Kueh Bangkit

Bangkit isn't a kit for banging. "Bang" is "香" in Teochew and Hokkien; "kit" is "cake" mangled; "kueh" is . . . (just about) anything edible any local delicacy served kinda snack size. In short, "kueh bangkit" means fragrant cookies.

Butterscotch Popcorn

To make corn pop, the moisture in the kernel must be heated and turned into steam. When the steam builds up enough pressure, it bursts through the wall of the kernel, creating popcorn. The heat mustn't be too strong or the outside of the kernel would harden and stop the corn from exploding. It mustn't be too gentle either or the steam would leak out of the kernel and not explode.

Butter Cake

When I was looking at butter cake recipes online, I was surprised to find people moaning about cracks in their cakes. That seemed rather odd  to me because the butter cakes my mother bought when I was a kid all had a big crack on top. Isn't the ruptured top the signature of butter cakes?

Japanese Soufflé Cheesecake (日式芝士蛋糕)

Soufflé cheesecake is the Japanese take on cheesecake. It's much lighter than the American or German version and not at all cheesy – the ideal cheesecake for cheesecake haters.  The recipe I'm sharing is adapted from Diana's Desserts. I've made four changes to the original recipe:

Ginger Milk Pudding (薑汁撞奶)

薑汁撞奶 is a Cantonese pudding made with ginger juice and buffalo milk, plus sugar to taste. Without steaming, baking, gelatine or agar-agar, the milk is able to solidify into a custard just by mixing with some ginger juice. Sounds really easy, right? Hey, the devil is in the details!

Hong Kong Egg Tarts (港式蛋挞)

The best tool for flattening pastry dough isn't a rolling pin but a plate. Just place a round blob of dough between two plastic sheets, then press it evenly with a flat-bottomed plate. Peel off the top sheet of plastic, then flip the dough into a tart mould.

Kueh Ko Swee (Kuih Kosui)

Knock knock!

Who's there?

Kueh hamba!

Kueh ham . . .  who?

Kueh hamba, aka kueh ko swee and kuih kosui!

Sambal Stingray (II)

The key to making good sambal stingray is a piece of stingray wing that's fresh and young.

There's nothing more disgusting than stale fish . . . . Ok, there are lots, actually, but you know what I mean. The best fish for eating is one that's still swimming. If that's not available, then at least one that's firm, shiny, and hasn't stopped swimming for too long.

Kuih Bingka Ambon

Knock knock!

Who's there?

Honeycomb cake!

Honeycomb cake who?

Honey, come quick! The honeycomb cake is delicious!

Silly knock-knock joke out of the way, let's get down to the serious business of baking, shall we?

Kuih Seri Muka/Kueh Salat (II)

To live up to its name, kuih seri muka must have a layer of custard that's smooth as a baby's bottom because "seri muka" means beautiful face.

Unlike humans, kuih doesn't need cosmetics, plastic surgery or botox. All it requires is low, gentle heat whilst it's cooking, and the "muka" would be "seri" as can be.

Cereal Butter Prawns (II)

Tips for making cereal butter prawns:

⋈ I've come across recipes that use oat which, if you think about it, isn't crisp before you cook it. So you fry it in butter and it's supposed to crisp up? No way! It just turns into a soggy mess. When you see recipes that use oat, run!

Learn How to Make Kueh Lapis in 5 Minutes

Knock knock!

Who's there?

Kueh lapis!

Kueh lapis who?

Kueh lah, please make some kueh!

Soon Kueh (Turnip Dumplings) (II)

Making 笋粿 is a hell of a lot of work! There, I've said it before anyone moans about soon kueh being a hell of a lot of work. Even if you have a food processor, which I don't, and you're not making a video of the whole process, which I was, all that stir-frying and rolling is still a lot of work. Are you counting? I just said "a lot of work" three times . . . make that four times.

Sui Gaw (水餃)

Dried sole is a crucial ingredient in sui gaw. It's grilled or roasted till dry and crisp, then pounded so that it's not too small (you wouldn't be able to taste it) nor too big (would be gritty). Added to the filling, dried sole gives sui gaw a unique toasty flavour. And if the stock is simmered with a few chunks of the dried fish, that's even better.

Har Cheong Gai (Prawn Paste Chicken) (II)

How many ways are there to fry chicken?

More ways than there are to skin a . . . c-a-t. (Shhhh! Don't let the kitties hear us.)

Every culture has its own version of fried chicken. That is the chicken's destiny. That is why it crosses the road.

Sambal Ikan Bilis (II)

Ini ikan bilis; ini kacang.

"Beep beep beep! KT has reached maximum capacity of her Behasa Melayu."

What?!

That is so not true. I know lots more Malay words . . . like, um, nasi lemak, mee rebus, ayam, ikan, babi, pulut, pisang goreng . . .

Teochew Fish Porridge (潮州鱼粥)

How do you tell if the fish you wanna buy is fresh? (a) It doesn't smell fishy. (b) The eyes are bright. (c) The gills are red. (d) It feels firm. (e) The skin is shiny. (f) All of the above. If you choose 'f', then sorry, you're wrong . . . mostly.

Bak Chang (肉粽; Meat Dumplings)

My mother made two types of 粽子 every year, kee chang and bak chang. The former is quite straightforward; it's just glutinous rice and lye water wrapped in bamboo leaves. Bak chang, however, is extremely varied in ingredients, seasoning, cooking method, and shape depending on which part of China your family is from. For us – we're Teochews – there're two types indigenous to our culture. The more elaborate type, called 双烹, has a small ball of sweet red bean paste wrapped in leaf lard. My mother always did the simpler type without the sweet red bean paste. The filling is 100% savory with fatty pork belly, chestnuts, mushrooms, dried prawns and fried shallots.

Kee Chang (碱水粽)

The Song Dynasty some 1,000 years ago was one of the golden eras of Chinese poetry. The more famous poets like 蘇東坡 and 李後主 are still household names now, more or less.

And then there's the whole bunch of guys from the Tang Dynasty, such as 李白 and 白居易, whose poems have been around for about 1,200 years. That's an awfully long time but it's nothing compared to 曹操 and 曹丕 who have clocked in almost 1,800 years

10-Minute Kaya (II)

To enjoy a kaya toast brekky at home:

1. Make kaya in 10 minutes using the recipe here, up to one week ahead. On no account make kaya the traditional way which involves a double-boiler and stirring for hours on end. If you have a lot of free time, I suggest you bathe your dog, read a book, or take a nap.

2. The night before the kaya toast breakfast, remove eggs from the fridge to let them come to room temperature.

Kueh Bengka Ubi (II)

If you can buy ready-grated tapioca and ready-squeezed fresh coconut milk, it'd criminal not to make kueh bengka ubi. It is so easy, so quick, so good.

It's hard to come up with tips for making kueh bengka ubi because the Malay/Nyonya cake is really straightforward. Even after eating lots of kueh to fuel my brain, I can think of only a few which anyone with some common sense/knowledge would know:

Lemon Coke Chicken Wings

What's better than fried chicken wings? STICKY fried chicken wings! I don't think I've ever met any sticky food I don't like (natto isn't food unless you're Japanese). I've certainly never met chicken wings I don't like. And coke is tasty, so why not put the two together? Chicken and coke make a natural pair. When chicken meets coke is kinda like when Harry met Sally. It's so obvious they should be together. (If you're too young to know what When Harry Met Sally is, click here.)

Orh Kueh/Steamed Yam Cake (II)

If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many words is my video worth? Let's see . . .

length of video = 5 minutes 10 seconds = 310 seconds
frames per second = 30
total no. of frames/pictures = 310 x 30 = 9,300
1 frame = 1,000 words
9,300 frames = 9,300,000 words

Samsui Ginger Chicken

Do you make 白切鸡, 'white-cut chicken'? If you do, chances are you stuff the cavity of the chicken with spring onions and ginger. After checking out the recipes online and in a few cookbooks, I think nine out of 10 people stuff their chicken. It's like these people, when they see an empty chicken, simply can't resist shoving in something. If you're one of them, I'm sorry to have to tell you, the method is wrong.

Why is it wrong?

Fried Spring Rolls (Video #135)

Regular readers of this blog would know I made my first cooking video last week. So why is this video #135 instead of #2?

Heh . . . heh . . . heh . . . 

Because I'm following a Chinese custom.

In the old days far, far away in China, an abundance of male heirs to carry on the family name was considered good fortune. So much so that if someone had only one or two sons – which was tantamount to a tragedy – he'd say he had 11 or 12. IOW, it was how many he actually had, plus 10. Hence, the eldest son became #11, and the second son #12.

Note that the creative accounting applied to sons only. It was perfectly alright to have only one daughter, or even none at all.

Pandan Chiffon Cake (II)

I've made my first video. This is my new hobby now, making cooking videos. It is fun!

The filming was a lot easier than I'd expected, and the "post production" a lot more fun.

Playing the film editor, I watched myself crack eggs in slow motion, made the upside down cake look like a (clumsy) flying saucer; zoomed in on my . . . .

OMG, my hands look so dry!

Pulut Inti

What do pulut inti, kueh kochee, pulut chawan, lopes, ondeh ondeh, kueh salat, pulut tataa, kueh doldol, kueh bengka pulut, and kueh wajek durian have in common, apart from all of them being Nyonya kueh-kueh?

The 10 kueh-kueh are all made with coconut, and glutinous rice or glutinous rice flour. Yet they're all different as can be in texture, taste and look.

Orh Kueh/Steamed Yam Cake (I)

Making good orh kueh starts with choosing yam that's light for its size. Lighter ones have less water, and less watery ones are nicer because they're more fluffy, powdery and fragrant.

Next, be generous when trimming the yam. The outer part is usually waxy and tasteless. I usually cut 2-3 cm off the top and bottom, and 1-2 cm off the sides.

To enhance its fragrance, the yam should be fried and then seasoned lightly with salt and five-spice powder. Don't let the yam brown or it'd be leathery.

Braised Chicken with Chestnuts

My mother always used dried chestnuts, so I'm clueless about prepping fresh ones. Using my common sense, I figure boiling should be the right method for tackling fresh chestnuts' shell and peel. It seems like the obvious thing to do, right?

Jamie Oliver Cooks Hainanese Chicken Rice

This is how the Naked Chef makes Singapore's iconic dish, Hainanese Chicken Rice:

The recipe is from Jamie Oliver's column in the Daily Mail, 2 March 2012. The headline reads, 'Cook with Jamie: East is best! These Far Eastern broths are (blah blah blah) good for you'.

How to Make GOOD Fried Rice

The most common tip for making fried rice is: use day-old rice because it's fluffy and no longer sticky. Unfortunately, fluffy rice alone doesn't make good fried rice. The chewiness of the rice is equally important, and that doesn't change much once the rice is cooked.

How to cook rice that's chewy? By steaming, so that the rice doesn't directly sit in boiling water.

When rice is cooked in boiling water, the cell walls break down, allowing the starch inside to leak out, absorb too much water and turn soft. The change in texture is irreversible, so the rice isn't chewy even if you let it rest overnight. Hence, rice cooked by boiling, in a rice cooker or on the stove, is destined to make fried rice that's at best mediocre even if it's day-old rice.

In contrast, rice that's steamed has no direct contact with boiling water. Cooked at a lower temperature, the cell walls don't break down much, so very little starch escapes. Hence, all the grains are chewy and they don't stick together. The overnight rest, a must for boiled rice, isn't necessary for steamed rice. This fried rice, made with 15-minute-old steamed rice, is as fluffy as can be:

Temperature isn't the only important factor. The amount of water absorbed by the rice is equally crucial. Too much water would make the rice loses its chewiness even if it's steamed. How much is too much? It depends on the type of starch found in the rice.

There're two types of rice starch: amylopectin and amylose. The latter makes rice fluffy and not sticky because it's insoluble. Basmati rice, for instance, is very fluffy because it has a high percentage of amylose. Amylopectin, on the other hand, makes rice chewy by absorbing water to form a gel. Glutinous rice is extremely chewy because it contains mostly amylopectin.

You might have come across the tip that aged, old rice is necessary for making good fried rice because it has more amylose than newly harvested rice. The tip isn't entirely correct. Rice that's too old has too much amylose and not enough amylopectin to make it chewy. It's fluffy alright but it's not chewy, and the texture gets worse when the rice cools down because amylose hardens when it's cold. New rice, on the other hand, runs a risk of turning mushy because it has a lot of amylopectin, which becomes soft if it absorbs too much water.

The best rice – that's easy to work with, fluffy, chewy, and doesn't harden when it's cold – should have a good balance of the two types of starch. I'd call it middle-aged. (Click here to learn more about old vs new rice from Harold McGee.)

So, the rice is steamed to fluffy and chewy perfection, and half the battle is won. Ready to stir and fry?

To win the second half of the battle without wok hei – the smoky, charred aroma created with a professional-grade stove – ingredients are the home cook's only weaponry. Forget about mincing a few cloves of garlic. You need a heap of ingredients – an atomic bomb, in other words, not a few hand grenades – or the rice would be tasteless. But not too much either or the rice would be overwhelmed. (You want to bomb a city, not destroy the entire planet.)

The mix of ingredients must be chosen carefully so that the rice is infused with both fragrance and umaminess. Shallots, dried prawns and salted fish make a great combination. The Chinese would mince these ingredients finely but I think the Nyonya method is far superior. Pounding with a mortar and pestle achieves a very fine grind which a knife can't possibly create. Imagine each and every grain of rice coated with countless specks of shallots, dried prawns and salted fish which have been fried till brown and fragrant. The aroma and umaminess pop in your mouth even before you start chewing.

Adding chunks of meat or seafood to fried rice would be to miss the point completely. It's fried rice, not stir-fried chicken or whatever. A modest amount, cut pea-sized or flaked if it's crab, adds variety but doesn't overwhelm. Each little piece is eaten with some rice in one mouthful, which wouldn't be possible if it's cut too big.

Most people expect eggs in Chinese fried rice so into the wok they go, fried rather than raw so that the rice doesn't sit in liquid eggs and lose its chewiness. Don't forget that eggs would absorb some aroma and umaminess, so there must be sufficient dried prawns, salted fish and shallots – or whatever you fancy – to flavour not just the rice but also the eggs.

Lastly, add salt and ground white pepper to taste, and lots of spring onion or maybe iceberg lettuce, and the job's done. Easy peasy.

DRIED PRAWN, SALTED FISH & CHICKEN FRIED RICE (虾米咸鱼鸡丁炒饭) (Recipe for 4 persons) 360 g long grain Jasmine white rice (I use Songhe brand) wash and drain thoroughly; place in 18-cm round cake tin; add 320 ml water (weight of rice plus water is 720 g); let rice soak 10 minutes 50 g dried prawns 50 g salted ikan kurau (threadfin), bones and scales removed if any 100 g shallots, peel 5½ tbsp vegetable oil 2 eggs (use 1 tsp to marinate chicken) beat with 2 tbsp milk, big dash of ground white pepper, and 1 tsp each of light soya sauce, white sesame oil and Shaoxing wine 200 g deboned chicken thigh or drumstick wash, drain and dice 1½ cm; marinate with dash of ground white pepper, and 1 tsp each of light soya sauce, Shaoxing wine, egg and white sesame oil for 15 minutes or longer salt to taste, about ¼ tsp ground white pepper to taste, about ½ tsp 60 g spring onions trim and wash; dice to yield 1 cup (sounds like a lot!) Steam rice over rapidly boiling water for 15 minutes, then check whether rice needs more water. If surface layer is cooked but a bit hard, rice is ideal. Steam another 5 minutes – surface layer should now be soft but chewy – then remove rice from steamer. If surface layer is not cooked, sprinkle with 1-2 tbsp water and continue steaming for another 5 minutes. Repeat if necessary, till rice is just soft. Remove rice from steamer. If surface layer is cooked and soft, remove rice immediately (and use less water next time you steam rice). After rice is cooked, fluff and set aside to firm up, about 20 minutes. Cover if not frying immediately. If the rice is fried just after steaming, it's still fluffy and 'Q' but the soft grains would break into small pieces when stirred. You may skip the cooldown when hunger is more important than presentation, or if you can toss rice like a pro. Whilst rice is cooking, rinse dried prawns, salted fish and shallots. Cut into small pieces, then blitz in mini chopper or pound till very fine. If pounding, start with salted fish, then dried prawns and finally shallots. In a well-seasoned wok, make a thin omelette with eggs using ½ tbsp vegetable oil. When omelette is almost done, chop into small pieces with spatula. Transfer to a plate and set aside. In the same wok, heat remaining 5 tbsp vegetable oil till almost smoking. Add salted fish, dried prawns and shallots. Fry over medium heat till brown and fragrant. Increase heat to high. Add chicken and stir through. Add rice and eggs. Stir-fry till chicken is just cooked. Taste and add salt if necessary. Stir through. Turn off heat. Sprinkle with ground white pepper and spring onions. Stir through. Plate and serve.

15-Minute Flower Crab Dry Curry

If you like crab but can't stomach the idea of being a crab killer, flower crab would be right up your alley. The blue crustaceans are mostly sold dead; live ones caught by local kelongs are available only once in a blue, blue moon, when you're extremely lucky. Or maybe unlucky if you're not into buying food that's still moving.

Kuih Seri Muka/Kueh Salat (I)

The custard layer of my kueh salat (aka kuih seri muka) is a pale avocado green. That's because it's made with (a lot of) pandan leaves. Do you know how the bibiks of yesteryears get a brighter green, naturally? They used dark green leaves called daun pandan serani/suji, which look like pandan leaves but are smaller and darker.

XO Cognac Fried Chicken Wings

I have a friend who knows a thing or two about food. He doesn't cook but he's a discerning eater. If he says a restaurant is good, then it's either very good or at least above average. His restaurant recommendations never disappoint me, and I have total trust in his opinion.

One day, this friend of mine asked me to bring him some bak chang made by his mother. He was living in New York at the time, and I was going to visit him for a couple of days.

Smuggle some comfort food to the other side of the planet for a dear old friend? No problemo.

I hopped along to his mother's place, and Aunty gave me six bak chang to hand-carry to her son, plus another six as reward for the bak chang mule.