Hainanese Chicken Rice

Hainanese Chicken Rice... yummmyy... and there are many recipes online and I'm sure the recipes and method are more or less the same.. for myself, this is how I do it.

Ingredients posted below are on estimation basis. Feel free to add or reduce base on your preference.

Also, because this is supposed to be a very short quick post for my dear friend who is waiting for this recipe since early December, hence I will only post on how I do the chicken. Do drop me an email if you'd like to know how I cook the rice and chilli sauce.

Here's my chicken rice version...  cooked last 2 weeks...

Recipe for half chicken..

For the chicken
Ingredients A - For the steaming / boiling..

2 inch of ginger - bruise
3 garlic - bruise
1 bunch of spring onions.
1 spoon of salt for taste

Boil the chicken with all above till chicken cooked. If you are using whole chicken, should be around 40 mins. Make sure chicken submerged completely.

If you are using chicken pieces like me, then 15 to 30 mins suffice.

Remove chicken pieces and immediately dunked in ice cold water.. This stop the cooking process and set the collagen... Soak it until the chicken cools down. Most of the times, I forgot to remove the chicken until when it's time to eat.. hehehehe So my chicken usually gets extended bath time.

Do not throw away the stock ya. Strained the stock and keep the stock for the rice and soup.

Ingredients B - For the sauce. Add all into a small pan
1 cup of light soy sauce
2 table spoon sesame oil
1 table spoon oil
2 table spoon sugar (or more up to your preference)
1 clove garlic
1 slice ginger
oyster sauce (optional. I didn't add due to allergy issue)

Heat up till sugar dissolved. Taste and add more sesame or soy sauce or sugar up to your preference.
I prefer the sauce a tad salty because the chicken is actually tasteless on its own.

Serve on a bed of sliced cucumber. (I love it with a bed of Wild rockets and honey tomatoes and cucumber.. )

Chopped the chicken
pour the dressing sauce... (You can use the sauce at room temperature but I like mine warmed. So I will heat the sauce up a bit before pouring)

Tadahhhhh.

Stuffed Tao Pok

Just a quick update.

I owe some girls this recipe :-)

Quick and easy recipe. For the fillings, loosely adapted Siew Mai's recipe. I omitted sesame oil and prawns and soy sauce due to allergy. I'm sure it will be even yummy with prawns and sesame oil.

For the Tao Pok, I followed domestic goddess wannabe method to turn the tao pok inside out for more crispier ending. Her stuffings recipe seems interesting too. I will definitely try her recipe next time. (with minced chicken of course ;p) You can try her recipe here. Also do browse through her recipe pages... alot of interesting weekend projects you can try.

Ok here's my easy and quick recipe.

Everything here is about a palm here a pinch there. Agak2..
Recipe enough for 2.

Ingredients
For fillings
- 100g minced chicken. I got mine from ColdStorage Halal section. Those prepacked ones.  So sometimes I'll use more at time I use less.
- 200g prawns - shelled, deveined and chop. (i omit this so i use total 300g of minced chicken)
- diced chinese mushrooms (soaked and softened) (i omit this)
- 2 tbsp soy sauce - I omit soy sauce due to allergy so i added salt
- splash of sesame oil - i omit this due to allergy
- dash of pepper
- 2 teaspoon of cornflour
- 1 grated carrot
- 1 finely chopped chillies
- spring onions chopped
- some garlic chopped

Tao Pok. - i bought 1 packet of small square ones from NTUC tofu section.

Method
Dumped all the ingredients except for Tao Pok into a bowl

Mix mix mix... until like this. 

Prepare the Tao Pok. Carefully slit the top of the Tao Pok and turn it inside out like below. 

I tried this way as well as leave the Tao Pok unturned. The Tao Pok that I turned inside out is very crispy. I like that better.  

Stuffed the Tao Pok.. Do not over stuffed else will overflow. Don't take that long to fry. Also avoid over fried as the chicken meat will end up too dry.

Serve with dipping sauce or sweet sauce. SEDAP !!

psst : You can basically stuff anything you fancy. It's really up to you.

psssst : I forgot the most important thing. Tao Pok is SOY. So funny that i'm avoiding soy based products but neglect the part that Tao Pok is Soy. I got slight rashes after eating this. Nothing serious though. It went away the next day. 

Mee Betawi

Ni Mak I punya recipe... 

Out of curiosity I goggled for Bee Betawi, there are so many other recipes out there and I'm sure it's equally tasty but it's different from mom. 

Since I love mom's version, I shall stick to that.

Seems like a lot of ingredients right? Apart from the fresh produce, I think most of the stuffs are usual ingredients you'll have if you cook frequently. 

Mee Betawi Mom's recipe below. No exact measurement. Next time I'll try to take note of each steps.

Mee Kuning - Mee lain tak sedap
Sawi
Tomato

Daging hiris
Fishball
Udang  -> Tak letak pasal allergic. Kalau rajin buang kulit. kalau nak rebus kulit udang buat stock sikit.

Kuah
Bahan Tumis - Kisar semua sekali Bawang besar 1 biji

Bawang putih 2 or 3 biji
Lada merah + Lada padi + Lada kering
(Hahhhh ni yg rumit sikit ni. Bab ni, I agak2 je. Biasanya, kita letak 4 batang lada merah, 5 to 10 lada padi, lada kering kisar sikit. Ye lah, kita masak untuk bertiga je :-) )

Lada Hitam - Jangan lokek lada hitam ya. Saya rasa Mee Betawi tak sama rasa kalau Lada hitamnya kurang. 

Tomato sauce 3 to 4 sudu..-> Kalau banyak sangat nanti masam kuah tu kak...
Chili sauce 1 to 2 sudu..
Kicap Manis - Selalu saya tak lokek bab ni... 

Hiasan (kalau ada) 
Bawang Goreng
Daun Soup / Daun bawang

Lada jeruk 

Cara

1) Tumis bahan tumis dan lada hitam. Tumis macam tumis sambal biasa

2) Masukkan daging.. goreng sampai empuk

3) Masukkan, kicap, air (rebusan kulit udang kalau ada... ) tomato sauce, chili sauce perencah.

4) Jangan masukkan banyak sangat garam pasal mee kuning masin sikit

5) Lepas mendidih masukkan fishball, udang (kalau ada)  dan sayur.

6) Sebelum matikan api, masukkan mee kuning. Jangan lama sangat nanti kembang

Nota

1) Biasanya, kita buat sampai langkah 3 jer.

2) Bila nak makan baru amik kuah sikit letak periuk kecik, tenggekkan atas api, campurkan fishball ngan sayur ngan mee kuning dan hidangkan.... 

Assam pedas

How do you like your assam pedas?

I remember when I'm still living with my parents.. mom will cook assam pedas at least once a week. We can have assam pedas more than twice a week and we still don't mind. That and potato and egg drop soup.  .

Mom don't use fancy ingredients such as bunga kantan.. serai and such but she can cook one mean assam pedas.

So it's only natural that when I got married.. the dish that I cook often is assam pedas..

This is Red Snapper fish head Assam pedas we had for dinner last week.

Kueh Nagasari to celebrate Nation 49th Birthday

Nagasari. Another traditional kueh. 

Nagasari is a traditional steamed cake made from rice flour, coconut milkand sugar, filled with slices of banana.^[2] It is usually wrapped in banana leaves before being steamed, or prepared with pandan that gives it aroma.^[3]It is commonly eaten as a snack in Indonesia^[4] where it is also known as kue bandang-bandang by Bugis people. Sometimes it is simply called as kue pisang (banana cake). - Source Wikipedia 

First time making this.I'm not a fan actully but husband love it. And I know much later the reason he love it is because of the banana... and not because he love the kueh.. Duh. 

I remember mak long from hubby side making this and I recall how simple it is. So thanks to Mr Google, I found a few recipe which interest me. After re-reading a few, I decided to follow CMG recipe. 

It was National Day that day. So off to the market I went looking for Pisang Raja. Hubby said to get pisang raja. They were out of Pisang Raja so I got Plantain instead. 

Psst: First time going to wet market without husband heheh I'm a bit lost as to where to find this shop and that shop. Since I'm there, I top up my stock of abu chang as well and bought some Sago. 

Here's the recipe from CMG. I always has great success following his recipe. 

Ingredients
1 cup rice flour
5 cups coconut milk
2 tablespoon corn flour
2 tablespoon sugar (I added another tablespoon more cos the Plantain I bought wasn't sweet)
1/2 teaspoon salt
Pisang Raja, Slice each to half (I used pisang tandok / Plantain as I couldn't find Pisang Raja) 
Banana leaf 

Method
1) Mix rice flour, coconut mil, sugar, salt and corn flour. Mix well using whisk. Sieve the batter to remove lumps. Pour into pot. Stir without stopping on medium low heat till thick and gooey. Off the heat and let is cool slightly.

2) Take a piece of softened banana leaf, (the recipe doesn't mentioned the size and I forgot to measure mine also ishhh) . Add 1 1/2 tablespoon cooked mixture, add piece of banana, cover with another spoonful of mixture on the banana. Wrap it

3) Steam on rolling boilling water for 30mins or till cook. Leave it to cool completely. 

Note
It's pretty simple to make. As off other kueh using banana leaves, I don't like the part that I need to dip the banana leaves in hot water to soften it so that the leaves will not tear during wrapping. I did that for the first few pieces, I find this slowed me down so I cheated by dumping the whole lot of leaves into microwave and nuke them for 30secs :p. 



Anyway, here's the outcome. I didn't try if immediately as I was late for my date with husband. I packed a few pieces for when we had our mini National day fireworks viewing picnic at The Lawn. 

The taste is there... but the wrong place to eat. My hands all messy cos need to unwrap the banana leaf and such and I didn't bring wet tissue hehhhe 

On side note, Happy Birthday Singapore. I'm proud to call Singapore my home. 

Kueh Loyang / Kueh Rose / Kueh Goyang

I'm going to start documenting my food journey.This post is merely my own personal journal towards a successful recipe.

I've been trying new stuffs and often when asked, I've forgotten how exactly I've done it and what next I should do to fine tune the steps or recipe.

I'll start with this Kueh Rose or Kueh Loyang or Kueh Goyang or whatever you call it, is the same.

This is a traditional kueh. Of late, I am more interested in trying traditional kueh which I feel is slowly being replaced by modern and westernised cakes and sweets.

As with other traditional kueh, the ingredients pretty simple. The steps though leceh, it is easy actually once you've destroyed made a couple of the kueh.

Here you go.

Ingredient .
1.5 cup rice flour
1 cup coconut milk
1 egg
0.5 cup sugar
0.5 teaspoon salt
Rose essense (Optional. original recipe did not add rose essence. I added a few drops smell)

1) Mixed into batter.
2) Run through a sieve to remove lumps. (i skipped this as I used hand blender to mix all so it's lump free)

3) How to fry kueh ros.

This below is how I done it. Heat up the mold in hot oil for few mins. Dip 3/4 through the batter, dip into the hot oil, shake the mold abit to loosen up the batter. Use satay sticks to help you release the batter if need. Continue fry till a bit golden, remove and drain on kitchen paper.

Please see the the video from recipe source below.
Recipe Source : YouTube.

See below video from the source of recipe . Credit to the owner of the video.
YouTube http://youtu.be/O_dyEP54Q04

Overall, still not perfect the shape still not uniform. The taste is there though. I've seen other recipe requiring flour to be added but I guess that will yield is a more tougher texture which I don't like.

The most important thing for a successful result I think is the temperature and the thickness of the batter. Next try, I'd use thicker not so diluted coconut milk.

How to make macarons video - Recipe for four flavours in one

I'm currently mad about macarons... I've never had a successful macaron using french method.... but still this video still makes me smile :-)