Stir-fried Four-Heavenly-Kings Vegetable Dish

Four Heavenly Kings Vegetables is a popular stir-fried vegetable dish usually offered in Chinese restaurants. It is made of 4 types of vegetables stir-fried in sambal and dried shrimp paste. However, some also used deep-fried crunchy ikan bilis (anchovies) in this dish. The four typical vegetables are petai (stink beans), long beans, brinjal and okra (ladies' fingers). However, nowadays we do see winged beans replacing okra. In this recipe, I have used winged beans as I like their crunchiness. I have also added some anchovies.


Ingredients:

• 100 g stink beans
• 100 g 4-angled beans (winged beans) (or use ladies' finger if you prefer)
• 100 g long beans
• 200 g brinjal
• 4 tbsp of sambal made from:
• 300 g fresh red chili
• 30 g dried chilli
• 10 g bird's eye chilli (chilli padi) (optional)
• 1 big onion
• 5 cloves garlic
• 1/2 inch shrimp paste
• 50 g dried prawns, lightly minced
• 50 g ikan bilis (anchovies)
• 1/2 tsp salt (or to taste)
• 1 tbsp light soy sauce
• 1/2 tsp sugar
• 5 tbsp cooking oil

Instructions:

• Preparing the vegetables:
• Half the stink beans to check and remove any worms in them.
• Slice the winged beans diagonally.
• Cut the long beans into 2-inch length (or shorter if you prefer).
• Quarter the brinjal lengthwise, then slice them into thick chunks at an angle.

• Heat a wok with cooking oil.

• When the oil is hot add the anchovies. Fry them till they are crunchy. Remove them from the wok and set them aside.

• Add the stink beans to the wok and stir-fry for about 2-3 minutes. Ladle them up and set them aside.

• Next, fry the winged beans for 2-3 minutes. Remove them from the wok and set aside. Do the same for the long beans.

• Next fry the brinjal till they are half-cooked. Ladle them up and set them aside.

• Add the minced dried prawns to the wok and fry them till they are fragrant.

• Add the sambal and fry them till they are fragrant and it separates from the oil.

• Then add all the vegetables to the wok. Fry them till they are cooked. Season them with salt, light soy sauce and sugar.

• Add the crunchy anchovies.

• Give the vegetables and the anchovies a good stir.

•  Ladle them up onto a serving plate.

• Serve with white rice.

Steamed Egg with Po Choy

Steamed Egg with Po Choy is a simple dish which can be cooked speedily. Preparation takes a short while most of the time is spent on waiting for the egg to be steamed. But more important is that this dish is tasty and will surely appeal to most people. 

Ingredients:

• 4 eggs
• 100 g - 120 g po choy
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp pepper
• 1/2 tbsp light soy sauce
• 4 cloves garlic
• sesame oil for greasing the glass baking dish
• glass baking dish 18 cm x 12 cm

Instructions:

• Wash the po choy and cut them into 6 cm length.

• Boil a pot of water and blanch them for about 7 minutes.

• Scoop them out with a stainless steel food strainer and let the water runs through the strainer.

• When the po choy has cooled down, use your hands to squeeze out more water from them. Set the po choy aside.

• Beat the eggs and add the seasonings.

• Grease the baking dish with sesame oil.

• Pour the eggs into the baking dish and add the po choy to it.

• Put the baking dish into the steamer and steam the eggs for about 10 minutes over high heat or until they are cooked.

• While waiting, mince the garlic and sauté them till they are golden brown. Set them aside.

• Once the eggs are cooked, remove the baking dish from the steamer. Let the eggs cool down.

• Overturn the steamed eggs onto a flat plate.

• Sprinkle the sautéd garlic onto the steamed eggs. Slice them up or cut them into diamond shape and serve.

Tofu Omelette

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As we know an omelette is a dish made from eggs. The fillings that can be included are up to our imagination - chives, potato long beans, spinach, onion, prawns, etc. One day I ran out of idea of what to cook and finding a piece of tofu in my refrigerator I decided to try making tofu omelette. It turned out to be so delicious that I have cooked it a couple of times, the first time with just chilli padi and the second with coriander and chilli padi. I will try to add other fillings later.

Ingredients:

• 1 piece of tofu
• 1 egg
• 1 piece chilli padi
• 1 small sprig coriander or green onion (only green part)
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 tbsp light soy sauce
• 1/2 tsp pepper
• 3 tbsp cooking oil

Instruction:

• Half the tofu horizontally and slice the tofu into 4 mm thickness or just slice the tofu into 4 mm thickness. Set aside.

• Cut the chilli padi into small pieces and roughly mince them.

• Cut the coriander and mince it. (Or, cut the green onion into small pieces.)

• Crack the egg into a bowl and beat it with the salt, soy sauce and pepper.

• Add the chilli padi and coriander (or green onion).

• Add the tofu to the bowl of egg and coat all pieces with the beaten egg.

• Heat up a frying pan with cooking oil.

• Use a spoon to scoop the tofu, piece by piece, into the pan. Arrange the tofu anyhow you like.

• When the bottom is cooked, turn over the omelette and cook the other side.

• Once the omelette is done, slide it from the pan to a serving plate.

• You may decorate it with some coriander or green onion on top of the omelette.

Ondeh-Ondeh Jagung

I have made ondeh-ondeh purple sweet potato and ondeh-ondeh pandan before. I decided to look for other ingredients to be added to my ondeh-ondeh dough to make my cooking journey more interesting and to give my family more variety of taste. So, I came up with jagung or corn. I modified my ondeh-ondeh pandan recipe to make my ondeh-ondeh jagung. 

Ingredients:

• 200 g glutinous rice flour
• 50 g all-purpose flour
• 300 g creamed corn
• 150 g coconut flakes
• 1/2 tsp of salt
• 3 pandan leaves, wash and knot them.

Method:

• Add salt to grated coconut and steam them for a few minutes.

• Open a can of creamy style corn and weigh out 300 g to be used in the recipe.

• Weigh and sieve the glutinous and all-purpose flours into a bowl.

• Add 90 percent of the creamed corn to the bowl of flours and knead till they are smooth. If the dough is too dry, add more of the creamed corn till you have a soft dough.

• Divide and weigh the dough into 23 g-piece. Roll the dough into balls. (You may weigh to make smaller or bigger dough balls. Note that the balls will enlarge once cooked.)

• Pound the cylindrical block of gula Melaka to break it up into smaller pieces.

• Take a dough ball. Flatten it and scoop 1/2 a teaspoon or more of gula Melaka onto it. Bring up the edges of the dough to seal it. Place it onto a floured plate.

• Repeat this till all the dough balls have been filled.

• Boil a pot of water. Add the knotted pandan leaves to it.

• Drop the dough balls into the boiling water.

• Once the dough balls float to the surface, it means that they are cooked. Let them roll in the boiling water for about 5 minutes more to ensure that the gula Melaka is melted.

• Remove the cooked balls onto the plate of grated coconut. Roll them in the grated coconuts. (I managed to get 24 pieces of ondeh-ondeh from my recipe.)

• Plate them and serve.

 

Poon Choi

Step 1 - Blanch the Napa cabbage

    

Step 2 - Blanch the Shiitake mushroom

Step 3 - Blanch the prawns

Step 4 - Blanch the carrots

   

Step 5 - Blanch the Enoki mushrooms and scallops

Step 6 - Cut and place the tofu and blanch the abalone and broccoli

Poon Choi is a traditional Hakka festival meal which consists of many ingredients layered in an interesting manner in a big pot, preferably a claypot.  It is usually prepared and served during Chinese New Year as the meal signifies abundance and prosperity. However, nowadays it is prepared and eaten at any time of the year. Ingredients to prepare Poon Choi differ from family to family. But the first layer of Poon Choi is usually the Napa cabbage. The other ingredients include prawns, fish slices, scallops, squids, abalone, sea cucumber, tofu, various types of mushroom and tofu. Carrots and broccoli add colour to make it more attractive. The quantity of the various ingredients below may be varied according to one's preference.

Ingredients:

• 8 leaves of Napa cabbage, cut into 3-inch length
• 5 big prawns (White prawns are preferable. However, I used tiger prawns at this particular time.)
• 5 pieces of big fresh scallops
• 5 pieces of abalone (braised ones as the sauce will be used in the soup of the Poon Choi). I have used those brined ones as I have ran out of the braised ones. However, I have kept the braised sauce from earlier cans that I have opened.
• 5 pieces of Shiitake mushroom (soaked overnight)
• 1 packet of Enoki mushroom
• 2 tubes of soft tofu (egg or plain)
• 5 slices of carrots
• 3 broccoli florets
• 4 pieces of shallots, sliced.

Method:

• Boil 2 litres of water in a pan.

• First, blanch the Napa cabbage. Layer them onto the base of the claypot once they have softened.

• Boil the Shiitake mushrooms till they are soft. Arrange them to the side of the claypot.

• Next, boil the prawns for about 8 minutes. Boiling them any longer would render them hard. Arrange them to another side of the claypot.

• Boil the carrots till they are soft. Arrange them in the centre on top of the Napa cabbage.

• Next, blanch the Enoki mushroom. Arrange them to another side of the claypot.

• Next, blanch the scallops and then arrange them to the side of the claypot.

• Cut and steam the soft tofu. Arrange them in the claypot.

• Blanch the broccoli and place them on top.

• Next, preparing the soup:

• Fry the shallots till they are fragrant.
• Remove the crispy shallots leaving the oil behind.
• Pour the water used to blanch or boil the ingredients to the oil.
• Add the sauce of the braised abalone.
• Let the soup boil.
• Season it with salt (if the soup is not salty enough) and pepper.

• Leave the soup in the pan till the Poon Choi is ready to be consumed. Re-heat when necessary and pour it into the claypot.

• The Poon Choi is ready to be served.

Green Onion Chinese Pancake

 

Green Onion Chinese Pancake is a savoury unleavened flatbread. It is flaky on the outside and soft on the inside. There are 2 ways to obtained the flaky layers - rolling and fold the dough (oiling each fold) to form many layers or rolling the dough, shaping it into circles and flattening it. I have used the second method to make the pancake. To make the dough, we only need flour, water, oil and salt. For the fillings, we need green onion, pepper, salt and a little bit of flour. This pancake is very versatile; it can be eaten for breakfast, lunch or dinner. It can be eaten on its own or with curry. We can also freeze up the pancakes and take out the required pieces to be fried whenever we want to eat them. 

Ingredients:

• Dough:
• 500 g all-purpose flour
• 300 g warm water
• 25 g oil
• 10 g salt

• Fillings:
• 100 g green onion
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp pepper
• 25 g all-purpose flour
• 50 g heated oil

Method:

• Dough:

• Add all ingredients for making the dough into a mixing bowl.

• Knead till a smooth dough is formed.

• Rest the dough for 10 minutes.

• Divide the dough into the number of pieces you desire. (I divide it into 9 pieces.)

• Grease a container.

• Shape each piece into a ball and put it into the container.

• Brush each dough ball with oil to prevent them from sticking to each other.

• Rest the dough balls for 30 minutes so that it is easier to roll them out later.

• While the dough balls are resting, prepare the fillings.

• Fillings:

• Wash and chop up the green onions.

• Add the chopped green onions to a bowl.

• Add all-purpose flour, salt and pepper to the bowl.

• Mix up the ingredients.

• Pour heated oil over the ingredients. Stir to mix up the oil and other ingredients.
• Divide the fillings into 9 equal portions. (This will prevent a shortage or an excess in the end.)

• Assembly:

• Take a dough ball. Roll it out into a circle.

• Spread the fillings on it.

• Roll up the dough to form a long roll.

• Take the long roll and roll it up into a circle like in the 6th photo.

• Flatten it to form a round flat dough of about 7 inches.

• Heat up a pan.

• Transfer the prepared dough onto the pan (there is no need to grease the pan as the pancakes are oily) and fry till the dough is cooked on both sides.

• Note:

• If you do not wish to fry the pancakes immediately, you may freeze them up.

• Put the fresh/raw pancakes onto a non-stick parchment paper. Put another piece of parchment paper on top followed by another piece of pancake. Repeat till all the pancakes have been layered between each parchment paper.

• Keep the stack of pancakes in a zip lock bag and put the bag into the freezer.

• When you want to eat them, just take each piece out from the freezer and onto the frying pan without defrosting it.

Claypot Tofu with Tomatoes and Mushrooms

Sequence of Cooking:

I have seen this dish being cooked on Instagram and Facebook. Looking at the ingredients, I was sure that the dish would be appreciated by my husband and children. True enough, all of them love it. It is also suitable for vegetarians.

Although no measurement is given, the dish looks easy enough to cook. Since then I had cooked this dish a few times to try out with different quantities of the various ingredients. The recipe below is the result of these trials.

Ingredients:

• 400 g tomatoes, cubed
• 1 packet enoki mushroom (2 would have been better), remove ends
• 4 pcs of large brown button mushroom, sliced
• 1 box of tofu, cut into pcs
• 1 egg
• 1 tbsp cooking oil
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 cup of water
• 1 tbsp black vinegar
• 1/2 tsp pepper powder
• 1 tbsp sesame oil
• Cornflour slurry (2 tbsp cornflour + 4 tbsp water)
• Garnishing - green onion

Method:

• Add cooking oil to claypot. Let it heat up.

• Add tomatoes to the claypot. Fry.

• Add salt.

• Add water. Let boil.

• Add enoki mushroom to 1 side and button mushroom to the other. Add tofu either on top of the mushrooms or to one side next to the mushrooms.

• Beat egg and add it to the claypot.

• Add pepper, black vinegar and sesame oil. (Dont hv to stir.)

• Thicken the sauce with corn flour slurry and garnish the tofu with tomatoes and mushrooms with green onion.

• Serve hot with white rice.