How to Make Har Cheong Gai (Prawn Paste Chicken)

I could smell the fermented prawn paste once the bottle was open. Phwoar! This is potent stuff!

It wasn't belachan, which is quite harmless until it's toasted or fried. Nor was it Penang hae ko, which is absolutely benign because it's got lots of sugar.

What I had was har cheong, a liquid prawn paste made in Hong Kong. It was a very appetizing grey – oh yum! – and the label on the bottle said, so reassuringly, 'Cooked [sic] Before Eating'. Thanks for the warning! You bet I will!

Your first whiff of har cheong might make you think of a rotting rat or, as a friend puts it ever so nicely, a mortuary with no power supply. But once you take a deep breath – be brave! – you'll get the aroma that explains why fermented prawn paste is cherished in Malaysia, the Phillipines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia, and some parts of China. That's, what, easily several hundred million people? Oh hang on, I almost forgot Singapore. That adds another few million who eat lots of belachan (but don't make any).

There are many types of fermented prawn paste, and they all have their own following. I think Hong Kong har cheong is excellent, but someone from maybe Thailand would (almost certainly) disagree. Some say the best belachan in Malaysia is from Malacca; others say it's Penang. I guess what's best depends on what you grew up eating. It's not the absolute standard but the emotional connection that counts.

The first time I made Har Cheong Gai was several years ago with a recipe from Lee Kum Kee. Marinated with just har cheong and a wee bit of sugar, the chicken was so salty only half of it was eaten. After the flop, the bottle of LKK Fine Shrimp Sauce sat untouched in the fridge for a few years! It was eventually binned only when I moved house.

Today, I finally made another stab at HCG. Giving LKK a wide berth, I armed myself with a different recipe and a different brand of har cheong. Unlike the first attempt which was verging on inedible, this recipe had water, a bit of oyster sauce, and more sugar to tame the massively salty har cheong. More importantly, the har cheong was, I think, far superior to LKK's. Everyone voted with his mouth, and there wasn't a single piece of chicken left.

If there's a favourite fried chicken in Singapore, my guess is it's HCG. Now I know how to make it. Mission Har Cheong Gai finally accomplished – yay!



Related links:
Making har cheong in Hong Kong
History of Har Cheong Gai

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The 'Mee Siam Mai Hum' Mystery

During one of his speeches a couple of years ago, the Prime Minister said, 'Mee siam mai hum.' He was relating how he would order the noodle dish, mee siam, without cockles. It was perhaps an attempt to connect with commoners who eat humble stuff, like me. But the speech set tongues wagging, to put it mildly, 'cause mee siam doesn't have cockles, ever.

The harsher critiques thought the PM's little boo-boo showed how disconnected he was with everyday life. But I think there could be another explanation for his culinary faux pas. What he actually wanted to say was mee siam without tamarind, or mee siam mai assam. How do I know that? Take a look at his grandmother's mee siam recipe, extracted from Mrs Lee's Cookbook (Mrs Lee being said grandmother):

Run your eye through the list of ingredients for the gravy. See? There's no assam in Grandma's recipe.

So, confronted with the commoners' version that always comes with assam, the PM would say mee siam mai assam. But that fateful day, no thanks to a slip of the tongue, he said mai hum instead.

That might be one mystery solved, but I'm still scratching my head. Every single mee siam I've ever eaten is slightly tangy with assam. When I have a craving for mee siam, it's the spicy sourness that I long for. Why on earth would anyone make mee siam without assam?

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How to Make Pandan Chiffon Cake – As Good As Bengawan Solo's

I felt like baking a local cake, and no cake is more local than Pandan Chiffon. I started by comparing recipes from Epicurative, The Best of Singapore Cooking, The Raffles Hotel Cookbook, and the four featured by ieat. I put everything in Excel so that I could standardize the amount of flour in every recipe to 100 g, then adjust the other ingredients proportionately. (Yup, I'm a geek, and proud of it.)

Here's the spreadsheet (strictly for geeks like me):

Once I was comparing apples and apples, it was obvious The Best of Singapore Cooking had heap loads of everything, from coconut milk to oil, egg whites, egg yolks, and especially sugar and baking powder. Every . . . single . . . thing! Hmm, doesn't seem right. BSC – out!

Epicurative and Raffles Hotel shared the same oil-less ingredients, but the mixing methods were different. The 'Grande Dame of Singapore' – or rather her servant, Ah Teng – whisked only the egg whites, and all of the sugar bar 10 g was added to unwhisked yolks. I didn't like the method because whisked egg whites with only 10 g of sugar might be unstable, and unwhisked yolks wouldn't have much volume. Ah Teng – out!

I tried Epicurative's recipe, splitting the sugar between the whites and yolks, then whisking each lot separately. I baked the cake for 40 minutes, which was plenty for a 21-cm chiffon. The crust was brown, but the inside was still wet whilst the cooked part was dry. As the cake cooled down, it shrank badly since it wasn't cooked through. I felt that there was too much liquid in the recipe, and not enough fat. Epicurative – out!

So, I was left with ieat's four recipes. Hmm, which one should I kick out first? Asianbakes seriously stinched stinged on yolks, whites, sugar and oil – out!

Anna Chan had an oil-less recipe, and my experience with Epicurative's oil-less chiffon wasn't good. Anna Chan – out!

Of the remaining two, ieat recommended the one 'with more egg whites' from Kiamniangwong. Actually, the recipe had less whites than Prima's, per 100 g of flour. But it had more in absolute number because it was for a bigger cake. (See? A spreadsheet helped!)

I took the doctor's order since he had clinically tested his prescription. My verdict? I was very impressed by the cake's texture, which was as soft as Bengawan Solo's. But the taste, using pandan essence/paste, left much to be desired, not to mention the hideous colour.

In case you don't know, squeezing juice out of pandan leaves is like squeezing blood out of stone. That's why most people use pandan essence, artificial green food colouring and, maybe to appease their conscience, a token amount of real pandan juice. But that's not a good way, is it, when pandan leaves are cheap and plentiful, and Bengawan Solo cakes are plentiful though not so cheap? Either buy a cake, or make one that's good and natural!

To make a pandan cake without chemicals, I had to figure out something: how to squeeze blood out of stone! I tried Epicurative's suggestion to soak finely ground stones leaves in water overnight, strain, let the mixture settle, then skim off the excess water floating above the juice. Verdict: it took way too long; there were far too many steps; and it was difficult getting rid of the excess water, so the juice was too diluted.

Epicurative's juice extraction method wasn't good, but the principle behind it was. Why don't I mix the pandan with coconut milk instead of water? Bingo! The coconut milk turned from virginal white to Martian green, and all I had to do was get rid of the fibrous pulp with a strainer. Two hours later, I was chomping on pandan cake that was full of the aroma of real pandan. It was light as air, soft as cotton, and green as a Martian – as good as Bengawan Solo's but I baked it!

Be warned though if you also want an all natural cake. You need a hell of a lot of pandan leaves, which may be a bit expensive if you're living in the US:

$15.95 for 18 leaves, in US dollars?! Mind you, when I chanced upon importfood.com last month, it was US$14.95 for 12 leaves. I almost died laughing when I saw the price, 'cause I pay 10 Singapore cents (US$0.08) for a big bunch which has maybe 12 leaves or so. Now, if you're Malaysian, feel free to tap me on the shoulder and say, 'Excuse me, that would cost me 10 sen, which is four Singapore cents.'

I guess I should appreciate my cheap pandan leaves, and bake more pandan chiffons – the green, green grass cakes of home.

1 July 2011 Update

The video, in Cantonese with Chinese subtitles, shows the boss of Bengawan Solo making pandan chiffon cakes. Guess what? There's one ingredient that she uses but is missing from other pandan cake recipes: condensed milk. Maybe that's the secret to her money spinner? I'm quite happy with my recipe, so I'm not going to tweak it. Of course, you may feel differently, in which case condensed milk could be the answer. Good luck!

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How to Make Chicken Satay & Peanut Sauce

Do you know how satay sauce gets its tinge of yellow? Turmeric? Wrong! The golden hue comes from roasted peanuts, which have to be finely ground and boiled to release their colour.

The first round of satay sauce I made was too chunky because the peanuts were all roughly chopped as per the recipe. So for the second round, I pulverized half of the peanuts for a smoother and thicker consistency. Surprisingly, that also gave me the right shade of colour for the sauce.

Aaah, so that's how, and why!

I was following the satay sauce recipe in The Best of Singapore Cooking, and wondering why the roasted peanuts had to be boiled. Now I know! I thought I had to add a pinch of turmeric to make the sauce yellowish but that was unnecessary and, I'm sure, totally wrong.

Besides changing the colour of the sauce, the finely ground peanuts also enhanced the . . . 'satay flavour'. You know what I mean, that special flavour and fragrance unique to satay, that makes satay taste like satay?

For the chicken, I used the oven's grill function. What, no charcoal?! Ok, before the satay police arrests me for committing a crime against satay, let me say that the chicken was really succulent even without basting. A charcoal fire imparts a wonderful smoky fragrance but, in the wrong hands, it may dry out the meat, especially when basting oil keeps dripping on the charcoal. If there's a miserly amount of meat on the stick, the heat from naked flames would be too intense.

Compared to some satay that looks two-dimensional because the meat is so thinly sliced, my version was of generous proportions – definitely plus size! There wasn't any drama from leaping flames, dancing sparks or furious fanning, but there was plenty of juicy, succulent meat.

How good were the satay and satay sauce? Well, these were some of the comments I got: 'Where's the ketuput?' 'No ketuput ah?' 'Someone ate all the ketuput?'

Aaaa . . . argh! There's no ketuput. I don't know how to make ketuput. NO KETUPUT, OK? NO KE . . . TU . . . PUT! Om, om . . . OMOMOMOMOM!


Just kidding, folks. No one said anything about ketuput, but I did think the satay was missing something because there wasn't any rice cake cooked in coconut leaves. So I did a search, and found this:



Hmm, the weaving looks doable. Once I know how to do that, with coconut leaves instead of ribbons, the rest is a doddle. Fill the ketuput with rice and boil it – for five hours! And there's a coconut tree at St Pat's, just by Marine Parade Road, that can be quite handy. It's a funny looking tree because all you see is a circle of coconut leaves hovering just above the ground, instead of way up there, and the trunk is completely hidden by the leaves. I think it probably holds the Guinness record for the shortest coconut tree ever. I could just reach out and pluck some leaves for ketuput! Whilst I'm at it, I might as well get a few more for otak-otak, and there're several mangosteen trees not too far from St Pat's . . . .

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Thai Stuffed Chicken Wings – Good Stuff!

If you hate bones as much as this chap who's gritting his teeth, and staring daggers at the person who's making him gnaw his food like Bo . . .

. . . then Stuffed Chicken Wings would be your kinda thing.

No bones; no worries! You'll be licking your lips, not gritting your teeth.

There you go, crispy chicken wings filled with fresh, juicy prawns, entirely boneless except for the tips – which I love gnawing on, but that's totally optional. What's not optional is the sweet chilli sauce . . . nor the ice-cold beer.

You don't say! . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . .

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Stuffed Tau Pok – Cousin of Chinese Rojak

Working out the recipe for Chinese Rojak didn't seem like work since it didn't involve any cooking. In fact, stirring and tasting was my kind of entertainment. Once I figured out how it was done, I wolfed down a huge bowl of fruits and vegetables. That was my '5 a day' as per doctor's orders, in one shot.

I then made a bucketload of the sauce, and kept some chopped up fruits and veggies in the fridge. When I felt like having rojak, all it took was 30 seconds. Rojak had never been so good and quick.

The readymade supply didn't last long and soon, I had to whip up another batch. This time, oh boy, it seemed like a lot of work!

Making the tamarind water was a real pain 'cause it was too thick for the strainer, so I had to pick out the seeds one by one . . . by one . . . . I counted up to 127, then started chanting, 'Om . . . .' Followed by deep and slow breathing . . . .

Meanwhile, the peanuts were roasting away. I had to stir them a couple of times so that they browned evenly. And then I had to rub off all the skins. And then I had to toss 'em high in the air outside the window so that the wind blew the skins away. Luckily, the wind direction was cooperative and nothing flew into the house. A round of vacuuming would have made me go 'Aaaaargh!' 'Om . . . .' again.

Finally, I had to get down to the chopping, slicing, measuring, dragging out the mini chopper to give the peanuts a whirl . . . .

I knew exactly what I had to do, so it was rather boring. I need something new!

Since I was, ahem, a veteran rojak maker (with a grand total of two weeks' experience), making a sauce for stuffed tau pok seemed like the natural progression. I made basically the same sauce as for Chinese rojak but added lime juice, kecap manis, and a thin instead of thick tamarind juice. I also added some palm sugar, which made the sweetness more nuanced. Mmmmm . . . . It was nice. Eaten with tau pok stuffed full of cucumber and blanched bean sprouts, the combination was surprisingly different from Chinese Rojak. It was lighter and tasted of veggies, in a good way.

I think I'm done with rojak anything for a while. Oooh, what's that coming out of my ears?

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