sunday is chicken stock day again

An eventful trip to Gua Musang has resulted in a bit of a delay in updating my blog. I hope I have not lose any readers out there (if there are any?). Haha.

Anyway, I'm going to continue about the chicken stock thingy because it is a Sunday. For those of you who have try out this simple and wholesome recipe, I hope the chicken stock has serve you well. Do you remember that we do have those cooked chicken after straining the stock properly?

This is what I normally will do,

I will shred some up for sandwich fillings preparations (for that lazy afternoon when cooking is the least I want to do). Mix the shredded chicken with good quality mayo, a bit of premium butter, season well with salt and pepper. Or to go further, spiced up the filling with cayenne pepper or cumin powder. For that added crunch, add crispy bacon bits... I recalled that a friend did mention that it is hellish to eat wholemeal bread. But I assure you, not with these fillings... but please do not count the calories. God bless your soul...

I will also keep some of these for that kuay teow soup luncheon or dice up the chicken into cubes for fried rice and stir fried vegetable dishes. Nothing is wasted in my kitchen and I do take pride in that.

Have a great weekend folks.

let’s fry them

Instead of the usual fried chicken wings for kiddies parties. Why not fry some squids. Both the kids and adults will love them. Serve them hot as mains or snacks. These snacks are great for watching that football match too.

Preparation: Now that you have cleaned the squids nicely. You can “flower” the squids by scoring lightly with the tip of the knife in crisscross fashion on the inside of the body. Lastly, cut up the body into bite size strips. The head may be served whole or halved if the head is too big.

Dry up any excess moisture from the sotong pieces with paper kitchen towel and marinate the squids with a beaten egg.

While marinating the squids with an egg, prepare and mix some plain flour (80%) with rice flour (20%) in a mixing bowl.

Seasonings: Sparingly add some ground cumin spice, ground coriander, sea salt, ground black pepper, paprika into the flour mix. Mix well with a whisk.

Cooking:

Heat up a generous amount of oil in a fryer. I would normally use a wok as it is quicker and save on gas consumption. Once the oil is almost on the verge of “smoking”, the oil is ready for frying. Simply coat the squid pieces with flour mixture. Dust off any excess flour and slide them into the well heated oil. Bear in mind that frying seafood requires quick handling and workings. I would recommend frying the squids in batches to avoid over cooking the squids.

Once the sotong is nicely brown, remove them from the oil and drain off the excess oil.

More seasoning can still be sprinkled to the fried squids if necessary. I love to dust 七味粉 before serving.

Sotong

I love to go squiding. The best sotong season is from June to early September. A quick check with the fishing charter to see if the sotongs have arrive. With a good team of sotong anglers, to hit 600 pieces of sotong is a relative easy task. An arsenal of 3-4.5 size squid jigs in orange and pink colors will suffice. Opt for thin FC leader will ensure a hookup most certainly… Do ensure that sotongs are properly iced as the carcasses will continue to produce “heat” for a while. A tip on selecting sotongs from wet market, choose those with a “translucent” body with very clear spots and bright eyes. The body should be firm to touch.

A tip on selecting sotongs from wet market, choose those with a “translucent” body with very clear spots and bright eyes. The body should be firm to touch. Fresh squid should not smell fishy or "squidy".

Though squids and it’s mollusks brethren are nice to eat, they can be nightmarish to clean because of their notorious ink sac. However, I have a simple way to overcome the mess of cleaning sotong with just 2 cuts. I would divide and pack the whole squids into several “Food Ingredient Packs” and freeze the packs. Do not wash the squids until you are ready to cook them.

Remove the packs from the freezer when you are ready to cook. Wait for the squids to thaw.

The right time to clean a squid is when you are able to slit the body lengthwise with a knife while the squid is still in a semi frozen state. The body is now slit open with the guts and innards still in solidified state. Remove the solidified gut and “plastic” spine as a whole.

The second cut is make between the eyes and the tentacles. Cut through the head and squeeze out the beak.

No ink is leaked even when the cut has punctured the ink sac as the ink sac is still frozen.

偷师

During our fishing trip to Thailand. We had this particular stir fried vegetable dish almost every day at the local 大排挡. I could not recall the name of this dish. However I did recall that the dish have fresh spinach stir fried with sliver of roast pork and fresh whole chilies. I had the opportunity to steal a look at the lady cooking this dish as our table is next to her stove and “work station”. I get to learn how this simple and delicious dish can be served at home…

Well there isn’t really a recipe, I hope my narration on how to cook this wonderful dish will give you an idea how this dish is done.

As always, I did not follow the “recipe” to the letter. I substituted the spinach with fresh kai lan that came in “convenient pack” at $1.20 from our local super mart. I would remove the leafy part and cut the stem length wise into thin slices. You can substitute with any greens of the day of your preference.

You will need to pick up some roast pork of about 250 gms and have them sliced up. You may want to decide if the porky slab should be thin or laden with fat. I would prefer the fatty sort. A general tip on how to buy roast pork is that always buy from a reputable stall that sell their pork fast and did their roasting act daily. Do sample their roast pork to make sure that the roast pork do not have a “porky” smell. The fat should be whitish and firm. Lastly, the roast pork should not be “slimy” to touch.

You will need some fresh chilies though I would use the dried ones as they are more convenient to keep. Bear in mind that you will need to use more dried chilies in proportion to the fresh ones. I stick to a ratio of 1.25 dried produce : 1 fresh produce.

The rest of the ingredients are,

a few thin slices of ginger.

2 whole garlic.

3 tbsp oyster sauce

¼ cup chicken stock mixed with 1 tbsp fish sauce

White pepper

葱油

Heat some oil in the wok and sautéed the ginger slices, dried chillies and whole garlic till lightly brown.

Add the roast pork slices and fried for ½ minute.

Add the kai lan or green vegetables of your choice. Toss them around and add the oyster sauce. Fry them till you notice that the vegetable has changed to a different hue of green.

Add ¼ cup of chicken stock with fish sauce. Reduce the stock and very quickly remove the fried vegetable from the heat.

Serve the fried vegetable with 葱油 and a bit of white pepper.

Agaration

(ah-gah-ray-shun)
The noun form of the Malay verb "agak-agak", which means to estimate.

I will use this term many times over like a broken record as food tasting is pretty subjective. There is really no right or wrong in food tasting as some may like it spicy, sweeter or even bitter. More so when it comes to seasoning. If you like it saltier, add more salt then. So do not split hair over it. However, I do follow this golden rule, “it’s always best to err on the side of putting less seasoning first”.

IMHO, a recipe is just a general guideline on how a dish will most likely taste. There are just too many variation (from the ingredients to the size of a teaspoon we use) that makes precise measurement difficult. An example will be, if the recipe calls for a “large” egg. How do we determine how large an egg should be? If we were to use a smaller egg, wouldn’t the seasoning called by the recipe a tab too much? Common sense and cooking goes hand in hand… Keep that precise measurement mentality for science class or when you need to build that rocket ship to Mars. Your cooking will taste better if you, “cho nan agak agak jiu ho”.

Table for one?

So how do I cook for myself when I’m home alone? I’m sure it is no less a daunting task to cook for one either. However, with carefully planning and preparation of food ingredients “packs” every weekend. The task to cook for just one person will not be difficult and time consuming.

We do have those little pack of chicken stock tucked away in the freezer right?

1. Cook the chicken stock pack over the stove with a small sauce pan. Adjust taste with seasoning or chicken powder if necessary.

2. Blanch the kuay teow, shredded chicken and chai xin in another pot of boiling water. Plate the blanched items in a bowl.

3. Pour the boiled chicken stock over the kuay teow, shredded chicken and chai xin.

4. Garnished with 葱油, white pepper and served.

Prep time just under 15 minutes.

There is really no reason to gorge yourself silly with those instant noodles.

I would prefer the fresh kuay teow from the market stall as the fresh ones are not easily broken into bits and taste better. However, the supermarket pre packed kuay teow will keep better for longer period of time. A plus for busy couples.

Green Apple, Celery Smoothie

How about a glass of refreshing smoothie to keep those pesky heat away? Smoothies are quick and easy to fix. Invest in a good blender to do a better job. A smoothie is a blended, chilled beverage made from fresh fruit or vegetables. In addition to fruit, many smoothies include crushed ice, frozen fruit, honey or yoghurt. You just need to be creative or just simply “fruits of the day”.

I like to add bitter gourd(the “mini” variant) to celery and green apple. The elderly folks have the idea that with the inclusion of bitter gourd and Chinese celery will help to lower blood pressure and keep one as cool as a cucumber…

Celery 40%

Green Apple 25%

Bitter Gourd 15%

Chinese celery 20%

Ice

Salt to taste

Celery forms the bulk of the ingredients while the green apples help to mediate the bitterness of the mini bitter gourd.

Cheerz.