Herbal Tea Egg/ Bu Bo Cha Cha/ Loh Bak/ Vegetarian duck/ Radish Cake

Herbal Tea Egg



Cantonese style radish cake





Loh Bak and vegetarian duck



Bu Bo Cha Cha



老婆饼/Lou Po Peng

My homemade "Lou Po Peng". Looks nice ?? It tastes flaky. But i did not press it flat enough, so my "Lou Po Peng" looks a bit "fat".

Ingredients:

Water dough

1 cup all purpose flour

1 eggs

15g sugar

Water 45g (adjust according to the flour consistency)

Oil 10g (i found that if use shortening, the effect is better, more flaky)

Oil dough

2/3 cup all purpose flour

Oil (enough to form a ball), some like to use lard.

Fillings:

2/3 cup glutinous rice flour

70g sugar (adjust according to your taste)

110mL water

white sesame seed (cook first)

35g oil

Brushing:

1 egg

White sesame seed

Instructions:

Cook the fillings first. In a small pan, boil the water and sugar till melt. Turn off the stove. Then add in the glutinous rice flour and stir immediately until it can stick together ( like a ball). After that, add in the sesame seed. Stir until well combine. Let it cool down in the refrigerator. (It should form a ball when cool down and not as sticky) Divide into 16 portions.

Now, prepare the doughs.

For wate dough, add all the ingredients and blend together until form a smooth ball. Divide it into 16 portions.

For oil dough, mix the ingredients together and form a ball. Make sure it is not too soft. Then divide into 16 portions.

Take one piece of water dough, roll flat on clean surface. Then, put one piece of oil dough on top of it. Wrap the oil dough and form a small ball. After that, flatten the ball. Take one end of the dough, roll it up to the other end. Repeat once. The dough might look like rectangular shape when roll it out.

After all the doughs have a mixture of water and oil dough, roll each dough into round shape. Put one portion of the filling on top of the dough. Seal the edge. Flatten/ press it to lay flat on the baking pan. Repeat for the rest of the doughs/ fillings.

Use a knife to cut 2 lines at the middle of the biscuit. Then brush with egg. Aftre that, sprinkle with white sesame seed. Let stand for 15 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 400 F. Bake the biscuits for 15 minutes or until golden brown.

Note:

This recipe is for finger snack size biscuit. If you would like to make a bigger biscuit, reduce the portions or double the ingredients.

You can substitute the filling with red bean paste, winter melon paste or black sesame paste too!!

Original details are adopted from the link as below. To get the details in folding the water dough and oil dough together, please refer to this link as well.

http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_558029ed0100pqpq.html



黑芝麻馒头/ Black sesame paste steam bun

These bun tasted great except i put less sugar when mix with the black sesame powder. Thus, it triggers a little bitter. Overall, taste real good and easy to make! I usually make it and serve as a breakfast during weekday as i do not have time to prepare a nice breakfast in the early of the morning everyday.

The way of doing this is the same as you make other steam bun, just you do not put the fillings inside the bun.

First, after the flour has risen double in size, you roll it out flat on a clean surface.

Then, you spread your black sesame powder which has a mixture of oil and sugar on the dough.

Roll the dough from one end to the other end. Then cut into few pieces.

Let it rise for another 10 minutes, and steam.

If you prefer other shape, you can shape the small pieces into your desire shape.

Hokkien Mee

This was the first time i made hokkie mee. I think it tasted good....

The broth was boiled with shrimp shells (the shells had been fried prior to boiling). I also boiled it with pork bones to increase the tastyness of the broth.

Homemade chilli paste : Blended dry chillies, stir fry with oil until aromatic and the color turned dark.

Garnishing with hard boiled egg, bean sprout, pork and shrimp. Sometimes with kangkung too (kong xing cai). For spicer taste, serve with chilli paste.

Anyone who interested in detail instructions, please let me know :-)



Easy version Tiramisu

Since i have some heavy whipping cream left over, i thought of making an easy version of tiramisu after insipire by a restaurant.

But my tiramisu does not turn out as good as i want it to be. The cream is just too heavy ( i meant the taste), i cannot take it as i am not a milk person. I think i am going to try light cream next time. Maybe it will be more similar to which i ate at the restaurant.

 I used cocoa poweder instead of coffee. It is not looked facny though, just sprinkle some cocoa power on top of it after i spread the cream. :-8

Spring Roll

Vegetarian Spring roll

The fillings are jicama, egg, bean sprout and carrot.

There was one day when the temperature over 70F in March. So we decided to fry spring roll that day, as we can deep fried it on our deck, and reduced the strong smell in the house afterwards.

Yam cake

My husband's birthday cake, bought from Chinatown!!

Curry Puff

I miss malaysia curry puff. After finding some recipe from the web, i decided to make my very own curry puff.

Ingredients:
4 cup all purpose flour ( i was greedy, i made a lot out of it, approximately 40 curry puffs-depends on the size of the curry that you made too)
Margerine - 15 tablespoon
Water (adjust based on your flour)

Fillings:
3 big potatoes
2/3 cup sweet onion
1 cup green pea
curry powder (depends on your taste)
salt (depends on your taste)
1 cup water

Methods:
Combine the flour and margerine together in a big mixing bowl. Blend/ mix the margerine and flour together till it become pea size. Add water (one tablespoon follow by one tablespoon) slowly till you can form a smooth dough. Cover and let rest for 1/2 hour.

Meanwhile, peel the potatoes and onion. Cut them in dices. In a heated pan, put some vegetable oil. Stir in sweet onion and stir fry till it smells good.The add in potato and green pea. Mix well. Next, stir in curry powder and sprinkle some salt. Mix well. Pour in a cup of water and let it simmers till the potato soft. Let it cold down.

When the dough is done, roll it out (long piece) and cut into several portions. Roll each portions into round shape. After that, flatten each ball into round shape. It would be better to make each skin as thin as possible. Put a tablespoon of filling in the center of the skin. Carefully fold into half and press the edges firmly. Fold the edge into pretty shape. Repeat for the rest of the skin. Deep fry and serve warm

It is great for snack or breakfast. The skin is so crispy. It is good for vegetarian too!!!

Kuih Koci without Banana leaves

I am craving for kuih-muih recently. My brain always has the pictures of kuih angku, kuih koci, rempah udang, seri muka, kuih layer, kuih mangkuang, and so on.

I searches the recipe and methods of making kuih-muih. With the ingredients readily available, i decided to make kuih koci. But i am a little lazy. I do not want to wrap the kuih with banana leave which it suppose to be. I just steam them and transfer to the paper muffin cups. The traditional and original way of kuih koci should be wrapped with banana leaves and shaped like a cone. It would make the kuih taste better too with the aroma of banana leaves.

My simple way of kuih koci is like below:

Ingredients:
1 bag of glutinous rice flour
1/2 cup of pandan extract
2 tablespoon of sugar
1 cup of coconut milk
a pinch of salt

Fillings:
300g of grated coconut
3-4 tablespoon of brown sugar (adjust according to desire sweetness)
50ml of coconut milk
2 tablespoons corn starch (melt in water)

To make the fillings:
In a pan, melt the brown sugar and add in the coconut milk. Then put in the grated coconut. Stir until well combine and the grated coconut turn brown color. Add the corn starch and stir well. Let it cool.


To make the dough:
In another sauce pan, combine sugar, salt, coconut milk and pandan extract. Bring to boil. Let it cold down. Put the glutinous rice flour in a big mixing bowl. Pour the solution into the glutinous rice flour slowly and keand until it become a smooth dough. If it is too wet, add some glutinous rice flour, or coconut milk if it is too dry. Let it sit for 1/2 hour.

After that, roll the dough out and divided into several portions. Shape each portion like a ball. Flatten the ball put one tablespoon of the filling in the center of the skin. Fold the edges and form a ball. Put it aside. Repeat for the rest them.

Grease the steam pan. Put the kuih on it and steam for 20 minutes. When it is done, transfer the kuih to the paper muffin cup.

If you cannnot finish the kuih in one serving, keep it refrigerated. You can microware it for 30 seconds the next time you want to eat it.

Asam Laksa

Asam laksa is always my favourite noodle dish. Unfortunately, i hardly can eat the same taste asam laksa here compare with my hometown. My mom's asam laksa tastes real good too.

I tried to make asam laksa here without all the ingredients. Oh well, what can you expect, right?!

Make approximately 4-5 servings

Ingredients:
"Lai fen" noodle
2-3 medium size fish (any fish but with bone)
10-15 dried chillies
3-4 peels of garlic
2-3 small onions
2 stalks of lemon grass
1 ping pong ball size of dry tamarine (reconstituite with water)
Laksa leave
salt to taste

Garnishing:
Pineapple
cucumber
Boiled egg (optional)
Sweet onion
Mint (optional)

Methods:

In a big pot, boil the fish. When the fishs is well cooked, take them out and remove the bone. Crush the fish meat and set aside. Save the water that used to boil the fish for later use. You can add one can of the sardine to the fish as well.

Blend the dry chillies, garlic and onion. Set aside.

In the same pot that boil the fish ( the water is still in the pot, it is going to use to make fish stock/ soup for this dish), put in lemon grass stalk, laksa leave and the blended chilli. Bring to boil, then reduce the heat. Let the soup simmer until you can smell the aroma coming out from the soup. After that, put in the reconstitute tamarind juice and salt. Stir well and put in the crushed fish meat. Let cook for another half an hour in medium heat or until the soup tastes good. If you have the "asam keping" and "bunga kantan", it would be great to add into the soup. It will make the soup taste even better and original.

Meanwhile, boil the noodle until well done. Drain the water and set aside.

You can prepare the garnishing ingredients now. Slide the pineapple, cucumber and sweet onion for later use. Wash the mint and set aside. Egg is optional. You can boil the egg and cut into few pieces if you would like to.

When everything is done, put the noodle into a bowl. Arrange the garnishing ingredients on top of the noodle. Pour the soup over the noodle. You can add some chilli padi or prawn paste (har ko) to the noodle before serving.

Now you can sit and enjoy the tasty asam laksa. I prefer more fish meat, so i always put more fish into the soup.

Homemade chinese sausage

This is my first time making sausage. Thus, i decided not to put too much spices to it in case it turns out bad. My husband and i were quite greedy. We bought 10 Ibs of pork to make the sausage. The worst thing in this process was cutting the meat into small cube size. 10 Ibs of meat, imagine that??!! I fed up with the meat cutting after that. My husband cut the majority of the meat, quite impress!

I discovered that kitchen aid mixer can attach the sausage stuffer. Woow... it was a big help. We can stuff the sausage pretty fast. Of course, it was slow initially as we did not get use to the machine. After firsst and second trial, it became faster. After that, we hang the sausage in the garage and let it air dry. We moved them to the basement when the temperature went up. It took us more than a week before we can actually eat it.

Look at the sausage that we have made. Though they did not look as nice, the casing and the meat kind of separate, but it tastes not bad.

Maybe next year i will add more spice and sugar to it, i like it cantonese way just like the market sells.