Chinese Recipes | Cooking Tips | Good Eats

I have this block of silken tofu sitting in my fridge for almost 2 weeks already. I bought it because J was supposed to be away on a short business trip and I thought I would make a tofu dish for myself. The trip was canceled and so the silken tofu was left in the fridge, forlornly looking at me each time I opened the refrigerator door.

Since mom is in town, I pushed the cooking responsibility to her and asked her if she could make something out of minced pork and tofu.

Mom: Give me 3 shitake mushrooms.
Me: Ok. I have green onions too. You want?

Mom: Yes. And I will also add dried sole, dried scallops and salted fish.
Me: Yippee! I like the flavors of all that together.

Without any recipe book for reference and all knowledge of cooking stored in her experienced brain, she started preparing the dish as I stood aside, taking notes.

Ingredients (Serves 2-3):

- 1/4 lb minced pork (seasoned with a dash of salt, pepper, corn starch and mixed with 2 cloves garlic, sliced, and 3 slices of ginger, julienned)
- 3 shitake mushrooms, cut into pieces (I had dried ones, so they need to be pre-soaked in water first)
- 1 tbsp dried sole (pre-fried)
- 1 tbsp dried scallops (pre-fried)
- 1 tbsp salted fish (pre-fried)
- 3 stalks green onions, cut into 1″ diagonals
- 1 block silken tofu, cut into 1″ cubes
- 1/2 bowl water
- cornstarch solution (1 tsp cornstarch mixed with 2 tbsp water)

Seasoning:

- 1 tsp light soy sauce
- 1 tsp dark soy sauce (for color)
- 2 tsp oyster sauce

Cooking Method:

1. Heat up 2 tbsp oil and stir fry minced pork until fragrant.

2. Add shitake mushrooms and light soy sauce and mix well.

3. Add dried sole, dried scallops and salted fish and mix well.

4. Add dark soy sauce and oyster sauce, mix well and allow to cook for 2-3 minutes then add green onions and mix well.

5. Add silken tofu and allow to cook for about 30 secs, then add 1/2 bowl water, cover saucepan and allow to boil. (No need to mix tofu with rest of the ingredients as you will break up the tofu.) Continue to boil for about 4-5 minutes to allow the tofu to absorb the gravy, otherwise the tofu will taste plain. (You may want to do a taste test here to see if you need more light soy sauce to increase the saltiness or more water to dilute the saltiness.)

6. Drizzle cornstarch solution over gravy to thicken the gravy. Gently shake the saucepan to allow the cornstarch solution to be mixed with the gravy.

Thanks to Tigerfish’s green onions and ginger condiment post, I realized that green onions (also known as scallion, a variety of onion) is actually an herb!! I use green onions quite a bit, so this is my contribution to this week’s Weekend Herb Blogging hosted by Kalyn’s Kitchen. Green onions grow to reach about 20 inches in height and grow well in warm climates. Both the green and white portions of green onions can be eaten and the bulb portion is the part that is most often used as a drug. Green onions has traditionally been used only in Asian folk medicine and its usage for its medicinal properties is not yet approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Mom prefers Chinese food to anything else, so last weekend, J and I brought her to Mayflower Seafood Restaurant in San Francisco to eat dim sum. This branch is much smaller in size compared to the one in Milpitas, CA. The restaurant opens at 10am, but there were already a group of hungry vultures waiting outside the restaurant’s un-opened doors before 10am.

The restaurant was too small to accommodate the typical dim sum carts, so all the dim sum were served by non-smiling, Cantonese speaking waiters/waitresses. Mom said there used to be a Mayflower Seafood Restaurant in Singapore too (located in Shenton Way area?) but they were knocked out by strong contenders like the Tung Luk Group and the Crystal Jade chain of restaurants.

We had a friend join us for dim sum. She works as a pediatrician in San Francisco so we needed to bribe her to give us free pediatrics consultation after the baby is born. After all, the dim sum bill for the 4 of us only amounted to US$42 with taxes and tips included, so it was a good deal.

Of course we didn’t drive all the way up to San Francisco (are you nuts?!) just to eat dim sum. This was just part of the one-day San Francisco “tour itinerary” for mom. We also brought her down the curvy wurvy Lombard Street, Chinatown and took pictures with her at the Golden Gate Bridge.

All these pictures below are not current. San Francisco last Sunday was pretty windy, so we did a “car tour” to save mom from the gusty winds that she was not used to.

Lombard Street (Picture taken in Dec 04)

Lombard Street is America’s crookedest street. Cars can only drive down Lombard Street at 5 miles/hour.

San Francisco Chinatown (Picture taken in Sept 04)

San Francisco Chinatown is the largest Chinatown outside Asia. There was some sort of festival (Mooncake Festival??) at the time this picture was taken, that’s why the road was closed and there were throngs of people. Sept 04! - that was how long ago I was in SF Chinatown! We brought mom to Chinatown to show her how difficult it is to get parking and so that she will never ever ask me to go there again when I tell her I cannot find a particular ingredient in Ranch 99.)

Golden Gate Bridge (Picture taken in Dec 04)

Everybody who has been to San Francisco would at least have a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge, wouldn’t you? BUT… is yours as picturesque as mine? Bwahahahaa… ok… I confess. All the above pictures were taken by J, not me. It was only late last year that I started using his camera cos he moved on to a new hobby.

Mom’s in town and I haven’t been cooking. I thought she would whip up some kick-ass dishes for me and J but I was dead wrong. She hasn’t been cooking either.

Coming from Singapore, a place where cheap and delicious food is readily available and people’s favorite past-time is eating, she was more interested to eat out and see what the Bay Area has to offer. We are not talking about any fancy shamcy restaurants here. The Ranch 99 deli was enough to make her happy.

We bought roasted duck from Ranch 99 two times in ten days. J and I ate the meat, while mom was happy eating the bones with porridge. I am not ill-treating her - she said the duck bones were very tasty.

I also had a taste of the duck feet and cow stomach from the Ranch 99 deli. These are things I would never have thought buying on my own, simply because they look too weird to be eaten J doesn’t eat such things.

Mom is good at eating stuff with bones, be it duck feet, chicken feet or fish. She would bite off a piece of meat with bones, manoeuver her tongue around the the bite, spit out the bones and eat the meat. I must have gotten that tongue-skill from her, that’s why I would be the one eating the stomach part of the fish (which has bones) while J takes the upper body of the fish, the meaty part. I wonder if this tongue-skill helps in French kissing?

Angela gave me a recipe for making Peng Kuih (translated to English, it means “Rice Cake”). Peng Kuih has a glutinous rice filling that is fairly easy to make. The recipe for making the dough also looked relatively simple. However, I had a hard time making the dough because the way the dough formed was way out of my expectations.

I mean, I am familiar with how a cookie dough looks like when I mix multi-purpose flour with eggs and a creamed sugar/butter mixture. That is a firm dough which I can roll out easily with a rolling pin.

This Peng Kuih recipe however, seemed to have too much water (to make the dough) and the batter needed to be heated over low heat to form a firm dough. I’ll probably use less water next time. I tweaked the recipe a bit and added shallots for more flavor.

Ingredients (Makes about 7 Peng Kuih):

For filling:
- 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
- 3 pieces dried shitake mushrooms, soaked and chopped into pieces
- 25g (about 3 heaped tsp) of dried shrimp
- 1 small shallot, sliced (amounts to about 2 heaped tsp)
- 250g glutinous rice

For dough:

- 140g rice flour
- 10g tapioca flour
- 300ml water
- 2 drops red food coloring

Seasoning for filling:

- 1 tsp dark soy sauce (this is to give the filling a nice brownish tinge)
- 1/2 tsp salt
- a few dashes white pepper
- 1/2 cube chicken stock

Preparation and Cooking Method:

To make the filling:

- Wash glutinous rice then soak in water for 2 hours. Drain off water then steam for another 20 minutes. Make sure the water does not cover the rice when steaming.

- Heat 2 tbsp oil in a wok. Fry garlic, mushrooms, dried shrimp and shallots until fragrant. Add seasoning and mix well.

- Add steamed glutinous rice and mix well. Set aside.

To make dough:

- Sift rice flour and tapioca flour. Add red food coloring to water. Make a well in the middle of the flour mixture, slowly add water and mix well to form a wet batter.

- Transfer wet batter to a wok and continue to stir well under low heat until a dough is formed.

- Dust work top with tapioca flour. Transfer firm dough to work top and knead until smooth. Divide into small portions.

- Use a rolling pin to flatten out each small portion and place flattened dough into Peng Kuih mould.

- Transfer some filling onto the flattened dough, use a teaspoon to press filling into the mould, then wrap filling with dough and use rolling pin to flatten it out.

Note: You can also simply wrap filling with dough and press onto mould. I did not do that as I was not sure how much dough is required to fill the mould. Also, I did not want a Peng Kuih with thick and uneven dough, so I used a rolling pin to flatten the dough before pressing it onto the mould.

- Remove excess dough from the sides of the mould. Invert mould, give it a hard knock and let the moulded dough fall out. Remove excess dough from the edges.

- Place moulded Peng Kuih onto cut pieces of banana leaves. Place on steaming tray and steam over low heat for 15 minutes.

The steamed Peng Kuih is a little sticky so I like to pan fry the Peng Kuih before I eat it. That makes the skin a bit crispy - ummmm… I like! Peng Kuih is best eaten with your favorite sweet sauce (I used ABC Kecap Manis - Perfect!).

What’s Beethoven’s favorite fruit or should I call it an herb? He even wrote a piece of music for it. Take a listen below. (Download may be a bit slow.)

Beethovan’s Symphony No 5. - I seriously think that Beethovan loved bananas :) don’t you?

Do you know that a banana plant is not a tree? Instead, it is called a pseudostem. Ok. You knew that?

How about: Bananas are considered as herbs. Oh you knew that too?

Well, I for one did not know that until someone mentioned it in Weekend Herb Blogging, so now I am also using bananas (copycat, kiss the rat, go home let your mother slap) as an entry to this week’s Weekend Herb Blogging hosted by Rinku.

In Singapore and in some other Asian communities, a banana is a slang term used to describe an Asian person who is perceived as acting like a white person - yellow (skin) on the outside and white on the inside. It’s like “Look at that Chinese speaking with an American accent. He’s a banana.” I am not a banana. I still speak with a Singaporean accent.

In terms of nutritional composition of a banana, a banana contains 93% carbs, 3% fats and 4% protein. No wonder when I was on a weight loss program a few years back, my “spa lady” flipped when once, I told her I ate TWO bananas that day. “Noooooooo! You can only eat ONE!!!” she shrieked.

She will probably shriek even louder if I tell her I mixed THREE bananas with butter and sugar etc to make banana muffins. She’s definitely into “thin is beautiful” and wants all her clients to think the same.

Anyways, since I am out of her weight loss program (since working out in the gym or having a bout of stomach flu was definitely more effective), I made Banana Muffins. I had googled and looked at quite a number of different Banana Muffin recipes before deciding to try Wandering Chopsticks Banana Bread Recipe. Well, she used a loaf pan that’s why hers is called “Banana Bread” whereas I used a muffin tin, so I call them “Banana Muffins”. She also used yogurt, which I was kinda surprised (”oh, you can use yogurt in baking??”) but was pleased since I had yogurt leftover from making my chicken pies.

Ok. I know what’s in your mind right now. Where are the muffins? Well, since I like the top part of muffins only because they are cripsy, I decided to quarter my Banana Muffins into bite sized pieces after the initial baking, so that I could have more crispy bits. :)

I made a slight alteration to Wandering Chopstick’s recipe, based on the ingredients I had on hand and after some “consultation” with her since I am a baking idiot.

Ingredients (Makes approx 12 muffins):

- 5 tbsp salted butter (you can choose unsalted butter if you so wish)
- 155g (or 3/4 cup) white sugar
- 3 overripe bananas, mashed
- 1 tsp vanilla essence
- 2 eggs
- 200g (or 1 1/2 cups) multi-purpose flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 cup toasted walnuts, chopped
- 1/2 cup yogurt

Baking Method:

1. In a large bowl, cream butter, sugars, bananas and vanilla well. (I used a fork to do the mixing.)

2. Beat eggs by adding them in one at a time. Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and toasted walnuts with butter/sugar/banana mixture. Add yogurt and gently fold in the yogurt. Do not overmix.

3. Put muffin cups into muffin tin. Transfer mixture into the muffin cups (till 80% full). Bake in a preheated oven at 325F for about 30 minutes or until browned.

These Banana Muffins are light and not as buttery as my Orange Muffins. The toasted walnuts provided a nutty texture and of course, keeping the bananas till they were blackened and overripe contributed to the sweetness and overall kick to these Banana Muffins.