Black Pepper Sauce

I guess nobody wants their rib eye with sauce made from Gravlox as home-made sauce always tastes so much more authentic and richer. Ideally, you should use the pan in which you fry the steaks to do the sauce so that you get the flavor of the juices from the meat. That is perfect if you are just cooking for one. However, in my experience, cooking more than one steak leaves the pan with lots of burnt bits and the steaks will be cold (warming them in the oven always toughens them) by the time the sauce is ready. So I prefer to do the sauce ahead and warm it up and the sauce doesn't suffer with re-heating. As requested, Joe, this is for you and everyone who likes black pepper sauce:

Black Pepper Sauce (for 4 steaks)

2 T small red onions/shallots, very finely chopped
1/2 T garlic powder (optional & I prefer the powder which is more fragrant)
2-3 T black peppercorns (depending on how intense you want the sauce), cracked coarsely
1 cup dairy cream*
1/2 cup sweet red wine like port, or 1/4 cup brandy
1 cup beef stock or 1 cup water + 2 Oxo cubes, or other beef stock granules (the Korean one is nice)
salt to taste

*if you prefer a less creamy sauce, reduce this to 1/2 cup.



1. If cooking one steak, do not wash the pan or remove the oil after frying your steak. Scrape off the burnt bits but if they aren't burnt, leave them because they add flavor to the sauce. With a low fire, fry the shallots until they are soft and transparent. Add the black pepper, fry, increase the heat and add the wine. If frying more than one steak, put some veg oil or butter into a pan and fry the shallots until soft and add pepper, fry 2 sec, then the wine. Increase the heat to medium.

2. When the wine boils, add the cream, garlic powder if using and the beef stock and let it boil for about 7-10 minutes until medium-thick. Taste and season with salt. If you like the sauce dark like the restaurants', add some browning sauce or dark soy sauce, which is more convenient and cheap and doesn't alter the flavor of the sauce much because you need to add just a little, say, 1/2 teaspoon.

p.s. like i said in my post Gyu The Cow, good steaks should be eaten plain with salt n freshly ground pepper. If you must have a sauce, it's good to have it on the side as a dip and not douse the whole steak with the sauce like I did.

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.

Wait For The Thunder

Unfortunately we forgot to take a photo of the real bite so this was re-enacted after the crab was half-cooked. You can see the small red puncture mark next to the tip of claw. My finger throbbed for hours after that.

I was about 7 or 8 years old. My mom had left a basin of cloudy rice water and I didn't know that a crab had strayed into the water. My cries brought the neighbors and someone said the crab will never let go unless the thunder clapped. Someone finally took a cleaver and whacked at the poor crab, which struggled and dug into my finger with all its remaining strength. That pain is forever imprinted in my memory. For many years, there was a fine white scar along the side of my finger. The scar has since disappeared and I can't even remember which finger it was.

That was a story my family has heard over and over and I never thought I would ever let myself be clawed by a crab again. Moments after telling my helper Vero that story, as we pulled off the plastic strings that tied each crab that we had already stabbed, I suddenly felt intense pain and looked at disbelief at the sight: my finger in the big claw of a crab, again! It was the memory of the previous experience that panicked me more than what was happening, because I never forgot the unbearable pain and the hopeless situation of getting the pincher off without enduring more pain as the crab tried to defend itself.

We were having some close friends and my kids' cell leaders over for a barbie last night and the last item to go on the grill was crabs. We could've thrown them onto the grill and closed the hood but that was deemed cruel so we finally stabbed the crabs through the soft part of their middle but there were raffia strings to be removed. I underestimated the tenacity of the last 3 dying crabs in the sink as I reached in to remove the strings.

So we had this situation where I was on my knees at the sink screaming with pain, and someone approached with a knife, another with a chopstick, and each time they came close, I tensed and the crab got terrified and dug deeper into my finger making me scream and tremble with pain which in turn made the crab dig even deeper. I felt blood rush to my face as I tried hard to keep still since any movement would panic my attacker.

One thing I love about my Hub is his control of situations. We've been in jungle situations (haha, private joke), passport expired flight about to take off situation, lost dog found dog but the person whose house dog ran into wouldn't give him back to us situation, children lost in mall situations and so on but each time Hub rose to the occasion and handled everything smoothly. I always tell my girl to get a thinking man like her father and for the boys to be like their father.

I shouted away those who came to help because the more the crab was threatened, the more he tightened his grip. I shouted for someone to boil water, hoping that we can slowly fill the sink with hot water so that the crab will faint or something. The frog in the increasingly warm water story came to mind. I was ready to wait all night, I just didn't want to have my finger dug deeper by a desperate crab in its final moments. Then Yi suggested pliers (thinking girl!) and Hub got a pair of small pliers, small enough to put in between the claw. Before I could stop him, Hero had swiftly plunged the pliers in between the claw and prised it open and freed my finger.

Now that I am a veteran at crab bites, I can offer some advice on the matter. Of course, be careful when handling crabs even if they look like they are dead. Maybe the best way to still them is like how you handle lobsters--give them a hot bath (correction: ice bath). And if you ever get floored by a crab's claw, yield, do not fight. I suppose that's stupid advice because you'll learn soon enough not to move or startle the crab. The crab settles down after a while but each time you tense up or move, he'll grip harder. For bystanders, it looks like an easy situation but I can tell you if you are the one whose finger is bitten, it is pretty agonizing. I was telling friends that I was lucky that the crab last night had a large claw and the pain wasn't as intense as the other time because the larger claw had a blunt end while smaller, younger crabs have very sharp claws that can cut really deep into the flesh. But I later realized that the crab had been stabbed and wounded and it was weakened. If it wasn't, it could've dug through my finger because, like I said, it was a survival fight for the crab.

I never looked the poor crab in its papaya-seed-like eyes. I was fighting for my finger but the crab was fighting for its life.

My final advice? Don't handle crabs until you know they are really dead because if you don't have a Hero, you may have to wait until the thunder roars.

My mom, who doesn't remember a lot of things, said, "What, again??"


p.s.: CL, R, W, P and K, if you are reading this, you were right. There's never a dull moment in my house.

New Man Tai, Open University

You must be familiar with the Man Tai and Beaufort coffeeshop-restaurants we have in KK by now. These are great inexpensive places for a quick stir-fry dishes. A reader directed me to the New Man Tai at Open University shoplots (on Lintas Rd to the KKIA) and it has since become a favorite place for us on weekends. I like it because it is clean (meaning no litter on the floor) and not crammed with tables or people. The food is good and not as highly-msged and salted as other Man Tais, but watch out for the cha sao fried omelette, which sits in oil.


Sweet & sour pork


Stir-fried greens with pork, a Beaufort-style restaurant standard dish that has shrunk by half in all these restaurants. The costs of the veg and pork is about RM2 but this dish sells for RM8.


Seafood tofu clay pot, a dish that makes a dramatic entrance sizzling and hissing to the table.


Cha sao omelette, very oily. Wey does a much better version, check his omelette out.


Bittergourd and beef slices with black beans. The bittergourd was overcooked.


Corn soup--not exceptional.

The dishes were about RM8/us$2.00 each except for the clay pot which was RM20/us$6, and the total bill came to RM67/us$18 for 5 of us. See you there some day:)

p.s I have cooked & posted 3 out of the 6 items above--click on the highlighted words.

Hot & Sour Soup Perfected

Sichuan hot & sour soup. The tofu should be cut finer--I need more practice.

Another soup, this time one of my favorites.

Remember 6th Aunt in Hong Kong, the one who fell down and broke her ankle on her way out of the dim sum restaurant when we visited last year? She's in town and I managed to get her to cook her hot and sour soup today. 6th Aunt's hot & sour soup was absolutely elegant and tasty, making mine look unrefined and, to tell the truth, it tasted coarse compared to hers.

From coarse to fine is a matter of cutting skills and patience. 6th Aunt cut all her ingredients into tooth-pick julienne strips while I cut mine as thick as chopsticks. On the tongue, the 'chopsticks' are chunky while the 'toothpicks' are delicate. To the eyes too the 'chopsticks' look unappealing while the 'toothpicks' give a foretaste of a smooth-textured soup. I also learnt from 6th Aunt's advice of not using too much ingredients so that the soup won't be like a thick bowl of ingredients in a little bit of starchy soup. That was really how my hot & sour soup tasted, because I tend to have this cooking principle of 'the more ingredients the better', which isn't true for this soup. Adequate amount of ingredients suspended in a silky tasty soup should be the key to a fabulous bowl of hot & sour soup.

Since 6th Aunt cooked without measurement, the recipe below is not rocket-science accurate, and you'll have to adjust the amount of ingredients, seasoning and thickening. Eaten with some guotie and shui jiao, this soup truly tickles the tastebuds with the texture of the many ingredients, the taste ( hot, sour and xien) and flavors (Sichuan peppercorn oil and chili oil). One of my favorite soups, not made this way in any of the restaurants here and surprisingly very well done in Chinese restaurants in the USA, from what I remember.

I have chosen to use canned chicken stock because I think the majority of us don't have home-made chicken stock sitting in the fridge whenever we feel like having quick soups as this. You can brew your chicken stock of course but that's like taking a boat to Singapore (3 days) when you can fly there (2.5 hours).

Reminder: to make a great hot & sour soup, the ingredients must be sliced very thinly and there shouldn't be an overload of ingredients!

Hot & Sour Soup Perfected (serves 6-8)
2 cans chicken stock + 2 cans water (the water is to stretch the soup but you can use stock only)
1/2 small piece of white tofu (about 1/3 cup only), outer 'skin' sliced away n cut into thin strips
3 dried mushrooms, soaked, cut into 3-4 thin layers horizontally n then into very thin strips
1/4 cup cloud's ears (black fungus), soaked, stems discarded and cut into thin strips
1/4 cup golden needles (lily buds), soaked, hard ends snipped off n buds shredded
1/2 cup chicken breast meat, in thin strips, seasoned with sesame oil, salt, pepper n some cornsflour
1/4 cup seasoned ja cai* (a pickled veg), cut into thin strips
1 small egg, beaten lightly

*seasoned ja cai comes in little foil packets

Seasoning:
white pepper (about 1 t)
black vinegar (about 4 T)--I'm told 'jen jiang' vinegar is best
light soy sauce (about 3 T)
sesame oil (about 1 t)
red chili oil to drizzle
Sichuan peppercorn oil to drizzle

To thicken soup:
4-5 T cornflour + same amount of room temp water, mixed

1. Put the chicken stock and water to boil. Add mushrooms and fungus and boil for at least 15 minutes to release the flavor of the mushrooms.

2. Add two tablespoonfuls of water to the meat to help loosen it, add meat into the soup, stirring well to separate, and then add the lily buds. When it comes to a boil, add the tofu.

3. When soup comes to a boil again, add the ja cai. Mix the light soy sauce and the black vinegar in a small bowl (this way you can control the taste better) and add half to the soup, taste, then add more if necessary. Remember that the sourness will be more pronounced when the soup cools. You can add a cup of water if the stock level has gone down.

4. Now add the white pepper (should be quite a lot but if you have sissy eaters, add less pepper and serve extra pepper on the side) and the sesame oil and when the soup is in a rolling boil, add the cornstarch solution slowly, stirring. Check if you like the consistency and add more cornflour solution or water to thicken or thin the soup respectively. Remember that the soup must be heated through to get the cornflour solution to thicken it. Switch off the heat and pour the egg in in a slow trail, stirring the soup in large circles with your other hand holding a pair of chopsticks or fork to make 'egg flower'.

5. Taste and season if necessary, then ladle into individual bowls and drizzle with chili oil and Sichuan peppercorn oil. Serve hot.