Glutinous rice

I have tried different ways to cook glutinous rice and stir fry it. I tried the IP version several times but I never got it right. It was always too sticky. I learnt from Meatman recently that there was no need to soak the rice for so long if cooking it in a rice cooker. I decided to give it a try.

The Meatman recipe called for soaking 30 minutes. The ratio was glut rice+ jasmine rice 500g : 500ml liquid (sauces + ingredients).

I decided to try cooking with brown rice without soaking at all but using the burnt rice function on my rice cooker. Instead of following the recipe, I used the finger indication. 

The outcome? The rice was washed very cleanly but was still a bit mushy and yet the brown rice was undercooked. I switched off the electricity and left it to steam on its own in the heat. After 1 hour, the brown rice was finally just cooked but the glut rice was still too soft.

I fried it up with sauce and ingredients (mushrooms, egg, garlic) but it was still a bit too soft and sticky.

In future, I will use less water. The recommended is ⅔C water to 1 cup glut rice.

Seafood vermicelli (woon sen)

I've come across several versions of this, but this seems the easiest. I am not one for Thai vermicelli so this recipe is preferred.

Adapted from Meatman who use black pepper prawns and a claypot.

Ingredients

2 basa fish fillets, sliced

5 to 6 prawns

5 - 6 squid rings

2 cakes of vermicelli noodles

8 garlic cloves, minced

1 tsp coriander powder (or fresh roots if you have it)

200ml stock (chicken or fish) or water and stock powder

3 tbsp oyster sauce

1 tbsp Chinese rice wine

1 tbsp Mirin

1 tbsp Japanese cooking sake

1 tbsp fish sauce (divided use)

3 tbsp water

dash of black pepper

dash of white pepper

1 tbsp corn starch

½ tsp black powder, ground

spring onion (to garnish)

Method

1. Rehydrate vermicelli with warm water for 5 - 10 minutes. Do not use boiling water or the noodles will turn mushy. Drain and set aside.

2. Marinate the seafood with half tbsp fish sauce and white pepper, and 1 tbsp corn starch.

3. Marinate the vermicelli with oyster sauce, chinese cooking wine, black pepper, half tbsp fish sauce and stock powder.

4. Preheat a claypot with oil. Fry the garlic and coriander roots if using. Be careful not to burn.

5. Deglaze with water or stock. Add marinated vermicelli and toss to coat.

6. Add cayenne and black pepper and toss to coat.

7. Top with seafood, cover and cook for 2 minutes.

7. Garnish with spring onions.

Christine's recipes also has a more authentic steamed prawn with vermicelli version.

Air Fry Har Jeong Gai (prawn paste chicken)

I have been trying to perfect my Har Jeong Gai for very long now. It started with oven baked but never very correct. While I've almost nailed the taste, the batter has always escaped me.

Now that I have an air fryer, I thought I'd try a new recipe culled from ideas off the internet. I'm not concentrating on the taste here but on the batter.

You can see two wings in the top left corner which I attempted to squash and flatten the batter and 'paint' onto the wing, they looked better

To dredge 

This chicken breading recipe is revolutionary not because it's tasty but because it reduces waste. Basically, 1 egg for every 1 tbsp of flour. I used corn starch or potato starch which I find to be lighter than flour.

To coat

It's 1 tbsp of rice flour + 1 tbsp of oil per drumlet or wing, plus one (for up to 10 wings) or two more (for more than 10 wings) of each for the road because who likes under-battered wings? The rice flour really is the game changer. Using the AF to 'fry' any other batter (other than panko) crumb will not make it crispy but in some cases, can be like eating raw flour.

The trick is to combine the rice flour and oil until it resembles bread crumbs. Then, the dredging slurry of egg and corn starch gives it the liquid that binds the rice flour + oil mixture into a light and dryish 'liquid' batter that just coats the wing and adheres to it. You can try 'painting' it onto the wing (I did) so that it is smoother than just lumpy bits of batter but other than looks, it really doesn't matter.

Then, airfry the wings skin side up at 220 deg C for 5 minutes to bind the batter to the skin. Do not turn or the batter will fall off! 

Turn down to 200 deg C and fry 8 to 10 minutes until cooked (when the skin bubbles). The oil from the skin also helps the batter to stick to the skin.

Feedback

I had originally turned down to 180 deg C for 8 minutes and it came out undercooked. The batter was just cooked but like eating uncooked bread crumbs. After re-cooking for another 2 minutes at 200 deg C, it was perfect. The batter tasted very mealy and more crunchy than crispy, but the clumpy rice batter just tasted like rice biscuit. [Temps adjusted above.]

Other recipes for future:

Noob Cook - no flouring in AF

Spice N Pans - uses baking powder and corn flour in marinade, then coat in plain flour and spritz with oil before AF (which I tried but didn't work?). His temps were 160 deg C for 15 mins then turn and 200 deg C for 3 - 5 mins. I should try these temps next time.

Lace skirt gyoza (potstickers), homemade wrappers and folding

This SBS recipe for has the best method (video). This Curious Nut recipe has the most standard ingredients but I've tried the method and it doesn't work for my equipment. However, it does say that the type of flour for the lace makes a difference - rice flour makes it most crispy but can mix rice, all purpose and cornstarch.

I won't go into the ingredients for dumpling and dumpling wrapper but focus on the lace-skirt/wing method. The trick is in adding the oil to the lace mixture.

Underside of dumplings with the lace skirt

Ingredients (updated for my HappyCall after testing SBS recipe)

1/3C water (approx 10 tbsp)

4 tbsp flour or cornstarch or mix of starches.

4 tbsp oil

1. Mix ingredients. Add to a squeezie bottle.

2. In a non-stick pan with a tight lid, pre-heat on medium heat. 

3. Once hot, squirt a thin later of dumpling lace. Arrange dumplings on top in a circular pattern.

(I put the dumplings directly onto the hot pan and then squirted the slurry in and around the dumplings. Seemed to work too)

4. Reduce heat to medium and clamp on the lid.

5. Cook for 6 minutes, checking every 2 to 3 minutes. 

6. Once the water has almost boiled away leaving the lace, remove the lid. 

7.  Turn down heat and cook until water has evaporated and bottom is even golden brown. Once cooked, turn off the heat, drain away the oil and invert onto a serving plate. Serve with dipping sauce.

Wrapping

1. Modern Pepper 16 styles: Includes 2 different styles of ingot and one cigar shape but otherwise all other shapes included in Souped Up Recipes. Very helpful spoken descriptions and not just demonstration.

2. Souped up recipes 24 styles: Best video ever! Includes simple pleats I've never seen before and complex pleating, also includes open-face dumplings with inserted veg (eg corn, peas, wood ear mushroom etc) that are more suitable for steaming.

2 different styles of ingots for CNY, and trying curry puff, round pasty, and leaf shapes

Homemade wrappers

Wrappers cut using third largest (left) and second largest cutters

This time I decided to cut circles so I don't have to bring out my weighing machine. It worked a treat! I had regular shaped dumplings and didn't need to leave wrapped dumplings standing for so long while I rolled out each wrapper (I usually roll and wrap, roll and wrap, roll and wrap). I am horrendous with rolling the wrappers and can never roll out into a regular round or oval shaped wrapper.

I did take extra time to roll out the dough really thinly before stamping out circles. I only rolled out half of the dough at a time and kept the unused dough and stamped out wrappers well wrapped in cling film. I dusted each wrapper with corn starch so they didn't stick to each other. I made sure not to use corn starch when rolling out the dough and stamping out the wrappers, otherwise any excess starch gets onto the dough and then it becomes impossible to recombine the dough again. 

So I had ended up with really thin skin wrappers (using the hot water dumpling recipe) compared to when I rolled out each wrapper individually. Total time taken to produce each wrapper would probably work out to be the same.

Homemade wrappers have a higher moisture content compared to store-bought wrappers, so can fold into more complicated shapes without tearing.

I used the 3 largest of my cookie dough cutters. Here's what I learnt:

- The 3rd largest cutter is tiny and difficult to work with so can only be used with shapes that start from a closed half-moon basis e.g., triangle, square, half-moon with no pleats, Chinese Ba Gwa coin, curry puff, round curry puff using 2 wrappers, ingots

- The 2nd largest cutter is slightly easier to work with without tearing so can fold shapes with simple pleats eg wavy crimp, up to 3-a-side pleats, buddha belly. Open faced shapes are possible but probably require tools (e.g. chopstick) to help make the folds.

- The largest cutter is a good size for complex pleats e.g. soup bun, 6-a-side pleats, leaf shape, and open face dumplings. The downside is that a lot of filling and dough is required.

- Note when preparing the filling: veg and other additions such as prawns need to be thoroughly drained and dried off (e.g. salting veg and squeezing out juices) and finely minced or diced. Otherwise wrapping becomes difficult and the cubed veg will tear the thin skin.

- Magic ratios: 2 cups of flour to 1 cup boiling water to 0.5 C room temp water (or less depending on how dry the flour is, stop when all the dry flour comes together. For ingredients, use 500g meat, 2 tbsp corn/potato flour, 1 egg, 1C packed prawn/seafood and 1C of packed chopped veg. Everything (both wrappers and filling) will be used up!

- Do not add oil to dough for fried dumplings. Adding oil to hot water dough means skin with oil isn't very stretchy and will tear easily. BUT if making dumpling for steaming, add about 1 to 2 tbsp of oil (to the 2C of flour) makes the skin super easy to roll very thin! On the contrary, dough for soup is just normal water and flour, do not use hot water.

Update: use oil:water:starch ratio of 1:5:2 and use a squeezee bottle.

• Preheat pan on medium
• Place dumplings on top (no oil!). Let sit for around 30 seconds.
• Squeeze mixture onto and around the sides of the pan, not onto the dumplings. Use only as much as is necessary to cover the bottom of the pan with a thin layer, otherwise it becomes a corn starch flurry that will never dry up.
• Turn down to medium low and let water evaporate, checking often
• Whole process should take about 7 to 10 minutes. Don't clamp lid shut (use a wooden spoon to keep ajar) because water needs to evaporate.
• Frozen dumplings from frozen work best because of extended cooking time needed to dry out and brown the lace