Chinese Recipes | Cooking Tips | Good Eats

Have you ever tasted a hot Original Glazed Krispy Kreme Doughnut? The originals are the best. They are light and fluffy and small enough such that you wouldn’t feel like you got a sugar overdose. The glazed icing on the doughnuts were a tad too sweet for my friend’s WH’s liking, but it was ok for me.

This is another sinfully delicious food that I really shouldn’t be eating too much.

Here’s the deal:
Fitness experts say that if you are in a fitness program and watching your diet, you are allowed to have one day a week (”sin day”) to eat whatever you want. The rationale is that with that, you will not start craving for junk food and go on a food binge. Of course you do not go and gorge yourself silly with junk food. You eat sensible portions of sinful stuff like a chocolate cake or a hot Original Glazed Krispy Kreme Doughnut!

The price I paid:
A single Original Glazed Krispy Kreme Doughnut can set you back by 200 calories, of which 100 calories come from fats alone.

To walk off 100 calories, I need to brisk walk on the treadmill for 100 minutes. Of course, who can just eat one doughnut alone right? C’mon! It’s THE Original Glazed Krispy Kreme Doughnut! So I ate two, but I did not walk for 200 minutes. Instead I went to the local grocery store to buy more food.

Deal or no deal:
No deal! I am not in a fitness program… so I do not need to stick to that one-sin-day-a-week timetable. I also had two doughnuts each day for three days in a row! I’ll detox next year. Oops that’s tomorrow!

Happy New Year everybody!

It’s crab season! A time for rejoicing and celebrating one of San Francisco’s greatest gifts to the tastebuds!

The local dungeness crab season runs from the second weekend in November through May, and the best time to eat is in December and January, when supplies are plentiful and the dungeness crab meat is sweetest.

San Francisco Fishermen’s Wharf is not exactly a stone’s throw away from where I live. In fact it takes many many many stones throw for us to get there. Coupled with the fact that J & I went into early Autumn hibernation mode, it had been a while since we drove into the city for a dungeness crab feast. It would be a sin to miss San Francisco’s season of greatest gifts to the tastebuds. So on Boxing Day, we buckled up and prepared to slurp up!

Fishermen’s Grotto, Stall & Restaurant #9 was the first place we tried dungeness crab and we had been loyal to that stall ever since. I went deliriously ballistic when I saw the pile of crabs at the stall.

We not only got to eat one of the world’s tastiest seafood offerings in its freshest possible state, we also got to be in so many strangers’ videos, too. Curious tourists peered over our shoulders to see what we were feasting on, but we were oblivious to them as we went “ummmmm” each time we bit into the tender, juicy and warm crab meat.

Each dungeness crab has been skillfully cracked by the professional crab-cracker such that you do not need much effort to remove the shell. The best part of it is that after you peel off the shell, the meat on the crab legs is still WHOLE! We’d dip that chunk of crab meat into the cocktail sauce provided and eat the WHOLE piece. Our tastebuds went wild!

Then we dug into the hot bowl of clam chowder soup. Now, this clam chowder is unlike any other clam chowder we have ever tried. The clams are big, the soup is thick, and it’s taste is in every way home-made. Pepper up the chowder and add the oyster crackers for the extra crunch.

The bonus for eating at the stall is that the price is much less than if you eat in the restaurant. It’s quite fun too letting the crowds watch you as you slurp or seeing the person standing next to you enjoy the feast as much as you do.

We had one BIG dungeness crab and a bowl of clam chowder soup. Total cost amounted to only $30. The crab was $8.95 per pound the the clam chowder was $7. A divinely delicious dungeness crab meal. Hands up those who love crab!

Call it a Chinese salad if you want to!

This appetizer reminds me of the Pickled Vegetables I eat in Chinese restaurants before a meal. Even before you order the dishes, the waiter places a small dish of Pickled Vegetables on the table. Sometimes they give you peanuts. And you know what.. the restaurant charges for these Pickled Vegetables, together with the Chinese tea and paper towels. So even before you place any orders, boom! you already incur a cost to the meal. These pickled vegetables stimulate your appetite so you may end up ordering more! Either way, the restaurant wins.

I should have done some research on how to make this Chinese Pickled Vegetables during my first trimester when I was having my all-day-sickness. The spiciness coupled with the sourness of the Pickled Vegetables would have made my day!

Here is the easy Chinese recipe from the recipe book: Singaporean, Malaysian & Indonesian cuisine.

Ingredients:

- 1 cup cucumber, seeded and julienned
- 3/4 cup carrot, julienned
- 6 shallots (diced) - I did not have shallots, so I used red onions instead
- 12 small red chili peppers - I had a mix of red and green ones
- 1 1/2 tbsp water
- 3 tbsp vinegar - I used rice vinegar
- 2 tbsp white sugar
- 1 1/4 tsp salt

Mix them all up and chill them in the refrigerator for a couple of hours. This is an appetizer you can definitely prepare ahead of time because it is best eaten chilled.

Note: This Chinese Pickled Vegetable recipe is different from the bottled Acar you see from the Singapore supermarkets. That is a Nonya (Straits Chinese) pickle called Acar Acar (pronounced as “ah-char”). The Nonya version is made by first preparing a spice paste called rempah, then mixing the rempah with the rest of the vegetables. The rempah comprises of shallots, garlic, red chilies, dried chilies, turmeric, lemon grass, galangal, candlenuts and shrimp paste. Too much work for me to make that!

This Chinese Pickled Vegetables dish is good enough for me.

This is an easy Chinese recipe for a dish that is a good accompaniment to a meat dish. It is easy to prepare and only has 4 ingredients.

The You Cai will wilt down when cooked (just like spinach) so if the plateful of uncooked You Cai looks sufficient, it is not. If it looks too much, then it’ll be just right.

Ingredients (Serves 2):

- 1 plateful of you cai, washed and cut into 4-inch lengths.
- 1/2 tsp minced garlic
- 1 tbsp oyster sauce
- 1 tsp dried shallots

Cooking Method:

1. Heat up 2 tbsp vegetable oil in a wok. Medium heat. When oil is hot enough, add garlic and stir fry for a few seconds. Take care that the garlic does not burn.

2. Add You Cai and stir fry with garlic for a few seconds. They will be a loud sizzling sound as the water droplets from the washed You Cai come into contact with the oil, but not to worry. There will be minimal oil splatter as the plateful of You Cai is sufficient to cover the base of the wok and prevent oil splatter.

3. Add oyster sauce and mix well.

4. Cover wok with lid, reduce heat to low, and let the You Cai simmer for about 3 minutes.

5. Plate the You Cai and add the dried shallots on top as a garnish. The dried shallots also adds some taste to the You Cai.

Note: Adding dried shallots is what the Singapore Chicken Rice stalls do with their Gai Lan side dish. They add oyster sauce and dried shallots. The Gai Lan’s in the US have very thick stems, hence I prefer to use You Cai instead. I can also cook You Cai Soup with it.

Feast your eyes on the picture: It is tender, succulent and melts in your mouth… … Now, close your eyes and spend a moment to visualize yourself chowing down on a steaming hot Stewed Pork Belly Bun. The juice oozes out of the stewed pork as you chew s-l-o-w-l-y, biting into the meat and the fats, tasting every bit of it.

Stewed Pork Belly Bun is also known in dialect as “Kong Ba Bao”. It is basically stewed pork belly in dark soy sauce wrapped in plain “bao skin” (see picture below). In Mandarin, “bao skin” is called “man tou”.

I kind of mutated PabloPabla’s recipe to make my “Kong Ba Bao”. Here is the mutated (but still excellent!) recipe:

Ingredients (serves 4):
- 1.3 lb (about 600g) pork belly
- 4 tbsp brown or white sugar
- 1 whole bulb garlic, separate into individual cloves
- warm water
- 2 sticks cinnamon, 3 star anise, 3 cloves and 2 cardamon seeds

Seasoning
- 3 to 4 tablespoons dark soya sauce
- 1/2 teaspoon of salt

Cooking Method:
(Steps 1 & 2: Lock, stock and barrel from PabloPabla)

1. Add sugar into a wok / saucepan which has been heated up. Let the sugar caramelise (turn liquid and brown).

2. Once sugar fully caramelised, add the whole pork belly and let it “sear” for 1 minute on each side. Add water to cover the pork belly by 1 to 2 cm. Add the rest of the ingredients and seasoning. Once water begins to boil, reduce to medium low heat.

This is the difference I made:

3. Cover lid and let it simmer for two hours.

4. For the pork belly to look brown all over, cut the pork belly into inch-thick slices, put them back to the gravy to simmer for another 10 minutes. Then lay them out on an oven tray with some gravy and place them into an oven pre-heated to 450 degree F, for 10 minutes.

5. After 10 minutes, set the oven to broil and let the pork belly crisp up a bit for another 5-10 minutes. See how the pork belly has browned in the picture below.

6. While the pork belly is broiling in the oven, steam the “bao skin” (man tou).

7. To serve, shred the pork into bite sized pieces. You may choose to remove some of the fats at this stage. Then insert the pork and skin into the “bao skin”.

Note: There was too much gravy in this recipe for “Kong Ba Bao”, so what I would do next time is to first cut the pork belly into inch thick slices, then sear the pieces on the caramelised sugar. To get a thicker gravy, I would use less water because the pork skin has a gelatinous effect and would make the gravy sticky.

How is this for a sinfully delicious stewed pork belly in dark soy sauce wrapped in “bao skin” to become “Kong Ba Bao”! End the meal with a cup of hot Chinese tea heh!