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Shiewie

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Everything posted by Shiewie

  1. Open house for 150? Wow !!! I want to be invited too - and it 's a long flight from KL to Chicago . Didn't know what carnitas .... but now I do - thanks!
  2. We make pickled sliced young ginger from time to time at home (to eat with century eggs or 'red hardboiled eggs') - sliced along the grain (so that it's smooth), blanched quickly then pickled in rice vinegar and sugar - can't remember exact steps but can check with mum if you like.
  3. Shiewie

    Dried Mushrooms 101

    Dried shitake mushrooms are a stand-by in our larder - it's really versatile and can be for loads of asian / Chinese dishes - sliced in omelettes, stir-fried with various vegies, stir-fried with tofu dishes, in soups, braised / stewed with meats and stir-fried with noodles. The expensive hana donko that torakris mentioned are called "fah gu" in Cantonese. I soak them in hot water whereas my mother soaks them in cold water... and it doesn't seem to make much difference. We use the stems as well - just slice them very thin as they're more chewy than the caps. The soaking liquid can be used too but make sure you strain it well to get rid of the grit collected.
  4. A cheap starter Vietnamese cookbook is Homestyle Vietnamese Cooking by Nongkran Daks and Alexandra Greeley at US$2.61! It's part of the Periplus Mini Cookbook series - not all the recipes in the Periplus mini cookbooks are authentic but this one hits the spot. The fresh spring roll sauce from the book is similar to the ones I've tried in Ben Thanh Market in Saigon and the Pho Bo recipe is pretty mean too. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be listed on Amazon.
  5. Marie-Louise, A favourite way with daikon is to stir-fry it with small slices of beef and chinese celery (kan choy). Julienne the daikon (add some julienned carrots too, if you like) and marinate some slices of beef with soy sauce, salt, sugar, sesame oil and a touch of cornstarch. Brown some minced garlic in a couple of tablespoons of oil, add the marinated beef slices and fry for a while before adding the julienned daikon, carrots and around 1/3 cup of water. Once the daikon and carrots are cooked, stir in some chopped chinese celery and serve.
  6. You're most welcome! There are lots of Thai influences in the food of Northern Peninsular Malaysia but I don't know whether budu is adapted from Thai nam pla. Fish sauce and shrimp paste are found in many variants all over the Asia-Pacific region and I'm not sure where they actually originated from. A friend brought some Maldivian equivalent of Budu back from our recent trip there and I'm waiting to try what it's like in comparison.
  7. Hi Haven't been online for the past week, just got back from a trip away (non food-centered !). Budu is used mainly as a condiment or dip - here's a link to a recipe for Nasi Kerabu that uses budu in the sambal served with it. skchai - I googled and found some other recipes using budu but they're in Malay. If you want them, I can translate them for you.
  8. I'm sure her jiaozi are gorgeous and would love to try some! Was trying to explain that Northern and Southern Chinese food can be quite different and that since I am of Southern Chinese descent, cabbage in dumplings are not the kind of dumplings I grew up with.
  9. Shiewie

    Lunch! (2003-2012)

    Wnt home for lunch - there were no leftovers for lunch today so got some takeout noodles - flat rice noodles with mince pork in dark soy sauce, pork balls, couple of slices of liver sausage and scallions
  10. IMHO cabbage is used for Northern Chinese dumplings like jiaozi but like Herbacidal said they are not common for Southern Chinese ones like har gau, siu mai or sui gau. I'm ethnically Chinese but only read about and then made dumplings with Napa Cabbage in it after reading an issue of Savuer! . Adding some Napa cabbage does make it a lighter dumpling and I guess it was used in the old days to bulk up the filling as meat would've been expensive. Making the wrappers yourself can be tricky. I'd suggest that you start by using store-bought wantan skins as dumpling wrappers first before trying to make it from scratch yourself. Cabbage - I've used Napa cabbage in dumplings but not others. Wash each cabbage leaf, blanch it to soften it (recipe in Saveur said to blanch it so I did but I've also seen recipes which says add it raw), drain then chop finely (I just cut them into strips of 1-inch by 1/8-inch). The combination of cabbage, pork and scallions sounds fine. Other items you could use are dried shitake mushrooms (soaked, drained and diced finely), diced carrots, shrimp, scallops, minced water chestnuts...basically whatever you like. You might like to add some sesame oil besides salt and pepper to season it (I sometimes use some oyster sauce, soy sauce and mirin too if I feel like it). The crescent shape seen in dumplings like har gau takes a lot of skill so what I do is just bring the ends of the wrappers to meet and seal them with little folds (if they're round wrappers) or bring the corners to meet if they are square. Have a small bowl water when you're wrapping the dumplings and seal them with a dab of water. How much filling goes into each wrapper would depend on the size of your wrappers. Make sure it's not too full though otherwise they'll split open during cooking. I've freezed uncooked dumpling filling and they're fine. I haven't tried freezing wrapped dumplings or cooked ones before. Edit - Forgot to mention this, if you're steaming the dumplings, don't forget to brush the bottom of the steamer with a bit of oil, otherwise the dumplings might stick.
  11. Saar Hor Fun is the Cantonese name for flat rice noodles. 'Char' means fried in Hokkien. The seafood hor fun you've described is the Cantonese style of cooking saar hor fun. You might like to try browning the garlic lightly first before adding the seafood and veggies - I think cooking the garlic last does not allow its flavours to quite develop. I'd also use a combination of salt and soy sauce in the gravy and not just soy sauce alone as Cantonese style noodles are always lightly coloured and shouldn't be too brown. Edited - forgot about the egg - yes add it last, give it a couple fo quick swirls in the wok and serve. What we cook at home usually won't taste exactly the same as what's served in the restaurants - wok burners at home aren't as powerful as the commercial ones so we can't get the same wok hei ... and there's always the missing ingredient - MSG .
  12. Nam Yuur and Fu Yuur? Thought about them but decided they're Chinese in origin and not indigenous to SE Asian region ... (though I often get confused about what's Chinese or not since the Chinese food we eat in SE Asia has large doses of local influence). Anyone can confirm?
  13. What about balut? Has anyone tried it? A friend who tried one recently said it's no different from an ordinary hardboiled egg ...with perhaps the odd feather or two and some extra chewy bits. But am not sure whether it's indigenous to SE Asia or whether it originated from China since it's found all over the SE Asian region.
  14. Am of no help here - can't think of any either.
  15. Err...the dry roasting/grill over the stove/dry fry is supposed to enhance the stink - it makes the belacan smell more rounded and less raw (usually done for raw sambals) - similar to dry roasting / frying spices.
  16. The 'pee effect' is why I don't particularly like petai... unless it's cooked in sambal with prawns or squid . Another stinky SE Asian favourite is cincalok - fermented baby shrimp. It's usually used as a dip with a squeeze of lime, sliced shallots and sliced chillies. I like pork steamed with cincalok and pickled shallots - fatal to a low-carb diet as you'll be induced to eat plate after plate of rice with it .
  17. Haha - me too - it's a good day if I can plan what to cook for dinner by lunch time on the same day and sometimes it gets changed midway through cooking !
  18. Joong is Cantonese for zongzi - chinese tamales.
  19. Golden mushrooms - are they long, skinny and bunched in little clumps? If they are, they are probably what's commonly known as golden needle mushrooms ('kum chum gu" in Cantonese) or enoki mushrooms. I haven't seen them dried though - I usually get them fresh or tinned. Like helenjp said, use them in stir fries and also in soups. Tapioca starch is used much like cornstarch, as a thickener. Here's a simple recipe for pan-fried Assam Prawns/Shrimp or Fish ... and you don't need to make another trip to Asian market for more special ingredients. (Tamarind is known as assam in Malay). It's a dish that's normally served with nasi lemak (coconut rice) (but it's fine with plain rice too or on it's own): Ingredients 1 lb medium shrimp / white fish cutlets 1 heaped tbsp tamarind pulp 1/4 cup warm water salt to taste 1/2 tsp sugar (optional) oil to pan-fry Instructions 1) If using shrimp, remove whiskers and remove shell around the body but leave the head and tail on (so that it looks pretty but you can remove it all if you're not keen on crunching on shrimp heads ). Slit along the back of the shrimps and remove the black bits (intestinal tract). 2) Dissolve tamarind in warm water and strain. Discard the seeds. 3) Marinade shrimp / fish cutlets with the tamarind juice, salt and sugar for around an hour. 4) Rinse the shrimp / fish quickly and pat dry with a paper towel (the rinsing is done to stop the shrimp / fish from darkening too quickly - I'm usually too lazy to do this so it alwasy looks kinda black). 5) Pan fry till they're golden brown.
  20. Corned Beef & Cabbage - The Feeding of A Myth.
  21. Shiewie

    Venison

    Cut the fillet into bite-size pieces and stir-fry with some sliced ginger, garlic and scalllions. Or marinate with soy sauce, oyster sauce, salt, sugar, lots of black pepper and a touch of mirin and stir-fry with garlic.
  22. trillium, This is off-topic but was just wondering is it difficult to get Nyonya Kuih in the States?
  23. Ahhh that layer cake - I think of that as Indonesian Layer Cake since it was something that relatives from Medan, Indonesia bring as gifts when they visited my gran. I loved it when I was little and usually ate way too much of it at one go and felt really sick after (for those who are not familiar with it, it's a really, really rich cake made with something like 20 eggs). There's a cake shop in KL that sells nothing but Indonesian layer cakes in all sorts of flavours. They're not bad but the spices in their cakes are not as intense as the ones from Indonesia. I don't like it with peanuts either, and I've always had it without ice-cream. Is this a new thing? Ice-cream is optional in some places. In the old coffee-shops where ice-cream is a specialty, for example Keck Seng in Penang or this long defunct one (so long that I can't remember the name at the moment) near the old Rex cinema in KL, ice-kacang comes with a scoop of ice-cream on top.
  24. Leftover (if you have any left) love letters that have gone soft are quite good too - they're really chewy and you can unfold them slowly back into little rounds.
  25. I'm not asleep either. Am waiting to see what you're having for dinner tonight after the jam doughnut for tea. What are tinned "lamb flaps"?
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