Steamed Pumpkin Cake

I bought a pumpkin from an agricultural fair recently. It was roughly 5 times more expensive than the normal pumpkin. I was told that this type of pumpkin is meant for export market and the skin is also edible. Since I have never try it before, I decided to buy one home. I used roughly 1/2 of it to make this steamed pumpkin cake. This was my first time attempting to make steamed pumpkin cake, although I have made the quite similar steamed yam cake countless of times.

I used almost similar ingredients and method that I used to make steamed yam cake for this. I am very delighted as it turn out so well and nice. I know many people like to add minced pork or Chinese sausage into this kind of cake but that is just not me. Even when I make steamed yam cake, I do not add in any meat as I do not like its texture in the cake. Another compelling reason why I don't add in any pork is that I feel that it is not that suitable for the girls to bring to their school since they have Muslim friends in school. If you prefer, you may add in some minced meat or Chinese sausages.

Steamed Pumpkin Cake

Ingredients:

400g pumpkin, shredded

380g rice flour

1.2 ltr water

14 shallots

26g dried shrimps

4 cloves garlic, minced

1 tsp 5 spice powder

1 1/2 tsp pepper

2 tsp sugar

2 tsp salt

1/2 cube chicken stock (optional)

Method:

1. Slice and fry the shallots till crispy and set aside. 

2. Use the same oil to fry the dried shrimps till fragrant and set aside.

3. Mix together rice flour, 5 spice powder, chicken stock, 1/2 tsp pepper and 400 ml water. Mix well and set aside.

5. Scoop out the extra oil from frying the shallots and dried shrimps and leave 2 tbsp in the wok. 

6. Fry the minced garlic and add in pumpkin. Add in 1 tsp of fried shallots.

7. Stir-fry the pumpkin for few minutes. Then add in the remaining 800ml water, sugar, salt and 1/2 tsp pepper. Reduce the flame and let simmer for roughly 15 minutes.

8. Lightly stir the flour mixture to avoid clumps accumulating at the bottom. Then pour the flour mixture into the wok. Add the remaining 1/2 tsp pepper,  1/3 of fried shallots and 2/3 of fried dried shrimps into the batter.

9. Thoroughly combine and mix the pumpkin mixture with the flour mixture till the batter is thicken. Turn off the flame.

10. Scoop the batter into a greased 24cm x 24cm x 7cm square pan and steam over rapid boiling water for 30 minutes till the skewer inserted into the cake turn out clean.

11. Sprinkle the remaining fried shallots crisps and dried shrimps on top of the steamed cake.

Notes:

1. I used the oil that I used to fry shallots and garlic to grease the steaming pan for better flavour

Fried Sweet Potato Balls

Made from a very humble ingredient, fried sweet potato balls are my favourite tea-time snacks. Nowadays, I seldom see these being sold outside. As a child, I would be very happy when mum made these. Just like most of the older generations, mum made them by estimates. Their generation usually do not use any weigher or measuring devices. I have the opportunity to observe how mum makes them when I was a child. So, it wasn't that hard for me to make these. She will always make this when she cooked sweet potato soup. She used the sweet potatoes that she boiled to be made into puree and from there on, she will add sugar and flour. I remember mum saying try to add in as little flour as possible. 

I made some the other day for the girls' tea-time snacks. The fried sweet potatoes ball that I made were the most basic version with only sweet potatoes, flour and sugar. There are several other versions that I have seen before; the ones coated with sesame seeds and another version with dessicated coconuts being added in. Nevertheless, my preferred version is still the basic version as it is the version that I am most familiar with. This is how mum made it (but hers is sweeter with more sugar added). For me, it is the best and it represents home. This is the taste of home!

Fried Sweet Potato Balls

Ingredients:

225g orange sweet potatoes

6 tbsp general purpose flour

2 tbsp sugar (or to taste)

Method:

1. Cut sweet potatoes into cubes and boil them in boiling water till they are soft.

2. Mash the sweet potatoes into puree.

3. Add flour and sugar into the puree and mix well. 

4. Pinch a portion of the mixture roughly the size of a ping pong ball onto the palm and roll into a ball. Repeat till the mixture finishes.

5. Fry in hot oil till golden brown.

Notes:

1. The mixture could be quite sticky and hard to handle. It is supposed to be sticky. Do not add more flour. I lightly greased my hands for easier shaping.

2. This recipe made 10 balls with each roughly the size of a ping pong ball.

Salt & Pepper Pork Bites

This is inspired by the famous Taiwanese Salt & Pepper Chicken. I saw salt and pepper chicken recipe being featured in Rasa Malaysia some time back (here) and was thinking of making something similar with pork belly. This is quite an easy dish, which can be taken as snack or appetizer.

As we do not take any fats, I discarded the thick layer of skin and fats on top of a strip of pork belly. I then cubed it. Instead of pork belly, tenderloin can also be used. After cutting it into bite-sized pieces, the next step would be to tenderise the meat. I mixed some soda bicarbonate into the cut pork belly and left it aside for roughly 1/2 hour before washing it off. After this pre-treatment, you will feel that the texture of the meat is very soft and slippery. The soda bicarbonate need to be washed away as it leaves a slight bitter after-taste on the food. 

After this pre-treatment, I marinated the pork belly cubes with ginger and garlic that I pounded earlier, salt, 5-spice powder, sesame oil, Chinese rice wine, pepper and some fried chicken powder. For the cubes to be crispier after frying, I coated them with a layer of corn flour. I accidentally discover this technique of using dried/cooked corn flour few years back. One of the ingredients required in the preparation of snowskin mooncake is cooked corn flour. It can be made by dry-frying the corn flour in a wok or using an oven. I prefer to use the oven as it is would not cause as much dust and mess as using a wok. Few years back, when making the snowskin mooncake, I made some extra cooked corn flour. So I just stored the extras in an airtight container in the fridge. When I was making my homemade seafood tofu, I used it to coat the tofu before frying. The result? The seafood tofu were extremely crispy. Since then, I have started to coat any food that need to be fried with cooked corn flour before frying. I guessed during toasting in the oven, the remaining water content in the flour has been taken out and therefore producing crispier fried food when coated with the cooked corn flour.

I coated each piece of pork belly cubes with cooked corn flour before frying them in batches. Once all have been fried, I discarded all the oil from the wok except for 1/2 tbsp which I used to stir-fry 2 sprigs of curry leaves till fragrant. Then I turned off the flame and added the pork cubes back into the wok. I stirred them for few seconds before adding in sparingly some fine salt, pepper and icing sugar. I tossed them to ensure that all the pork cubes were coated with the salt, pepper and sugar. You have to adjust the ratio of salt, pepper and sugar to your liking, bearing in mind that salt have been added to the marinates earlier.

Braised Pork Belly with Eggs and Pork Tripe

I usually don't blog much on daily home cooking as it is a daily routine. Today is just one of the rare occassion where I will just blog about this particular dish that I prepared for dinner the other day. It is a special request from dear hubby for me to jot down the ingredients used in this dish as he like it so much. I have no prior intention to write about this, so I did not think of snapping a picture of it. The only picture I have is when we were half way eating it. So, it doesn't look so enticing. Nevertheless, don't let the picture fool you. When dear hubby open the door, the first thing he asked me is "What did you cook today? It smells so nice." He can even smell it before he entered the house. He told me that he was actually not very hungry. In fact, he was quite full. But he can't stop eating as it is so appetising. He even thought of having a second serving of rice. But too bad I don't have extra rice. I never prepare extra rice or dishes as I do not like leftovers. I know how much my family can eat, so I will prepare just enough to feed everyone without any leftovers.

For this dish, I use 1/2 pig trip, roughly 300g pork belly and 7 hard-boiled eggs. The pig tripe has been cleaned earlier. So, it saved up a lot of my time. I marinated the pig tripe and pork belly with salt, sesame oil, Chinese rice wine, dark soy sauce, light soy sauce and 5 spice powder for roughly one hour. Then, I seared the pork belly and pig trip with some oil in the wok. The marinates were set aside for later use. Without removing the seared belly and tripe, I added in 4 cloves of lightly crushed garlic, 2 star anise and 1 bark of cinnamon stick as well as some dangui.  Then the hard-boiled eggs were added in. For better flavour, I slit each of the eggs half-way into a cross. When they are ready, the top will open up like flower and they are more flavourful. This is a method used by mum. After stirring for a while, I poured in the saved marinates. Then I added in sugar to taste and water enough to cover all the ingredients. I let it come to a boil and then cover with a lid. It should be braised for 1 1/2 to 2 hours for the pig tripe to be tender. I added water few times and continue to braise till the pig tripe is tender. Then I cooked till the gravy is reduced and look caramelised. These are simply yummy when served with a plate of steaming hot rice.

Big Bowl Ice

The weather is so hot nowadays. Something cool and refreshing to soothe out this scorching heat would be a relief. So after our weekly grocery shopping, we dropped by a place called Big Bowl Ice for some shaved ice. There are many sizes available from the smallest to very huge size. The largest is extremely huge and it can feed up to 30 people, as they claimed. They also claimed to use only natural ingredients without any preservatives, artificial colouring or artificial flavouring.

We ordered 2 smallest bowl of shaved ice and snow ice. Of these two, I prefer snow ice as its texture is smoother. We only ordered the scallion pancake later on when we saw other people having it. It looks so crispy and nice. So we decided to have a try.

Siu Mai

Siu Mai is often associated with breakfast or brunch. However, I made these for dinner, defying the common convention. 

Most of the time, when we go for dimsum breakfast, we will sure order these. It was said that this type of open-top dumpling originated from Inner Mongolia, between Ming and Qing Dynasty. It was brought to Beijing and Tianjin by merchants from Shanxi. 

There are some variations to the ingredients used. The main ingredients are usually minced pork and shrimps. Some of the recipes would called for the use of shitake mushrooms and water chestnuts. I did not add in any mushrooms as I prefer to retain the original flavour of siu mai, which is without mushrooms. However, I prefer to have a little crunch and therefore added in some diced yam bean.

Siu Mai

Ingredients:

400g minced pork

7 large shrimps, minced

1/2 cup diced yam bean

6 cloves garlic, pounded into a paste

Thumb-sized ginger, pounded and extract ginger juice

1 large egg

1 1/2 tbsp tapioca flour

1 tbsp Chinese rice wine

1 tbsp sesame oil

1 tsp oyster sauce

1 tsp light soy sauce

Pepper

Sugar

Salt

31 pcs wonton wrappers

Method:

1. Add minced pork, shrimps and garlic paste together in a bowl. 

2. Pour in ginger juice and mix well.

3. Add in yam bean and mix thoroughly. 

4. Then add rice wine, sesame oil, oyster sauce, light soy sauce, tapioca flour and

 mix well.

5. Crack egg into a bowl. Scoop out 1 to 2 teaspoon of egg whites and set aside for later use. Beat the remaining egg and add in to the rest of the fillings. 

4. Then add in salt, sugar and pepper to taste.

5. Set it aside to marinate for at least 1 hour.

6. Grease steaming plate to avoid the siu mai to stick to the plate.

7. Scoop a tablespoon of the filling onto a wonton wrapper and wrap it. Place siu mai in steaming plate.

8. Repeat with the remaining pieces.

9. Coat the top of each siu mai with the egg white set aside earlier. 

10. Sprinkle or spray some water on the siu mai to prevent the skin to dry out. 

11. Steam in rapid boiling water for 5 to 7 minutes. Do not oversteam or else the filling will dry out.

Dinner in Klang

We went back to Klang during the weekend just before Mid Autumn Festival. Mum said she wanted to eat fried rice vermicelli with lala. So, we went to Coconut Flower Restaurant in Telok Gong for lunch. I didn't bother to take any photos then as all the dishes that we ordered were those that we have ordered before and I have blogged about them previously.

Since we were quite full after our sumptuous lunch, we decided to have noodles for dinner. We went to this restaurant called Sekinchan, located in Pandamaran. We ordered 3 types of noodles and some side dishes. My all time favourite is the translucent-looking fried tapioca noodles. 

Fried Cantonese Noodles (Ying-Yong)

Fried Tapioca Noodles

Fried Hokkien Noodles

Salted Egg Pumpkin

Fried Pork

Mid Autumn Festival 2014

Mid Autumn Festival is a rather significant and important festival among the ethnic Chinese. It is even more special for me as this festival also marked my wedding anniversary. This year is our 9th years anniversary. 

Mid Autumn Festival also known as Mooncake Festival and many other names revolves around 3 concepts; thanksgiving, gathering and praying. With these in mind, I made some mooncakes to be given to family and friends. This year, I made more varieties of mooncakes. I made 4 boxes of baked mooncakes, 3 boxes of jelly mooncakes and 3 boxes of mini snowskin mooncakes as gifts. I am extremely happy with all the positive comments and reviews on my mooncakes and I am also very thankful  as I am able to personally make these for the people I loved. 

These are some of the photos of the gift packs:-

This is Chloe's first Mid Autumn Festival. The children thoroughly enjoyed themselves with the lanterns. 

Dear hubby also surprised me with this cake from Coffee Bean and also a night gown. Happy 9th Wedding Anniversary, dearest hubby!!