Ham Roll

Very simple but quite time consuming dish that I don't usually prepare. It's ham roll with asparagus. All you need are some asparagus and ham. This is quite a tasty dish where you get the saltiness taste from the ham blend with the natural sweetness from the asparagus. I enjoy it very much.
Here's how I prepared.

• Cut asparagus into 3 pieces long
• Slice the ham and blanch the ham in boiling water to reduce the saltness
  
• Blanch asparagus in boiling water and oil
• Roll and seal the edge with corn flour
• Steam ham roll for about 8 -10 mins
• In a bowl mix in some soy sauce, salt, sugar, water and corn starch.
  
• Bring the mixture to boil and pour on the roll
• Ready to serve.
  

Nam Yee Char Siu

It's char siu time again but this time I found a recipe to prepare char siu using Nam Yee, one of my favorite ingredient. The recipe does not call for any usual ingredient such as garlic, ginger or hoisin sauce, in stead it uses nam yee, ketchup and oyster sauce.

Since it was snowing out site, this time I decide to baked char siu it in my oven. It was a long process but the outcome was rather delicious. The char siu was juicy and the taste was wonderful.

Here's my adapted version.

Ingredients (click here link to the original recipe)

• 3lb country style BBQ Pork ribs

Marinade

• 4 tbsp oyster sauce
• 4 tbsp ketchup
• 3 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tsp sesame oil
• 3 tbsp sugar
• 1 piece red fermented beancurd
• 1 tbsp Chinese wine
• 1 tbsp five spice powder

Glaze :

• 1 tbsp honey
  
• 1 tbsp water
• Remaining Marinate
  

Method:

• Whisk together all the marinade ingredients in a bowl.
  
• Pierce the pork with a fork and place pork in the marinate in the fridge for overnight.
• Mix all the glaze ingredient together and cook over medium heat until it’s syrupy, about 2 – 4 minutes.
• Preheat the oven to 300ºF. Line a tray with foil and set the wire rack over the tray.
  
• Place the pork on the wire rack. Pour hot water into ray until enough to cover the bottom of the tray and cover the tray tightly with foil. Roast on the middle rack for 20 minutes.
  
• Remove the foil and roast for another 40 to 45 minutes, until the edges of the meat start to brown.
  
• Turn on the broiler (keeping the rack on the middle rack), brush the pork with glaze and broil the pork for about 3 minutes. Flip the pork over then brush the pork with glaze and broil for another 3 minutes, until the pork is a dark brownish red and evenly caramelized.
  

BBQ Pork ( Char Siu)

Running out of idea what to cook last weekend and the BBQ Pork country style was on sales last weekend for $1.29 per lb, so we decided to grill up some Char Siu and I could probably made some Lor Mai Kai from the left over.Here's the simple ingredient for marination

Ingredients:

• 3lb BBQ Pork Country Style
• 10 tbsp Hoisin sauce
• 4 tsp garlic powder
• 8 tsp soy sauce
• 1 cup sugar
• 4 tbsp wine
• 2 tsp 5 spice powder
• 2.5 tsp salt
• Dash of pepper

We used the plain old charcoal grill to BBQ the Char Siu for about 30 minute until the meat is cooked. Grilling with charcoal added some smoke flavor to the char siu, that's why we always prefer to use charcoal for grilling.

I prepared some BBQ for Aidan as well. Grill chicken tender. Aren't they looks delish?

Hubby New Toy

I bought hubby a new gas grill as a birthday gift this year. The grill has been sitting the garage since few weeks back. This week we decided to invite some friends over to our house for BBQ, so hubby can show off his new toy and his BBQ skill :)

For a startup, hubby decided to try baby back rib. We bought a slap of baby back rib and marinated with the Spice Rub Recipes from Little Corner of Mine's BBQ recipe.

Ingredient:

• 1 Tbsp + 1/2 tsp. paprika
• 1 1/2 tsp. chili powder
• 1 3/4 tsp. cumin
• 1 1/2 tsp. brown sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp. kosher salt
• 3/4 tsp. dried oregano
• 3/4 tsp. black pepper
• 1 tsp. white pepper
• 1/2 tsp. cayenne
• 1 tsp garlic powder (optional)
  

Method:

• Rub the spice on both side of the rib the day before and marinate in the refrigerator overnight.
• Preheat the grill by turned on 2 out of the 4 burners alternately to high heat.
• Once the grill is heat up, places the rib in between the burner to make sure there is no direct heat to the rib and turn the heat to low.
• Covered the grill and let it cook next 30 minutes.
• Turn the rib over and cook for another 15- 20 minutes.
• When the rib is almost ready, brush the rib with your favorite BBQ sauce and let it cook for another 5 - 10 minutes. Turn to other site and repeating the sauce brushing process.

*If you interested in oven grilling, check out the method provided from Little Corner of Mine

Hubby and friends loves the BBQ rib very much, and his friend even consider to try again sometime soon. ( Hope we are invited for the feast.)

So what's your next BBQ agenda, Honey?

Babi Masak Kecap

Another recipe I tried last week from the Green Mangoes and Lemon Grass with slightly modification and substitution. The original recipe called for 1 1/2 cup of water, I only use 1/2 cup and mine has more sauce than the one showed in the recipe... hmm not sure why.

Ingredients:

• 6 dried chilies
• 8 shallots
• 4 cloves garlic
• 2in ginger
• 1 tsp balacan powder
• 11/4lb pork cut into cube
• 3 tbsp sweet dark soy sauce
• 1 tbsp lime juice
• 3 tbsp oil
• Salt to taste

Method:

• Process chillies, shallots, garlic, ginger in a food processor until smooth paste
• Heat oil in a pan, add chili paste and balancan powder and stir fry over low-medium heat until fragrant.
• Add in pork and stir fry over medium heat until it changed color. About 5 minutes.
• Add soy sauce, water and lime juice. Bring to boil. Cover with lid and let it simmer over low heat. Stirring occasionally. Cook until pork is tender and the sauce has thickened.
• Add salt to taste.

Pork and Taro Root in Fermented Bean Sauce

When I ran out of idea what to cook, I will ask my mother in law for suggestion. This is one of the recipes she provided via a phone call to HK long time back. She doesn’t provide the exact quantity she uses but just a rough idea on the ingredients and method. I try to recreate this dish from my memory and these are the ingredient and quantity I used. You may adjust the quantity to suit your taste.

Ingredients:

• 8oz minced pork
• ½ tsp corn starch
• 1 tbsp of soy sauce
• 1lb of taro root quartered and slice into 1/4inch thick
• 2 tbsp fermented black bean
• 3 clove of garlic
• 2 tbsp oil
• 1 cup water

Method:

• Marinate pork with soy sauce and corn starch. set aside.
• Clean the fermented black bean water and discard the water.
• Remove the skin of garlic. Minced the garlic together with black bean. You can use mortar to mash them into paste consistency.
• Heat 2 tbsp oil in a pan, add the garlic and black bean paste in the pan and sauté until fragrant.
• Then add in pork and stir fry until the pork turn brown.
• Add in taro root and stir fry for another minute.
• Add in water and cover the pan with lid. Turn the heat to medium and let it simmer for 10 minutes or until the sauce is thicken. Depends on the thickness and the taro root, you may add more water if needed.

Braised Seacucumber with Pork Loin

Never imagine I cooked this dish but hey I did it. Thanks to my in-law who brought these wonderful dry seacucumbers all the way from Hong Kong and cleaned them for me and also the recipe was provided by my mother in law.

I seldom eat seacucumber at home and usually they only serve seacucumber in the wedding reception dinner. Seacucumber is quite an expensive seafood but according to my in law, they are very nutritious especially to women.

Cleaning Seacucumber takes a lot of patient and steps. I don't really know how to clean them. If I recall correctly, they need to be soak in the water for couple days then boil it with ginger and scallion and then let it sit in the boiling water for another day or 2. The finished seacucumber should be double its size and a good quality of seacucmber should taste tender and not too chewvy after cooking.

Ingredient:

• 1 seacucumber (hoi sum) Soak and cleaned ready to cook
• 1lb pork loin cut into 3/4 inch size
• 10 mushrooms
• 5 scallops
• 10 dry oysters
• 1/4 cup black moss (Fat choy)
• 4 slice of ginger root
• 3 scallion cut into 2 inches long
• 2 -3 tsp oyster sauce

Marinade:

• 1 tsp juice of ginger
• 1 tsp chop garlic
• 1 tbsp Shau Heng wine
• 2 tbsp soy sauce
• 1/4 tsp sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp corn starch

Preparation:

• Soak mushrooms into water until soft then cut into half. Keep the water.
• Soak scallops into water until soft (about 1 hour). Keep the water.
• Soak dry oysters until soft (about 1 hour). Keep the water.
• Combine all soaking water into a larger bowl for later use.
• Soak black moss (Fat choy) and divide the moss into smaller portion.
• Cut seacucumber into 8 to 10 pieces
• Mixed all the marinate ingredients together. Add cut pork loin into marinade and let it marinate for 30 minutes or longer.

Method:

• Heat work with 3-4 tbsp oil and Place the pork on the wok 1 by 1 to brown the meat. Once all the meats are browned, set aside.
• Place sliced ginger root, scallions at the bottom of big pot.
• Place sea cucumber above the ginger and scallion.
• Mix oysters' sauce with 2 1/2 cup of the soaking water in a bowl.
• Pour the mixture into the pot and pour remaining soaking water into the pot until the sea cucumbers are covered with water.
• Bring to boil and let it simmer for another 1 hour.
• Check the pot once a while to make sure the sauce don't get too dry.
• Cook sea cucumber until it reach the tenderness you preferred and the sauce reduced and thicken.
• Add the remaining ingredient: pork loin, mushroom, oyster, black moss, scallops and cook for another 20 to 30 minutes.
• Salt to taste.

7up Pork

I got this recipe from my ex-housemate back when we were study in college. This is a very simple and easy recipe; all you need is a can of 7up and some pork. The original recipe does not call for chilies pepper flake, I like my food a little spicy so I sprinkled some chilies pepper flakes at the end to kick it up a notch and I think it taste wonderful with a little spicy flavor in it.

Ingredients:

• 2.5lb of pork cut into bite size
• 8 fl.oz of 7UP
• Light soy sauce
• Dark soy sauce
• 2 tbsp of oil to brown the meat
• Salt and chilies pepper flakes to taste

Method:

• Mix all soy sauces and meat together and let it marinate for 30 minutes
• Heat the pot with oil and brown the meat
• After the meat turned brown but not filly cooked, remove the access oil and add the 7up
• Turn the heat to medium and let it simmer until the sauce is thicken
• Add salt and chilies flakes to taste