Sweet, sour and sticky ribs

British chefs always use black current jelly to thicken their sauces. This gives it a velvety sheen and rich flavour. This gave me the inspiration for this recipe, which has heavy influences of Nigella Lawson and Delia Smith.

Ingredients
500g of prime ribs
1 tsp mustard (English, of course)
2 tbsp soya sauce
2 tbsp blueberry or black current jam
2 tbsp honey
2 tbsp garlic chilli sauce
1 tbsp corn flour
1 tbsp worchester sauce
Juice of half a lemon lemon juice

Method
1) Marinate the prime ribs with everything. I toss everything in a freezer ziploc bag and mush everything together well. You can also throw in the squeezed lemon for extra flavour. Leave it to marinate overnight.
2) On a lined baking tray (only so that it's easier to wash up), dab the ribs with kitchen towels as dry as you can and place them on the tray, fat side up.
3) Bake at 200 deg C deg C for a further 15 mins, turning halfway through the entire cooking time.
4) Strain the sauce from the bag into a saucepan. Create a sauce by the reduction method. Add more water if its too thick. After the ribs are done and removed to the place, add in the drippings (sans oil).
5) Serve the ribs after they've had 10 mins to rest and for the juices to sink back into the meat.

Mapo Toufu Pasta

This is mapo toufu pasta, or simply put, zhajiang mian with toufu and pasta. I prefer the al dente-ness of pasta compared to the soft ban mian type of noodle.

Ingredients (feeds 2)
300g of minced meat
1 packet of silken toufu (the variety that is suitable for frying)
1 cucumber
1.5 handfuls of pasta (I like angle hair because it cooks in 2 mins but you can use spaghetti or even tagliatelle)
2 tbsp bean paste
1 tbsp chinese cooking wine
1 tbsp sesame seed oil
1 tsp sugar
1 tbsp corn flour
1 tsp garlic
1/4 cup water

Method
1) Marinade the meat with the bean paste, wine, sesame seed oil, sugar and corn flour. Blend well.
2) Heat up a wok and some oil. When the wok is hot enough, stir fry the garlic briefly. Do not let it brown. Next, brown the minced pork until well separated. Add 1/4 cup of water, bring to a boil. Cover and let it simmer.
3) Meanwhile, prepare the cucumber by skinning it, then scouping out the seeds with a spoon. You can then use a mandolin to grate long thin strips, but since I don't have a mandolin, I used my peeler to peel out long half inch strips.
4) Add the toufu (cubed) into the work and gently stir to incorporate but be careful not to break up the toufu.
5) In another pot, cook the pasta according to the instructions on the packet. Drain on a sieve and set aside.
5) Serve by assembling - pasta at the bottom of the bowl, mapo on top, topped off by grated cucumber.

Bean Paste Bitter Gourd with Pork Bones

This is my first time cooking 苦瓜Read online that I have to prepare it by first cutting it in half (skin intact), scouping out all the seeds and white pith, then slicing thinly. Salt and leave for 5 to 10 mins. Finally, squeeze out the juice to extract the bitterness.

I didn't have black beans, the original ingredient for this dish, so I used tau cheow instead.

Ingredients

1 packet of pork bones (about 250 to 300g). You can also use spare ribs

1 bitter gourd, prepared as above

2 tbsp tau cheow (you can use slightly less as this is rather salty)

1 tbsp chinese rice wine

1/2 tsp sugar

1 tbsp sesame seed oil

1 red onion or 2 small shallots

1 clove garlic, crushed and roughly chopped

Method

1) Marinate the pork bones with the tau cheow, rice wine, sugar, and sesame seed oil. Prepare the bitter gourd. After squeezing out the juice, pat the gourd dry with a kitchen towel.

2) In a saucepan, fry the onion and garlic. Brown the pork bones until 1/3 cooked, which will take about 5 minutes.

3) Add the bitter gourd and stir fry for 2 to 3 minutes. Add 1 to 1.5 cups of water to nearly cover the pork bones.

4) Bring it up to a boil before leaving it to simmer for 20 to 30 minutes until cooked.

5) Serve with freshly steamed white rice.

Unagi Temaki

Got this idea from Sakae Sushi. Not difficult.

Ingredients

1 packet of ready roasted teriyaki unagi which has 2 halves of an unagi

1 cup of cooked rice, cooled

1/2 Japanese cucumber, sliced up. You can also use a mandolin into thin shreds

4 sheets of sea weed (nori)

Wasabe (optional)

Method

1) Cook the rice and let it cool. Warm up a packet of ready roasted unagi and slice it once in half length-wise, and another time down the spin. You will get basically quarters of 1 unagi.

2) Cut up the sheet of nori into roughly a palm-size square. Roll it up like a kachang puteh wrapper. Fill it up with rice to fill the bottom, then slide in 1 quarter of the unagi.

3) Slice up the cucumber or shred it with a mandolin. I just got lazy, after all, its a late weekday dinner. Slide it in as well.

4) Take the sauce from the unagi packet and sancho and serve as dipping sauce. Wasabe is optional.

5) Serve and eat immediately, otherwise the seaweed gets soggy and chewy.

Wanton

Felt very much like having dumplings, so went to get some wanton skin. Its still the most traditional kind of dumpling that I've eaten since childhood, unlike all the 'shanghai' dumpling skins and 'gyoza' dumpling skins that we see in the supermarket nowadays.

Ingredients
1 packet of wanton skins (about 22 inside, don't ask me why there's such an odd number)
300g minced pork
200g prawns, shelled and chopped into small bits. You can also mince it, but I prefer a bit of bite
1 tbsp cooking wine
1 tbsp light soya sauce
1 tbsp fish sauce
a bit of water (to seal the edges of the wanton), with 1/2 tsp corn flour added (optional, since the wanton has already been dusted with flour, its actually 'sticky' enough to seal the dumpling)
1 tbsp corn flour

Sauce for the noodles
1/2 tsp oyster sauce
1/2 tsp chilli sauce
1/2 tsp tomato ketchup
Dash of sesame seed oil

Soup
1 tbsp chicken stock concentrate
1l of water

Method
1) Marinate the pork and prawn with the wine, soya sauce and fish sauce. I didn't bother to let it marinate very long as I knew I would take some time to wrap the dumplings, so that would be more than sufficient time for the mixture to marinate before it goes into the pot.

2) Using a teaspoon, spoon 1 tsp of the mixture into the centre of the wanton skin.

3) Fold in half to make a triangular shape and use the water or corn flour paste mixture to line the sides. Press down to seal the edges, gently easing the air bubbles outwards. I then press the 2 edges together, as I was taught but you can leave it as a triangle if you prefer. The triangle method works very well if you intend to deep fry the wantons.

4) Gently throw the dumplings into a pot of water which is at a rolling boil. The dumplings are ready to dish up and drain once they float to the top, about 2 to 3 minutes. Don't throw in too many dumplings at 1 shot and crowd the pot, bringing down the overall cooking temperature.

5) To serve, I never deep fry anything in my house, and I prefer soupy stuff, so I made 2 variations.

a) Dry: Cook the noodles in the same pot of water according to instructions, and serve with noodles and a sauce (1/2 tsp oyster, 1/2 tsp chilli sauce, 1/2 tsp tomato ketchup, dash of sesame seed oil) and toss the noodles to coat thoroughly. Dish the dumplings on top. You can also add vegetables of your choice, eg bean sprouts or cai xin

b) Soup: Pour away the water used to cook the dumplings and noodles. Using water from a freshly boiled water from a kettle, add the chicken stock. Once the stock has come to a boil, ladle it over the dumplings. I served mine with meatbals, which were actually the leftover filling.

Old cucumber and peanut soup

This started off as peanut soup, but I really wanted the 'cooling' effects of the old cucumber that I was harboring in the fridge. Thus, I decided to do something like ABC soup (ang mo kio, bawang and candang), which is essentially a vegetable soup with pork stock.

Ingredients
1/2 cup peanuts
5 to 6 big dried scallops
1 big old cucumber, cubed and seeds removed
2 tomatoes, chopped
1 carrot
1.5l boiled water
500g pork bones for stock

Method
1) Boil the water in a kettle. Put the bones in a pot and pour the hot water over it. If you're very 'cantonese', you would at this point let the bones sit for about 2 minutes before pouring out the water, then you would repeat the process. This is essential for removing the 'porky' taste and making sure that the soup stays clear. I was making a weekday dinner so didn't bother.

2) Throw everything else in the pot and bring to a boil. Once it comes to a rolling boil, skim the surface of the soup to remove the scum. This is also essential in ensuring that the soup stays clear.

3) Turn down to a simmer and let it slowly bubble away for 1.5 to 2 hours. Better still if you have a pressure cooker, then you can reduce the time down to 40 to 60 mins. Again, being a weekday evening, I only had an hour to spare, but the peanuts weren't soft enough, and the pork and peanuts still had a lot of taste in them. Again, being really cantonese, we don't usually eat the soup ingredients, so all the taste has to be eked out of them.

4) Serve with steamed rice.

Five spice pork chops

The age old question of - what to cook? It struck me that perhaps its time for another 5 spice recipe, haven't done something 5-spice related for a long time. Inspiration came to me - if you can stud a christmas honey baked ham with cloves, you can certainly stud a pork chop with cloves. I added the brown sugar to replace honey, which tends to burn in the oven. Instead of doing the usual bake or grill, I decided to do a covered casserole so that it will retain its moistness, rather than having it all evaporate in the oven heat. The result was that generated a lot of juice which was retained which makes a nice sauce together with the marinade.

Ingredients

2 pork chops

1 tsp 5 spice powder

1 tsp brown sugar

1/2 tsp mixed spice

Cloves

1 tbsp light soya sauce

1 tbsp shao shing wine

Method

1) Marinate the pork chops for 15 mins. Stud the pork chop with the cloves. Pat dry and place into the casserole and cover.

2) Preheat the oven and bake at 200 deg C for 12 to 15 mins until cooked.

3) To make the sauce, pour out the juices and mix with the marinade. Thicken the sauce either the corn flour mixture of by reduction.

Pear and white fungus soup

Wanted to make this for a long time but never had the chance. Surfed and found a few recipes, and these were the easiest which I adapted. Benefits of Honey link and Soup Queen link. I was too lazy to double boil, and so I just used my special AMC pot's heat retaining properties, but this recipe is for normal pots. The result went down well, even with a year old toddler.

Ingredients (feeds 10 - yes there are a lot of people to feed in my extended family!)

5 pears, Chinese Ya pear or fragrant pears are both ok

10 - 15 red dates

2 bundles of white fungus

1 packet (about 150g) winter melon strips

Approx 2 - 3l of water

Method

1) Soak the white fungus in hot water for 20 minutes. Once softened, remove the hard yellow core and cut up into bite-sized pieces.

2) Pare and core the pears and slice them 1/8 inch thick. I soak them briefly in some salt water to prevent them from turning brown.

3) Pour dates and pears into a pot, and add enough water to cover all the ingredients.

4) Bring to a boil and boil at medium heat for 20 minutes. Turn down the heat to a simmer for 10 minutes. Add the winter melon strips and white fungus and simmer for another 20 minutes. If you prefer less crunchy fungus, you can add it earlier, around the time u turn it down to a simmer.

5) Serve either warm or ice cold.

Casserole chicken

This is my mom's recipe, which we ate our way through our childhood. After she passed, I spent quite a bit of time experimenting and trying to recall from my childhood the possible things she might have put into the pot. And then I remembered that my mom is like a Jamie Oliver - bare basics. And so that's what I did - bare basics.

So here it is, but altered to my own taste buds, but the basic taste is the same.

Ingredients

4 drumsticks (Mom used to use 1 whole chicken for the family)

1 tbsp light soya sauce

2 tbsp chinese wine

1/2 tsp sugar (I used brown since this is going into the oven so there will be a nicer caramelized taste but you can use ordinary white sugar)

Salt and pepper to taste

2 cups water

1 medium carrot and 2 small potatoes (optional - my mom always added them but I don't)

1/2 thumb sized ginger, sliced thinly

2 star anise

Method

1) Marinate the chicken with the soya sauce and chinese wine. Just 10 minutes should suffice.

2) Put everything into a casserole and pour the water in. It should just cover the chicken, but if you need you can top up with more water.

3) Bake at 180 dec C for 1/2 hour and serve with freshly steamed rice.

The first taste transported me back to my childhood!

Best Roast Potatoes

Taken from Jamie's Family Christmas ep 3 on Channel 4

Serves 6

Ingredients

• 1.5kg Maris Piper potatoes, peeled
• Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• Olive oil
• 1 bulb of garlic, broken into cloves
• Red wine vinegar

Flavour combo 1:

• A good couple of lugs of olive oil
• A bunch of fresh rosemary, leaves picked

Flavour combo 2:

• 50g butter, cut into little cubes
• A bunch of fresh sage, roughly torn
• 1 clementine

Flavour combo 3:

• 2 tablespoons goose fat
• A bunch of fresh thyme, leaves picked
• A couple of fresh bay leaves

Method: How to make perfect roast potatoes

1. Preheat your oven to 190ºC/375ºF/gas 5. Peel your potatoes with a knife or speed peeler and cut any larger ones so they’re all an even-size - twice the size of a squash ball is about right. Wash your potatoes in cold water to get rid of any extra starch then tip into a large pot, cover with cold water and season well. Bring to the boil and cook for about 6 to 7 minutes, so that they’re parboiled, then drain in a colander and leave to steam dry for 3 minutes. Give the colander a bit of a shake to help chuff up the potatoes – this will help to make them super crisp later on.

2. At this point, you need to decide which flavour combo to go with. Tip your potatoes into a tray or pan in one layer, and add your fat – olive oil, butter or goose fat – then season really well with salt and pepper. At this stage, I’m not going to add any more flavour. Toss your potatoes in the fat, or use a spoon or fish slice to mix it all up. You could get the potatoes up to this stage the day before, simply cover them with cling film or tin foil and pop in the bottom of your fridge or in a cool place until you need them. Put your potatoes in the hot oven to cook for 30 minutes until lightly golden and three quarters cooked.

3. Now’s the time for my new trick. Gently squash each potato with a potato masher to increase the surface area – the more of your potato that’s in contact with the pan, the crispier it will be. Whichever fat you’re using, you now want to prepare the rest of the flavourings. Add a good lug of olive oil to a small bowl and add the herbs, garlic and a splash of red wine vinegar, then scrunch and mix it up a bit. If you’re using butter, peel in a good few strips of clementine zest with a speed peeler – you won’t eat these but they’ll add amazing flavour. Add the flavour to your potatoes and give the pan a good shake, then pop back in the hot oven for 40 to 45 minutes until perfect for your liking. You’re looking for gnarly, crispy, bubbly and delicious.

4. Transfer to a plate lined with kitchen paper to drain off some of the excess fat, then tuck in! I’d be happy with any of these flavour combos, but this year I’ll be going for butter, but maybe with the rosemary and garlic. So you really can mix it up however you like.