Lor Bak / Braised Pork

A funny thing happened the first time i attempted to make lor bak. I had braised the meat for hours in its gravy and at last got the consistency and tendency that i had wanted. When it was time to serve, i was busy so my husband decided to give a helping hand...by draining the gravy away into the sink!!!! He thought it was just lots of oil. So, we had a sauceless lor bak dinner, with a very black face chef and a very frightened husband. :)

ingredients:
3 layer pork
2 cloves garlic, crushed
premium dark soya sauce / kecap manis
sugar
5 spice powder
3 star anise
1 cinnamom bark /kayu manis
3-4 cloves
water

1. Marinate the pork with kecap manis/dark soya and 5 spice powder all over. Let to stand for 30 minutes.

Warm some cooking oil in a big pot/wok and throw in the garlic, star anise, cinnamon and cloves until fragrant. Add in the marinated pork. and fry till brown on all sides. Add in water, dark soya sauce/kecap manis and sugar and stew the meat till tender. This can take easily from 1 - 3 hours, depending on the size and tenderness of the meat. Add in more 5 spice powder, sugar or water if needed and taste. Adjust taste to your liking.

After meat is cooked, drain the gravy into a BOWL and slice the meat into bitesize pieces. Serve the meat with the gravy on the side.

Braised Pork trotters/leg

This is Kai's favourite dish. Mom makes this whenever Kai is in town because she knows how much Kai appreciate this fatty, sinful dish. It is such a simple dish to prepare, yet looks and taste so luxurious, fit for a king. There are variants to this dish. The Cantonese community cooks this dish with sweetened black vinegar and tons of ginger. It is a confinement dish which is suppose to cleanse and purge the impurities from the body after birth.

Mom's braise pork trotters is more a Hakka dish. There's no vinegar involved and it taste more savoury than the Cantonese version. She loves to add a dash of home-made rice wine before serving and OHHHHHH, so wonderful, sinfully delicious. I always forget to take a photo when mom cooks this dish and so now, i'm left with no photos to show on my blog.

Ingredients:
1-2 tbps cooking oil
1 clove garlic, minced
1 pork leg / pork trotters
Shitake mushroom (soak in water till soft)
2-3 tbps light soya sauce
2-3 tbps dark soya sauce
4-5 tbps water
3-4 whole garlics
1 whole chilli
2 tbps rice wine
2 tbps sherry/port wine

Method:
heat up a wok or deep pot and fry the minced garlic with oil. Add in the pork trotters and fry on both sides till slightly brown.

Add in light soya sauce, dark soya sauce and water and let simmer for a while. Add in whole garlics, chilli, mushroom and continue frying. Transfer the whole thing into a pressure cooker and pressure cook for 30 minutes.

Before serving, add in rice wine and port wine. Adjust flavouring to taste. Serve with warm white jasmine rice.

Kiam Chye Tng (Pickled mustard with duck soup)

This is a simple dish, as long as you have a slow cooker. You can throw everything into the pot, switch on to low heat and leave for office. When you come back in the evening, you open your door and is welcomed by the fine aroma of the soup wafting through your home. It's ready and duck is so tender.

You'll need

1 duck, chopped into big pieces
1 thumb size ginger, bruised/crushed
1 packet pickled mustard or kiam chye (discard the pickled juice and wash the mustard under cold water)
2 Tomatoes, quatered
a bit of salt
a bit of white pepper
a bit of sugar or ajinomoto or Maggie chicken granules

Put everyting except the tomatoes into a slow cooker, add enough water to cover the duck. Cover and switch to low or auto and leave to boil for several hours, 4 hours at least. When it's cooked, add salt, pepper, ajinomoto etc to taste. Add your tomatoes before serving in a soup bowl.

Ngo Hiang

This is mom's recipe, a favourite of mine and I believe a favourite "snack" amongst Singaporeans as well. Mom is so good in rolling this meatrolls, it makes mine look under-nourished and insecure! Even hers taste different eventhough we put in exactly the same ingredients. I believe it has something to do with the pork. In Sweden, the pork is very different. It's lean, not an ounce of fat insight, and it has an odour, a porky body odour. In Malaysia and Singapore, pigs are castrated (neutering) for several reasons :
- to increase growth rate
- to improve the quality of meat - meat from entire male animals often has a very strong, unpleasant smell and taste
- to reduce dangerous behavioural traits - for example, entire bulls can be dangerous to handle compared to neutered bullocks.
- to prevent unwanted breeding - farmers only want to breed from the best genetic stock.

And exactly for the reasons above especially point 1 & 2, that pork in Asia are fatter and has no unpleasant odour. In Europe (and even Australia), you would have the animal-rights group protesting and demonstrating outside your farm it is deem cruel to animals, thus no castration is being done here. And thus my less than tasty ngo hiang.


Ingredients
800gm mince pork
200gm minced prawns (raw)
half a carrot, chop finely
a few sprigs of coriander, chop finely
3 shitake mushroom (soak in water till soft), chop finely
4-5 pcs water chestnuts, chop finely
1 shallot, chopped and fried
white pepper
1 tbsp oyster sauce
1 tbsp dark soya sauce
1-2 tsp five spice powder
1 egg

Beancurd skin to roll.

Deepfrying oil.



Method
Mix all the ingredients above evenly (except the beancurd skin). Use a clean, damp cloth and wipe the beancurd skin thorougly. This takes away the saltiness of the skin. Cut the beancurd skin into big A4 size sheets. Put a substantial amount of meat onto the sheet, arrange it in a way so the meat is nearer to your side of the beancurd sheet. leave some space on both sides so you could roll it later.

First, fold the sides on your left & right, then fold the sheet nearest to you. Roll it like how you would roll a popiah/springroll/fajitas (or whatever that mexican dish is called). Then seal the end of the beancurd sheet with beaten egg.

Put all the ngo hiang rolls in a plate and steam it for 10 minutes. Let it cool. When you are ready to eat it, take one roll, cut it generously and thickly across and coat it with corn flour. Then deepfry them until golden brown.

Altenatively, you can also coat the whole roll of ngo hiang in corn flour and deep fry it, and then cut it into bite-size pieces after that.

You can also deep freeze the rest of the rolls after you have steamed them. Thaw them when you want to eat them and then deep fry them.

Sarawak Laksa

For us Sarawakians living overseas, you will always find Sarawak laksa paste in our food storage. It is an absolute must-have and as long as you have this precious paste, you can have Sarawak in your heart and stomach without feeling too homesick. The Sarawak laksa is not like its cousins in Singapore or even Penang. This is a flavour all of its own, it's taste is so unique, spicy with a coriander and sambal belacan soup base that it stands out from the Singapore or Penang version. The Singapore laksa is more curry/lemak based whereas the Penang one is assam/tamarind based.
Nobody really knows the actual ingredients in the Sarawak Laksa paste. The coffeeshops in Kuching also order these paste from the one and only manufacturer in Kuching, which is coincidently near the area i grew up in, Kim Kiat Road. So this paste is a closely guided secret even the coffeeshops can't emulate. Well, they try to but it just doesn't taste the same as the authentic Sarawak Laksa paste with the sparrow brand. All I know is, it contents a lot of coriander seeds as well as sambal belacan.


For the soup
1 packet Sarawak Laksa paste
2 cans coconut milk
2 liters chicken and prawn stock + 5 liters water
1 pc chicken stock cube
salt to taste

Garnish
Omellet, cut into thin strips
Tiger prawns (cooked, peeled and deveined)
coriander leaves
beansprouts (blanched)
chicken meat, cooked and torn into strips
sambal belacan
Lime


In a large pot, boil the chicken in water and peel it into strips. Set aside. In the same broth, boil the prawns for 3 minutes. Peel and devein them. Set aside. Now you have your chicken and prawn stock. Add in the 5 liters water and bring it to a boil. Add stock cube.

Then add the Sarawak Laksa Paste and stir. Bring it to a boil. Sift the whole contents into another pot, press the soup thoroughly from the sieve and discard the husks in the sieve.
Now you have a clean pot of soup without any of the pounded/blended ingredients. Make sure the soup is free from all husks. Boil for a while and switch to low heat.

When it is about time to serve the soup, add in the coconut milk and salt to taste. The coconut milk should be added in last minute so it won't boil too long in the stock.

Garnish with all the garnishing ingredients. If you want it to be extra spicy, add in homemade sambal belacan. If you want a tinge of tanginess, squeeze in juice of 1 lime.

Nyaman! Ahhhhhhhhhh

Singapore Chicken Rice (or Hainnanese Chicken Rice)

Chicken
1 whole chicken
Half a pot water
1 thumb ginger, crushed
2 whole garlic (with skin attached)
Sea salt
1 chicken boullion

(Sauce to pour over chicken later)
100ml chicken stock (from above)
2 tbps oyster sauce
2 tbps light soya sauce
3 tsp sesame oil
1½ tsp sugar
3 tsp shallot oil (optional)


Rice
500gm Jasmine rice (depending on how many people are eating)
1 tbsp cooking oil
1 tbsp chopped shallots
1 tbsp minced garlic
700ml chicken stock (from above)
2 tbsp minced ginger
1 whole garlic (with skin attached)
2-3 pandan leaves, knotted


Method
Bring half a pot of water to boiling point. Lower fire to medium, put in the whole chicken, crushed ginger, whole garlic and sea salt and chicken boullion and bring to a boil. Around 25 minutes under medium low heat. To check if the chicken is cooked, poke a chopstick on the thigh of the chicken, if blood oozes out then you have to cook it further. Do not overcook the chicken, and do not be impatient and cook under high heat, otherwise the skin will start to flake off. Poke the other thigh after further cooking, no fresh blood should be running out after 30 minutes of boiling.

Bring out the chicken to rest. Do not leave the chicken in the stock, otherwise it will still be cooking in the stock eventhough you have switched off the fire.

Meanwhile, prepare the rice. Wash the rice and drain the water thoroughly. Warm up a skillet, add cooking oil and fry the mince garlic and mince shallot till fragrant. Add the washed rice to the pan and fry for around 1-2 minutes. Transfer the rice to a rice cooker. Add the chicken stock (instead of water). 700ml is just an estimation. The best way to cook rice is to put your pointer finger (the 2nd one!) just on the top of the rice and the water/stock level should reach the first line (lowest line ) on your finger. Stir in the minced ginger in the rice-stock, add 1 whole garlic, knotted pandan, close the rice cooker and let it cook.

Meanwhile, prepare the sauce for the chicken. In a separate bowl, add 100ml or 1 big scoop of chicken stock, the oyster sauce, sesame oil, soya sauce, sugar and shallot oil together. Chop the chicken into pieces and arrane it on a serving dish, pour the sauce mixture on the chicken. Garnish with slice cucumber and coriander leaves.

When the rice is cooked, you can dish out and serve it with in a Chinese rice bowl or compact the rice in the Chinese rice bowl, then overturn it onto a plate.


This dish is best eaten with Chicken Rice Chilli Sauce and kecap manis.

Blend 1 handful chilli padi, 5-6 garlic, 1 knob ginger (peel off skin), chicken stock from above( maybe 2 tbsp), 1 tsp salt, 1tbsp sugar, lime juice. Add some kecap manis. Blend with a handblender still smooth. Adjust the taste. If too spicy, add a bit more sugar etc.


Bon Apetit!

Nasi Lemak

I tend to cook nasi lemak a lot this year. I cooked it for most of the guests we invited over for lunch, alongside another dish- tauhu goreng. I think i need to change the menu, it's getting boring. However, this is an alltime favourtie dish. You can eat it for breakfast, or lunch or dinner, even supper! Yup! You westerners might be thinking we Asians are crazy eating this for breakfast but we Asians think that you westerners are crazy not to eat such things for breakfast. So there we have it.

It seems like a lot of ingredients and a lot of work, but sersiously, it is not that bad. You can make a lot of sambal and keep for next weekend and let the rice cooker worry about cooking the rice.

For the rice
2 cup rice (rinse thoroughly)
1 can coconul milk (about 400-500ml)
1-2 pandan leave, knotted
½ tsp salt

Sambal prawn
10-12 tiger prawns (washed and deveined)
1 big onion (sliced thinly into rings)
2 tbsp cooking oil

to pound/grind into a paste
2 dry chilli
2 red chillies, fresh
1 small piece of belacan (pungent prawn paste)
1 small thumb of galangal (blue ginger)
1-2 candlenuts (substitute with almond nuts)

½ tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
2 tbsp tamarind juice


Garnish
2 hard boil egg, halved or fried eggs
4 tbsp ikan bilis (or dried anchovies), deep fried for 1 minute
½ cucumber, sliced thinly
Optional garnishes
kangkung (water spinach) blanched in boiling water
hard tofu (fried and sliced)
2-4 pics whole makarel fish - deepfried
Fried chicken pieces


Method
Put the rinsed rice into a rice cooker. Pour in the coconut milk, salt and knotted pandan leaves. Make sure that when you put your finger on top of the rice, the liquid should reach the 1st line of your finger (or lowest line from the tip of the finger), if there's too little liquid, you may add more water.
After the rice is cooked, make sure you switch off the rice cooker immediately, to avoid burning the rice, and let it cook gently in its own heat. After 5-10 minutes, lift the lid and fluff the rice.

Meanwhile, while the rice is cooking, prepare the sambal and the garnishes.

For the sambal, heat up the cooking oil, and fry the big onion until soft and brown. Add in the pounded paste ingredients and saute gently until fragrant. Add in the tiger prawns and fry for additional 2-3 minutes. Add in the sugar, salt and tamarind juice. Cook it for another 5 minutes more under medium low heat. Then dish it into a serving bowl/dish.

Serve the rice with all the garnishes and the prawn sambal.