Udang Masak Lemak Nenas, a Nyonya Classic

Masak Lemak Nenas is another quintessential nyonya dish, a must-try dish when you attempt to explore nyonya cuisine.  You walk into any nyonya restaurant, this dish is undeniably one of THE dish that the waiter will highly recommend that you order.     

The sweetness from the pineapples and prawns, the saltiness from the salted fish, the creaminess from the coconut milk, the spiciness from the chilli paste coupled with the extra tang from the lemongrass, galangal, tumeric and ginger all of which just blend so perfectly, giving the whole dish a good balance, guarantee to please and satisfy your palate to the max.  This is indeed a dish your taste buds will thank you dearly.

Needless to say, this has always been one of my top favourite nyonya dish and my classic comfort food until today. Masak Lemak Nenas is always served with steamed white rice.  For my personal preference, I always complement it with sambal belacan (another must-try nyonya-style chillie paste) or sambal cili garam (another classic Nyonya sambal).  Like most nyonya dishes especially if they are gravy based, we the Peranakans (the Sraits born) will always eat using our five fingers as we can practically lick each of them if the dish is good.  Oh, I'm drooling now!!

Now, let's get down to the recipe.....

Ingredients

• 200g prawns
• 150g pineapples, sliced
• 2 cups of coconut milk
• 3 cups of water 
• 1 salted Ikan Sepat (Gourami fish)
• sugar
• salt
• oil to fry
• 3 kaffir lime leaves (optional), I omit this
• 1 teaspoon of tamarind paste

 To blend (A)

• 10 fresh chillies, I used about 6 as my family can't really take too spicy
• 15 shallots or a palm full
•  3 pips of garlic
• 1/2 inch of galangal
• 1/2 inch of turmeric
• 2 stalks of lemon grass, sliced
• 3 candlenuts
• 5g of belacan (shrimp paste)

Steps to prepare

1. Toast belacan over fire or on a dry pan until fragrant.
2. Blend all ingredients in (A). Add some water to ease blending process.
3. Add oil to pan and fry (A) until fragrant. When it’s fragrant, the paste will change into a darker shade of red.
4. Add water.
5. Add pineapples and allow to simmer for 5 minutes.
6. Then, add coconut milk. Make sure the fire is small and keep stirring or else the gravy will turn lumpy.
7. Add prawns, ikan sepat, tamarind paste and sugar. Wait until prawns cook.
8. Finally, switch stove off and add kaffir lime leaves. Stir evenly and serve.

Steamed Pumpkin Cake

This savoury dish is a typical Chinese snack usually taken during breakfast or afternoon tea.  I made this over the weekend as I was ordered by the 'home minister' in my house to clear the two pumpkins that had been lying idle in the kitchen for almost three weeks.  

I was cracking my head hard thinking of what to cook the pumpkins with.  Of course, I was trying to be creative (oh, please!) and thinking of something different and special......like pumpkin juice, pumpkin cakes, pumpkin muffins, pumpkins buns, pumpkin breads or even pumpkin ice-cream.   Well, none of them seemed appealing to me.  Not wanting to take the risk, I finally decided to go back to the usual savoury steamed pumpkin cake, a popular breakfast or party snack among the Chinese community.

Well, preparing the dish is surprisingly easy, nothing very complicated.  The ingredients used are rather standard and easily available.  The 3 most basic ingredients are rice flour, water, and of course pumpkin (mashed, grated, or cubed).......that's it!  To make it savoury and flavourful, minced meat (either chicken or pork), mushrooms, chinese sausages, dried shrimps and fried shallots are added.  Then, comes salt and pepper for taste AND spring onions and sliced chilies for garnish.

Now, the most important part is the texture of the cake.  This is where personal preference comes in. Some like it hard and springy AND some like it slightly softer.  It all depends on the water used.  The standard flour-water ratio is 1:3.  For example, for 100g of rice flour, we may need 300g of water.  From here, you work your way up or down.  If you prefer a slightly softer texture, then add a little bit more water (about 50ml) and vice versa. 

The Recipe:
(adapted from Fong's Kitchen, with slight modification)

Ingredients
700g of pumpkin
250g of rice flour
1 tbsp of corn flour (to make the texture smooth)
750ml of water (this amount of water yields a rather soft texture.  I suggest that you reduce to 650ml)

100g of chicken/pork meat
70g of dried prawn (I find it a little too much, maybe should reduce it to 50g)
1 tsp chicken stock, powered form
3 dried mushroom (optional)
1 chinese sausage (optional)

2 tsp of oil
2 cloves garlic

1 tsp Salt
1 tsp pepper

10 shallots
1 red chilli
1 stalk of spring onions

Preparation :

1. Soak the dried prawns, mushrooms and chinese sausage for half an hour or until they are soft. (As there's flavour in the water, I did not throw it, instead I used it to make up to the 750ml of water required)
2. Skin and cut the chicken meat into cubes.  You may also mince the meat.
3. Mince the garlic.
4. Skin the pumpkin and cut it into small cubes.

 Method:

1. Steam pumpkin until soft and fork tender.  Lightly mashed half of it.  Set aside.
2. Add water and chicken stock to the sifted rice flour and corn flour.  Stir well until flour is completely dissolved.
3. Heat two tablespoons of oil in a wok over medium heat. Fry garlic and dried prawns until crisp and fragrant.
4. Add in chicken meat, mushrooms and chinese sausage and stir-fry until it is cooked.
5. Add in pumpkin and continue stir-frying, about 2-3 minutes.
6. Add salt and pepper. 
7. Pour in the rice flour mixture, and stir it till it turns sticky.
8. Pour mixture into a 21cm round cake tin and level the surface with a spatula.  (You may drizzle some oil on the spatula to ease leveling the surface)
9. Steam it over boiling water at medium fire for 45 minutes to 1 hour.
10. Prepare toppings while steaming the cake. Cut shallot into slices and fry it till light brown. Slice the red chillies and spring onions.
11. Remove the cake from the steamer and sprinkle topping ingredients immediately on the hot cake. 
12. Wait for the cake to cool down before cutting into slices and serve.

Notes:

1. If you want your pumpkin cake to look slightly yellowish, mash the pumpkin a little.  
2. The cake can be kept in the refrigerator up to a week. Before serving, heat it up in the microwave oven or steamer. Alternatively, it can be cut into rectangle and pan-fry until light brown. The pan-fried crisped pumpkin cake is utterly delicious. 

Updates - 23/4/15
* Made with one whole pumpkin (weighs about 1600g).
* Double up the rice flour to 500g with 1300ml of water.
* The texture of the cake turned out perfect, just the way I wanted it (neither too soft nor too hard)

Bak Chang

After my self-claimed success making nyonya chang the other day, so here I come again trying my hand now at bak chang, literally means meat dumpling.  Personally, I have always preferred bak chang to nyonya chang.  Reasons?  Well, bak chang tastes much saltier, meatier and there's also a variety of ingredients in it to go with the sticky glutinous rice, but the top most important reason is the chunk of pork belly meat with its wobbly-looking fat still remained intact in the bak chang that is ready for us to savour.  As what people used to say, 'save the best for the last'.  This is exactly what I do every time I eat a bak chang, the fatty part will without fail be my last bite.  So, I always end my bak chang eating on a high note.  Truthfully, a bite of that fat is just 'divine'.

Talking about my bak chang making experience, well I have underestimated the whole process.  I had thought that everything would be smooth-sailing and fast and simple.  I had prepared all the ingredients and soaked them in the morning.  I had planned to fry them after my class at 9.30pm.  After all, it was just stir frying and would definitely not eat that much time.  Only then I would wrap the dumplings and keep them refrigerated before boiling them the next morning.  That was what I had planned.  BUT everything went haywire.  Stir frying all the ingredients took me about 1 hour.  Preparing the soaked leaves and setting up my work station took me another 45mins to 1 hour.  So, you can now work down to guess what time I actually started wrapping and tying the dumpling, huh!  When I was tying the dumpling, I did not know what went wrong, somehow I lost my grace and nothing seemed to work.  The whole process was slowed down.  Well, guess what time I finished everything and went to bed?  3.30........A.M.!  This is CRAZY!

However, luckily the end result was NOT CRAZY!  Ha ha!  I am pleasantly satisfied with this recipe in which everything turns out to be positively encouraging.  Mom was surprisingly pleased with the taste claiming that my bak chang tasted even better than the ones she bought from her friend.  Two constructive comments were the chestnuts were not properly cooked as in they were not soft enough (in fact I should have boiled them after soaking) and another one was the wrapping and tying eeeerr....still needs a little brushing up.  A hollering YES, I certainly do concur with her that I need lots of practice especially on the tying part considering that just imagine 10 out of 20 pieces of the dumplings that I made slipped from the strings and eventually got unwrapped during the boiling process.  I was left speechless and completely frustrated upon looking at the rice grains including all the ingredients nicely floating in the boiling water. $@$#$%!

So, that's it....my first bold attempts making two kinds of dumplings - nyonya chang and bak chang!  To put it simply - an extremely tedious work but a time well spent and an effort worth invested.

Oh, yah, before I forget, I must thank Su-yin of Bread et Butter for sharing out the recipe, of which you can find it here.  It was her nai-nai's (grandmother's) recipe.  In fact, I just stumbled upon her blog when I was browsing through the net looking for a bak chang recipe.  I got hooked to this recipe simply because it was her nai-nai's.  He he!  To me, you can never go wrong with any recipes so long as it is from a grandmother's!  Anyway, my hats off to her for taking the trouble to learn how to make this dying traditional Chinese food.  As a twenty-something gal, she could have enjoyed life doing what modern young girls supposed to do like hanging out with friends, going for movies, fiddling around with electronic gadgets, going for dates etc etc.  Instead, she chose to be in the kitchen mingling with woks and pans just for one thing - preserving the tradition.  Wow!  Kudos to you, sweetie! 

So, here you go, Su-yin's nai-nai's bak chang recipe.......

Nai Nai’s bak chang

by Bread et Butter

Makes approximately 19-20

Ingredients:

• 500g pork belly, chopped into ~ 2cm chunks
• 1 kg glutinous rice
• 20 dried chestnuts
• 1 chinese rice bowl of dried shrimps (heh bee)
• 1 chinese rice bowl of dried Chinese mushrooms – I used approximately 40 tiny ones
• 1 Chinese sausage (lap cheong)
• 6 salted duck eggs (we will only be using the yolks)
• 20 shallots

For the pork belly marinade:

• 3 tbsp oyster sauce
• 1 tbsp light soy sauce
• 1 tbsp dark soy sauce
• 1 tsp sesame oil
• 1 tsp Shaoxing rice wine
• 2 tbsp five spice powder
• 1 tsp white pepper

For the rice marinade: (approximate amounts – you may need to adjust according to taste)

• 5 tbsp oyster sauce
• 5 tbsp dark soya sauce
• 1 tbsp light soya sauce
• 1 tbsp sesame oil
• 1 tbsp white pepper

For wrapping:

• at least 60 bamboo leaves (you need 2 per bak chang, with some spares in case of tears/holes in leaves)
• cooking string/hemp leaves

Method:

The night before :

1. Soak the bamboo leaves in a large pot of cold water (I used my 28cm Le Creuset pot). Try to submerge as much of the leaves in the water as you possibly can.
2. Soak the glutinous rice in cold water.
3. Soak the chestnuts in cold water.
4. Mix all the ingredients for the pork marinade together. Pour it over the pork belly pieces, and leave to marinade overnight in the fridge.

Preparing the ingredients:

1. Cook the duck eggs in a pot of boiling water, for 10 minutes. Leave to cool sightly, peel, separating the yolk from the whites. We will only be using the yolks, so store the whites in the fridge for another use – I use them for steamed eggs, and as a condiment for porridge. Cut the yolks into quarters.
2. Soak dried shrimps in a bowl, using hot water.
3. Soak the Chinese mushrooms in a bowl, using hot water. If your mushrooms are very large you may want to slice them in half.
4. Slice the Chinese sausage into 1 cm slices.
5. Peel and finely dice the shallots. I cheat and use my mini food processor, which does the dicing in 5 seconds flat.

Cooking the ingredients:

1. Heat 1 tbsp corn oil in a large pan/wok. Using high heat, fry the Chinese sausage until they brown slightly and become fragrant, about 2 minutes. Remove from pan, and place in a bowl.
2. In the same pan, fry the dried shrimps until they become fragrant, about 2-3 minutes. Remove from pan, and place in a bowl.
3. In the same pan, fry the Chinese mushrooms until they become fragrant, and brown slightly. I usually season with a pinch of salt (old habits die hard). Remove from pan, and place in a bowl.
4. In the same pan, fry the pre-soaked chestnuts until they brown slightly. Remove from pan, and place in a bowl.
5. In the same pan, fry the pork belly chunks until they turn lightly browned. We’re not aiming to fully cook the pork belly here – the aim is to sear it briefly. Remove from pan, and place in a bowl.
6. Add 1 tbsp corn oil to the same pan. Fry the shallots until they become fragrant. Add the glutinous rice flour, and stir for 1 minute. Add all the ingredients for the rice marinade, and any leftover pork marinade you have. Taste, and add extra oyster sauce/dark soya sauce etc as necessary. Switch off the flame, and leave rice in the pan. You can always transfer the rice to a bowl, but why wash an extra bowl?

Wrapping the bak chang:

1. Drain the water from the bamboo leaves. Pat the leaves dry with a cloth – it doesn’t matter if they are still slightly wet.
2. Select two leaves, and place them in opposite directions (i.e. the tail end of one lining up with the top end of the other). Do not use any leaves which already have holes in them, as they will cause water to seep into the bak chang during the cooking process.
3. Form leaves into a cone.
4. Fill the cone about 1/3 of the way with the glutinous rice.
5. Then, place each of the following atop the rice: one chunk of pork belly, one chestnut, one/two Chinese mushrooms (use two if mushrooms are small), two slices of Chinese sausage, 1/2 tsp dried shrimps, and a piece of duck egg yolk.
6. Top with more glutinous rice, till you reach the brim of the cone.
7. Fold the leaves around the pouch, and secure with cooking string/hemp leaves.
8. Repeat with remaining leaves and ingredients, until everything is used up.

Cooking the bak chang:

1. Boil water in a large pot. When the water comes to a boil, gently lower the bak chang’s into the water. Make sure the entire bak chang is submerged in water. Cover the pot with a lid, and cook over medium heat for 2-3 hours. You may find that you need two pots if yours isn’t large enough.. I had to use two!
2. To test if they are cooked through – you’ll have to unwrap one and check. And taste. (The perks of cooking.)
3. Once the bak changs are cooked, remove from the pan and place in a colander – I use a colander as it allows any extra water to drain away. Alternatively you can hang them up, but I didn’t want water to drip all over my stove!

 Happy Dumpling Festival!

Nyonya Chang

Here it is my very first bold attempt making this traditional Chinese classic or zongzi in Mandarin, chang in Hokkien and dumpling in English.  Frankly, I can't really believe that I have come this far making changs.  What satisfies me the most is I went about doing everything on my own without the accompaniment of any experienced elder.  I was all alone throughout the whole making process from buying the ingredients, cutting the meat, making the filling, tying the dumplings to boiling them.  To tell you the truth, I've never bought pork from a butcher before and obviously communicating with the not-so-friendly rough-spoken Chinese butcher in Mandarin is quite a daunting task for me.  I didn't even know what is pork belly called in Mandarin but luckily Google Translate saved the day. 

Of course, I find wrapping and tying the dumplings the most challenging task.  It all happened on a dark stormy night when rain was beating like bullets, lightnings were flashing rather frighteningly and thunders were booming angrily, I was all alone sitting in my living room wrapping and tying my dumplings.  Hey, I'm not making up the whole scene okay but coincidentally this was what exactly happened that night.

After my wife and kids slept, I went downstairs, quickly set up my work station and began wrapping my dumplings accompanied by nobody except for a few virtual elderly aunties who appeared on my laptop screen showing me the way to wrap and tie the dumplings.  While wrapping I was looking at the demonstration video clips via YouTube.  Very true, it's easier seen than done!  Immediately, I felt like giving up.  The first dumpling I tied crashed down on the floor scattering all the grains and fillings.  At that spur of the moment, my heart crushed and a surge of loneliness sipped in.  While I was cleaning up the mess, suddenly I thought of my mom.  How I wished she was beside me showing and guiding me how to tie dumplings.  However, I went on to pick the bits and pieces of the grains including my crushed heart.  Staying strong, I continued and and eventually pulled it through.  I am now on my third batch of my dumpling making project. Yipee!

Okay, now back to my nyonya dumpling.  I chose this recipe simply for the reason that it was Amy Beh's, a well-known celebrity chef and newspaper columnist in Malaysia.  With her accolades, I  thought how wrong could I go with her recipe?  Browsing through the ingredients and after having a word with my tua ee (eldest auntie), YES I was on the right track.  Based on my tua ee's input, I made slight modification to the recipe.  I made it sligthly more flavourful after I was told that the taste would be blander during the boiling process. 

Overall, I am absolutely glad that everything particularly the taste turned out well.  I benchmarked it with my tua ee's dumplings and what I got was to me that of what I have been eating all these years.  However, one setback, mine was not as nice-looking as that of my aunt's.  Hers was clean-looking with a striking blue hue on top whereas mine was rather murky and not that appetizing.  So, this leaves me with lots of rooms to improve.

Recipe - Nyonya Chang
Source : Kuali.com (Amy Beh)
Yields approximately 15 big dumplings

Ingredients

• 700g glutinous rice 
• Some screwpine leaves, cut into 4 cm lengths
• Dried bamboo leaves, washed and boiled until soften 
• Hemp strings for tying
• 2 tbsp salt
• 1 tbsp sugar

Filling

• 5 shallots, minced (I used 7 shallots)
• 2 tbsp chopped garlic
• ½ cup oil 
• 3 tsp preserved soya bean paste (tau cheong)
• 7 tbsp coriander powder (ground ketumbar), mixed with 170ml water into a paste (increased to 8 tbsp)
• 450g belly pork, skin removed and cut into very small cubes
• 12-14 dried mushrooms, soaked and diced
• 100g candied winter melon, diced (increased to 150g)

Seasoning (combined)

• 3 tsp pepper
• 5½-6 tbsp sugar or to taste (replaced with brown sugar, 6-7 tbsp)
• 1 tbsp thick soy sauce (2 tbsp)
• 1 tbsp light soy sauce (2 tbsp)
• 2½-3 tsp salt or to taste
• ½ tsp ground black pepper

Method

To prepare rice (I apportioned the rice to tinged some blue with the blue pea flower)

1. Boil some water together with 30 blue pea flowers to get blue tinged water.
2. Soak 200g of the rice with this water for at least 3 hours.
3. Soak the rest of the rice with water at the same time.

To prepare the filling

1. Heat oil in a non-stick pan, fry shallots and garlic until aromatic. Add soya bean paste and coriander paste. Fry until fragrant.
2. Add pork, winter melon and mushrooms, and mix in combined seasoning. Fry until pork is heated through. Dish out and set aside.

To assemble the dumplings

1. Drain the glutinous rice and briefly rinse the rice.
2. Overlap 2 bamboo leaves lengthways then fold into a cone. 
3. Fill in this order into the cone-2 tbsp blue glutinous rice, 2 tbsp filling, 2-3 tbsp white glutinous rice.
4. Cover with a piece of screwpine leaf. Press down to compress the dumpling. Wrap into a pyramid shape. Tie tightly with hemp string to secure. Repeat until all the ingredients are used up.
5. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add salt and sugar then put in the dumplings and immerse them completely. Cook in rapidly boiling water for 2-2½ hours. Remove the dumplings and hang them to drain off excess water.

Fried Oyster Omelette

Fried Oyster Omelette is another famous street food in Asia.  It is said that this is a must-try hawker food when one visits Asia and this is the reason why this food has been constantly ranked as one of the most sought-after hawker food in Taiwan.  This Chinese dish is widely found in many parts of Asia including Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines.  Easily found in night markets, this is one heck of a dish to die for.  It is savoury, creamy, zesty, chewy, some gooey and some crispy! 

In Malaysia, it is commonly called Oh Chien, literally means fried (chien) osyter (Oh) in the Hokkien dialect.  This dish is easily available in any foodcourts in Penang and Malacca (where I'm currently residing). 

Needless to say, I really have weakness for this food where I got infatuated with it when I was seven, if I may recall.  I could still remember how my mom and my uncle used to occasionally bring back this food nicely wrapped in a sheet of plastic and newspaper.   Though closely wrapped, the aroma would somehow make its way out wafting the air and I would be like YES!  Mom knew very well that I loved it so much that she boldly tried frying one plate for me.  The result was quite shockingly disastrous where all I got was a big lump of starch clumped together.  I did not want to disappoint her, so I tried to pretend that it was okay and edible.  Somehow or other, my innocent expression failed to cheat and convince her!

Whatever it is, this dish is truly a comfort food for me until today.  The combination of omelette, starch, fresh oysters and sprigs of fresh coriander leaves with a zest of squeezed lime juice just blend so beautifully making the dish deliciously sublime and leaving you totally perked up.

Surprisingly, this dish is so easy to prepare.  Not many ingredients involved.  They are quite easily available except for the oysters where you may have to buy them fresh from the morning market and at times it could be hard to come by.   Preparation only takes less than 10 minutes and frying only eats a miniscule 5 minutes.  So, barely 20 minutes, a plate of vibrant looking and savoury Oh Chien is already sitting nicely on the table ready to fire your palate and appease your appetite.

I got the recipe from Kenneth Goh of Guai Shu Shu in which he gave a very well write up on the dish.  Of course, there are aplenty of them on the net but Ken's photos somehow caught my hungry eyes.  The photo shots were spot on.  The colours looked deliciously vibrant making the dish looked irresistibly tempting.  Everything was perfect, just the exact type of fried oyster I used to eat when I was just an innocent young boy.

So, for those of you who have not had this dish before, I highly recommend that you give it a try.  Certainly, you don't have to be physically here in Asia, just scroll down and you will have this delectable Asian treat right before you, in your humble kitchen.    

The Ingredients:
(makes one big plate, as per picture)

• A handful of fresh oysters or defrosted frozen oysters
• Some spring onion (chopped separately for the white portion and green portion)
• 2 cloves of garlic 
• 2 tablespoons of tapioca starch or corn starch  or sweet potato starch
• 1 tablespoon of rice flour
• 2 tablespoons of fish sauce
• 1/2 teaspoon of white pepper
• 2 tablespoons of cooking oil
• 10 tablespoons of water
• 4 eggs, lightly beaten
• Some sprigs of coriander leaves for garnish

The Steps:

1. Defrost the frozen oysters completely, wash carefully in cold water and drain well.
2. Mix the tapioca/corn/potato starch and rice flour together with the water to make a watery starchy solution.  Set aside for later use. 
3. Heat the frying pan with 2 tablespoons of oil.  Stir fry the white portion of the spring onion and garlic until fragrant.  
4. Pour in the starch solution until the batter is half cooked (about 15 seconds)
5. Add in the beaten eggs and when the eggs are almost cooked, add in seasonings (fish sauce and white pepper).  Stir until well mixed. 
6. Add in the fresh oyster and stir fry for another one minute. 
7. Off the heat and garnish with coriander leaves or spring onions (the green portion)

Note: Best served hot as a snack with homemade garlic chilli sauce and squeezed lime juice.

 Bon Appetite!