Siu yoke (烧肉）Roast Pork Belly

This was bound to happen sooner or later. Well, here it is: pandemic pork belly, because all that extra time I've got to spend at home, I got to make a dish I would otherwise not.

Ingredients

• 500g pork belly
• ½ tbsp Shaoxing wine
• ¼ tsp five spice powder
• 1 tsp salt
• ½ tsp white pepper
• 1 tsp white vinegar
• 1 Tbs coarse salt (for layering on top of the pork belly)

To Prep the evening before:

1. Mix the salt, five-spice powder and white pepper together.
2. Rinse and clean the pork belly before drying with paper towels.
3. Poke holes evenly around the skin of the pork belly and score the rind to stop any bubbles from forming while it is roasting. 
4. Brush the Shaoxing wine on to the bottom of the pork belly before rubbing in the dry mix. Ensure that the skin of the belly is kept clean.
5. Place the pork belly on aluminium foil and fold the sides on to the meat. You should be left with a wrapped pork belly but the skin should still be fully exposed.
6. Place the pork belly in to the fridge to marinate and dry for at least 8 hours.
7. Once the pork belly has marinated, remove it from the fridge  and brush the skin lightly with white vinegar before covering the skin with coarse salt.

To Cook

1. Bake the pork belly in an oven at 200 degrees Celsius for 45 mins.
2. After 45 mins, take the pork belly out of the oven and remove the salt layer on top of the skin.
3. Take the pork belly out of the aluminium foil and place it on to a wire rack to roast. Make sure to use either the leftover foil or another tray to catch the oil drippings.
4. Return the pork belly to the oven, putting it on the highest rack to broil for another 10 mins, or until the skin has become crispy.
5. Remove the pork belly from the oven and let rest for at least 10 mins before cutting it in to bite-sized pieces to serve! To make the cutting easier, start from the meat side and cut down in to the skin.

 

Salted egg cookies

These days, salted-anything sells. You've got all sorts of amuse-gueules: salted-egg fish skins, salted egg-chips (Singapore's Irvins Salad Egg Chips sell for US$11 come to mind (and to mouth), salted-egg crackers, and of course cookies. So I had fresh salted duck eggs in my fridge left from a friend who stayed with me for a time. Of course I could make a salted egg porridge or stir-fry them with mao qua or bitter gourd, but who does that for one person? So I searched Pinterest to find salted egg cookies and I modified it to my own tastebuds. This was the result. This one's for keeps. 

Makes roughly 45 small bite sized cookies

85g unsalted butter, softened at room temperature ( I used ½ cup crisco)

⅓ cup caster sugar (or 6 Tbs)

½ tsp salt

1 cup all purpose flour 

1 heaped Tbs cornflour 

½ tsp baking powder

3 cooked salted egg yolks, briefly mashed 

1 egg yolk, lightly beaten to glaze

black sesame seeds to sprinkle (optional) 

Using a wooden spoon or an electric mixer, beat butter, sugar and salt for about 1-2 mins or until combined and fluffy. Do not over beat. Place flour, cornflour, baking powder and salted egg yolks in a medium coarse sieve and use a spoon to sift and press the flour-salted-yolk mixture into the butter mixture. Then, use a spoon or spatula to mix until the flour mixture is totally absorbed into the butter mixture. Gather the crumbs to form a soft pliable dough. Wrap dough in cling film and allow it to rest in the fridge for at least 30 mins.

Line baking trays with baking paper and preheat oven to 170°C

Place dough on a lightly floured surface to roll into 3 mm thickness and cut them into shapes using your desired cookie cutter. Brush the cookies with egg yolk and sprinkle sesame seeds on them and bake for 25 mins or until golden brown. 

Sticky glutinous rice dumplings (bachang or zongzi)

Singaporean style sticky Glutinous Rice Dumplings (Bachang or zongzi)

To make 35 rice dumplings, you will need: 

Ingredients
9-10 cups of glutinous rice (soaked overnight or at least 2 hours in warm water)
0.5 cup of winter melon (diced)
4 lap cheungs sliced (Chinese pork sausages)
18-22 small shiitake mushrooms (soaked overnight)
2 bags of chestnuts (or soak dried ones overnight)
1 cup of raw red peanuts with their jackets on (or soak them overnight)
1.3-1.5lbs of pork butt (needs some fat)
12-24 boiled quail's eggs (optional)
70-80 bamboo leaves (usually one bag will be sufficient)

Run the bamboo leaves under water and clean it with a brush. It will be dirty. Boil the dry bamboo leaves in a pot for 30 minutes. Leave in the pot while you prepare the other ingredients.

Stir fry the following:
1.5 Tbs oil
3 cloves garlic
2 pieces of ginger
Add pork and mushrooms, 3 Tbs light soy sauce, half cup of water, a pinch of salt and white pepper. Remove and leave the gravy in the pan.

Add peanuts to the remaining gravy to simmer for about 7-10minutes. Add 1 Tbs of sugar if you like them sweeter. Put aside.

Add all the soaked rice to the gravy mix and stir fry for about 5 minutes. Because you've soaked the rice, it will make the rice fluffy when you steam them later.

Folding the bamboo cones
Take two bamboo leaves and make them into a cone. Add rice, followed by each of the 5 ingredients: pork, chestnut, sausage, winter melon, and mushroom. (boiled quail's eggs if you have them) You can check youtube to find how to fold them here: https://youtu.be/mkdYFK4RchM)

Using an instant pot, I added enough water to half submerge the dumplings with the raised metal rack below. Adjust high on steam for 30 minutes for 10-12 dumplings.

This is the final result. A pyramid of yummy sticky goodness.

A Blast from My Past: Nian Gao Recipe

Some people like this brand of Koda Farms sweet rice flour.

Ingredients:

• 1 lb. bag of glutinous rice flour  (Erawan Brand look for the green bag or Koda flour) approx. 480gm
• 1 1/4 cups brown sugar (or 5 flat pieces of cane sugar)
• 2 Tbsp. oil (I used grapeseed)
• 2 1/4 cups water

• 1 glass container to steam in (lightly sprayed with olive oil so it won't stick or else use banana leaves to line the container for easy removal. 

1. Boil the water and brown sugar until fully mixed. Let it cool to room temperature. Add the glutinous rice flour and oil. Blend the mixtures until it is completely incorporated.  
2. Steam the batter for 50 minutes on medium high.
3. Let it cool before refrigerating it. 
4. Slice the cakes, coat with egg and lightly pan fry on medium-low heat for about 3 min. on each side or until it's soft and gooey.

After it's steamed, it looked like this. 

Overnight it's hardened enough to be sliced into morsels to be dipped in egg.

Pan-fry them on medium heat till they are a gooey delicious shade of golden brown. 

Lo Bak Go (Radish cake) that made the cut

So I've always made it without wheat starch but it's a necessary secondary starchy flour. I used 5 tablespoons of this with a cup of rice flour and it was magic watching it come together.

This is the brand that I am most familiar with living in Surrey, BC, Canada because Heng Long carries this brand which is very reasonably priced. 1 cup of this is needed. 

This was the messy pile of radish after shredding it and putting it in the wok. Cover for 12 minutes and it was all beautifully soft. 

This was after adding the thin rice and wheat flour mixture which coalesced into this goopy pre-lobakgo-ness.

After steaming for 45-55mins, this would be good enough to serve my grandma, my epoh, my mum and my mum-in-law (all too busy in heaven to pay any attention to my Chinese culinary skills!)

The "Glue"

1 cup rice flour 

5 tbsp wheat starch or corn flour

1 cup water

The "Liao"

1 white radish (medium)- Korean ones are fine.

1/2 a red onions

3 tbsp dried shrimps (soaked for 2 hours)

4-5 medium-sized dried scallops (soaked for 2 hours)

3/4 cup mushrooms (soaked till soft and diced)

2 tablespoons oil

The "Shesoning" (agar agar ok?)

1 tsp salt

1 pinch of sugar

1 tsp sesame oil

A dash of fish sauce

1 tsp toasted sesame seeds

1/2 tsp white pepper

1 tsp Shaoxin wine

1 tsp Knorr chicken seasoning granules
A handful of cut spring onions to look pretty

The How-to

1) Add water to rice flour and wheat starch to make a thin batter.

2) Heat and add oil for stir fry (red onions, dried scallops, dried shrimps and dried mushroom, till fragrant and until golden brown.

3) Add radish and seasoning to taste until combined.

4) Cover and cook until tender and translucent, about 12 minutes on medium high. Radishes are famous for sweating lots of liquid. 

5) Using the same wok, Add the batter and stir them until slightly thickens, Pour mixture into a well-greased glass container and steam for 50-60 minutes on medium-high heat. Remove from heat and set aside to cool before sprinkling spring onions then chucking it into the fridge to ogle at the next morning. 

Chocochiplets

To be fair, this was pilfered from recipe #234 from Hamlyn's Cakes and Baking that I had bought in 1991, with slight alterations, of course. (If there weren't any alterations, I'd be sending you to the Hamlyn site.)

The first time I tried this recipe was on 21 August 1993, before my son was born. Probably for the International Fellowsheep Young Adults' Group back when I lived in Clarens, Switzerland. This is a quicky-feel-good recipe for the no-fuss, no-mess baking guru.

Then again, if you were a real baking guru, you wouldn't be reading this. No duh.




Ingredients:
100g margarine
50g caster sugar
1 egg, beaten
150g self-raising flour
175g chocolate chips
Handful of walnuts

Cream the butter and sugar until it's light and fluffy.
Add the egg until incorporated.
Fold in the flour.
Then the chocolate.
Throw in the walnuts with flair and go "ka-bam-bam" for good measure.

Place a small teaspoon a little apart (it's margarine so it won't melt into a flatter cookie) and bake for 15-20 min on 180C. Makes about 30-35 small bite-sized morsels of crunchy goodness.

2 July 2014 Kimchi courtesy of Mrs. Sun-Kyeng Park

Making the "Sauce" 

Add the other ingredients to make the "Paste"

Massaging the "Paste" into the cut cabbage  

The finished products in 1 litre jars

 

Sun and I in her Langley kitchen

Ingredients for four 1-liter jars of kimchi

2 cabbages

1 cup of salt

Cleaned, cut into rectangles and salt-rubbed overnight (or at least 5 hours)

Wash 2 or 3 times

Leave to drain for an hr

"Paste" for 2 cabbages 

2 cups of water 

2 tbsp glutinous flour

1.5 cups of gochu garu (red pepper flakes)

Quarter cup fish sauce

3 tbsp of crushed garlic

1 tbsp cut ginger

2 tbsps sugar

1 tbsp of sesame seeds

Cut 3 sprigs of spring onions in 1" pieces

Optional: Fresh chives 

Add glutinous flour into a pot with 2 cups of water on medium heat. Keep stirring until it becomes a translucent "paste". Cool a bit then add the gochugaru, fish sauce, crushed garlic, cut ginger and sugar. 

Take the cleaned and drained cabbage and put it in the largest mixing bowl or pot. Sprinkle sesame seeds and the chives before adding the finished "paste" which should have been cooling down until it's warm. Massage it into the cabbage well.

Leave to ferment for a day in summer room temperature before refrigerating the next day.

Enjoy!

Appropriate

It seems appropriate
To describe my restlessness
Like a sleepwalker desperate
To lie down
But finds herself walking unconscious.

It seems appropriate
To be thoughtful and gracious
Yet, I cannot find it within myself
To extend kindness
Though it is not asked of me.

It seems appropriate
To expect my Father to help
My ingrown awkwardness
My violent feelings-
My exasperation of self.

It seems appropriate
To want nothing more than healing
Nothing less than health
At the quickest instant
Her words to lose their affect
Words to lose their sting
Words to lose their meaning
Yet I cling, or they cling to me
Like burrs of a Velcro fruit.

It seems appropriate
To cry foul, or at least air the room
For it is still with musty ill-kept silence
There seems nothing to do,
Nothing to say,
No where to start,
No place to heal,
No one to bridge the gap,
Nothing more to add.
There is only dullness
And on my part, elusive waiting
Wanting to get away,
Feeling wronged,
Not getting out
Nor staying in.

I have so much to say
Yet cannot say it.
I have so much I wish to ask her
But trust not to speak my mind.
I have been desperate to understand
Yet have been so misunderstood.
I have longed for opportunities
That now, feels stale from waiting.
I want to be a friend,
But don’t know how.
I want to befriend,
But am not taught how.
I am upset by my lack of knowing
what is simply
Appropriate.