people diet for a day or two for that special dinner or pair of skirt, but for me it's to make way for more food. Disgusting.

As I sat down to write this post, I googled for the recipe and found it listed as 'Mushroom Parmentier'. My recipe below is not far from the original except for the amount of mushrooms and I used cheddar instead of gruyere cheese. As usual I cut steps whenever I could; that's my bad habit. I think if I were to tweak this recipe, I'd add some cubed beef steak to it but then again it really is very good as it is. I'm sold on this Laura person; her recipes are simple to follow and delicious. If only she doesn't have that fun but irritating French cafe music on all the time.


Mushroom Shepherd's Pie
500g mix of fresh shiitake & oyster mushrooms
1/2 red onion (or white since red is expensive), chopped
3 T butter
2 T olive oil
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1/4 cup red wine
1/4 cup chicken stock
1/2 t fresh or dried thyme (fresh is better)
salt & pepper to taste
1 T plain flour
1 T fresh parsley (I used Italian flat leaf), chopped

Mash
4 large potatoes, skinned n cut into cubes
2 T butter
5-6 fresh dairy cream (or milk)
1/2 t salt & some freshly ground pepper
50 g mature cheddar, grated

--boil the potatoes until tender. Drain n mash with all the ingredients using a potato masher or ricer. Adjust the amount of cream/milk to make the mash the consistency to your liking.

Prep: I do wash my mushrooms (top only, don't wash the underside) despite all the instructions telling me not to, and gently squeeze out the water. Trim off the stalks & tear the oyster mushrooms into smaller pieces and cut the shiitake into 1 cm thick slices.

Oven at 250 C.

1. Put 2 T butter into a frying pan, add 2 olive oil and fry the onions until transparent and soft. Add the mushrooms and garlic, fry for 1 minute. Add the red wine and fry until the wine is nearly gone in amount and fragrant (until it doesn't smell as strong as when it was added).

2. Add the stock, thyme, salt & pepper and let it cook for about 1 minute, stirring well.

3. Knead 1 T butter with 1 T flour ('beurre manie'--what a clever way to thicken the gravy without ending up with lumps of flour!) and add to the mushrooms, stirring to dissolve the butter and flour. The sauce will thicken beautifully. Add the parsley, stir through and spoon the mixture into a gratin dish.

4. Spoon the mash over the mushrooms, level and pull a fork over to make a lattice pattern and bake at 250 C for 10-15 minutes until golden brown.

Serve hot.

Cheese Baked Rice A La King

Cheese baked rice

You know the baked cheese-topped fried rice in dim sum baskets served in char chan tengs, Hong Kong-style fusion coffee houses? I was trying to make that dish, except I didn't want the usual fried rice topped with pork or chicken chop or luncheon meat. I thought chicken a la king, a dish we enjoy, would be good instead of fried rice but this dish goes to prove that the same thing served in a different style can be utterly disastrous. I don't know, you can try it out and tell me what you think. Maybe macoroni would work better than rice for this dish. You can still do the dish the char chan teng way, by frying up some rice with luncheon meat and mixed peas and carrots, top with a piece of pork chop or ham, and then top that with mozzarella cheese, cheddar & parmesan cheeses.

I didn't think I would blog about a recipe I didn't like. But who knows, some of you may like fusion food better than us. Wey, who disliked Chinese-Western fusion food, now hates it after eating this. And I feel the same too. Little kids may fall for it, thinking it is western. Yes, it might work on kids.


Cheese Baked Rice A La King
3 cups Chicken a la king*, warm/hot
5 cups cooked plain rice or macaroni, warm/hot**
120 g mozzarella, grated
100 g parmesan & cheddar (or just one type of either cheese), grated

*make the sauce slightly thicker than usual for this dish

**or use fried rice, top with a chicken chop or pork chop or fried egg or fried luncheon meat or ham. Omit the chicken a la king.

1. Oven at 250 C, rack on upper half of oven.

2. Wrap a bamboo dim sum basket with foil, leaving an overhang wide enough to wrap the sides of the basket so that the basket won't burn.

3. Put the cooked rice into the basket, level it and then top with the chicken a la king. Make sure the chicken & sauce is level.

4. Sprinkle an even layer of mozzarella followed by the parmesan and cheddar, and pop into the oven for 3-4 minutes until bubbly and golden brown in some spots. Serve hot.

Spare Ribs With Sour Plums

As a Martyr Mother, I usually steam pork spare ribs with black beans because that's the way the guys in my family like their ribs. But once in a while, Martyr Mother rears her ugly head and cooks ribs the way that SHE likes, with sour plums. The savory-sour ribs are so appetizing that I can eat a whole plate of ribs myself, and I usually do because the boys will leave it alone.

A friend once taught me to marinade spare ribs for steaming with lots of corn flour hours before steaming, so that the meat will be tender and smooth. Make sure too that the ribs are chopped (by your butcher) into bite-size pieces to increase their surface area for absorption of all those marinading ingredients.

I threw in some plum sauce just because I needed to finish off the jar I bought for making luo sang during Chinese New Year. Do you know that there's lots of sugar in plum sauce? I was horrified to find that the plum sauce had crystalized and the lid was glued tight with sugar. I had to put the lid to a flame before it would open. And as expected, the plum sauce overwhelmed the sour plums, making the dish sweet instead of sour. So please don't do what I did. Just keep to the sour plums.


Spare Ribs With Sour Plums
400 g pork spare ribs, in bite sizes (try chicken wings for kosher/halal dish)
4-5 sour/salted plums + 1/2 T pickling liquid
1/2 T chopped garlic
1 heaped T corn flour
3 t light soy sauce (I like Yummy House's)
1/2 t fine sugar
a few shakes of white pepper
1 t sesame oil
1 T shaoxin wine
1 T water

garnish: chopped spring onions & red chillies

1. Put everything into a heat-proof dish and mix well, crushing the sour plums coarsely. Leave covered in the fridge for at least 3 hours.

2. Get a pot/wok of water boiling, put the dish in and steam the ribs at high heat for 20 minutes. Garnish with chopped spring onions & chillies and serve hot. Goes well with plain rice.

Junior's New York Cheesecake

Junior's Fabulous New York Cheesecake

I am a New York cheesecake person and the denser the cheesecake, the better I like it. I've never made a New York cheesecake that I really liked because the results were always a semi-dense cake. I wanted a cheesecake that is so hard that I would have to scrape it off the spoon with my teeth and chew, not bite, before I wash it down with black coffee. Yes, that sounds like a hard cake and I like it that way.

There are almost no secret recipes anymore today. Take Junior's in New York, which serves 'The World's Most Fabulous Cheesecake', whose famous NY Cheesecake recipe is all over the internet. But with all those recipes, how do you know which is the one that will work? Some recipes from the net and cook books have disappointed and discouraged me. I think the popularity of food recipes blogs is dependent on the credibility of the blog writer. If you trust that writer is giving you a true and tried recipe, you will try her recipes out. I knew I could trust Tealady because like me, she tests and writes about her culinary experiences honestly. Tealady too walked a long road to finding her favorite cheesecake recipe, finally finding it in Junior's Cheesecake Cookbook, and she was so gaga over it that I printed her post, waiting for a lean moment in my life when I can indulge in one of my top favorite desserts. But the lean moment never came and I've waited too long so 3 weeks ago, I made my first Junior's NY cheesecake and it turned out so good that I couldn't salvage a piece for my blog photos; everybody had second and third helpings. Yesterday I bought a 2kg block of Philly cream cheese (the only cream cheese I use; Anchor cream cheese is cheaper but makes lousy cheesecakes) and baked 2 of the cheesecakes again.

This recipe is so good I didn't change much except reduce the sugar by 1/2 cup. I also creamed all the cheese in one go rather than in two batches but you don't have to cut corners like me. To get the cake as dense as possible, do not overbeat but whisk just enough to make sure the cheese is creamed and smooth. The best thing about this recipe is that you beat everything together. There's no separating and whisking of the egg whites and no difficult folding in of any ingredients. Junior's NY cheesecake has a sponge cake base, and since I have many failed sponge cakes in my freezer (I had a frightful weekend some weeks back when I just couldn't get my sponges right), I used a 2 cm thick sponge cake as base but the batter was so heavy that the sponge cake was flattened to nothing. I think a base is totally unnecessary for dense sponge cakes. I do love graham cracker bases but these days my guilt about eating such stuff prevents me from enjoying them and I find myself going for the cheesecake but discarding the base/crust so now I don't bother with them. In any case, I think bases are for commercial bakers to save on the real thing, the cheese. I've seen cheesecakes with a layer of sponge as thick as the cheese layer.


Creamy and satiny...mmm..


Top left cake was baked using a bain marie, bottom cakes were not but turned out good. The bottom left cake had no cracks and the 'blemishes' were caused by the cling film which stuck to the cake during chilling.

I baked the first cheesecake the usual way, using a bain marie (water bath) but the cake still cracked. I read somewhere that dense cheesecakes, unlike fluffy soft cheesecakes, don't need to be baked bain marie so this time I put my cakes directly on the rack. The result was one cracked a little and one didn't, which proved to me that bain maries are more of a comfort to nervous bakers. However, the first cake fell evenly when it cooled while the ones I baked non-bain marie caved in quite a bit, but I don't think it was the lack of bain marie. I think I opened the oven door too many times to take photos and to check on the doneness, which is difficult when you have two cakes of different sizes baking at the same time. However, I may be wrong, as bain maries are supposed to not only prevent cheesecakes from cracking, they also keep the cakes moist. I overbaked the cakes, by a full 25 minutes, because I totally forgot about the cakes! The cakes were crumbly and drier than the first one I baked, so remember to set your oven alarm.

A cheesecake is easier to bake than a sponge cake. You must trust me and make this cake this weekend. This cheesecake and a cup of coffee made me felt blessed and happy. Many thanks to Tealady and Junior!

p.s. This cheesecake is still more Chicago than New York to me; I would like it to be denser. I think I may have over-whisked the batter. But still, it is an awesome cake which everybody who ate it loved. I found it rather difficult to slice cleanly. Does anyone have a good tip on cutting cheesecakes into neat slices without having to dip the knife into hot water?

Junior's New York Cheesecake

32 oz/1 kg Philadelphia cream cheese, softened at room temp
1 1/3 cups fine sugar
1/4 cup corn flour
1 T pure vanilla extract (I reduced to 3/4 T)
2 extra large eggs
3/4 cup heavy cream

1. Oven at 170 C (I used a lower temperature so that the cake will rise slowly). Recommended temp is 180 C.

2. Put 1/4 of the cream cheese, 1/3 of the sugar and all the cornstarch into your mixer bowl and beat at low speed with a butter whisk (for Kenwood machines, that would be the K-beater) until creamy, 2-3 minutes, scraping down the sides of the bowl several times.

Add the remaining cheese, 1/4 at a time, scraping down the sides of the bowl after each addition. Increase the mixer speed to medium and add the remaining sugar, vanilla,one egg at a time, beating well after each addition but do not over-beat. Lastly add the cream.

Or, you can add all the cream cheese into the mixing bowl of your mixer and beat at low speed until creamy, scraping down the bowl now and then. Add the sugar, vanilla extract,eggs and cream (in that order), whisking well at medium speed after each addition. The batter should be satiny-smooth. Do not over beat or the cake will be less dense.

4. Pour batter into a 9 "/23 cm spring form pan and bake bain marie for 1 hour 15 minutes or 10 minutes more. Do not bake longer even if the centre is soft and wobbly because it will firm up when the cake cools.

5. Remove the cake pan carefully, run a blade around the sides so that the cake won't crack as it cools and contract. Let it cool thoroughly, cover with cling film, and put into the fridge without removing the cake from the pan. Chill at least 4 hours or better still, overnight, before serving. You can serve with a compote of berries, which is perfect for it.

Fruit Compote: Just put some water and sugar into a small pot and when the sugar has dissolved, add the fruits and cook until softened.

Di San Xian (Earth Three Fresh)

In western restaurants, you know you are getting a steak if you order 'tenderloin with bearnaise sauce'. Chinese restaurants do not name a dish by the ingredients like di san xian as 'brinjals, potato and bell peppers stir-fry'. Intriguing names such as 'Ants Crawl Up The Tree', which really is a mung bean noodles and minced meat dish, can fire up the imagination and make a boring dish otherwise. Some dishes have such descriptive names which you can almost imagine how the dish came about, such as 'Buddha Jumps Over The Wall', which sounds like something a track and field monk should eat but in reality only the king can afford. And if your host ever suggests a dinner of 'Phoenix and Dragon', please take my advice and decline dinner. One of my friends was invited to such a dinner when he visited his ancestral village in China in the days before any of us would venture into China. When the waiter lifted the huge silver lid, a chicken (the phoenix) rested in the middle of the large platter, with a snake (the dragon) curled around it. He ate it. I would prefer to drop dead. I think it was stories such as these that put me off from visiting China until 1999.

Di san xian literally means 'Earth three fresh' which really means three fresh things/veg from the earth, if you juggle those words a little. Di san xian is a common everyday dish in China but not in Malaysia. Di san xian originated from northern China, which explains the inclusion of potatoes which are seldom used as a stir-fry item in Southern Chinese cooking. I like to use young potatoes for this dish because they aren't as floury as the old potatoes. If you can't find brinjals, you can substitute with very young eggplants. Taiwan brinjals are best because they are thin-skinned, seedless and always tender.

I've eaten different versions of di san xian and since I prefer some sweet soy bean sauce in it, that's how I cook it. If you prefer a lighter version, omit the soy bean paste and use more light soy sauce. The secret to this dish is to fry each type of veg separately in plenty of oil and avoid adding liquid, which means a lot of patience is needed to fry the veg over low heat until they are cooked. If patience is not yet developed in you, then go ahead and use some chicken stock, but sparingly. The dish should taste fried, not steamed or boiled and there shouldn't be any gravy or sauce. Another way to not test your patience is to julienne the veg so they cook quickly.

Di san xian reminds me of Italian caponata. If you cut the ingredients into meaty chunks, they are like a cross between meat and veg, so even carnivores like my son Wey will eat this dish.

Di San Xian
1/2 each green and red bell peppers
1 large young potato
1 Taiwan brinjal
1/2 T finely chopped garlic
veg oil
1/2 T chopped garlic
1/2 T sweet Chinese soy bean sauce (I get mine from Shanghai)
1 t light soy sauce
3-4 T chicken stock if needed

Prep: If using young potatoes, it's ok to leave the skin on. Cut the potatoes into small chunky wedges. Do same with the brinjal but make sure it's cut longer and not too thick so that it can cook faster. Cut the peppers into diagonal pieces. For a neat presentation, try and cut all the veg about the same size.

1. Put 3/4 cup veg oil into a heated wok and fry the potatoes until light golden and cooked. Remove onto a plate. Fry the brinjals for about 1 minute, remove.

2. Pour all the oil away. The wok will still be coated with oil. Add the bell peppers & garlic to the unwashed wok, then when the peppers are half-cooked, add the potatoes and fry under low heat for a couple of minutes. Finally add the brinjals, the bean sauce and the soy sauce and fry for a minute. Usually a pinch of msg or chicken stock powder is added too. Fry well to mix and dish onto a serving plate. Serve hot.

note: if you find that your veg are burning and not fully cooked, lower the heat and add a tablespoon of chicken stock. Wait for the liquid to dry up before adding another spoonful if needed.