SIU YOKE

Crispy skin that stays crispy, even at least 4 hours after cooking, meat so tender it almost melts in your mouth. That is how good this siu yoke is! Making siu yoke is not rocket science, almost anyone can make this. But it takes too much time, and that's what puts people off making this, I guess.

Ingredients

2kg pork belly
3 cubes of red fermented bean curd
1 tablespoon chinese five spice powder
1 tablespoon pepper
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon chinese wine
sea salt
rice wine vinegar

Method

With a meat pricker, make as many holes as you can on the skin side of the pork belly. This is especially important if you want to have a nice, level and crunchy skin. I find that doing this while the meat is frozen helps as sometimes when the meat pricker is not sharp enough, it is difficult for it to pierce the skin deep enough.
Using sea salt, liberally rub it into the skin, giving the meat a massage so good it puts your massage therapist to shame;-)

Mix the salt, chinese wine, fermented bean curd cubes, five spice powder and pepper into a paste and rub it into the flesh side of the meat.

Now it's time to let it sit a well ventilated place for 4 to 5 hours. You will notice lots of moisture on the skin. Wipe it off with a paper towel and massage more salt into the skin. Repeat as necessary, as every time you wipe off the moisture, some salt gets wiped off too. The salt draws moisture off the skin, so it helps the skin to remain crispy even after cooking.

Preheat an oven to 200 degree celsius.
When the 4 hours are up, skewer the meat. This is to prevent the meat from shrinking too much while cooking.
For the first hour, cook the meat at 180 degree celsius.
For the second hour, cook the meat at 150 degree celsius.
For the next half hour, increase the temperature to 200 degree celsius.

Now, take the meat out and baste it with the rice wine vinegar.
put it back into the oven, up the temperature to 250  degree celsius and wait for the skin to char. Don't worry if the skin's a little burnt. You will be scraping it off later.

When the skin is slightly burnt, it's time to take it out of the oven and let it sit for 30 minutes.
When the 30 minutes are up, you can scrape the burnt bits off the skin, remove the skewers and chop up the meat. Be sure that you have a very sharp knife when you do this, because the meat will be so tender that it would fall apart if excessive force is used.

This customer wanted it to be chopped into 4 pieces, so I can't show you what it looks like after chopping it to smaller pieces, but it's always best to chop it into chunks. That way you get to enjoy more of the crispy skin and the melt in your mouth goodness of the flesh!

Enjoy!

HOT CHICK'S FOOD TASTING PARTY

These are just 3 of the six types of flavours of roasted chicken that we will be serving this Sunday at our Food Tasting Party!

CHINESE BBQ CHICKEN

HONEY GLAZED BLACK PEPPER CHICKEN

SPICY HONEY LEMONGRASS CHICKEN

Although we will be serving wings, as we would like to have you try all the different flavours, be assured that all the flavours will be at it's best! Tomorrow would be the last day for you to indicate your interest in attending this event, details can be found at That Bloody Botak's facebook event page.See you on Sunday!

BLACK PEPPER EE MEE

Accidents can also lead to a good thing. No, I'm not referring to the time that you got your girlfriend pregnant. It was a cold, rainy night. We were fishing by the beach and the chill made me really hungry. So I went over to the seafood restaurant nearby and ordered a plate of fried ee fu noodles to go. Now, this dish does not normally have a lot of pepper in it, but maybe the chef was too lazy to wash the wok after preparing black pepper crabs, as the dish had that distinctive black pepper taste! 

Now, I've always been a sucker for spicy food, and that noodle dish that night got me craving for more, so every time I went there, I specified that I wanted black pepper ee fu noodles. The weird stares I got was worth the taste of those noodles! Really  excellent stuff!

Was at the supermarket earlier and I saw japanese mushrooms being sold really cheap, so I bought a box of them. I needed to finish off the ee mee, prawns and squid too so what better way to do that than to make this awesome dish!

Ingredients

Pork lard (if u can't take pork, any cooking oil with some sesame seed oil added in will do just fine)
2 prawns, shelled
1 squid, cut into rings
4 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
half a large onion, roughly sliced
1 tablespoon light soy sauce
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1 portion of ee mee, cooked to al dente
3 different types of japanese mushrooms (or you can just use your favourites)
Black pepper (if you think you have used enough, add a little more. After all, this dish is called Black Pepper ee mee! ;-) )

In a hot pan, saute the garlic and onions are slightly golden brown.
Add the mushrooms and let it sweat. The mushrooms will slightly shrink in size.
Add the prawns and squid, and when it's almost cooked, it's time to add the noodles. 
Now you can add all the sauces and black pepper, give it a good stir.
once everything is properly mixed, you can take it off the heat and plate it to serve.

I simply love this dish! The sweetness of the caramelised onions playing with the spiciness of roughly cracked back pepper, with the taste of the sea lingering in the background! Really excellent stuff! Good for a cold rainy night like tonight! And damm easy to make too!


Enjoy!

ENGLISH SCONES

Normally I can't bake to save my life. My forays into bread making failed spectacularly! However, this time it was an unprecedented success! So if I can do this, so can you! And it tasted pretty good too! Got this recipe off the internet. There are many scones recipes out there, but this is the easiest I've found so far.

Ingredients

2 cups all purpose flour
1/3 cup brown sugar
1  teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
120g unsalted butter
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup plain yogurt
1 large egg

Method

In a big bowl, mix the flour, sugar, salt, baking powder and soda.
Using a box grater. grate the hard butter into the flour mixture and use your fingers to mix it until it becomes crumbly, like in the picture above.
When that's done, add the raisins and mix well

In a small bowl, use a fork to mix the egg and yogurt into a smooth consistency.
Now slowly add the egg mixture into the flour and mix it till it forms a dough that looks like the picture above

On a flat clean surface, dust some flour on it and roll the dough until it looks like a french loaf.
Using a knife, cut pieces of about 1 inch thick off the dough and place it on a nonstick or greased pan

Sprinkle some sugar on the top and pop it into a pre-heated oven at 200 degree celsius and let it bake for between 15 and 20 minutes.
When that's done, leave it to cool for about 15 minutes before serving with your favourite jam, cream or butter.

The ones I made looked a little too big compared to the ones at the shop, but I don't really care, because like me, there's more to love! 
So take out your favourite china, make a nice cuppa of tea and enjoy your scones!

VIETNAMESE CUISINE
928 FOOD COURT, PUTERI MART
JALAN PUTERI 2/1.
BANDAR PUTERI PUCHONG,
PUCHONG 47100, SELANGOR

As far as food court fare goes, this is about the best vietnamese food you can get at prices this cheap. Prepared by some vietnamese, they serve the standard vietnamese spring rolls and lemongrass chicken or pork served with rice or vietnamese rice noodles. As I'm not much of a rice fan, I chose the noodles.

If you want a complete meal, this is it! For RM6.50, you get a bowl of rice noodles generously filled with shredded carrots, cucumbers and vegetables, topped up with some sliced lemongrass pork with crushed peanuts and a tangy dressing made of fish sauce, vinegar, chili and sugar. Mix everything in the bowl and you have a complete, healthy and tasty meal! Every bite is full of flavour and texture, and the best part is, it's a reasonably priced and healthy meal! Good thing I did not order the spring rolls, as I was Stuffed after finishing this bowl! Will order that the next time I'm here!

PESTO

Traditionally, a simple pesto is made of fresh basil, pine nuts, olive oil and parmesan cheese, all blended into a paste. Over the years, it's been simplified to any herb, any nuts, parmesan cheese and olive oil. Over here, pine nuts costs a bomb, and unfortunately my basil plant is almost bald from overuse, so I'm substituting the basil and pine nuts with parsley and almonds. This pesto will be used in spaghetti with mushrooms, cherry tomatoes and bacon

Ingredients

For the pesto
2 handfuls of parsley leaves
40g roasted almonds
2 tablespoons parmesan cheese
4 tablespoons of olive oil

For the pasta
3 rashes of bacon, chopped
Your favourite mushrooms, roughly chopped
Half of a whole garlic, chopped
4 cherry tomatoes, cut into halves
Spaghetti for two portions

Method

Put all the ingredients for the pesto into a blender, blend it and presto! you've got pesto! simple, right?! ;-) put it aside.

Cook the spaghetti according to instructions till al dente
Drain the water and mix the pesto with the spaghetti, put aside.
In a hot pan with some olive oil, sear the tomatoes.
Next, add the bacon and garlic, cook till the bacon is almost crispy.
Put the mushrooms in, stir well and cover the pan for about a minute. The mushrooms should be cooked by then.
When the mushroom's done, add the spaghetti into the pan, mix well and you're ready to serve.

This dish can easily be turned into a meat-free dish by omitting the bacon, just add a little more cheese and nuts and you won't notice the difference. A really tasty and healthy dish! 

Enjoy!

HAIRY CRAB
 Iwc Aquastic Hairy Crab
E-0-8, Pusat Perdagangan Kuchai, 
Jalan 1/127, Off Jalan Kuchai Lama, 
58200 Kuala Lumpur.

Yangcheng lake is famous for their hairy crabs. In autumn, when the female crabs are full of roe, is the time when the locals savour this delicacy. Now, this company imports crabs from this place to supply local restaurants, and they actually cook some of it for walk-in customers too!

They have crabs of various sizes, and are priced from RM20.00 onwards per crab. This establishment claims to have stocks imported daily from it's source. They are currently having a promotion. But 5 crabs, get 1 free. So for RM100.00 we got 6 crabs, with a cup of ginger honey chinese tea for each of us. 

These were the crabs that were served to us. All tied up, they looked like oversized spiders! But there was nothing spidery about eating them! Hell, there's even a set of tools for you to use!

This tools are there to make sure you get all the crabby goodness out of each crab, and when i say goodness, it's really good!

Imagine what a chicken cube is like. One small cube will give you a taste of chicken many times it's size. These crabs are just like that. Small in size, but huge on flavour! God is really fair in this case. If only there was a crab the size of a Sri Lankan mud crab with the flavour intensity of one of there!

I would love to eat these ugly little monsters every day, but the amount of work it takes to get the meat out of the crabs really puts me off, so for all you scientists out there, here's a challenge! Try to genetically modify a crab, big as a Sri Lankan mud crab, with the intense flavour and taste of these tiny hairy crabs and I'm sure you will have a winner on your hands!

CURRY MEE AND
ASAM LAKSA
At the entrance of Petaling Street wet market,
opposite Hotel Chinatown Inn

I'm very particular about my curry mee. the curry gravy must be thick and the sambal that accompanies it must be good. Many times I would be very disappointed as the gravy is more like a watery soup than anything else. No matter what ingredients you put in it, if the gravy is off, I won't bother coming back. 

This stall, however, is different. It's run by a gang of very nice  aunties and one old man. The prices here are reasonable, considering the generous portions served. It is only open from 4.30pm onwards, which explains why I just came upon it this year, after been walking around Petaling Street for around 20 years during lunch. Since then, I've been to this place at least three times, and that says a lot as I hate traffic jams!

Don't expect much from the dining area, as it's at the entrance of what is the morning wet market. The smell of the market is also pretty strong, but the food is so good that the smell is of little consequence. 

Now, this is a small bowl of curry mee with the addition of fu chok. The curry mee comes with pig skin, slices of fish cake, char siu and tow pok. And did I mention that there was a container of delicious sambal on every table?! The gravy on it's own was very good, but the sambal took it to a different level altogether! As some of you who know me well know that I don't like those oily yellow noodles, as such I would normally either use bee hoon or ee mee for the curry mee. Really excellent stuff! 

This is also a small bowl of asam laksa, but there's nothing small about the portions given! You will never get a piece of fish that size, let alone a few pieces of it at any other asam laksa stall! I absolutely love the tangy gravy, and you can add as much prawn paste as you like because like the sambal earlier, there's a container of prawn paste on every table too! I used to think the asam laksa at the Sri Petaling pasar malam was good, but this is streets ahead in terms of taste and value! Excellent stuff!

This is a bowl of fish ball soup that comes with pork balls, fish cake slices and the fantastic fu chok in a ikan bilis broth. The broth itself is really good. The fish balls are nice and springy, and the fu chok, oh the fu chok! The auntie who took my order suggested that since I already had the fu chok in the curry mee, I should choose something else, but I LOVE the fu chok! Give it to me! ;-) And what Bernard wants, Bernard gets, so........

The total bill inclusive of 2 glasses of chin chow cost rm19, not cheap but not expensive either, as the portions were extremely generous! You can pay the same amount elsewhere but you can never get the same quality and portions of food that you get here. Real value for money meal!

A FOOD TASTING PARTY

chinese bbq chicken

We are having a food tasting party prior to the launch of our lunch delivery project. 

spicy thai bbq chicken

The tasting menu will consist of grilled chicken with at least 5 different flavours and some side dishes

rosemary honey roast chicken

All our meats are sourced freshly slaughtered in the halal way

, and they are cooked pork-free.

black pepper chicken

Should you be interested to attend, please indicate your interest here https://www.facebook.com/events/145443799143424/ so we can arrange for enough food to be available.

peri-peri chicken

See you there!

3 MUSHROOM AND EGG PENNE

I love meat, but when I was at Meat and Buns, I was blown away by the black pepper mushrooms that they served with the hotdogs so much so that I bought those mushrooms and tried to cook it in different styles. this was one of them. People who know me well were surprised that I'd do a meat free dish, as seem from a screenshot of my facebook posting below.... ;-)

Well Ping, don't worry, rest assured it's me :-D. And for those of you who want to know how it's made, here are what you need.

Ingredients

Olive oil

A handful of roughly chopped coriander leaves

A whole chopped garlic

1 big onion, roughly chopped

3 types of your favourite fresh mushrooms, roughly chopped

Mozzarella cheese

Parmesan cheese

2 eggs

2 portions of penne

2 tablespoons of italian herbs ( you can also just use oregano and thyme)

truffle oil

Method

In a pot of boiling water with some salt, cook the penne till al-dente, and when it's done, drain the water, mix some olive oil, coriander leaves and a handful of mozzarella cheese in an oven proof bowl. 

In a pot of salted boiling water, cook the eggs for 5mins, take them out and immediately soak the eggs in a bowl of ice water. This is to prevent the yolk from overcooking as we want the yolk runny

On a hot pan with olive oil, throw in the garlic, onion, mushrooms and the italian herbs and cook till the mushrooms are done.

now, mix the penne and the mushrooms, sprinkle more mozzarella and parmesan  cheese on top, put the bowl in a hot oven until the parmesan cheese browns.

Now you can plate the dish, peel the shell off the egg, place the egg on top of the pasta, poke a hole so that the runny yolk will spill on the pasta, sprinkle some truffle oil and garnish with some coriander leaves.

Now, you have a really good tasting, meat-free meal that even a neanderthal meat eater like me would wipe the plate clean! 

Enjoy!