Tofu with thousand year egg (皮蛋豆腐）

Experiment: Tofu with thousand year egg (皮蛋豆腐）

Introduction:
Few weeks ago, my co-worker brought an thousand year egg to office, and said that she’ll have that and tofu for lunch. I was like, “REALLY? I have always heard about it but never tried it!” At lunch time, she cracked the thousand year egg, sliced it, and put it on top of the tofu. She poured some soy sauce on top… and TaDa! There’s a dish of Tofu with Thousand Year Egg. The whole process took like maybe… 2 minutes? It was so simple, yet it tasted so good. So tonight, I decided to give it a try, and make my own version of it.


Materials:
1 box of soft tofu
1 thousand year egg
Bonito flakes
Sliced red ginger
Soy sauce
Sesame oil

Procedure:
1) Take the tofu out from the package, put it on a plate. Steam it if you like, or you can serve it cold.

2) Crack the thousand year egg, peel it, and slice it. Put it on top of the tofu.

3) Put as much bonito flakes as you like on top of the tofu and thousand year egg.

4) Put some sliced red ginger on top of the bonito flakes.

5) Pour soy sauce on top, then sesame oil. DONE!



Result:

Discussion:

1) In case you’re wondering what a thousand year egg is, it looks like this:










Picture taken from Wikipedia.org



You don’t need to cook the egg. When you crack it open, it looks like a hard boiled egg, except that it’s black. And if you’re lucky enough to get good eggs, the yolk would still be quite liquidy, like a soft boiled egg, as shown in the above picture. OH btw, thousand year eggs are made with duck eggs, not chicken eggs.


2) There are many versions of this dish. Some people like to put coriander instead of bonito flakes, and some like to put chopped green onions on top. Well basically you can put whatever you like on top of the tofu!

Pork and Kimchi Rice Bowl (豚キムチ丼）

Experiment: Pork and Kimchi Rice Bowl (豚キムチ丼）

Introduction:
Last weekend, Mr. Clam and I went Downtown to watch some Olympic stuff. We went in a restaurant called “Ebi Ten” fo food. There I tried a rice bowl called “Buta-Kim,” and I REALLY LIKED it! When I was eating it, I thought to myself… “It shouldn’t be too hard to make at home…” So I gave it a try tonight.

Material: (serve 2-3)

200g thinly sliced pork
100g kimchi
1/4 onion, thinly sliced
1/2 tbs chopped garlic
2 tbs chopped green onion
Oil
Mayonnaise
Egg (optional)

Rice
Small pieces of lettuce

Sauce:
1 tbs mirin
1 tbs sake
1/2 tbs soy sauce
1/4 tbs sesame oil
1/2 tbs brown sugar
Salt

Procedure:
1) Mix all the sauce ingredients in a small bowl.

2) Heat up a frying pan, put some oil and chopped garlic in. Then put the onion in. Stir fry until the onion is brown and soft.

3) Put the pork in. When the pork has changes colour, put in 1) and the Kimchi. Stir fry until the pork is well cooked.

4) Now it’s time for the rice. First put the rice a rice bowl, then put some lettuce on top. Ok, now it’s time for the trick – MAYONNAISE! I never thought of putting mayonnaise in a rice bowl until I tried it at Ebi Ten. So remember to put some mayonnaise in your rice bowl! It makes it taste SO much better! 

5) Now, if you like eggs like me, you can put a sunny side up egg on your lettuce. If you don’t like eggs, then you can skip this.

6) Of course, now you’ll need the kimchi pork! Just simply put the pork on the lettuce, and green onion on top of the prok. Viola! There’s your Pork and Kimchi rice bowl!



Results:

Without egg:

 

With sunny side up egg:

Discussions:
1) It was suprisingly good! And the good thing is it doesn’t take long to make! I think from cutting the onion to the finished product, it took me less than 20 mins.

2) I think I’ll start to put mayonnaise on EVERYTHING now coz it tastes so good!

Stir Fry Daikon Cake with XO Sauce

Experiment: Stir fry Daikon Cake with XO sauce

Introduction:
I tried to make the Daikon Cake again. This time I tried it with Rice Flour:Corn Startch 2:1 ratio, but then... it turned out to be quick firm. Still not the texture I want. BUT! Since this is so firm, it's actually quite good for stir frying. So today I tried stir fry daikon cake with xo sauce - a common dish now in many dim sum restaurants.

Materials:
Daikon cake
A bunch of bean sprout
2 -3 tbs XO sauce (depends on how spicy you like it)
1 tbs of chopped garlic
Chopped green onions
Pepper, salt to taste
Oil

Procedure:
1) Cut the Daikon Cake into cubes.

2) Heat up a frying pan, then some oil, and then add the chopped garlic. When the garlic turns golden brown, put the bean sprouts in and stir fry for a bit.

3) Put the daikon cake in and stir fry with the bean sprout. Then put the XO sauce in. Add salt and pepper to taste. Mix well.

4) When the daikon cake is well cooked, put everyone on a plate and sprinkle grenn onions on top.

5) Time to eat!


Result:

Discussion:

1) Just in case you didn't know what XO sauce is, it's a seafood sauce that's usually made of chilli pepper, dried scallope, dried shrimp etc. It's usually spicy. You can find it in most Asian supermarkets.

2) I think I put too much oil from the XO sauce in... so the whole dish turned out to be quite greasy. Not good.

3) Hmm... About the Daikon Cake I think I'll try a Rice flour:Corn Starch 3:1 ratio... Wish I'll succeed next time!

Inari sushi

Experiment: Inari sushi

Introduction:
I usually cook noodles on weekend (noodles is quick!), but Mr. Clam complains that I cook too much noodles lately and he wants rice for dinner. I opened the fridge and see what I can make, and I found that I didn’t have a lot of food left. I saw that there’s a pack of aburaage (leftover from the mochi-kin from Oden.) So I decided to make Inari sushi.

Materials:
5 aburaage (Deep fried tofu pocket)
2-3 bowls of rice
White sesame

Sauce:
1 cup of dashi stock
1 tbs soy sauce
1.5 tbs sugar
1 tbs mirin

Procedure:
1) Boil a pot of water. When the water boils, put the aburrage in water and boil for about 2 minutes to get rid of the oil. Then take the aburaage out and drain out the water.

2) Cut the aburaage in half, and open the pocket. Be careful not to tear the pocket. (I tore one… >.<) You’ll then have 10 small pockets.

3) Put all the sauce ingredients in a pot and bring to boil. Put the aburaage in the pot and turn down the heat. Simmer for about 10-15 minutes, or until the sauce is almost gone.

4) Take the aburaage out and drain out the sauce.

5) Mix sesame seeds with rice. I like sesame seeds a lot so I put quite a lot in. Anyways. After you mix the sesame seeds and rice, put the rice into the aburaage pockets (be careful not to tear the pocket here!).

6) It’s READY!

Result:

Discussions:

1) You can put chopped carrots and shitake mushroom in the rice as well so that the inari sushi has more flavour.

2) One piece of inari sushi is actually quite a lot of rice! I was surprised how quick the inari sushi used up my 3 bowls of rice.

Chinese Radish Cake (蘿蔔糕)

Experiment: Chinese Radish Cake

Introduction:

I saw in my friend’s facebook that she made Radish Cake last year. I was sooo tempted to make it last year, but then… since it involves MANY steps, I was quite reluctant to do it. This year, since I have time in my hands, I decided to give it a try. I’ve done my research – I went to MANY recipe websites. But very interestingly, the flour proportion vary from site to site. In the end… I just randomly put the two types of flour together… in the end… It was too sticky. Hmm… I’ll definitely try it again (when I feel like it). But anyways… here’s what I did…

Materials:
1.5 Chinese white radish (about 800g)
2 shallots
2 dried scallopes, pre-soaked in water

5 dried shitake mushroom, pre-soaked in water

2.5 Chinese sausages
2 tbs Chinese dried shrimp, pre-soaked in water
A bunch of green onion, chopped
Sesame
Rice Flour
Corn Starch
Oyster Sauce
Sake
Grounded white pepper
Oil

Procedure:
1) Cut the shallots, dried scallopes, dried shitake mushroom, Chinese sausages, Chinese dried shrimp in tiny pieces.

2) Shred the radish. When you shred the radish, water will come out. Don’t pour out the water, you’ll need it for later.

3) Heat up the frying pan. Put the Chinese sausage in first, the oil from the sausages will come out. Then put in the shallots, dried scallopes, dried shitake mushroom and dried shrimp. Put this mix in a bowl when everything’s cooked.

4) In the same pan, put in the shredded radish. Fry for a while, and then add in 3), oyster sauce, sake and grounded white pepper, and keep stirring. When the radish becomes half cooked, turn off the heat.

5) In a small bowl, mix the rice flour and corn starch with the radish water. If you don’t have enough radish water, then just use water to substitute. I think I used roughly 500g of flour in total.

Ok this is the part where I had problem. I didn’t know what proportion of the rice flour and corn starch I should use… from lots of websites that I’ve read, I know that I should put more rice flour then the corn starch. So I just randomly mix them in. From the result that I got, I think next time I’ll try:

Rice Flour:Corn Starch
3:1

6) ANYWAYS… after you mix the flour with the radish water (mix it well!), pour it in the frying pan and mix it with the radish. Keep stirring. It’ll become thicker and thicker.

7) Brush oil all over the steaming container. Then put the radish mixture into the container. Then steam it for roughly 30-45 minutes.

8) Use a chopstick or skewer to poke into the center. If the radish cake doesn’t stick onto the chopstick/skewer, it means that it’s cooked.

9) While it’s still hot, sprinkle sesame and chopped green onions on top and let it cool.

10) You can either eat it steamed, or cut it into slices, and pan fry it.

Discussion:

1) Hmm… I acutally do like the taste of this radish cake… the bad thing is that it was toooo sticky, which is not good if you wanna pan fry it. I acutally liked to eat this batch steamed.

2) I cheated and used V-Slicer to “shred” the radish. People told me that the radish slices were too thick. I think I really have to SHRED! (Which means it’ll take me MUCH LONGER!)

3) I’ll defintely try to make it again!!!

Glutinous rice ball with sesame filling 芝麻湯圓

Experiment: Glutinous rice ball with sesame filling 芝麻湯圓

Introduction:
It’s the Chinese New Year’s Eve today. Usually families gather together and eat glutinous rice balls. I usually buy rice balls in the supermarket, but since I have time this year (this year’s new year’s eve falls on Saturday!), I decided to make it myself.

Materials: (make about 20 glutinous rice balls)
150g glutinous rice flour
100ml warm water
1/4 cup grounded black sesame
1/4 cup sugar
1/8 cup unsalted butter (or pork lard)

Soup:
1.5 litre water
4-5 slices ginger
3-4 tbs black sugar

Procedure:
Sesame filling:
1) Mix the grounded black sesame and sugar together. Melt the butter, and add in the grounded black sesame and sugar mix. Stir well until it becomes a paste. Add more butter in if the mixture is not sticky, or add more gounded sesame and sugar if the mixture is too wet.

2) Use a small spoon to scoop the sesame filling into small balls, and put them on a plate. Make sure that you leave space between each filling.

3) Put the filling into the fridge for a few hours, so that it becomes harder, and easier to be put into the glutinous rice balls.

Glutinous Rice Ball:
4) When the filling is hard(er), you can start preparing the glutinous rice balls. Slowly pour warm water into the glutinous rice flour, and mix it WITH A SPATULA. Mix it into a dough ball. Pour more water in if the dough ball is too try, or add more flour in if it’s too wet.

5) Separate the dough ball into smaller pieces.

6) Roll the dough intoa small ball, the press ih the centre so that the centre is flat. Then put the sesame filling into the cente, and close the glutinous rice ball. Roll it into a ball again.

7) Boil water, and put the glutinous rice balls in. When the glutinous rice balls are floating, then they’re ready!

Soup:
8 ) Boil the 1.5 litre water. When water boils, put the ginger and black sugar in. Feel free to add more sugar if you like really sweet stuff.


Result:

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Discussions:
1) Make sure that you use unsalted butter, otherwise… it’ll be salty and sweet.
2) You can use raw sugar, cane sugar or brown sugar to substitute the black sugar.
3) Apparently using pork lard will make the filling smoothier… but… I think I’ll stick with butter.
4) If you can’t make the 20 glutinous rice balls at once, you can put them into the freezer. Just boil them (without difrosting) when you wanna eat again.

Dace Fish Paste Omelette

Experiment: Dace fish paste Omelette

Introduction:

Dace fish paste was on sale at T&T this week, so I bought a tub home. I was thinking of making soup with it… but in the end I decided to make this super easy omelette since it’ll take less time.

Materials:
4 Eggs
Dace fish paste
A bunch of coriander

White pepper

Procedure:
1) Panfry the dace fish paste.

2) Take the cooked dace fash paste out from the pan, and then cut the fish paste into small(er) pieces.

3) Wash the coriander, and then chopped it into small pieces.

4) Beat the eggs, and then put the coriander and white pepper in.

5) Put the cut dace fish paste into a frying pan again.

6) Pour the egg mixture on top of the dace fish paste. Use a lid to cover the pan, and turn to low heat. Cook until both sides are cooked.

Result:

Discussions:

1) If you don’t like coriander, you can try using green onions to substitute it. I think that’s how my mom usually make it.