Chinese paella

I'm a cooking programme junkie. Lately, I watched an old episode of Jamie Oliver in Oliver's Twist and watched him as he brought a Brazilian friend home and tried to prepare authentic Brazilian stew - with a Jamie twist, of course. In particular, 1 dish actually reminded me Chinese cooking. He started off with Brazilian sausages (which look surprisingly like lap cheong), fried them off, then poured in some spare ribs for browning and topping off with other liquids. I also watched a recent episode of Kelly Kwong and saw her fry fried rice, which I've not done for a long time simply because I've not had leftover rice for a long time ever since I discovered the microwave rice cooker. Last night, I watched an episode of Chef At Home and saw Michael Smith prepare something involving basmati rice.

Suddenly I felt inspired - I dusted off my old paella pan and this is that I did:

Ingredients

1 packet chicken balls (too lazy to go and debone chicken thigh and cut into cubes, and don't like using chicken breast because it's very dry)

1 carrot, diced

8 dried shitake mushrooms, soaked in 1/2 cup of hot water

1 large onion, diced

3 cloves of garlic, crushed

1 cup of rice, washed and drained

2 lap cheong, cut into circles

oil for frying

Method

1) Pour the oil into a heated paella pan. Fry off the lap cheong. Once the oil has started to melt and ooze out, add the onions and fry until soft. Add the carrots and fry briefly for about a minute.

2) Drain the mushrooms and slice up. Reserve the water from soaking the mushrooms.

3) Add the crushed garlic, rice and mushrooms to the pan, and briefly fry to incorporate.

4) Pour back the water used for soaking mushrooms, and add another 1 and 1/2 cups of water (ie total 1 cup rice = 2 cups water). Pat down ingredients without stirring the rice too much or the grains will break. Bring to boil.

5) Cover and leave on a slow simmer for about 20 mins until the water has been absorbed and the rice is cooked and fluffy.

6) Serve immediately in the paella pan.

Scones

Boss made some very nice fresh scones to surprise us one morning. Here's the recipe - looks super easy!

Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 15 min
Ready in: 45 min

Ingredients (makes 8)
1 3/4 cups (220g) all-purpose flour
4 teaspoons (15g) baking powder
5 tablespoons (70g) unsalted butter
5 tablespoons (60g) white sugar
2/3 cup (160ml) whole milk
1/2 cup (70g) currants
1 egg yolk, beaten

Directions
1) Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Lightly grease a baking sheet or line with baking parchment.
2) Sift flour and baking powder into a medium bowl. Rub butter and sugar into flour to form a fine crumble. Make a well in center, and add milk and currants. Knead gently together, being careful not to over mix. Dough will be sticky.
3) On a generously floured surface, roll out dough to 3/4 inch thickness. Stamp out 2 1/2 inch rounds with a plain pastry cutter. Transfer to prepared pan, and brush tops with egg yolk. Allow to stand for 15 minutes.
4) Bake in preheated oven until risen and lightly golden on top, 12 to 15 minutes. Remove to a rack to cool.

Variation: My scones (see picture) were made by substituting the raisins with bits of apple (approx 1/2 a big apple) which resulted in increasing the cooking time by about 3 minutes.

Beef and sweet potato broth

In my new stew craze, I've been experimenting with different slow cooker recipes. Here's the one I tried today which altho didn't turn into a stew, became instead, a nice thick broth. Notice I use the word 'broth' rather than 'soup', because that's exactly what it is.

Ingredients

500g stewing beef, cubed

1/4 cup flour

1 tbsp 5 spice powder

1 tbsp dried basil or sage

1 large white onion, finely diced

1 carrot, cubed

1 sweet potato, cubed into smaller chunks (approx 1 inch cubes. This is impt so that they will actually start to 'melt' and provide the thickness to the broth)

2 handfuls barley

1.5l pork bone stock or chicken stock

2 tsbp rice wine (optional)

2 tbsp worchestershire sauce (optional)

1 handful soyabeans (I put this in a bag so that I could fish it out later as I don't really like eating beans but you can always leave it in)

Oil for frying

Salt and pepper to taste

Method

1) To the flour, add the basil or sage, 5 spice powder and salt and pepper. Mix well. Coat the beef cubes evenly.

2) Add oil to a pan and brown the beef cubes taking care not to crowd the pan. Do a batch at a time until nicely browned on all sides. Remove and drain.

3) Add more oil to the pan and add in the onion, carrots and sweet potato. Briefly fry until onion softens.

4) Pour the vegetable mix into a slow cooker, together with the beef. Add the soyabeans, barley and stock. Pour in the remaining flour used to coat the beef.

5) Once the broth comes to a boil, skim off the foam and any floating oil. Leave to slow cook for at least 2 hours.

6) After 2 hours, pour in the rice wine and worchestershire sauce. It is ready to be served after another 10 minutes of simmering. At this point, check for seasoning and add salt and pepper if needed.

7) Leave it to simmer for up to 4 hours so that the beef becomes really tender, and the sweet potatoes and barley melt to produce a thicker gruel. It can also be cooled down and kept in the fridge after the initial 2 hours, and reheated the next day after skimming off the fat. This leaves time for the tastes to infuse overnight.