Recipe 1: Roast Pork Belly
Ingredients
* Pork Belly with skin, don't buy those thick layers of meat
* rice vinegar
* salts
* ginger
* string to tie
* Puncher
Here are a few tips for crunchy roast pork:
1. Some will blanch the pork belly first before dehydrating the pork belly skin with salt. This method is still workable, but:
a. it requires a longer time and more salt to dehydrate the pork belly skin. I will encourage you to have it dehydrated in the fridge within 24 hours or slightly more. If not, it is hard to get crunchy crispy skin.
b. It will require longer roasting time and higher temperatures.
2. If you follow my method and scare the pork belly have the smell,
a. Scrub the skin layer at least 2 - 3 rounds with a knife and then salt
b. Apply pepper and ginger during overnight drying in the fridge
This method will reduce the smell to unnoticeable.
3. Punch the skin as much as possible. More punch from the meat tenderizer will provide more outlets for the pork belly to be dehydrated. So be generous, especially at the edge.
4. Do not be concerned about applying more salt in the 1st and 2nd rounds. Most of the salt will be diluted by the water from the pork belly and wiped away. Only the 3rd time (after the rice vinegar) adjust the salt level according to your preferences.
Tip: For better crunchy roast pork without using baking soda or more salt, I defrost the pork belly a day before and keep it in the fridge a day before I scrub it. This will greatly dehydrate the pork belly skin.
Recipe 2: Bak Kien
Bak Kien or Bak Kian Bak Kean or Lok Bak Pork rolls or meat rolls (肉卷 or 春卷) are our all-time favorite Chinese New Year dish and every year my mum prepares a few kilograms of minced meat in her way, own idea. Compared with other recipes, we make the bak kies slightly different from others by leaving out one commonly used ingredient, the 5 spice powder.
No specific reason for leaving out these lovely spices but without this, you can taste the beautiful flavour of the vegetables, the natural sweetness, and the combination of different seasoning sauces. The recipes will show you the wonderful side of bak kiens that previously you might not know.
Recipes:
* 1 kg of minced pork (buy those that include some fat)
* 1 bowl of water chestnuts (approximately 15 - 25 water chestnuts)
* 1 bowl of shallots (15 shallots or more)
* 1 bowl of carrots
* 1/2 bowl of minced garlic
* 5 - 8 Oyster Sauce
* 2 - 5 Sesame Oil
* 2 - 3 white pepper
* 1 teaspoon of Salt (dissolve in water)
Instruction:
1. To enhance the flavor of the bak kien, adjusting the flavor to optimum is very important. The tips for adjusting the flavor are
A. Add all seasoning according to the recipes as a start. Important do not add in any water.
B. Mix the vegetables and meat thoroughly. Then take a bit and taste it. If not strong enough in sesame oil or oyster sauce, add bit by bit till ideal.
C. Once the taste is ideal, you can smell the fragrance of oyster sauce mixture with sesame oil from the surface of the mixture. It is not a mild fragrance or too intense, it is a sweet fragrance of both.
2. Steam the bak kien for 15 minutes before deep fry. This is to prevent frying the bak kien too long and unable to be stored for too long. Steaming the bak kien first will also prevent the wrapping from falling apart.
Recipe 3: Kuih Pie Tee
The recipe is straightforward but need to get the concentration of the flour mixture correct in order to be successful.
A. Kuih Pie Tee Cup
* 3/4 bowl of rice flour
* 3 tbspn of all purpose flour (low gluten type)
* 1 pinch of salt
Use the same bowl measure
* 1 egg (York and white)
* Top up with water till the same quantity
Mix them well and sieve several times
The texture should able to coat the spoon and drip of smoothly like flowing cream
B. The filling
- 20g dried cuttlefish
- 5 dried scallops
- dried shrimps
- 4 carrots (julienne)
- 1 mengkuang (julienne)
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