Coconut Red Bean Pudding (椰汁紅豆糕)

Well... I think I've cooked too much red bean while I was making the Red Bean Pudding (砵仔糕), so now I need to find something else to cook to use up the cooked red beans! =P

The first thing that came to my mind is the coconut red bean pudding! You might be thinking why the hell I want to make another red bean pudding!!!! Ha! This red bean pudding is totally different to the other one I previously made. It has a much soften texture, more pudding like and none of those chewiness! This is actually another of my mum's favourite!!! I guess she likes anything with red beans!

Ingredients:

150g corn flour

300ml coconut cream

300ml milk

600ml water

white sugar to taste

cooked red bean

1) Add corn flour into milk in a large pot and mix well. Then add in coconut cream, water and sugar and mix until smooth.

2) Heat up the mixture over low heat until thick, then add in the cooked red beans and stir well. pour in a oil sprayed tin, and wait for it to cool before refrigerate.

Just a little note that when you heat the mixture up, make sure it's over low heat otherwise it will bubble and splatter everywhere! Also make sure that the mixture becomes VERY thick before you turn off the heat otherwise it won't set, and you won't be able to cut it into squares so you will end up eating it like a thickened soup! I've made these 2 mistakes before so I know the tragedy!!!!

Chinese Street Food - Red Bean Pudding (砵仔糕)

What characterise the food in Hong Kong is the fact that you can enjoy some delicious cheap street food, as well as some micheline star restaurants in this small bustling city. However, because of hygiene and safety control, those temporary or 'on-the-run' street foods are very hard to find nowadays!!! I remember when I was little, there was a 'on-the-run' wooden trolley just close by home that sells steam rice noodle with sesame and hoi sin sauce!!!!! I used to have that as breakfast almost every morning before school! And those sauce always ended up staining my white uniform! Opppssss..

Another of my 'on-the-run' favourite is the red bean pudding (that's actually the best I can translate it in chinese!!!) It comes in 2 flavours - brown sugar or white sugar. I actually don't mind both, and it comes in a dish shape with a thick skewer through it, so you can enjoy it without too many 'accident'!!! I don't see them much on the street anymore, last time I saw it was probably in Central near the Lan Kwai Fong district! If you want to try them now, you probably need to get them from Yumcha or some bread shop.

The other day a friend of mine asked me whether I know how to make them, cos she wants to have some. So I promised her that I'll make her some next time I do a batch. This kind of red bean pudding is actually quite easy to make... especially when you have all the ingredients at home! The most frustrating step is boiling the red bean, it's time consuming! It can take up to 40-50 minutes just to soften up the red bean!

Ingredients

3.25oz rice flour (沾米粉)

2oz wheat flour (澄麵)

4oz brown sugar (or white sugar)

red beans

1) Boil the red beans in water for 50 minutes, or until soft. Drain (you might need to keep an eye on the water level, just it case it goes dry!!)

2) Mix rice flour and wheat flour together in a large bowl with 1/2 cup of water until there smooth. Pass the mixture through sieve 3 times.

3) Mix sugar and 1.25 cup of water together in a small pan and bring to a boil. Cool for a minute then add to the flour mixture and stir quickly until smooth.

4) Grease 7 ramekins (or any other small bowl) with spray oil and pour in the flour mixture from step 3. Add in cooked red beans. Steam over high heat for 20 minutes.

These red bean puddings are so delicious and chewy in texture, and you can alter the amount of sugar and red beans you put in to suit your taste. My mum likes here to have LOTS of red beans! And for myself, I'm actually happy to go without any red beans as well... hahaha... I just love that chewy texture!

=)

A simple Japanese Dinner @ Home...

onigiri

takoyaki

Last Saturday, hubby and I went out for bunch with a group of friends in Crows Nest, and it rained so badly that I didn’t want to go anywhere after brunch except just to go home lie on the couch with a blanket on and watch DVD.

And on a slow raining day, cooking gets lazy too! A quick fix of Japanese meal for dinner is just perfect! I don’t have the Japanese sushi rice in stock, but the medium grain I have at home will do! Get the rice cooked in the rice cooker, once it is done, add a splash of sushi rice vinegar and some sugar (adjust according to your own taste!), then mix in some japanese rice seasoning, and use one of those triangle sushi mould to create the shape (according to Jo, the official name for triangle sushi is onigiri!! Thanks Jo!!!) and wrap it with a strip of seaweed! Done!

Having only onigiri looked a bit plain, so I threw in some takoyaki, wagyu beef slices, and a seaweed salad into the menu. Don’t think that I’ll make the takoyaki from scratch!!! It’s too much effort plus you need to get that special cooking utensil for it, so I just got the frozen ones from the Asian grocery store. You simply just microwave it according to instruction, but I think I’ll chuck it into the oven next time, cos I found that using the microwave makes them lack in colour! ummmm... those frozen takoyaki are not bad, but of course no where as good as the fresh ones. These frozen ones seem to have too much flour in them but not enough octopus pieces... well, it’s only frozen, can’t expect too much! And the real ones should have the fishy flakes on top, and it just happened that I ran out in the pantry, but I think I can deal with that!!! The Japanese BBQ sauce and mayo definitely helped to save the dish! hahaha...

Doggie Cupcakes

It seems pretty unfair that I always cook for hubby and myself, friends and family, and never cook for my dog Mochi! When we have dinner, he always come around and start sniffing around the table, but actually that’s all he does, because he is trained to know that he won’t get any food off the table! But occassionally he does get very agitated when our dinner plate has some kind of egg, cheese or apple in it, because I sometimes feed him these as well, but never off our dinner!!!!

One day I saw a friend of him who baked some little cupcakes for her dog - she’s a dog lover, she always give her dog the best food, and the best care! So whatever she feeds her dog must be good! So I quickly asked her for the recipe!!!

Ingredients

40g plain flour

3 eggs

10g honey

1) Preheat oven for 15min @ 200C

2) Beat eggs and honey together for 5min

3) Sift in flour and fold

4) Pour batter into cupcake mould (80% full)

5) Bake for 20min @170C

Eggsssss... I think that’s all Mochi could sniff!!!! When he saw those cupcakes, he was over-joyed, and finished it in a second!!!! I guess it must be good! hahaha...

Bamboo Steamer Rice

Last year when hubby and I went to Hong Kong, after a few days we started to have this people phobic - too many people, too much traffic, and too much pollution. So we decided to go out on an outskirt adventure to Tai O. Tai O is kinda like a fishing village where there is minimal traffic... actually barely any traffic - more bike than car, and people are so simple and down-to-earth, lots of little grocery stores, and most importantly fresh air!!! After almost 2 hours of travel from the city centre, we finally arrived! Hubby and I not knowing our direction, so we simply just followed behing this group of people who seemed to know where they were going! We stood close by them and listened to their conversation as to where to go for lunch!!! haha.... we don’t usually do that!!! We ended up at this simple restaurant right by the water and there was this dish called ‘bamboo steamer rice’ which was awesome!!!! And I tired to replicate this dish a couple of times, but still haven’t been successful! Well... I guess if I can easily replicate the dish at home, there would be no such thing as restaurant and secret ingredients!

Anyway... here’s my version. It has rice... obviously!! And salty fish, pork neck, shrimp paste, silver fish, and the big dried shrimp!!! All wrapped with lotus leaf so it has that nice fragrance, then in it goes into the bamboo steamer for 20 minutes!

After a quick stir!!!

Mine didn’t taste too bad, the second time definitely improved! But this time round the shrimp paste was a bit too strong, and somehow the shrimp paste and salty fish here just doesn’t taste the same as the ones in Tai O. Does anyone have a suggestion of a good shrimp paste?? I guess I still need to work on the balance between the salty taste, the distinct taste of shrimp paste and the beautiful fragrant of lotus leaf!!

Ready for the third time trail!

Vietnamese Rice Paper Rolls

What I like about rice paper roll is its light and fresh taste. Although it’s a pretty light ‘snack’ (or dinner... which is how we had it) in taste, it’s actually very filling, probably because of the noodles inside!

This time I made two flavours - prawn and beef. Prawn is easy, you just go and get the cooked prawns from the seafood store, for beef, I got the fatty Asian hotpot beef you get from the Asian grocery stores and marinated it with sesame oil, soy sauce and sugar and stir fried it. The fatty beef is just so lovely in taste, every bite you can feel the beefy oil run inside your mouth. However, what I found is you can’t have too much of it, because the amount of oil from the beef actually fills you up pretty quickly!

Making rice paper rolls is easy, you get the rice paper from Asian grocery stores, they come in a pack of hard semi-translucent hard sheets. All you need to do is soak it in warm water, once it’s all soften up, you can start rolling!!!! Add in some prawns, noodles, and mint, then roll it up and tuck the sides in! Easy!!!! Mint is the crucial part in these rolls! It helps to give that refreshing flavour! Cucumber is another thing that you might want to add into your rolls just to give it some crunch!

For the sauce, I was being lazy, and just bought the hoi sin sauce for dipping, which I found a bit too salty. If you fancy, you might want to create your own dipping sauce with fish sauce, brown sugar, lime juice, chili, and shredded carrots to give it an extra refreshing flavour!