Caramelized Anchovies & Peanuts ???????

When I was a kid, I love this dish made by grandaunt. It goes very well with plain rice porridge.

� cup cleaned split dried anchovies (don�t wash them!)
� cup raw peanuts
2 Tbsp sugar
1 Tbsp light soy sauce
3 Tbsp cooking oil

1. In a dry wok, low heat, fry peanuts for 2 minutes or until skin is dry and can be removed easily. Remove skins by rubbing them with fingers and blow the skins away.
2. Medium low heat, heat oil and fry anchovies until golden. Dish up.
3. With remaining oil in wok, return peeled peanuts into oil and fry until light golden. Put fried anchovies back in and put in sugar and soy sauce. Stir until lightly caramelized.
4. Turn off fire and continue to toss until nicely caramelized. Try to toss until warm and not hot, so that the anchovies won�t stick to each other later.

Read More

Steamed Chinese Whitebait ????

Chinese Whitebait, or some call it Silver Anchovies, or baby anchovies, even blue eye anchovies..
Anyway, it's those teeny weeny white coloured dried mini anchovies.

My late father loves this simple dish. My late grandaunt taught me how to make this.

Very simple to make:

Ingredients
50gm mini anchovies (rinsed and drained)
1 tbsp sugar
1 Tbsp light soy sauce
1 Tbsp cooking oil
1 Tbsp finely chopped red chili
1 Tbsp finely chopped garlic

Mix everything together and steam for 10 minutes or just put plate on top of rice when water in rice cooker is reduced.

Read More

Hyacinth Bean Soup

23/1/2017 : Correction:
The bean featured in this recipe was previously named wrongly as Lima bean. The actual name is Hyacinth Bean

I haven't been cooking much since June... most of the postings nowadays are back posts of what I've done in the previous weeks. Well, when one has a bun in the oven, there are always excuses that can be made at every corner, anytime, to be lazy.. kekekekeke...

Lima is five in Malay language.. This is not a Five Bean Soup..

In Cantonese it's called "pang mei dau". I think it's called lima bean, as that is the closest that I can get from the internet. It is a bean about 3-4 inches long, pale green colour with a matte surface in the shape of an eyebrow.

This is my grandaunt's favourite soup and she'll eat a lot of the beans because she believes this bean enhances our eyesight, and with that she claims the reason for her being able to thread a needle at 90.

1 1/2 cup lima beans (correction : Hyacinth Beans)

300gm pork ribs or just meat (scalded)

10 peppercorns

1.5L boiling water.

Salt to taste

Trim the beans by discarding the top bits and pull away the top ligament.

Boil water, put in everything to simmer for 2 to 3 hours.

the Lima Bean.. I think

The beans are out of the pod after being boiled...

Read More

Chicken with Chinese Mushrooms ?????

Whenever this dish was cooked at my home (parent�s), the first thing that gets snapped up were the mushrooms and fungi. The chicken gets left behind� which is the other case when I cook this for my hubby. Different family with different taste buds..

Chicken with Chinese Mushrooms Recipe

1 chicken whole leg (cut small)
� tsp salt

6 dried shitake mushrooms
2-3 pieces of wood ear fungi (mook yee)
2 Tbsp cloud ears fungi (wan yee)

2 inch ginger (smashed with a cleaver)
1 clove garlic (chopped)
2 tbsp oil
1 cup water

2 Tbsp light soy sauce
1 tsp dark soy sauce
� tsp sugar

� tsp cornstarch mixed with � cup water

Method:
1. Soak mushrooms and fungi in cold water until they soften. Clean and cut into small pieces. Cloud ears need not be cut, just trim off the ends.
2. Marinate chicken with salt for 15 minutes.
3. Heat wok and put in oil. Saute garlic and ginger until fragrant.
4. Put in chicken and stir fry until meat is browned.
5. Put in 1 cup of water and let simmer for 10 minutes.
6. Put in light and dark soy sauce and sugar.
7. Put in mushrooms and fungi. Simmer for another 5 minutes.
8. When gravy has evaporated to desired amount, put in cornstarch mixture.
9. When gravy has thickened, dish up and serve with rice.

************
Wood ears and cloud ears will enlarge about triple in size after being soaked.

Read More

Watercress Soup ????

The Chinese boils watercress for soup or for a cooling drink (liang cha). While Westerners use raw watercress for salads and sandwiches.

Watercress in Malaysia is not suitable for use in salads or eaten raw. Because...... they are grown in water that is fertilized by sacks of chicken droppings soaked in the ponds they are grown in. This way... I don't think one will eat raw veg bathed in chicken s**t water.. hehehehe.. lots of bacteria, and they may have a few slugs stuck between the petioles..
But hey.. without those precious stuff from the chickens, u won't get those fat juicy watercress from Camerons..

Watercress Soup recipe
300gm soup bones or ribs
250 gm watercress
6 red dates, pitted
10 white peppercorns, crushed
1 tsp salt
1.5L water

1. Trim leaves and tip off the main stem of the water cress. Keep them seperately.
2. Scald soup bones or ribs.
3. Boil 1.5L water and put in the stems, bones, red dates and peppercorn and simmer on med low heat.
4. After and hour and a half of simmering, remove stems and put in the leaves and tips of watercress.
5. Simmer for another 30-45 minutes and season with salt.


***
Usually my grandaunt will throw the stems away after simmering, saying that they are tough to be chewed. But if I'm around, she'll leave them for me to eat.

I usually see other people cutting the water cress into 2 inches length and putting the whole watercress stems in to boil together with the leaves... hehehe.. but not the way my grandaunt taught me.. she just retained the leaves and tips to be put in at a later stage .

Read More

Chinese Chives Soup ???

Chinese Chives (gow choy) sounds the same as nine veg.. and many people refrain from eating this after having measles or chicken pox because, they believe they�ll get 9 times of that disease if they consume this 9 veg.

When I was a kid, I hated Chinese Chives� the smell was urgh!!!!!

Then grandaunt made this soup.. that was when it changed my opinion about this member of the onion family. It became my next favourite veg.

From a smelly green thingy.. it became the sweetest veg to my tastebuds�

A very easy soup to make

Chinese Chives Soup
� cup dried anchovies, wash and drained
1 Tbsp oil
1L water
Salt to taste

10 fishballs
100gm Chinese chives cut into 3cm lengths)
1 egg , beaten

Heat a pot and put in oil. Stir fry anchovies until fragrant and pour in water. Let boil and simmer for 15 minutes. Remove anchovies and season with salt.

Put in fish balls and wait for them to float.
Put in Chinese chives and wait for soup to boil.
Drizzle in beaten egg while stirring continuously with a ladle.
Turn off the heat and serve.

Read More

Assam Prawns ???

This is another family favourite from Grandaunty.

When grandaunty made this dish last time, she�ll divide the prawns equally among family members. The children have lunch and dinner at home, and the adults only have dinner. If we�ve eaten all our prawns by lunch, then it�s no more by dinner. No stealing!!! So, we�ll eat half of our portion and save the rest for dinner. We learn to cherish our assam prawns.

This is a slightly different version that most of the assam prawns that I�ve eaten in restaurants. Ours is slightly carameled, rather sweet and made with very simple ingredients.

Ingredients:
300 gm prawns (as thick as my index finger when shelled, about 200gm)
3 Tbsp sugar
2 Tbsp tamarind paste
� tsp salt
1 red chili, finely chopped.
2 Tbsp oil

Method:
1. Shell prawns, leaving on the tail.
2. Add in sugar and salt.
3. Marinate for 30 minutes.
4. Add in tamarind paste. Combine well using fingers, removing seeds (if there is) as the fingers rub the tamarind paste onto the prawns.
5. Add in chili. Mix well.
6. Heat wok, add in 2 Tbsp oil and wait until the oil is hot, pour in prawns.
7. Fry them until prawns are slightly caramelized. Dish up.



***
The remaining oil is best used to fry kangkung� or other belacan based dishes.

***
Cook prawns immediately after adding in tamarind. If not they�ll taste half rotten later.

Read More

Chicken with Red Dates Soup ????

I have a grandaunt who lived til she was 96. She was the eldest sister of my paternal grandmother. My father and I were babysat by her, so were my father's siblings and my siblings. So, she was very much involved in our lives.

She cooked our daily meals until.. she was.... 90. Well, she was a healthy woman until that great power disruption of 1997. Imagine her running after us with a cane when she was 85. She could cross a busy road while on the way to church for Mother's day or Easter celebrations. Taking awards for being the oldest person in church for many many years.. **she was born on the same year Kampar Chinese Methodist Church was established, 1903.

She was a disciplinarian, taking over the role from my grandma who was busy making ends meet for the whole family. Everybody will turn up for her big birthday, her own grandchildren (lesser) and us her niece, nephews, grand nieces and grand nephews making up the majority. Her passing away brought much sorrow to our family... most of all to my small ku cheh.. hehehe.

Memories of her remain.. We miss her cooking a lot. She could cook many dishes that none of us could ever recreate.

This soup is one of it. My favourite soup from grandaunt.

Chicken and Red Dates Soup Recipe

Ingredients:

• 400gm chicken (abt 1 quarter bird)
• 15pcs red dates
• 1.5L water
• 1/2 tsp salt.

Method.

1. Boil water.
2. Remove skin from chicken.
3. Hit red dates with the side of a cleaver and remove seeds.
4. Place chicken and red dates into boiling water and simmer for 3 hours.
5. When ready, season with salt. Pepper is not necessary.

**

I made this with a slow cooker, 4 hours on high. Heating up slow cooker, put in chicken and pitted red dates, then pour in boiling water.

Read More