mflo

Agar imho, are the second most easy to get gelling agent right after gelatine. so i think in any country, if there is an area that is widely populated by chinese, and we know u can find alot of "chinatown" in most countries. then u will be able to find agar agar. that is true in some sense. but if u have ever made jelly just from agar, you will notice that not only will agar causes the jelly to be very brittle, it also doesnt gives much shine. its a pretty dull and brittle jelly. So, with something that is like juices, i prefer gelatine over agar. ah forgotten about that. In our restaurant, we generally uses thermal whips for both our cold and hot foams. but sometimes we goes through them so fast, regardless of it being suitable for hot or cold, we just use it. LOL

in regard to your question, gelatine gives a much better foam and shine and texture compare to the agar agar.

I am the mistress of foams! LOL j/k i'll be glad to share my foam recipes with you. In the restaurant, I am the one working the foams all the time. But because I am in charge of the Cold section, you might find that most of my recipes are savoury. Here is one that is my all time favourite. Goes with alot of things. Parmesan espuma/foam 300 gm parmesan, grated Note: this is to tell you, i grate the parmesan myself from a very large and fresh block of Italian parmesan. Do not buy those grated parmesan. They give very different effect. It its a pain to grate, but the end result, c'est parfait! 200ml milk (full cream) 500ml cream 2 knife tip agargar (very small knife tip) using a paring knife. slowly heat up the grated parmesan, with the milk and cream. Whisk continously, using low heat until the cheese melted away. Do not let it boil without adding the agar. So after the cheese have melted, add in the agar, continue to whisk and let it boil. Now, strain after boiling. Let it cool, dump it into the ISI canister. Use only 1x the charge. Shake well, it it set upside down in the cooler. Voila! fantastic parmesan espuma. Note: because it is cream base, we do not put that many charges, otherwise, it will not come out smooth and shiny. rather, it will look like shaving foam. so very not good. =p replacing parmesan with Comte, and add 250 ml of milk instead of 200 and decrease cream by 50, using same amount of charges, u get Comte foam. It can be used hot or cold. Watermelon foam 500 ml watermelon juice. (juiced and strained) 100ml citrus juice (i usually used a combination of orange and lemon) 2 pieces of gelatin (2.5g) soak gelatine in cold water. squeeze dry. seperate 100 ml of the watermelon mixture from the total and heat it up to melt the gelaltine. mix together the heated juice with the non heated juice. whisk well. add into the Canister. This takes 2 charges. shake well and let it rest for a day before using. Chorizo foam. (i use this as a espuma to finish off my salad, etc) 350g grated chorizo. 800ml cream 100 ml milk 2 knife tip agar agar Heat up a pan, without oil, saute the chorizo til fragrant, add in the cream and milk and simmer to infuse. strain. Bring back to a pot, add in the agar agar. bring to a boil while continously whisking. Use only 1x charge. cheers! these are bounce off my head. hope u find it useful. there is basically a basic recipe for non cream base and cream base. once u figure it out. u can do all sorts.

Alycemoy, dont worry, a good laksa recipe will come your way very soon. and i will describe in detail on the dos and dont of making a good penang laksa as well. it was those one dish that i can relish passing down my infos on cause i've been through trial and error with it. pan: my mum passed away when i was real young, so i grew up with my grandmother. Our family (included extended) communicate in English and our patois, the "Baba Hokkien", which is a mixture of English, Malay and Hokkien mixed together. and Also some splatter of Hokchu, because thats my grandmother's mother tongue. pan, i have to correct ur pronounciation on bubur chacha. When I first saw the post, for a moment i had no idea what it was. Cacak actually sounds like lizard. u had me scared for a moment... usually their either pronounced it Cha-cha or char-char. The chinese with their mangled malay will pronounced it "jaja" hehe... Sometime, people ask me if i were ever tired of nyonya food. Actually, I dont. I am proud of my heritage and am never sick of eating them. Even after facing them over and over again.... but it is very fattening..... and high cholestrol.... I hope i can include pics as well. But as a chef, with busy working hours, i hardly went home to visit my hometown. So, i'll see what i can do... I cant really descibe much about festivals, except we have several big ones like Chun Jik (Lunar New Year) & Chap Goh Meh (15th Night), Cheng Beng (prayers to ancestors), this which i hardly participate because I am a Roman Catholic, and I don't like all those prayers thingy, cause it is not about my religion. That is another subject all together, best left alone . We also celebrate the Dumpling festival. I remember when I was young, I would relish helping my grandmother prepare the ingredients for the dumplings. She was very particular about the rice, I remember she will spread them out in these huge metal tray and make us (the grandchildren) pick the rice for her. You have to thoroughly seperate the glutinous rice from the normal rice and those that she considered "bad". If not, the end product of the dumpling will not achieve the "holding" quality that she wanted. Can understand so far? Then, we also celebrate the Hungry Ghost month. With more food and prayers.... Mooncake festival / Lantern festival. With more food and prayers and mooncake. When I was young, my grandmother will only buy mooncake from this lady that lives about 3 street away from us. She makes these fantastic tau sar & lotus paste mixed baked mooncake with a very fragrant crust. Half the time, i'll just eat the crust and throw away the filling Seriously, nobody makes it like her anymore. After the mooncake festival, another big occasion in our family will be the Giu Ong Ya ( Nine Emperor) Birthday. I dunno why they called it Nine Emperor, but it is to actually celebrate the birth of the Jade Emperor. Then there is one of my favourite, the Winder festival, or we called it the "Tang jek". Because this is the time i get to eat homemade glutinous rice ball!!!!! yummy... I eat tons of these. Just simply love them. The plain rice balls without any filling and served in a pandan and ginger flavoured gula melaka syrup.... ~~~~ Then, there will be of course, Nyonya weddings and funerals..... Hmm, we ALWAYS serve meatball porridge made from pork during the wake. and during mourning, we can only wear white, dark blue or black. and our typical colourful bowls and stuffs, we change them all to this plain dark blue and white instead... Ok, i'll stop here first. cant think of anything else. good night

hey thanks for the feedbacks. Let's see... I am well, a rojak nyonya. My grandmother is a Medanese Straits Chinese who speaks hokchu and married a melaccan baba who only speaks baba hokkien. My mother was only a half nyonya from her mother side. My dad, beside loving nyonya food, have no other peranakan identity left. too modernised.. My favourite Nyonya dish? Oh Wow... too many!!! Penang laksa. lor bak. most types of nyonya kuihs (pastries and cakes), Sri Muka being my fav and onde-onde. bubur cha cha assam pedas Sambal petai. rempah hnh chee (fried fish stuffed with sambal paste) ince kabin (nyonya fried chicken) and many many more..... i'll have a brief one on customs and traditions. lol. now you guys have set me thinking. Yes. we do have strict standards when it comes to our cooking. That has not changed. I am particular about my nyonya food. That's why, it is very difficult to find very good nyonya restaurant. Most of the time they cannot match the standard of home cooked nyonya food. We have a lot of "pantang" (rules and regulations, taboos) when cooking and even when not cooking. So many things we cant do or say when you cook certain stuffs, if not, the food wont turn out right or like how during certain occassions we must have this or that to throw away bad luck or to invite good luck, how some food can only be eaten in certain occasion (like funeral) cannot be eaten any other time. And of course during major occassions like funeral and chinese new year, the order of the food that we eat, and what dish goes with what. Well, we are particular about that. (with my grandmother anyway... ) as for subtle differences? hmmm.... as far as i am concern, most penang nyonya food are more sourish based. And they have a lot of "kerabu" styled dishes due to the influences of the Thais cause they are quite near to Thailand. Overall, in Penang nyonya dishes, you can see a lot of dishes that have that hint of Thai in them. While for Melaccan nyonya food, we uses more spices, herbs, alot of pandan leaves and flowers like "bunga telang" in our cooking. As for the Singaporeans, I can't really say, since I've only been here for two years and I have not really discover great nyonya food here yet. Probably because too busy working. But one thing I can say though, their style is more light, not so spicy and some of the ingredients are different. For instance, for the laksa, rather than uses "lye fun" they uses thick rice vermicelli instead. It just makes such a difference to the laksa. Not that nice in my opinion. Lye fun is smooth and chewy, while the thick vermicelli comes off grainy due to the rice starch. just not the same... ok... beside the customs and traditions, i think a glossary of nyonya ingredients will be good before embarking on recipes and cooking. ya?

Thanks for the welcome. So, to start it off, i am going to have a slight introduction to my ethnic cuisine. Before we can taste the food, we must understand the origin... There are many names to this wonderful and special cuisine that was created from the merger of two distinctively different cultures. You may heard it before or taste it before in some other names like "Peranakan Cuisine", "Straits Chinese Cuisine" or the most common "Nyonya Food / Cuisine". Note: It is always called Nyonya food, never Baba food or Nyonya & Baba food because the tradtion is that ONLY the nyonya cooks. Never the Baba. So, its a special of the ladies of Peranakan. Not for the men. The Fukinese / Hokkien people venture out during the late Tang dynasty to cultivate other lands and became traders. They usually ply the coast of China and what we known in modern day as Southern Vietnam, called Champa. From there, they venture into Siam and to the Malay Peninsula and Java. When overseas trade was outlawed in the Later Ming and Qing dynasties, many of these traders settled permanently throughout SEA. Peranakan is the term to describe to Chinese who settled in Southeast Asia. They married the local malays and adopted the way of livings of the locals. The oldest settlement of Peranakan is from Melacca. If you visit Melacca today, you can still see a lot of the old Peranakan charm along the Jonker area. And also of course, in Penang. So from Melacca, because of trade under East India Company, Peranakan community back then was a very strong trade community. Being a Peranakan usually equates to being rich and educated. Sir Francis Light started a new settlement in Penang while Sir Stamford Raffles started another in Singapore. So, until today, when you say Peranakan, there will be only 3 types. Singaporean Peranakan, Penang Peranakan and Melaccan Peranakan. But, we are still known as Straits Chinese, irregardless of which community you originated from. We speak a mixture of Malay and Hokkien. Which we called the "Baba Hokkien". Our attire and jewelry are greatly influenced by the Malays, but to not losing our chinese identity, we still maintain Chinse "Taoism" traditions and beliefs. --------------------------------------------------------------- Pls have some feedback on how i should continue this... I hope i pique enough curiosity about my culture.

Ok, i am rattling from my brain as i go... There are many types of bean paste available in chinese cooking. The most common would be the type that is made from soy beans, which some will called "yellow bean paste/ brown bean paste/ fermented bean paste". From the basic paste that is made from the soy bean, it can be further diversified into 1) sweet bean paste 2) salty bean paste 3) hot bean paste not to be confused with the korean "gochujang" or the japanese "miso". although basic ingredients is the same, which is the soybean, the taste are greatly varified. so, when you are cooking a recipe, look very carefully wether it is stating salt, sweet or hot. This is a personal experience... I didn't pay enough attention and added salty bean paste when it should be sweet. Then we also have the black bean paste which is more pungent and are generally salty and are made from fermented black beans. From the basic black bean paste, you can also purchase some other type of black bean paste like, hot black bean paste and the more popular among asians, "hot black bean paste with garlic". I like to use that to cook my clams with some lemongrass, bird's eye chilli, sliced galangal, some oyster sauce, kaffir lime leaves, garlic and shallot. and some dried shrimp. fantastic with piping hot rice. The Hokkien called the bean paste "Taucu" the Cantonese will called it "Tau See". The black version is called "hark tau see" hope this helps some!

thanks for the welcome. Sorry for late replies. Busy! I am located in Singapore btw. At this moment, working as a part of an opening team at a Gourmet Shop / Fine casual dining restaurant. I have my basics in French cooking actually. But been home cooking for many years and hanging around chinese chefs is actually good for knowledge. But as a Strait born Chinese, i am most familiar with Peranakan cuisine. Actually, I would love to introduce Peranakan cuisine to all the good people here. But mainly I just love to exchange knowledge and that is why i am here. CHEERS!

when i was doing doing my attachment at Four Seasons, I was attached to their chinese kitchen for 6 weeks. and 5 of those in the Dim Sum department. The dimsum are made fresh daily and that include "Har Gow". The skin is indeed hard to make. My "sifu" was very particular on the exact amount of flour and water used. Also, the kneading was very important and not exposing it to air. And the skin must be warm when wrapping the filling. Har Gow wrapping is one of the hardest skill in dim sum. It took me 2 weeks to actually be able to produce a decent looking har gow. Deftness and how nimble you are with your fingers makes a very big difference.

as a professional cook and as a chinese, i would like to point out that beside the msg, the other difference between home cooked chinese food and restaurant style is the lack of "wok hei" in home cooked food. the stove makes a difference. you can store your rice overnight before cooking it as fried rice just like the restaurant did, but you can never achieve that same taste, even with the MSG.

i personally sprinkle salt on my watermelon and apples. well, there is really a difference, the salt does heighten the sweetness of the watermelon. Another one, salt on the "rose apple" rather than the sour plum powder. The sour plum powder mask off the natural sweetness of the rose apple, while with salt, its the same thing with watermelon. Also, as a Peranakan chinese, ( i dunno if any other families does that) but my family occasionally eat our watermelon dipped with rojak sauce. Well, they are pretty rad that way too, its like eating it with balsamic, except that its not. make sense? Also, we also use watermelon, uh, the skin thats it, to brew cooling herbal soup during the summer. Quite good actually...