Fish casserole

Ingredients
2 batang fisk steaks
Per steak - 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp ginger powder, 1 tsp cumin, tsp tumeric. Mix dry ingredients well and rub onto the fish.
2 strips of bacon rashes
3 cloves garlic, crushed
2 shallots, chopped
1 broccoli
1/2 cup water
1 tbls dark soya sauce
1 tsp Thai chilli flakes

Method
1) Marinate the fish steaks. Set aside. Reserve some of the garlic and shallots.
2) Cut up the broccoli into little florets. Marinate with half tsp salt.
3) In a casserole dish, place the broccoli on the base and mix well with the leftover garlic and shallots.
4) Warp each steak with bacon and place the fish steaks on top of the florets.
5) Add the water and cover the casserole.
6) Bake at 200 degrees C for 18 mins, or 180 degrees C for 25 mins.
7) Mix the soya sauce with chilli flakes. This is the dipping sauce for the broccoli. Dilute with water if too salty.
8) Serve with crusty bread or rice.

Pork Porridge

Went to Newton Hawker Centre last night. As the original one is under renovation, it has moved to this previously open area (was it a field or car park? Cant remember) next to these very nice colonial-style black and white shop houses. I did one time think of renting one during my 'shophouse phase' but then saw the hawker centre nearby - not a good thing!

Anyhow, was having a porridge craving. U know how it is when u get the Hong Kong style chok, grains nicely broken down till the whole liquid is this velvelty and delicious gruel that slides down your throat. It can also be stody, like oatmeal, the way my family used to cook it (my mom would say that it's more substantial), but that's not the way I like it. I'm also not a fan of Teochew style muay at all. I'd much rather eat mui fan but maybe that's the Cantonese in me talking. :)

Went to Newton last night for late dinner to satisfy my craving for bbq chicken wings and porridge, but my craving for porridge was cruelly misplaced - 1stly, could only find a fish muay, 2ndly - blardy ripoff - $4! Anyway, with visions of pork porridge swirling in my head, I'd thought I'd try round 2 today. To make it simple, I'm using a rice cooker to do all the work.

Ingredients
300g pork bones (used for soup) or spare rib (this has more meat but is more pricy)
200g pork collar or pork shin - sliced thinly
100g minced pork
100g pork liver, sliced thinly
2 cups rice
1.5l water
1 finger length ginger, sliced thinly
Salt to taste

Marinade
Pork bones - 2 tbsp light soya sauce, 1 tbsp rice wine, 1 tsp sugar, 1 tbsp sesame seed oil
Pork slices - same as above, halve the proportions
100g minced pork - I cheated, as I didn't want to discolor my porridge (making it dark from the soya sauce and wine), after putting in the pork bones, I used the leftover marinade to marinate the minced pork
Liver - 1 tsp salt and 1 tsp ginger powder

Method
1) In the rice cooker, pour in just a big of cooking oil and fry the ginger slices.
2) Drain the pork bones of the marinade. Brown the pork bones. Remember to reserve the marinade liquid to marinade the minced pork. Shape these into balls.
3) Pour in the rice and bowls of water. Stir. Cover and let the rice cooker cook for 1.5 hours.
4) Check the consistency of the gruel, usually, it helps to stir it and add (water) water if necessary so that the rice grains break up and gives a velvety consistency.
5) After 1.5 hours, carefully pour in the pork balls once at a time so that they retain their shape and stir. Add salt to taste.
6) When ready to serve, pour in the liver slices and switch off the heat. These will cook in the heat but you don't want them over-cooked.
7) To serve, Optional: Break in 1-2 eggs into each bowl and ladle the hot porridge on top. The heat will cook the eggs.

Salted Fish Fried Rice

Fried Rice has always been a boon and bane for me. I like eating it, it's super simple to cook (another 'throw everything in your fridge' dish), but gosh, so darn hard to get right! How do hawkers get that distinctively 'fried rice' taste? I can only describe it 'that slightly chao-da taste' that can't seem to be replicated at home. I strongly suspect it's because these guys probably never really wash their kwalis. It's the burnt on burnt taste so when u scrape the kwali - voila! Kinda like why people like claypot rice. Burnt bits! But imagine the srubbing up afterwards, not to mention burning my precious pots!

There's been a lot experimenting for me when it comes to fried rice - egg before rice or rice before egg? The former makes the fried rice drier, the latter makes the fried rice a bit wet. Personal preference I guess.

Ingredients (feeds 2)
2 bowls overnight rice - essential! Otherwise freshly cooked rice is just too soft.
1 handfull bean sprouts
Salted fish - don't quite know how to describe quantities for this, 2 pieces chopped up?
1 handful ikan billis
2 eggs, beaten
1 tomato, cubed
1 tsp XO sauce
1 tsp spicy bean sauce
1 tsp sambal (can add more to taste)
1 garlic, crushed
2 shallots, chopped
Cooking oil

Method
1) Fry the ikan billis and salted fish until crispy. Set aside.
2) Fry the garlic and shallots in the oil until fragrant.
3) The next few steps have to be done very swiftly - pour in the sauces, tomato cubes, and lastly, bean sprouts. Fry very briefly just to incoporate.
4) Add the egg. This will stick to the bottom of the pan so quickly, as soon as it solidifies, scrape it off the bottom and incorporate it with the rest of the ingredients. Remember to keep 'chopping' into tiny pieces.
5) Once all the egg is dry, pour in the rice. Really flatten it (to get it nearer the heat) and then incoporate again.
6) Lastly, return the salted fish and ikan billis and incorporate. Serve immediately. Alternatively, the ikan billis can be served separately to keep it crispy.

Grilled baby calamari

Dropped by the supermarket and picked up some fresh seafood for a change in diet. Came across baby calamari. This presented a challenge to me - I've never cooked squid before! I didn't even know how to clean it!

So digging back to my days of watching my maid clean squid, I remembered that there were 2 things that needed to be removed - the plastic-ky spine and the ink sac. Except in a baby squid, you don't really want to separate the body from the head, so there I was fishing around its torso. I found and removed the spine but not the ink sac, couldn't find it without having to dissect the poor squid.

One thing I learnt the hard way - the ink sac is actually quite salty! (probably from living in the sea) So no more additional salt needed next time.

This recipe was inspired by my recent Bangkok trip. We had the best grilled squid (these were giant ones), simply grilled and served with dipping sauces! A clean taste, the char-grilled squid was delicious, a simple taste of the sea! The dipping sauces provide all 4 dimensions of taste - sweet, sour, salty and spicy.


Ingredients
Baby squid, cleaned
Garlic, crushed

Oil for grilling

1 tbls honey

Dipping sauces
1 freshly cut chilli
2 tbls dark soya sauce
1 tbls Lime juice
Thai sweet chilli sauce

Method
1) Clean and prep the squid (e.g. can be skewered)
2) Marinate with crushed garlic and a drizzle of honey.
3) Brush the grill with cooking oil, heat till it smokes and place the squid on the grill to cook. Brush on oil on the squid. Cook, turning occasionally. Serve immediately.
4) For the salty and sour dipping sauce, mix cut chilli, lime juice and soya sauce.
5) To eat, dip squid into either the chilli/lime sauce, or Thai sweet chilli sauce, or even both!

Country Quiche

I have this love affair with quiches - I love eating them! I still remember my 1st encounter with them was in this tiny cafe in Banff in the beautiful Canadian Rockies. First time I saw it, I didn't know how to pronounce it, and called it 'quic-key'. I was promptly corrected by the server!

Since then, I've loved its custard-y texture together with the melt-in-your-mouth buttery crust. My search for the perfect quiche recipe ended when my kitchen goddess friend, DJ shared this one with me. Altho rather difficult to whip up for a quick dinner, it's great for those lazy weekend afternoons. Served best hot but also equally good cold with a salad, leftover quiche is great as a light dinner.

Tips
1) This works best in those wall-mounted ovens with a sliding oven tray which u can slide in and out. Pour the egg mixture into something with a spout, e.g. measuring jug or even tea pot. Pour only half the mixture into the pie base. After placing the pie on the sliding tray, pour in the remainder till you reach nearly the brim of the pie. Slide it in. No spillage! I made the mistake of thinking I had a fantastic sense of balance. Between sliding in a to-the-brim quiche and trying not to scald my hands on the sides of the oven, my egg mixture spilt all over the oven floor and charred nicely. I had a good hard time trying to scrub it out later.

2) The diameter of the pie pan is quite vital - Pie pan depths are usually quite standard. The ingredients are calculated so that after pouring in all the egg mixture, you will almost exactly reach the brim of the pie base. But even if things don't work out so exactly, you can just pour in as much egg mixture as it takes to almost reach the brim. Remember not to pour right up to the very brim or it will overflow, the egg mixture will rise just a bit.

Ingredients (Either 1 large quiche, or 4 small ones)
Short crust pastry
200g flour
200g butter
3 tbsp cold water

Filling
2 big onion, sliced
150g sausages, sliced
Pinch of nutmeg
50g green peas
1 red chilli, deseeded and sliced
½ tbsp concentrated chicken stock

Egg mixture
3 eggs
150ml milk
Salt & pepper to taste

Method
1) Make short crust pastry by rolling flour and better until they resemble small bread crumbs. Combine into a ball and set aside in the fridge to rest for 20 mins.
2) In a pan, sauté the filling ingredients. Pour into the bowl containing the egg mixture and mix well.
3) Roll out the pastry into a 10” pan. Prick the base with a fork so that it doesn’t rise up during baking.
4) Pour in the filling.
5) Bake in the oven at 190 Degrees C for 25 – 30 mins or until golden brown.

Bak Ku Teh - with a twist

Trying to prepare a complete balanced meal is never easy when you're in a time crunch. After coming back from work, I'm tired and it's late, and I still need to squeeze in my exercise routine. So I'm always looking for 1 dish meals.

Bak Ku Teh is mostly a 1 dish meal, toss in a ready mix packet with the marinated bak ku - how tough can it be? However, there's never any veg in the soup! So hence started my quest to find the perfect veg that can add to the soup without sullying the flavour.

This week I bought spinach, intending to cook it separately. But today, after a particularly bad day at work, I thought - what the heck.

The result - sublime! The spinach adds a sweet nutty taste to the soup. On retrospect, why not, after all, we always cook spinach soup with bak ku anyway.
Some other vegs that don't work - chinese lettuce. It can go in to let the heat wilt in the soup but definately not soaked in or cooked in the soup, it leaves a slightly bitter taste. However, it does add a nice crunch.

There's no recipe today because how hard is it to make bak ku with a ready mix? All the instructions are on the packet.

Baked fish wrap with asparagus

This is another recipe using asparagus and ham. It works just as well with bacon rather than ham. See how easy it is to come up with different variations of the same theme? This is also a very simple recipe - most of the spent is spent in the assembly, but almost minimal washing up. Perfect for an after work meal.
Ingredients (serves 2)
10 stalks of baby asparagus
6 cherry tomatoes, sliced in half
2 fish fillets (chose a firm fleshed fish, and preferably with skin on)
4 slices of ham
3 tbls butter
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
2 slices ginger, slivered
3 cloves of garlic, crushed
Herbs: Sage, parsley, nutmeg, thyme
Aluminum foil

Method
1) Marinate the fish by rubbing on salt and pepper. Lay on the slices of ginger.
2) While fish is marinating, in a bowl, pour in 1 tbls olive oil, salt, pepper and herbs. Mix well. Put in the asparagus and cherry tomatoes and toss like you would a salad.
3) To the butter (softened at room temp), add the garlic herbs and mix well. This is the garlic butter mix.
4) To assemble the package, take a big enough sheet of foil to fully envelope the fish, and also with enough allowance to crimp the edges. Lay open the foil, using butter or olive oil, oil the foil so that the fish won't stick.
5) Start with laying 5 asaparagus in the middle of the foil, then the cherry tomatoes on the side. Butter the fish fillet with the garlic butter, and wrap in ham. U can use a tooth pick to secure this so it doesn't open up. Lay this on top of the asaparagus.
6) Fold it over and crimp the edges so that any juices don't flow out. Repeat with other fillet. Poke 1 or 2 holes in the foil to allow the steam to escaape.
7) Place both packages on a tin foil to catch any juices that may flow out.
8) Bake at 180 degrees for 15 minutes.
9) To serve, cut open the foil. All juices will be trapped inside and you can eat it straight out of the foil. Just throw away the foil when done, u don't even have to wash any plates!

This foil package method works equally well with seafood e.g. squid with lemon juice and chilli, or even used over the barbi. I even toss the packet on a skillet sometimes instead of in the oven. U will know it's cooked when the steam in the packet causes it to puff up.

Ham and Asparagus pasta

This is a really simple recipe, again, using the stuff in my fridge. Sometimes it's fun to go to the supermarket and without planning ahead for the week, just buy whatever's on offer and then wing it.

Ingredients (serves 2)
1 cup of bechamel sauce (white sauce) - do a web search for ingredients and method. A good link of how to make basic sauces can be found here.
4 slices ham, sliced into squares
herbs - I like oregano and parsley for thisbut you can really use whatever you like.
2 handfuls asparagus, chopped up into inch long sections
Cooked pasta of your own choosing (sphagetti, angel hair etc)
Butter for cooking
3 cloves crushed garlic

Method
1. Make the sauce in a pot. Set pot aside.
2. In a pan, saute the garlic and then pan fry the asparagus until softened and then add the ham and pan fry until slightly singed around the edges.
3. Pour the contents of the pan into the pot of sauce.
4. Pour in the cooked pasta and mix well. The residual heat from the pot will gently warm thru the pasta. (I know people usually serve up the pasta on the plate and the pour the sauce over. No no! The correct Italian way is to pour the pasta back into the sauce pan (with flame switched off) and give it a toss so that the sauce coats the pasta evenly. The residual heat from the pot will help warm thru the pasta too. Serve this up immediately so the pasta stays al dente.)
5. Serve with glass of white wine. Presto!