Whilst sifting through my blog for inspiration one afternoon this week (I had drunkenly invited a friend and his girlfriend over for dinner and had no idea what to cook but wanted to impress), it came to my attention that there’s a huge discrepancy in the number of Asian vs Western recipes I post. Some of this is due to my not being a huge fan of Asian desserts, so all dessert recipes I post automatically add to the Western category, and also thanks to how most of the Chinese food I cook at home (stir-frys, fried rice, Chinese soups, steamed fish) doesn’t tend to be very photogenic.

Another big contributing reason is that when I cook Asian or Chinese food, I very rarely measure anything. It’s a splash of this and a pinch of that, tasting and adding more of whatever is lacking. I’m bad enough when I make a simple pasta at home, but at least it’s easy enough for me to write a recipe starting out with x grams of pasta and y rashers of bacon.

Sometime last year, I was poking around in my pantry, having spotted a packet of Beijing style noodles (they just sort of looked like dried udon sticks, to be honest), and pulled together a dish that was a big hit with one of my especially noodle-loving friends. For some strange reason, we started referring to it as “the sort of dan dan mian” even though the only way it resembled dan dan mian was that it was a dry-ish noodle dish. I did a little bit of research and apparently what I made was very similar to Taiwanese braised pork (which is then served on rice, or all manner of noodles), and it’s also, in fact, quite similar to Japanese soboro. It’s a rich, savoury-yet-tinged-with-sweet meat sauce, and it actually could pass off for a plate of spag bol in these pictures, sans hard-boiled egg and cinnamon stick. For ease of reference, I decided to note down estimated amounts of the seasonings so I don’t end up having to search high and low when I next decide to make this and can’t find a single dan dan mian recipe that even closely resembles the dish I’m thinking of. And now you guys get to benefit too. :)

This dish is quite aggressively seasoned with Chinese five spice powder (generally a blend of cinnamon, star anise, fennel, clove and ginger, and easily available at any grocery store with an Asian section) which I pumped up with whole star anise and cinnamon. The spices marry very well with the fatty pork, but if you prefer to make this dish a little healthier, just swap out the pork belly for an equal weight of lean minced pork, and halve the amount of Chinese five spice powder (you can always add more in later if you find it not fragrant enough). As for the rest of the sauces, don’t be intimidated by the seemingly long list of ingredients – most Asian kitchens should have some if not all of them. If you’re missing anything, I wouldn’t bother to buy an entire bottle just for this dish, so just substitute with whatever you have. You should be able to taste the sweet, salty and spices each in their own right.

And on that (Asian) note, I’d also like to wish all of you a Happy Chinese New Year, and may you have a healthy and prosperous Year of the Dragon! ROAR.

Taiwanese Braised Pork Noodles

2 tbsp canola oil
5 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
1 2-inch piece of ginger, peeled and bruised with the flat of your knife
2 pieces of whole star anise
1 3-inch stick of cinnamon
200g minced pork
200g pork belly, minced or chopped into fine dice
1/4 cup Shaoxing cooking wine
3 tsp Chinese five spice powder
2 tbsp oyster sauce
3 tbsp dark soy sauce
3 tbsp thick dark sweet sauce (the type served with Hainanese chicken rice)
3 tbsp brown sugar
2 tbsp fish sauce (or light soy sauce)
salt & ground white pepper
*optional: 4 dried Chinese mushrooms, rehydrated and finely chopped
4 hard boiled eggs (I generally try to undercook them when pre-boiling them since they’re gonna be sitting in the sauce simmering for a while more after)

600g dried Chinese flour noodles (the white sort, not the yellow/eggy sort), or whatever you prefer, or steamed rice!
fresh coriander

Heat the oil in a medium sized saucepan over medium heat. Add the garlic and ginger and slowly cook until lightly browned and very fragrant. Add in the star anise and cinnamon, and toast the whole spices for an additional minute.

Raise the heat to high, tip all of the pork in and cook, stirring constantly, to brown the meat. Break up any large clumps of minced pork. Once the meat is browned (about 6-8 minutes), add in the shaoxing wine and Chinese five spice powder. Mix well, and allow the wine to cook off, about 3 minutes. Add the rest of the sauces, sugar, and mushrooms if using, and season with a few shakes of white pepper. (There’s no need to add salt for now, as the sauces all add a lot of saltiness already.) Add about a cup of water, bring it to the boil, then reduce the heat to low. Add the peeled hard-boiled eggs in and gently simmer for 30-45 minutes. Check the water level and give it a stir every 5-10 minutes, turning the eggs in the sauce, and topping up with additional liquid if necessary. Taste, and adjust the seasoning as necessary.

In a separate pot, bring 3-inches of water to the boil. Cook your noodles according to the instructions on the packet, then drain and divide equally between four bowls. Top each bowl with 3-4 spoonfuls of the braised meat sauce, and an egg. Garnish with some freshly chopped coriander, and serve immediately.

Yield: Serves 4

Note: This sauce also freezes well, so by all means double or triple the recipe and freeze it for next time, but without the eggs. (Freshly boil the eggs and add them to the sauce when reheating to serve. They won’t be as strongly flavoured but they’re also much less likely to be overcooked!)

It’s a bit of a joke, how much I adore gai yuen gwat, or chicken cartilage. I was first introduced to it as a dish in its own right at a little yakitori joint here in Hong Kong, almost three years ago. Tasty, crunchy, salty, crispy delicious nuggets, lined up on a pretty little stick, roasted to perfection over a charcoal fire.

Since then, I’ve encountered it in a couple of different forms – dusted in seasoned flour and deep fried (like KFC’s popcorn chicken, on crack), used in place of cubes of chicken in dishes like Kung Pao chicken. And no matter what form it appears on my plate it, I love it oh so very much.

Before bunny flew off to Singapore for the Chinese New Year break, she hauled me into a supermarket to stock up on some supplies, worried that I would starve while she was away. (I have a really bad habit of eating rubbish – if I eat at all – when I’m on my own for more than a day or two.) As we passed the freezer section (I was looking for fish fingers!), a bag of frozen gai yuen gwat caught my eye.

And so it was, that on this eve of the Lunar New Year, I’ve just had probably the most delicious meal I’ve ever, ever, made for myself, for my solitary tuan yuan fan. (Is it still a “reunion dinner” if I’m only reunited with deliciousness? I think so, yes.)

Kung Hei Fatt Choy, everyone! Here’s wishing you a happy, healthy, prosperous, and absofrickenlutely delicious Year of the Rabbit. :)

Gai Yuen Gwat Donburi

250g pack of frozen gai yuen gwat, thawed
1 tsp soy sauce
1 tbsp white wine vinegar or lemon juice
1 tsp oyster sauce
1 tsp sesame oil
powdered white pepper
sea salt
canola oil

200g cooked Japanese white rice
1 onsen tamago (see note below)
freshly ground black pepper
Shichimi togarashi (optional)

Place all of the gai yuen gwat into a medium, non-reactive mixing bowl. Add in the soy sauce, vinegar/lemon juice, oyster sauce, sesame oil, and season with a generous shake of white pepper and a pinch of salt. Mix thoroughly, and allow to marinate for at least 15 minutes.

Heat a non-stick sauté pan over medium-low heat. Add all the gai yuen gwat in, and cook gently, allowing the fat to render out (which will help to lubricate the pan) as the pieces slowly crisp up. Cook thoroughly, and until all the pieces are a deep golden brown, then transfer to a small plate or tray lined with paper towels. Sprinkle a pinch of salt over the cooked pieces, and toss.

To assemble, fill a large donburi bowl with rice in an even layer. Scatter the gai yuen gwat over the rice, leaving a small gap in the middle of your bowl. Carefully crack the onsen tamago into the middle of the bowl, season the egg with salt and black pepper, and dust the entire donburi with the Japanese chilli flakes. Serve immediately.

Yield: Serves one.

Note: Onsen tamago is a slow-cooked egg, where the egg is poached in its shell for about an hour at a low temperature. Cooking it this way allows the whites to become creamy and gel-like, without completely solidifying. I do this by bringing the eggs to room temperature, then immersing them in my sous vide supreme for 60 minutes at 62.5ºC.

That’s right, boys and girls, I finally did it. I brought nasi lemak to Hong Kong. (Or, to my flat anyway.)

For those wretched souls out there who have never had the divine pleasure of tasting this dish, it’s a Singaporean/Malaysian rice dish. The name is roughly translated to mean “rich coconut rice” (lemak being a Malay term that means “rich”, but specifically thanks to the addition of coconut milk), and centres around two main components: the titular starch, and sambal. The rest of the ingredients vary – from the ikan bilis (small, crispy, anchovy-like fish) and salted peanuts, to Malay-style fried chicken wings, an egg in some form (crispy-fried, or an omelette), luncheon meat (at the non-Halal stores anyway!), ikan kuning (yellowtail scad, dusted in turmeric and fried to crispy perfection), to sayur lodeh (an Indonesian vegetable stew in coconut curry).

For this feast at home, brought on by my mother very kindly bringing up a triple-wrapped tub of sambal up with her to Hong Kong when she last visited, I went with some of my favourite side dishes, but tried as far as possible to keep the experience fairly authentic, since we had a nasi lemak newbie among us. As you can see in the picture, I picked peanuts, ikan bilis, long beans with spicy minced pork, crispy slices of luncheon meat, chicken wings and a fried egg, all served around the rice, with a good dollop of sambal sitting atop some peeled and sliced cucumber. It was pretty epic – and my favourite compliment of the night was when a fellow Singaporean at dinner said she’d definitely return to a nasi lemak shop that served food of this standard! :D

Having googled around for recipes, it turns out that the rice was pretty easy to make. It was just a matter of cooking 2 cups of rinsed and drained Thai jasmine rice in an equal amount of of coconut milk, a finely minced shallot, a big pinch of salt and 5 bruised pandan leaves. Cook it however you normally cook rice, and hey presto you’re in business!

The chicken wings, however, were a slightly trickier story. I’ve long wondered how Malay-style fried chicken wings are so freakin’ tasty, especially considering they haven’t got my usual secret weapon (LARD) up their sleeves. I played around with some of the spices in my pantry, and think I came up with a pretty good approximation. I’ve included the recipe below, and if all goes according to plan, I’ll get my bum off the couch and figure out how to make the sambal soon, so Singaporeans all around the world won’t ever have to suffer the indignity of substandard nasi lemak in horrendous approximations of Singaporean restaurants ever again.

Malay-style Fried Chicken Wings

15 pieces of chicken wings (I used 10 mid wings and 5 drumlets)
3 shallots
5 garlic cloves
2-inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled
2 tbsp turmeric
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp soy sauce
1 tbsp oyster sauce
1/2 tsp fine sea salt
1 tsp ground white pepper
1 tbsp sugar
3 tbsp cornflour + more for dusting

canola oil, for deep frying

Rinse the chicken pieces, and pat dry. Set aside.

Finely mince the shallot, and place in a medium, non-reactive, mixing bowl. Grate the garlic and ginger into the bowl, being sure that any juices drip into the bowl. Add in the rest of the ingredients, and stir well to mix evenly.

Add the chicken pieces in and toss so each piece is coated in the marinade. Cover, and allow to marinate for at least 1 hour, or for up to 8 hours, in the fridge. About 30 minutes before cooking, remove from the fridge, spread out on a tray and allow to come to room temperature.

Heat about an inch of oil in a deep-sided skillet or wok to about 170ºC. It should not be smoking. (If the oil is too hot, the outside of the chicken will burn before the insides are cooked through.) While the oil is preheating, place about a cup of cornflour in a shallow dish, and dredge each piece of chicken in the cornflour. (Cornflour gives a crust that stays shatteringly crisp even after the chicken pieces have cooled, which makes it ideal for deep-frying in advance.) Fry the chicken in a few batches, without overcrowding the pan, for about 7 minutes, turning the pieces every couple of minutes, until golden brown and cooked through.

Drain well on paper towels, and serve immediately, or keep warm in a low oven until ready to serve.

Yield: Serves 5 (or 3 greedyish people)

For the uninitiated, coconut candy might seem a tad daunting. To eat, that is. Little squares of toxic-coloured coconut shreds, bound together by what appears to be sugar and more sugar? Hot pink? Neon green? It can’t possibly be edible.

Only it is, and it is so delicious. Growing up in Singapore, my mum wouldn’t let us buy it off the shelves at the little mama shops around the void decks of HDB blocks, which was probably a good idea, seeing as the last thing a hyperactive kid needs is a huge hit of sugar straight into your bloodstream. As a compromise though, once in a while she’d make it for us as a treat. I didn’t really mind, since making it at home meant I could colour the blocks of candy any way I wanted.

When I was in Singapore a few weeks ago, I walked past a Bengawan Solo on the way to lunch with a friend, and she mentioned never being allowed to eat coconut candy as a kid either. That passing comment was enough to set both of us craving the stuff, fueled – of course – by how Bengawan Solo seems to have stopped making/selling this candy!

Once I got back to HK, I started looking for fresh shredded coconut, and e-mailed my mum to get her recipe. Once I found the coconut, I whipped up a few batches, went mad with the food colouring (as usual), and vacuum packed a little of it to send back to the one responsible for this craving back in Singapore. :)

It’s easy enough to make at home, requiring only three main ingredients – coconut, evaporated milk, and sugar. Different recipes will call for rose or vanilla flavouring, but I used a combination of rose water and fresh pandan leaves, which is how my mum used to make it. The only thing to note is that you’re gonna be standing in front of the stove stirring an unwieldy mixture in a pot for the better part of an hour, which will get pretty tiring, but it’s nothing a little Röyksøpp won’t fix. :)

Coconut Candy
250g fresh shredded coconut
325g caster sugar
100g full cream evaporated milk
1/4 tsp fine sea salt
2 pandan leaves, knotted
20g unsalted butter, plus extra for greasing
1 tsp rose water
food colouring (optional, but not really!)

Line a small, shallow tray with greaseproof paper, and butter the paper. (I used a tray around 8″ x 5″ x 1″.) Combine the coconut, sugar, milk, salt and pandan in a medium-sized, heavy-based saucepan over medium heat, and carefully mix. The contents of your pot will seem dry at first, then liquid will seep out of the coconut and the sugar will melt, giving you a very soupy mixture.

Cook the coconut mixture, stirring every couple of minutes to ensure that it doesn’t catch at the bottom and burn, for about 45 minutes to 1 hour. The liquid should thicken and reduce, and then completely cook off until you’re left with a very thick paste that pulls away from the sides of the vessel. Remove from heat, then quickly beat in the butter, rose water and food colouring. Using a pair of chopsticks, pull out and discard the spent pandan leaves. Don’t be tempted to use your fingers, as cooked sugar is extremely hot! Quickly tip the mixture out into your prepared pan and, using the back of a wooden spoon, or a sturdy silicone spatula, gently pat it down into an even layer.

Allow to cool for 10-15 minutes, then score the surface with a sharp knife, dividing the tray into about 16-20 pieces. Allow to cool and harden completely, then remove from the tray and cut through the scored surface. The candy will keep in an airtight container for 1-2 weeks at room temperature, which is probably a good thing, since I can’t eat more than 1-2 pieces at a shot. :)

Happy 2010, everyone! Things have been a little busy in the ‘Kong, what with our NYC trip (which I will try to write about soon!), and back-to-back visitors over December. New Year’s Eve was a fairly tame affair in this household, with just four of us (the last houseguest of the decade, J, and S joined us in this year’s feasting), a delicious spread, and a healthy dose of booze.

To bunny’s dismay, J has been the first person around to not just entertain but encourage my crazy kitchen ideas, and while I was showing him one of newest cookbook acquisitions, we decided that NYE’s dinner needed to pay tribute to some of the yummiest food I partook of in the big apple. Having regaled him with tales of the Momofuku Pork Bun, that naturally was on the menu. When we flipped through and found the fried chicken recipe, things just started to fall into place.

And dinner was thoroughly badass. A fittingly epic last meal of the decade, starting with my take on the pork & egg buns, followed by David Chang’s fried chicken (which he brines, then steams, then fries, delivering a shatteringly crisp skin), and ending off with the River Cottage pistachio cake topped with a batch of cereal milk (based on Christina Tosi’s cereal milk panna cotta) frozen custard.

It’s now two days later and I’m still reeling from the deliciousness of the meal – something I couldn’t have carried off at such short notice without my trusty sous chef! (He also took most of the photos here – and you can see the rest of his shots – plenty of which involve the three monsters who have been haranguing him nonstop – on his flickr stream.) I’m also more than relieved that I don’t need to wait till my next visit to Manhattan before I get to sample more of David Chang’s awesome Momofuku creations!

Now, how did everyone else count down?

Pork & Egg Buns
(inspired by and based largely on recipes from David Chang’s Momofuku cookbook)

8 slices pork belly (see below)
4 slow-poached eggs (see below)
4 or 8 frozen chinese buns (the white sweet-ish sort, I substituted man tou ‘cos I couldn’t find the proper ones, but it worked fine)
quick-pickled cucumbers (see below)
4 tsp hoisin sauce
rendered pork fat or oil for deep frying, heated to 190C

Steam the buns according to the instructions on the packet (generally about 5-8 minutes on medium-high heat), and halve them if necessary. While the buns are steaming, deep fry the pork belly slices just so they’re heated through and the edges are golden brown and starting to get crispy. Crack the eggs out of their shells and slide them into the hot oil, deep-frying until golden brown all over and just heated through.

Assemble the buns from bottom-up as follows: bun, pork belly, egg, 1 tsp hoisin, 4-5 slices of the pickled cukes, then the top bun. Serve immediately, with chilli sauce and scallions on the side.

Pork Belly

5-600g slab of pork belly, with the cross section measuring roughly 2×4″
1 tbsp sea salt
1 tbsp caster sugar
50g rendered pork, beef, goose, or duck fat

Mix the salt and sugar together, then rub it all over the pork belly in a ziploc bag, then seal and refrigerate for 4-8 hours. Rinse, discarding any liquid that has collected in the bag, then transfer to a new, clean ziploc bag. Warm the rendered fat until liquid and pour it into the bag over the belly. Seal the bag, pressing out as much air as you can.

Heat a pot of water to between 80-85C. Using a flame-retarder, or any other method you prefer – if you’re a lucky bastard and already own a sous vide supreme, you should clearly use that (heated to 82C, specifically – maintain the temperature of the water in that range and confit the pork belly, en sous vide for 8 hours. Once the cooking is complete, plunge the bag into an ice bath to stop the cooking process, then refrigerate until completely cold (this makes it easier to slice). You can prepare the pork up to a week in advance until this step.

Before serving, run warm tap water over the bag to slightly loosen the fat, then remove the pork belly from the bag, scraping off the excess fat. Cut into slices roughly 0.5cm thick. The slices can then be warmed in a little oil in a skillet, deep fried, or grilled.

Slow-Poached Eggs

This is basically David Chang’s take on the ubiquitous onsen tamago – i.e. eggs that Japanese women used to make by carrying a basket of raw eggs into then onsen or hot spring baths with them while they bathed. In the time it took for a good soak, you’d emerge not just refreshed, but with a basket of creamy eggs, coddled in their shells.

There isn’t so much a recipe for this, it’s just a method. Essentially, the raw eggs – shells intact – need to bathe for about 45 minutes at 62C. Again, unless you have an immersion circulator, it’s a little hard to keep your water at Precisely this temperature, so if you keep it within maybe 60-63C, you should be good to go. Once I got a large-ish pot of water to 62C, I popped the eggs (previously brought to room temperature) in, and just turned the heat back on to medium-low for about 30 seconds every 7-8 minutes. Obviously, if you have a bigger pot of water, it’s going to maintain its temperature better, especially immediately after adding the eggs in.

Once the eggs are cooked, you can use them immediately, or chill them in an ice bath to arrest the cooking, and refrigerate until you reheat for use up to 2 days later. When you crack them open, there will be a little bit of egg white that’s still fairly loose, just crack your egg onto a saucer, and tip the dish over your sink, using your fingers to hold the egg in. It will drain off the loosest, translucent bits, and the rest are fine for eating.

Quick-Pickled Cucumbers

Another non-recipe: slice two to three small cucumbers into 1/8-inch-thick discs, and toss with 1 tsp each coarse salt and caster sugar. Set aside for 5 minutes, then rinse and drain. Taste them: if you like how they are (slightly crunchy, with a little saltiness and a hum of sweetness in the background), you’re good to go. Otherwise, correct the seasoning with extra salt or sugar, and drain again before using. It takes literally 8 minutes to do from start to finish, and the cukes can be held for a couple of hours max, so do this right at the end, just before you start your steaming and deep-frying!

Yield: Serves 4 as a first course, or 1 really hungry person. :)

As I mentioned in my previous post on Bento Basics, one shortcut that I’ve found invaluable is relying on your freezer. I’ve always extolled the virtues of bulk-cooking, especially for people who have small family units. It can be a little tricky to buy and cook for one or two people, and since it takes hardly any longer to make a small amount of ragu as it does to make a giant pot, why not just do a big batch which you can portion and freeze, and that’ll make for another 4 or 5 meals which will only take a few minutes to heat up in the microwave (or on the stove top).

Soboro is likewise a great staple to have in your freezer. Since I use it mostly for my bentos, they’re also in such small portions that I can nuke them while stir-frying some vegetables, and the entire bento gets assembled in under 10 minutes. The best part about it is that it takes under 30 minutes to cook, even in a huge batch (unlike some stews which might need a few hours in a low oven). The only thing I’d really caution you against is buying cheap ground meat from a dodgy source: there’s been quite a lot of attention shone on E.Coli and other types of bacterial food poisoning arising out of contaminated grinder equipment and poor hygiene (especially if all sorts of odd, nasty bits get ground into the meat, complete with the associated germs), so find a reliable butcher you trust, or – as I prefer – grind it on your own. (Granted, most people look at me kinda funny when I say that I grind my own meat. But it’s really quite easy when you have a KitchenAid or a similar stand mixer, which has a meat grinder attachment available. Although, presumably, grinding your own meat means you’ll be in the kitchen for more than the abovementioned half hour.)

The best part about soboro is how versatile it is: you can make a classic sanshoku-don (3-coloured rice bowl) bento if you combine it with some tamagoyaki (Japanese rolled omelette) and steamed veg, mix it with some mashed potatoes, then bread and fry the mixture for soboro croquettes, fold it into an omelette or scrambled eggs, use as your base for a fried noodle dish, or even drain off the sauce and fill onigiri (rice balls) with it (as pictured at the start of the post).

And lest you start to fancy soboro as something that belongs only in your obento, I should probably share one of our current favourite weeknight quick-fixes too: when I was in Tokyo in October, we closed off a meal at a little yakitori joint with an excellent soboro donburi: a bowl of steaming hot rice, a few spoonfuls of juicy soboro, all topped with a quail’s egg yolk. When mixed together, the sauce from the meat and the egg yolk combined, coating the rice with such a delectable rich flavour. I now replicate this at home by mixing up a double portion of the donburi with a hen’s egg yolk. Simple, and – admittedly – not much to look at, but I can assure you: it is thoroughly satisfying.

Ground Meat Soboro

5 tbsp oyster sauce
3 tbsp mirin
2 tbsp light soy sauce
1 tbsp dark soy sauce

3 tbsp sesame oil
1 bulb garlic, peeled and minced (or grated)
3 tbsp grated ginger (about a 2-3 inch knob)
1kg ground beef/veal/pork/chicken (or a mixture – I like using roughly 70:30 beef to pork)
5 tbsp sake
salt & black pepper
a small bunch of spring onions/chives, sliced into 1cm lengths (my bundle weighed about 100g, and had around 20 stalks, but feel free to adjust this amount to taste)

Mix the first 4 ingredients together in a small bowl, set aside.

Heat the sesame oil in a large, high-sided frying pan over medium heat, and add the garlic and ginger. Fry until fragrant, and just starting to brown around the edges; about 3 minutes. Turn the heat up to high, add all the meat in and fry fast to brown all over, breaking up any clumps that form.

When the meat is about 3/4 cooked, add in the sake and a big pinch of salt. Cook, stirring frequently, until the meat is cooked through. Add the sauce mixture along with a level tablespoon of ground black pepper and about 50ml of water, and stir thoroughly to ensure that it is evenly mixed. Turn the heat to low and simmer, about 5 minutes until the liquid is reduced by half. Remove from heat, then stir through your spring onions, cover and let it steam for a minute or two more to wilt the spring onions. Taste, correct the seasoning with salt and/or pepper if necessary.

You can now either serve it immediately, or cool rapidly (use an ice bath), then portion out and store. It will keep for about 2-3 days in the fridge, covered tightly, or for a few months frozen in an airtight container. I generally freeze portions of around 150g for my bentos, which I can then nuke for 2-3 minutes on high to defrost and reheat.

Yield: Makes about 8 servings, depending on the sizes of your portions, but you can also double (or triple!) the amount you make, depending on the size of the pots you have. Likewise, feel free to reduce the amount you make, tasting and adjusting the measurements accordingly.

So why did I bother to figure out how to make it, now that I live in the land of XO sauce? Cost, really. Well, that and curiosity. My favourite XO sauce has a rather hefty price tag (HK$240 for under 200g of the stuff) and its recipe is closely guarded by the chef at Lung King Heen in the Four Seasons Hong Kong. And with the way I inhale a bottle of that goodness, I figured it was time I tried to come up with a recipe on my own.

Googling a recipe proved to be a little less helpful than I had expected, though. As with many Chinese dishes and sauces, the list of ingredients was vast, and varied according to who made it. I did glean that the main ingredients were dried scallops, small dried shrimp, Chinese jinhua ham, chilli, garlic, shallots and oil. Some recipes included large dried shrimp, some included dried salted fish, and a host of different spices and seasonings. I decided I would start simple and start adding on as and where I found the flavours lacking.

Because I was reluctant to buy a huge amount of dried seafood, I stuck with just dried scallops and the small dried shrimp. I decided to use fish sauce as my source of saltiness as well as to hopefully do away with the need for salted fish. Because I couldn’t get my hands on any Chinese ham, I substituted it with pancetta. You can use bacon (smoked or not), or Chinese ham if you prefer. I’ve also gone rather heavy on the dried scallops, as I simply love the flavour and texture that it brings. Two tries later, I think I’ve got a winner. It’s a little on the salty side (as compared to say Lee Kum Kee’s XO sauce), but as I use it as a dipping sauce, it works perfectly for me. Try it, and adjust the seasoning as you see fit. I hope you like it!

XO Sauce
160g dried scallops (conpoy)
80g small dried shrimp (xia mi)
400g peanut oil
300g pancetta
100g peeled shallots
100g peeled garlic
20g chilli padi
30g large red chilli
2g powdered white pepper
100g fish sauce
50g sesame oil
10g chilli oil
20g crab oil (if you can’t find this, omit, or replace with chilli or sesame oil)
sea salt

Place the dried scallops into a bowl, rinse and drain twice so that they are moistened, then transfer to a zip lock bag and seal tightly, pressing out as much air as possible. Do the same with the dried shrimp, then place both zip lock bags into another bag and leave in the fridge for 18-24 hours to soften.

Transfer the softened scallops into a bowl and steam for 30-45 minutes, or until very soft and pliable. Cool until you can handle it, then shred (either with your hands or with two forks), reserving any of the liquid that collects in the bottom of the bowl. Set aside. Pound the dried shrimp in a mortar and pestle (or in the zip lock bag with a rolling pin or mallet) until fluffy and mostly disintegrated. Combine this with the scallops, pepper and fish sauce. Set aside.

Finely chop the shallots and garlic in a food processor. Scrape it out, then chop the chillies in 10 1-second pulses. Cube the pancetta.

Heat about 300g of the peanut oil in a Dutch oven over medium-low heat. Add the pancetta, and cook until the pancetta turns golden brown and the fat is mostly rendered out. Remove from the pan using a slotted spoon, and set aside.

Tip the shallots, garlic and chillies into the oil, and fry over medium-low heat until very fragrant and just starting to colour, about 8-10 minutes. Add the shrimp and scallop mixture, stirring frequently. It will steam a little at first, but continue to cook until all the moisture has evaporated, 10-12 minutes. Stir in the reserved pancetta, and the remaining 3 types of oil. If necessary, add the last 100g of peanut oil as well. It will look like a LOT of oil, but you need it to preserve the sauce well. Add about 1 teaspoon of sea salt, and stir though. Allow it to heat very gently, then remove from the heat and allow it to cool. Once cool, spoon into bottles or jars, ensuring that the contents are covered by at least half a cm of the oil. Keep refrigerated in a tightly sealed bottle (so that the rest of the items in your fridge don’t all start to smell of XO sauce!) and try not to eat too much at once.

Yield: about 800ml

Okay, okay, I know I owe you guys a post on a certain restaurant in Spain. But I wrote my post down somewhere on a piece of paper when I was on a bus back from KL and I can’t find it. So let me talk about something a little more recent which I did and which I’m rather proud of.

There comes a point in a cook’s life where he/she stops copying recipes and starts creating dishes. The transition is actually generally a lot more prolonged than what you might think, as it starts with making slight changes to recipes to suit your taste (or, similarly, to suit different ingredients that might be available in your part of the world/during a particular season), or pulling different components from different recipes to assemble into an entity of its own. For me, I reached a sort of nirvana when I started cooking multi-faceted dishes with different components, most of which I’d come up with on my own.

As I’ve always said, cooking is really about a bunch of simple, basic techniques more than anything else. Whenever I cook/bake/make something for friends, I always find myself surround my hysteria – friends screeching, “HOW CAN YOU POSSIBLY MAKE ALL OF THIS? IT’S SO COMPLICATED!” To which I more often than not reply, “But it’s all really simple!” And I’m not being a show-off/overestimating my friends’ skill sets. You see, if you know how to boil water for instant noodles, or do a simple Chinese style vegetable stir-fry, you’ve got all the techniques down pat for making a simple pasta from scratch – you can boil water, you can judge doneness for noodles, you can cut/chop/slice (chances are garlic will be in the mix for both types), you can sauté, and you can check for seasoning. Likewise, if you can make cupcakes (following the most basic of butter cake recipes), and you understand the flavour pairing of strawberries, vanilla, sugar and softly whipped cream, you can assemble a multi-layered berry cake with crème chantilly easily. Even better: if you’ve ever played with playdough, or made a simple dough for messing around with and rolling around as a kid, you can make your own pasta. See? It’s all simple. Just break everything down into its components.

Now, one of the other things I like to do is to re-create dishes based on classic street food. Bunny observed the growth in my skill set by how I went from one modification to another – I started out simply looking for new ways to present the dishes (such as in the case of my Bakkuttini), and slowly I started remodelling one aspect at a time of each dish.

My latest creation is an amuse bouche based on Laksa. It started out with a good friend demanding to taste Laksa Pesto. I was bored of this – I didn’t find it challenging enough anymore, and I’d made it too many times – so I wrangled my way out of it by telling her I’d do a different Laksa dish for her instead. Another friend had been itching to try a self-saucing laksa ravioli, and after tossing ideas around, I came up with a list of ingredients that went into a traditional bowl of Laksa, and came up with this:

It’s – again – really quite simple. (This time, though, I will admit that the entire dish is rather time consuming to make, even though the individual parts aren’t actually very challenging at all.) I made ravioli using egg-yolk-only pasta (roughly 150g of plain flour to 2 large egg yolks, with a little salt), which I opted for because I wanted it to mimic the richness and texture of the springy egg noodles normally served in Laksa, and filled this with a mixture of minced prawns, XO sauce, minced laksa leaves and fresh chilli (i.e. your basic laksa pesto) with a little oil to bind, and served this with two sauces: a fragrant prawn stock which was heavily reduced until almost syrupy, infused with lemongrass, galangal, and some carrots for colour and sweetness, and the second sauce was a ready-out-of-the-packet coconut cream. (I decided that I wanted the coconut cream to actually come off with a very clean flavour on the palate in contrast to the rich shellfish broth, which would – in itself – be quite interesting since coconut’s usually the rich, cloying component in these dishes.) I topped it with a prawn coated in salted-egg-yolk (quite a common dish on many Chinese menus) which embodies both prawns and eggs – i.e. two of the common toppings in laksa, and finally garnished it with a crisp fried laksa leaf to pay homage to the humble beginnings of this dish.

(You can see the entire sheet of paper with my doodlings, scribblings and conceptualising on this scan which I’ve uploaded into my flickrstream.)

The best part of it was that when you sampled a mouthful of each of the components, it actually really tasted like Laksa. Also, it means I now know how to make Laksa, which could prove handy considering I’m now HK and very far away from my local Katong Laksa stall.

Laksa Amuse
(serves 6)

For the prawn stock:
2 cloves of garlic, peeled and bruised
4 shallots, peeled and roughly chopped
1 small white onion, peeled and roughly chopped
1 carrot, peeled and diced into 1cm pieces
Heads and shells of 20 tiger prawns, roughly chopped
Pork bone stock (or chicken stock or water) – I probably used about 1.5 litres
2 1-inch pieces of galangal, bruised
1-inch piece of young ginger, bruised
3 lemongrass stalks, bruised and roughly chopped (white part only)
Vegetable oil

For the pasta dough:
150g unbleached all-purpose flour
2 large egg yolks
a pinch of salt

For the ravioli filling:
Meat from 14 prawns
2 tbsp XO sauce (I used some from the Peninsular hotel in Beijing which I got as a gift, but any brand you like the flavour of will do – e.g. Lee Kum Kee which is easily available in many supermarkets)
1 large red chilli, deseeded and roughly chopped
1 handful of laksa leaves (I used about 3/4 of the packets you get in Cold Storage)
2 tbsp chilli-infused sesame oil (or the oil from your XO sauce)

100ml coconut cream/thick coconut milk
6-10 pretty laksa leaves
1 salted egg
20g unsalted butter
6 prawns, peeled and deveined but with the tails intact
potato starch/flour
oil
sea salt
finely ground white pepper

Peel and devein all 20 prawns, but reserve 6 with the tails intact. Set these 6 aside. Blend the flesh from the other 14 prawns with the rest of the ingredients for the ravioli filling and season with salt and pepper. If necessary, add a little more olive oil or vegetable oil so the mixture binds. Cover tightly with clingfilm and set aside in the fridge. (Can be prepared up to 1 day in advance.)

In a stockpot, gently sweat the onions, carrots, shallots and garlic in a little oil until softened, but not browned, about 10 minutes. Remove from heat. In a sauté pan, fry the prawn heads and shells in a little oil until all the shells turn a deep orange and are very fragrant. Tip the shells into the stockpot. Do this in batches if necessary to prevent the pan from overcrowding. Deglaze the pan with 1 cup of the stock, ensuring the scrape up all the caramelised bits at the bottom of the pan. Pour this liquid into the stockpot, and top it up with enough stock to cover by about an inch. Bring this to a gentle simmer, then add the lemongrass, ginger and galangal, and simmer for 1 hour, skimming off any impurities that rise to the surface. After 1 hour, strain the stock through a china cap, pressing on the solids with the back of a wooden spoon to extract all the liquids, into a smaller pot. Strain this again through a fine-grained sieve without pushing any particles through this time, then simmer gently to reduce until you have about 1 cup of liquid left. Season with salt (it’s important that you only season at the end), and set aside until ready to assemble. If desired, you can prepare this in advance, then cool and refrigerate until needed.

To make the pasta dough, lightly beat the egg yolks with the salt and add the flour – about a cup first, then slowly add in the rest until the dough is no longer sticky and wet. It should feel a LITTLE bit too dry. Knead for about 10 minutes until the dough is smooth and satiny, then wrap well in clingfilm and set aside at a cool room temperature for 30 minutes to relax. Dust your work surface and rolling pin with flour (or set up your pasta roller), and roll the pasta out until it is about 1mm thick (slightly thinner than you would roll it out for noodles like tagliatelle). Cut out 12 circles, each 5cm in diameter, then place a heaped teaspoon of the prawn filling into the centre. You should have enough dough and filling for a few extras in case of breakage. Place the ravioli on a tray lined with a sheet of waxed paper dusted with flour or semolina, dust with more flour, place another sheet of wax paper on top, and wrap well with clingfilm and keep in the fridge until needed. You can prep this a few hours in advance, or even freeze it. (If cooking from frozen, add another minute or two to the cooking time, but do not defrost it first.)

Fry the reserved laksa leaves for garnish in a little oil until crisp and translucent. Be careful not to burn them. Set aside on some kitchen towels to drain. Separate the salted egg, and steam the yolk for about 5 minutes. Allow it to cool, then chop finely.

When ready to serve, bring a large pot of salted water to a rolling boil. Reheat the prawn stock, keep warm, and bring the coconut cream to room temperature. Dust the reserved 6 prawns in potato starch, then fry until the flesh turns pink and the flour is golden brown and crisp. Drain on some kitchen paper. Wipe out the sauté pan, and melt 20g of butter in it, and when it starts to foam, add in the chopped, steamed salted egg yolk. Stir the yolk in until you get a foamy buttery sauce, then add the prawns to the pan, tossing to coat. Once the prawns are warmed through and well coated, remove from the heat. Cook the ravioli for 2-3 minutes (fresh pasta cooks VERY quickly, so be careful not to overcook it!), then drain onto an oiled pan (to prevent sticking).

To plate, place 2 tablespoons of the prawn stock into the bottom of each small dish. Place the cooked ravioli in the sauce, then spoon over 1-2 teaspoons of coconut cream. Top the ravioli with a prawn crusted in the salted egg yolk, and garnish with a fried laksa leaf. (See the dish/illustration.) Serve immediately, and enjoy. :)

Anyway, Marvin has requested that I post my recipe following the jubilant declaration I made last night, and here it is. Or as close as I can get to a recipe anyway – since I didn’t measure anything, and last night was the first time I made it. :p Okay since I don’t have any measurements I’m just going to write it in fluid English.

This recipe is for the “dry” style of wonton noodles – they can also be served in soup which should be quite self-explanatory.

I first made the chicken stock – this part is easy enough. Boil one chicken – I’d recommend chopping it up into quarters at least – in erm a lot of water. You need a lot, ‘cos I made the mistake of boiling my noodles in the same soup that I wanted to drink, and the flour and starch from the noodles ended up making the soup very thick. Throw in two tomatoes (quartered), 2 carrots (roughly chopped), 1 white onion (quartered), some spring onions and a leek. Season with sea salt and finely ground white pepper (or you can use white peppercorns in a strainer), soya sauce, shao hsing chinese wine, and toasted sesame oil. This is pretty much the way any chicken soup is made, but with a slightly chinese twist (the wine and sesame oil). You can also add corn for other sorts of chicken soup, but I don’t really like the sweet flavour in wonton mee.

For the dumplings, I mashed up 200g of minced pork, 5 peeled and deveined tiger prawns, 3 fresh water chestnuts (peeled and finely chopped), about a teaspoon each of minced ginger and garlic. Season generously with soya sauce, sesame oil, finely ground white pepper and some sea salt. Add a small splash of shao hsing chinese wine, and mix thoroughly to combine. This gave enough filling for 30 wontons (and I don’t like the kind that are very giam siap and only have a smidge of filling), as well as 6 meatballs (cos I ran out of wrappers). Whatever you don’t use immediately can be covered with clingfilm and frozen – I’m not sure exactly how long they’ll last though. (When cooking the frozen wontons, don’t defrost them first – just add 2 minutes to the cooking time of the fresh ones.)

Lay your (square) wrapper out on a plate, and draw an imaginary line which divides it into 2 triangles. Place a small ball of filling just below the line, and use a wet finger (ha) to draw around the perimeter with water – this will help the dumplings to seal shut (you don’t need to use egg or anything like that). Fold the top triangle over, and pinch it shut at the apex of the triangle, and slowly squeeze out the air from the middle out to each side before sealing it shut. You want to make sure that there is no air inside the dumplings, as air bubbles will expand when cooking and cause the skin to break.

If you aren’t as lazy as I am, you can always pleat the top but I couldn’t be bothered last night. Anyway you eat them so fast that I hardly think it’s worth it. Unless I’m throwing a dinner party or something, I guess.

While making the dumplings, keep all the completed wontons and unused wrappers under a slightly damp cloth to keep them from drying out.

Fill a small pot with soup (strain out any solids) for drinking, and to cook the wontons in. Reserve the rest. Bring it to a boil, then drop in the wontons to cook. The dumplings take about 3-5 minutes to cook – or prod it gently with a chopstick, it should be firm. Ladle 4 or 5 into a small bowl with some soup.

Before cooking the noodles (you can find them easily in the refridgerated section of any cold storage or NTUC I think), prepare a bowl with the following: about 2 tsp of light soya sauce, 1 tsp of sesame oil (or a few good shakes of the bottle haha), 1 tsp of chilli (the kind that comes in chilli oil), another 1 tsp of the chilli oil, some finely ground black pepper, a small splash of chinese wine, and 1 tbsp of the soup. Cook the noodles – while stirring vigorously – in the reserved soup, until tender (about 3 minutes in rapidly boiling soup should do it). Strain them quickly and mix thoroughly with the seasoning in the bowl. If the noodles look too dry, add a couple of tbsp of soup and mix again. Garnish with some finely chopped spring onions, and serve with the wonton, some slices of char siew, and some blanched green vegetables.

Enjoy!

Note: The wontons can alternatively be served deep fried.