30 April 2009

Steam Radish Cake II (萝卜糕)

I was on medical leave on Tuesday. Instead of idling at home, I tried out Lily's steam radish cake recipe. It's quite similar to the one that I tried earlier, but she added wheat starch flour and corn flour. I had a 1kg radish, so I just doubled the ingredients, but I used 750ml of water. So the cake was slightly firmer, which makes it easier to pan-fry. The cake was also soft enough to be eaten on its own. Brought some for my care group friends to try and they said it's nice. :-)


Ingredients

500g radish(白萝卜)
2 nos. shallots, sliced
40g dried shrimps
1-2 nos. chinese preserved sausages (腊肠)
4 nos. dried mushrooms
2 tbsp oil, for frying
A little oil for greasing

Batter:
150g rice flour (粘米粉)
15g wheat starch flour (澄面粉)
20g corn starch (太白粉)
500ml water

Seasoning:
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp sugar
1 tsp sesame oil
pepper, to taste

Method

1. Shred radish. Set aside.

2. Clean and soak both dried shrimps and dried mushrooms until soften. Chop dried shrimps slightly. Cut mushrooms into small cubes.

3. Cut sausages into small cubes.

4. Grease a pan with some oil.

5. Place wheat starch flour, rice flour and corn starch in a mixing bowl. Pour water into flours and stir well.

6. Heat up 2 tbsp of oil in a pan/wok and fry these ingredients by order ,remove and set aside, first the sausages , then the shallots, lastly dried shrimps. Without removing the dried shrimps, add in the mushrooms and then the shredded radish.

7. Season with the seasoning ingredients.

8. Pour the flour mixture into the pan. Cook until the mixture thickens.

9. Place the thick mixture into the greased pan prepared earlier.

10. Steam at high fire for 1 hour.

11. Set aside. Slice when radish cake is cool.

12. Cake can be served as is or pan fried and best eaten with chilly sauce.

17 April 2009

Low-Fat Orange Yogurt Cake

Yesterday was my first time using yogurt to bake cake and it turned out yummy. Try it! The recipe is at Happy Home Baking.


Ingredients

250g cake flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
70g butter, soften at room temperature
zest of 1 orange
160g sugar (original recipe calls for 200g of sugar)
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 cup plain, non-fat yogurt
1 tsp vanilla essence
2 tbsp orange juice

Method

1. Preheat oven at 180 degC. Grease or line a 8" by 4" loaf pan.

2. Sift together cake flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Set aside.

3. In a bowl, mix together yogurt, vanilla essence and orange juice.

4. With an electric mixer, beat butter and orange zest for 1 minute.

5. Add in eggs gradually, about 1 tablespoon at a time, beat constantly for about 2 minutes.

6. On low speed, beat in 1/3 of the flour mixture.

7. On medium-high speed, beat in 1/2 of the yogurt mixture.

8. On low speed, beat in half of the remaining flour mixture.

9. On high speed, beat in the remaining yogurt mixture.

10. On low speed, beat in the rest of the flour mixture.

11. Scrape into the prepared pan and bake for 45 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean.

I made half the portion of the recipe and baked for about 25-30 minutes. Yielded 3 large cupcakes for mum and I.

10 April 2009

Ban Chien Kueh(面煎糕)

It's one of the traditional and vanishing snacks that we have enjoyed since young. I'm thankful that the recipe is available at Kitchen Capers' forum. Do have a try if you like it.


Ingredients

Batter
330g plain flour (alternative: 230g plain flour and 100g rice flour)
3 eggs
70g caster sugar (already reduced)
1 tsp instant dry yeast
1 tsp baking soda
420ml water

Peanut Filling
300g toasted peanuts, finely grounded/chopped/blended
caster sugar/brown sugar for sprinkling
butter
(optional) can of sweet corn

Method

1. Mix all batter ingredients in a bowl and stir until well combined. Let mixture rest for at least 30 minutes.

2. Heat up a non-stick pan and rub with a little oil. Pour in enough batter (one ladle or more) to make the skin as thick as you like. Cook at medium low heat for about 1 minute or until cooked/nicely browned.

3. Sprinkle filling on top and fold it into half (half moon shape). Remove from pan and serve!

05 April 2009

Chwee Kueh

We forgot to buy breakfast for tomorrow and not wanting to make a trip to buy bread and not wanting to eat instant noodle, I decided to try on Gina(KC)'s Chwee Kueh recipe that I saw at her website and also at Cuisine-Asia as I still have some preserved chopped radish left from yesterday's "experiment".

Ingredients

200g rice flour
1,000ml boiling water

200g preserved chopped radish (chai por), washed and drained
1 clove of garlic, chopped
2 tbsp light soy sauce
3 tbsp sugar
50ml corn oil

Method

1. Heat up a claypot with corn oil and saute the chopped garlic till fragrant. Add preserved chopped radish, light soy sauce and sugar and stir fry for 2 minutes.

2. Cover the claypot and lower the heat to let it simmer for 5 minutes. Turn off the heat.

3. Sift rice flour in a mixing bowl and slowly pour boiling water and stir till there are no lumps in the batter.

4. Pour batter into aluminium cups and steam over high heat for 5 minutes.

5. Remove the chwee kueh from the cup and garnish with a spoonful of cooked radish.

I did half of the recipe and yielded 12 chwee kuehs because I only have 100g of chai por left. I have also left out the sugar because I find that the chai por I bought is kind of sweet. The chwee kuehs were steamed in teacups instead of the aluminium cups as I do not have them.

H said they are almost as good as the ones bought outside. Perhaps it's time to invest in some aluminium cups?

Paris Spring Restaurant

Let me present to you... Marmite Pork Ribs.


No, it is not cooked by me. It was one of the four dishes we ordered at Paris Spring Restaurant during lunch today. It was our first time there. The restaurant is situated along Casuarina Road, where the famous Casuarina Curry is located.

The portions of their dishes were surprisingly huge and H and I could not possibly consume everything. So we had to 打包 this dish home for tonight's dinner, while we tried to finish the special fried bee hoon (S$4), sambal sweet potato leaves (S$8), and fish maw soup (S$8).

I ate a piece of the Marmite pork rib (S$10) before we sent the rest for packing. It was tasty and fragrant. The smell continued to emerge from the package while we were on our way home in the car.

We think the prices charged by this restaurant is pretty reasonable. There were a lot of crab meat in the fish maw soup that we thought the waitress had ordered a large size soup for us that could easily cost more than S$10. The sambal sweet potato leaves was not too oily, which I like. The special fried bee hoon was really delicious with the "wok hei" smell.

A few patrons ordered prawn paste chicken(虾酱鸡). Perhaps it is one of the popular dishes there.

We will probably go back there to try out the other dishes next time.

Paris Spring Restaurant Group Pte Ltd
洞庭鱼头王
126 Casuarina Road
Singapore 579514
Tel/Fax: 6458-4567

Huat Kueh (发糕)

发糕 is one of the recipes that I wanted to try out. Mum used to make it long time ago and I'm missing the homemade one.

Mum said that grandmother used to cook the brown sugar / gula melaka syrup first and then mix the flour together with the syrup after the sugar syrup has cooled.

Most of the other recipes I saw at Random Rumblings, FenYing's recipe and All That Matters require coconut milk, which is not mum's preference. I will try their recipes some other time to see how they taste like.



Ingredients

250g Self-Raising Flour
100g coconut sugar / brown sugar
200ml hot water

Method

1. Melt the sugar with hot water and let it cool.

2. Mix the self-raising flour and the sugar syrup together.

3. Pour batter into a bowl and sprinkle sugar across the mixture into a + sign and steam with high heat for 45-50 minutes.

04 April 2009

Wah Kueh - Chinese Rice Bowl Pudding(碗糕)

Another "off" day for me to try out new recipe. :-)

I'm trying out this traditional Hokkien rice bowl pudding recipe that I saw at Cuisine-Asia, an interesting site with a great collection of recipes. It's Gina(KC)'s recipe.


Ingredients

300g rice flour
50g wheat starch (澄面粉)
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1.5 litres hot water

6 tbsp chopped preserved radish (chai poh 萝卜干)
5 dried mushrooms, soaked and thinly sliced
1 tbsp dried shrimps
100g Chinese sausage, chopped

Method

1. In a large mixing bowl, place rice flour, wheat starch, salt and pepper together. Pour in hot water and mix until well-blended and smooth.

2. Pour pudding mixture into small bowls, about three-quarter full.

3. Steam pudding over high heat for 25 minutes

4. In the meantime, fry preserved radish, mushrooms, dried shrimps and chopped Chinese sausages together until fragrant. Toss to mix.

5. Place spoonfuls of topping on top of the steamed rice puddings. Return to steam for another 5 minutes.

6. Serve with garnish of fried shallots, chopped spring onions and freshly cut chilli.

I halved the above recipe and yielded about 5 rice bowls of pudding.

Mum says that there is a Hakka version called "Mi Gao Ban", in which alkaline water is added. It is usually eaten with chopped preserved radish (chai poh) and a choice of sweet sauce or soya sauce.