Rice Cooker Bak Chang / Bak Zhang (Glutinous rice with pork and salted egg)

(sorry, no picture yet, I thought I'd put this post down as quickly as possible before I forget how I cooked it!)

So, I was craving Bak Chang but I didn't know where I could get lotus leaves and I certainly didn't know how to wrap the lovely things even if I DID manage to procure the leaves. So I looked around the internet for an easy recipe, and having found none that was easy enough I decided to adapt some Lo Mai Kai recipes for my purposes....

Ingredients  (this makes roughly 4 portions)

400-500 g pork belly (sliced into 1-2 cm rectangles)

4 salted duck eggs

2 cups (roughly 300 g) of glutinous rice (soaked overnight)

5-6 dried Shiitake mushrooms (soaked overnight)

2 shallots, chopped

2 cloves garlic

1 tbsp oil

Marinade for pork

4 tbsp dark soy 

3 tbsp light soy (if you are using Lee Kum Kee brand dark soy sauce or any other brand which is quite salty, reduce this to 2.5 tbsp)

1 tbsp oyster sauce

1 1/2 tsp Chinese five spice powder

A small shake of white pepper

Saute the shallots for a few minutes until fragrant, then add the garlic and fry until fragrant. Add the pork. Once the pork is browned, add enough water to cover the pork and boil until tender (this typically takes 1.5 hours. Alternatively, cook it in a pressure cooker for 10 minutes).

Wash the soaked rice until the water runs clear. Drain the rice, then add the pork pieces (without the cooking liquid) and the mushrooms. Once the pork pieces have been removed, skim the surface of the pork cooking liquid to remove the oil and fat.
Add 2.5 cups (roughly 450 ml) of the pork cooking liquid into the rice cooker, topping up with water (and salt to taste) if necessary. Turn the rice cooker on and let the rice cook (I find it useful to stir the rice occasionally during the early cooking stages to ensure an even cook)

While the rice is cooking, boil the salted duck eggs for 10-15 minutes until the yolk solidifies. Cool the eggs and peel them.

Once the rice is cooked, leave it in the rice cooker for at least 15 minutes before stirring it and serving with some chilli sauce!

Hainanese Chicken Rice (Paste)

This aromatic rice is nothing to be sniffed at - fragrant with garlic, shallots and lemongrass, it is a match made in heaven for poached chicken pieces, sliced cucumber, and a garlicky chilli sauce. Easy peasy, tasty paste-y :)

If you somehow end up in a situation where your son, on his birthday, decides spontaneously that he wants to have Hainanese Chicken Rice for dinner, have no fear. I've been there. Here's my emergency recipe. I have no idea if it's authentic since I've not referred to any recipe sites for this and I have basically tried and guessed my way through this, but my husband says it tastes nice and that's good enough for me, really....


Chicken Rice Paste (for 1.5-2 cups of rice)

Ingredients 
(To blend)
1 thumb-sized piece of ginger
3 cloves garlic
1 shallot
1 tsp sesame oil (or more, if you really like sesame oil!)
1 tsp chicken stock powder/granules
1/2 tbsp water
slightly less than 1/4 tsp salt

(Others) 
2 stalks lemongrass, cut into 2 cm sections
1 knot of pandan leaf (also known as screwpine leaf)  if available
1 tbsp cooking oil

Instructions
Blend the above ingredients to form a smooth paste. Pour oil into a warm frying pan and saute the blended paste with the lemongrass pieces until it is fragrant and achieves a nice brownish hue.

Having washed your rice and added the appropriate amount of water into your rice cooker, stir the paste in and add in a little more water (I find that cooking any rice with oily things tend to result in undercooked rice, so a bit more water is required to compensate for this, roughly an extra 1/5 cup). Add the pandan leaf, then cook the rice

When the rice is cooked, remove the pieces of lemongrass and pandan leaf, and stir the rice to ensure even distribution of the paste. Serve warm, with appropriate accompaniments.

Note: If you don't fancy using chicken stock granules, just use the poaching liquid from your chicken (but that of course means that you'll have to cook your chicken FIRST before cooking the rice....). Me, I prefer to do the exact reverse, which is to fry off the paste in a deep pan, and after I've added the paste to the rice, I add water into that pan and use that liquid to poach the chicken....

Toothache-induced headache

Apparently you can get headaches as a result of a toothache. That would explain the blinding pain in my skull right about now....

Can't wait till I see the dentist on Tuesday

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Dedicated to my colleague who lent me the DVD and is also himself a tinker, a tailor, a soldier and definitely a spyyyyyyyyy. It may not be immediately obvious what it means since most of it concerns inside jokes, but if you know a certain Matt Eckold do ask him ^_^

You know....

You know your roast duck recipe is an epic fail when the feedback you get is "OH that's DUCK?! I thought you seriously overcooked the chicken!" -__-"

LADIES: If you're in the middle of eating a rendang and your husband starts batting his eyelashes at you, you know he wants you to cook a sambal to go with it.
MEN: If you live overseas and your wife is cooking rendang in the middle of the week for no celebratory reason, you know she is stressed. Why are you asking her to cook sambal!

Roasted Pork Ribs

This dish is beyond description - yummylicious should sum it up quite nicely! Tender pork ribs with a slightly spicy, salty and sweet marinade - easy to cook, amazing to eat. Another stunning recipe courtesy of Rosalind Hon!

Roasted Pork Ribs
Ingredients
1 kg rack of pork ribs


Marinade
8 Shallots

8 cloves garlic

1 to 2 tblsp. lat tau ban cheong  (chilli bean sauce)

1 to 2 tblsp. oyster sauce

Some Sesame oil

1 teaspoon Salt

2 teaspoon Sugar

1 tblsp. Cornflour

3 teaspoon soya sauce

100 ml apple juice (or juice extracted from 1 apple)

Seasoning
Black pepper
Melted butter.


Coarsely chop the shallots and garlic, then mix the marinade ingredients together to form a chunky paste. Marinade the pork ribs in this for a few hours (best overnight). Preheat the oven to Gas Mark 6 (180 degrees on a fan oven).
Transfer the ribs to a baking tray, and drizzle melted butter and freshly ground black pepper. Roast in the oven for 1 hour. (You may want to turn the ribs over after half an hour, but personally i prefer to allow the top section to char slightly because it looks better and tastes awesomeeeeeeee). Serve hot with rice.

Note: If you are not keen on the smell of pork, blanch the ribs in boiling water before applying the marinade.
Note 2: Any leftover marinade should be pan fried/cooked and stored. You can reuse it on other cuts of meat, or freeze it for later use.

Smoked Salmon and Pepper Pasta

Sweet, rich, creamy, sharp, and very boozy, this dish is a delight to prepare - it has but few ingredients and requires very little preparation, but is luxurious and velvety on the tongue. Throw in an optional fresh chili for some extra bite. 

If, like me, you inevitably end up with a post-Christmas pack of smoked salmon in your fridge (bought with the good intention of serving, but seldom actually ends up on a plate because everyone else has brought too much food anyway), this is the recipe for you. (If you don't actually have smoked salmon handy and have to go out and buy one, allow me to recommend the cheat method of buying smoked salmon trimmings instead - it is much cheaper and saves you having to slice your smoked salmon.

Smoked Salmon and Pepper Pasta  (Serves 2)

Ingredients
A little bit of olive oil
A little bit of honey (for drizzling)
Salt
2 smallish peppers/capsicum, in bite-sized chunks
100 g pack of smoked salmon/smoked salmon trimmings, sliced into small strips
15-20 g of salted butter
1-2 tbsp good brandy or whiskey (I have not tried any other liquor yet....)
1/2 an echalion shallot (or 1 normal shallot), thinly sliced.
150 ml single cream
150 g spaghetti or linguine (I usually allow 75 g pasta per person, but that's because we eat a lot...)

Drop the pasta into boiling water (remembering to check frequently and drain when the pasta is al dente). In the meantime, drizzle a little bit of olive oil, salt and honey onto the peppers, give it a good mix, and grill until slightly brown and caramelised. Heat butter in a pan. Once butter is foaming, lightly saute the shallots until soft, then stir in the cooked peppers. Add the liquor, allowing the alcohol to evaporate before adding in the cream. Season with black pepper if desired. Mix well, then pour in the pasta, allowing the warm cream to coat the pasta. Plate the pasta, then mix in the smoked salmon (or pile the smoked salmon atop the pasta, which is what I usually do to keep the smoked salmon from cooking).Voila!

You may have noticed that the sauce is unseasoned - that is partly because the butter and the peppers have been salted, but also because smoked salmon is salty anyway and the sweet (but bland) cream sauce will offset that nicely. If you don't have a grill, roast the peppers in an oven at Gas mark 6 for about 15-20 minutes, but if that's the case put the peppers in the oven first before you start boiling the pasta. For an extra spicy kick, add some fresh red chilli slices when sauteing the shallots.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Gosh it's been such a year. I finally got my PhD, Cent Hope is doing okay (will post a feature on it sometime soon, I reckon), Simon passed a few exams and my pretty boy is growing up so quickly... Lots to thank God for.
Maybe it's a post-viva phenomenon, but I'm feeling ridiculously sentimental and mildly sappy. I guess maybe it's finally hit home that I am actually going to be leaving the ORC. Not sure how I feel about leaving so many precious people behind :P
But anyway I thought I'd share some Christmassy pictures I made some time ago. Feel free to re-use them, but PLEASE do not remove the copyright sign or the url to the Cent Hope site!

Merry Christmas, everyone :)

Poetic Injustice

In his room my son lies dreaming
But even in his perfect bliss
He can still hear his mother screaming:
"SOMEONE'S EATEN ALL MY CRISPS!!!!"

- A lament by a hungry mummy

Pork Leg in Vinegar and Ginger (猪脚醋 / 姜醋)

Not for the fainthearted, this one. The dark broth, with pork meat soft and tender from slow stewing, is fiery with ginger and acidic with vinegar, but the old wives swear by it and so does my husband. Perfect for ladies during their postnatal confinement period or even just for a cold winters' night such as this.

Many thanks to my mum in law who cooked this for my confinement and who willingly shared this recipe with me (stay tuned, my mum in law is an excellent chef and hopefully more of her recipes will star in this blog in future). I've adapted the seasonings slightly to cater to my husband's palate but as always, the guide is always "season to taste".

Since it is virtually impossible to get pork trotters here I've gone for the next best thing which is pork hock/leg on the bone, which came to about 1 kg including the bone. I've also tried this with pork belly, which tenderizes a lot more quickly but is obviously not as meaty and chunky as leg meat

Ingredients

1 whole pork leg – in large chunks

150 ml Chinese Black Rice Vinegar

1 1/2 tsp brown sugar  

2-3 rice bowlsful of old ginger, sliced or shredded

3 tbsp light soya sauce (or 2 tsbp light soy sauce + salt to taste)

2 tsp of dark soya sauce 

1 – 2 tbsp sesame oil

4 cloves of garlic, lightly crushed

Shelled hard boiled eggs (optional) 

Blanch the leg pieces in boiling water for a few minutes to remove the smell and scum. Drain.
Heat the sesame oil in a pot and fry the garlic and old ginger slices until fragrant. Add the leg pieces and fry for a few minutes. Add the vinegar (if not feeling adventurous, use slightly less than the prescribed amount - you can easily add more later on). 

Add boiling water to the pot until it is about 4/5 full, and bring to the boil. Add the dark soya sauce, light soya sauce, sugar (you can actually do this later on, but personally I like the "dump it all in a pot and leave it for X amount of time" approach), and hard boiled eggs. Simmer for 2 hours or more, allowing the soup to thicken (or adding water if necessary) to the desired consistency.

Serve with rice.

Recipe courtesy of Rosalind Hon, minor amendments by Jacq Chan of NkR Productions.

SO embarassing!

So it's winter now, and skin tends to be dry, and in particular today I was afflicted with very dry fingertips. Normally, isn't a problem, but today at choir practice, while trying to sight-read the notes and read the lyrics and sing (no mean feat for a half-man!), I lost my grip on my music folder midway through a song. In the ensuing arm-flailling and finger fumbling trying to regain my hold on it, I managed to propel it even further from myself and it landed  with a thump in the middle of the floor, a good distance away from me. By the time I got it back the alto section was a giggling snorting off-key mess :P. I was sick with embarassment but couldn't stop laughing either >.<

The conductor, bless him, took it all in his stride and calmly said "Right, the next time one of you decides to fling your folders onto the floor *further titters from me, i told you I was struggling to stop laughing* can the rest of you try to keep on singing...."

I am soooo going to moisturize before next rehearsal.

Cent Hope Christmas graphic

So I spent today designing this publicity graphic for our iPhone game Cent Hope.... if you haven't already done so, BUY THE GAME  and support us! :D

So, what do you think? I personally wonder if there's something wrong with my monitor cos it looks fine here but when viewed on other monitors the colours look a lot less saturated....

Christmas Poster

I originally made this poster for the chaplaincy many, many, many years ago (circa 2004?), and was delighted to find it in use today (here's a photo of it taken with my phone).... how's that for longevity, eh?

Recipe for accompaniments to Hainanese Chicken Rice (the chicken, soy sauce, and chili sauce)

Hainanese Chicken Rice is a well known dish around Asia - many variations exist, and this is one of them. Succulent poached chicken sitting on a bed of cucumbers and dark sauce, accompanied by fragrant rice and a garlicky chili sauce, it is little wonder that the dish is as popular as it is. This ridiculously easy version features deboned chicken legs as a convenient alternative to poaching a whole chicken 

If you're in my situation and have a relatively small family (and dislike having leftovers), you'll agree that poaching/steaming a whole chicken is sometimes an impractical task - You need a pot or steamer big enough, you end up with leftover chicken which is tricky to reheat properly the next day, you need to chop the pieces up after it's been cooked (resulting in some mess and splatter), and odds are only the men will enjoy the chicken breast portion anyway. The solution is obvious - use deboned chicken legs instead - they are cheap, tasty, succulent, and a cinch to debone when raw (and saves you having to debone it for your offspring after it's cooked anyway)

You'll notice that I have been careful to post this as "accompaniments" to Hainanese Chicken rice - I do have a recipe for cooking the rice from scratch, but i have not fully worked out the ratio of the ingredients and have been cheating and using instant paste :P Will add that in the next time after I've had a chance to try it out.

Poached Hainan White Chicken (Pak Cham Kai/Pak Chit Kai)

Ingredients for flavouring the poaching liquid (completely optional)
Thumb-size ginger
2 cloves of garlic
Salt
A few dashes of white pepper
A few drops of sesame oil
1 tsp fish sauce
Deboned fillets of chicken legs (I have a family of 3, so we had 3 chicken legs - 3 thighs & 3 drumsticks)

Fill a shallow pan (that has a lid!) with sufficient water to cover all the fillets. Add all the flavouring ingredients and bring the water to a strong rolling boil. Gently put in chicken pieces. If the water temperature has dropped (i.e. it's stopped boiling) bring it to the boil again - once it is boiling, cover the pan and turn the heat off (yes, that means turn the gas completely off, no fire, etc). Leave it for 25 minutes. In the meantime, prepare the soy sauce and the chili sauce.

After 25 minutes, remove the chicken pieces and immerse in a bowl of very cold water. After 5 minutes, the chicken is ready to be sliced and served on top of a bed of cucumber. Drizzle the soy sauce over it, scatter some coriander and chives/spring onions and enjoy!

Chili Sauce
Ingredients

0.5-1 red capsicum (red pepper - depends on how much you want, usually for 3 people half a pepper is sufficient)
1-2 red chilies (to taste)
1 clove garlic
Thumb-sized ginger (optional, only use this if you don't want to put any chilies in it at all)
Lime juice
Salt and sugar to taste

Blend everything, adding lime juice, salt and sugar to taste. (See, told you it was ridiculously easy)

Soy sauce for chicken
Ingredients
1 tsp dark soy sauce
3 tbsp light soy sauce
1 tsp sugar (optional - if you are using Malaysian soy sauces which are naturally sweet, you don't need this)
1 clove garlic
1 handful of chives/spring onion
A few coriander leaves
A dash of white pepper
Salt to taste
Half a ladle of remainder poaching liquid

Dissolve the sugar in about 2 tbsp boiling water. Mix all the other sauce ingredients together to taste (the quantities above are given as a guideline, feel free to cater to individual tastes!)

Cent Hope website is finally up!

Finally, after a few weeks messing around with HTML (and watching in horror as w3schools flagged up error after error), the website for Cent Hope is up!
http://www.frugalspark.com/CentHope/
Let me know what you think of the web design, and how it can be improved....

Do check it out!
BTW BTW BTW we're offering the game for 69p over the Christmas holiday season. A real bargain! Don't miss out...

Digging out old Physics notes

My viva is in less than a months' time! ARGHHHH....
In preparation for it I dug out some of my old notes and found these sketches (made in class)

More adventures with CSS!

So, I'm trying to put screenshots of the game on the site, and I'm wondering if there's an easier way for viewers to see an enlarged version of the picture without having to use javascript (just to avoid compatibility issues).

Then I stumbled upon this site:
http://www.dynamicdrive.com/style/csslibrary/item/css-popup-image-viewer/#thumb

HALLELUJAAAAAAAH!

Problem solved :D

Chicken and Tomato Soup

This aromatic and flavourful soup is a real crowd pleaser for cold days. The chicken, having been marinated overnight, is tender and savoury, and there is a subtle hint of sourness from the tomatoes. The finishing touch of generous amounts of coriander gives the clear broth a very oriental note. Best served with rice or noodles.

I first tasted this soup in my friend Mindy's house - apparently she drinks it every time she feels tired/cold, and I can completely understand why. The soup had a very refreshing and wholesome feel to it and obviously after the first sip or so I demanded that she send me the recipe, which I'm going to post here (with some minor alterations).

This is another one of ultimate brainless simple recipes that busy mums should keep in their arsenal - it's healthy, it's easy and it's fast!

Chicken and Tomato Soup

Marinade:

500 - 800g chicken drumsticks/legs/thighs, deboned and diced into bite sized chunks

2 tbsp Cornflour, 

4 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped

2 tbsp white wine (1/2 cap of chinese ShaoXing wine), 

2 tbsp oyster sauce, 

1 tsp sugar

1 tsp or more light soy sauce (to taste!),
A few drops of sesame oil, 

3-4 thin slices ginger.

Ingredients:
4-5 tomatoes, quartered or with slits cut into them

12g fresh coriander

1.2 - 1.5 litres of water 

Marinade the chicken, and leave in a fridge overnight.

Bring the water to the boil, then put tomatoes and chicken in. Bring it back to the boil, then simmer over a low heat for no more than 20 minutes.  Serve with generous amounts of coriander. TADAAAAA! Finito.

Additional notes:

Using a shallow ladle, scoop up all the foamy scum stuff and oil that float up to the surface while the soup is simmering. This will ensure a really clear and non-greasy soup. I did not quarter my tomatoes because I don't actually like mushy tomato all over my soup - thus I made a cross-slit on the top of the tomato so that it will flavour the soup, but without becoming overly soft and mushy.

Misadventures with CSS

I've been spending the past week or so designing a new look for the Cent Hope website (watch that space, it's going to be BAZINGA, I tell you!). And since I haven't touched HTML properly for almost a decade, I've had to do a lot of reading on the web and research and some serious trial and error. And yesterday at 0:00 am I learned two important things:

1. Browser incompatibilities with paddings/borders/width sizes are usually resolved with declaring the right Doctype. Me, I used: <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Frameset//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/frameset.dtd">,
    which according to http://www.w3schools.com/TAGS/tag_doctype.asp , contains "all HTML elements and attributes, INCLUDING presentational and deprecated elements (like font). Framesets are not allowed."
2. This particular doctype does NOT like spaces in between your width digits and the word "px". i.e. if you are declaring
   width: 50%;
   it doesn't bark at you, but as soon as you try
   width: 500 px;
   it just ignores you altogether. The fix is simple. Take the space away.
   width: 500px;
   and the world is a much better space.

I know this may be elementary to some, but I hope this is helpful for people out there who want fixed width DIVs and inadvertently left a space in between the numbers and the px and have spent a whole night trawling the net wondering why and finding out that actually most programmers don't like fixed widths and prefer to use percentages instead. (On that subject, while I completely understand the rationale behind leaving it flexi, I need a fixed width for this particular site. No offense).

And that's my contribution for today.

You've Got a Friend In Me (Cover Version) with William and Jacq

Well, as the description says, my son was watching Toy Story 1 and 2 today (yes, i know, excessive television watching, but he'd already done his homework so what could I say -_-") and I was reminded of this old recording that William and I made a long time ago.... an hour and a lot of laughter after browsing through hilarious old videos and photos later, I uploaded this vid onto Youtube. So. This is my offering for this week - an old MV :) Enjoy!