M’sian home cooking

(Been searching through my draft posts and decided to post this so it's from some time back.)

My mum has transformed from someone who couldn’t cook to someone who actually has a secret stack of recipes, all hand-written and crumpled with the many times she’s referred to them. Whenever I’m home, she’ll try to bring out all the new dishes she’s learnt and it always amazes me how good her cooking skills have become.

Some of my favourite home-cooked dishes are shown below. Alot of them are plain and simple dishes as I remember them from my childhood, but as you all know, sometimes these are the best types of meals.

Different lighting from different meal times - also partly due to rubbish photography skills

Tung choy cheng chu yuk (Steamed pork with preserved vegetables)

Bits of pork minced with some tung choy, seasoned with salt and pepper, and steamed. That’s all. Easy. When I was a kid, I used to have plate after plate of rice with just the gravy from the dish alone. Just gravy and rice, lots and lots of it.

Lou kai kiok (Stewed chicken feet)

This is another one of those home-cooked favourites that can’t be found in restaurants. Chicken feet is stewed in soy sauce (and other sauce mixtures) till cooked, and hard boiled eggs added in to absorb the flavour. Eaten with rice, the gravy alone can can take me through plates of it.

Salted fish meat patties

I specifically asked my mum to make this dish while I was home. It’s not like I can’t make this in London, well, maybe the salted fish is quite expensive so I don’t buy it here, but it’s different, you know? Eating this at home makes it taste a little better.

Dark soy sauce sweet chicken

I used to call this ‘Teem Gai’, or sweet chicken, as this is how it tastes. First the chicken pieces are fried (not deep-fried, but fried so preferably the skin should be left on to allow the chicken to be nice and crispy) and then the sauce is made, and the chicken pieces thrown back into the work to absorb all the lovely flavours. The sauce is made with thick, dark soy sauce, soy sauce, a little oyster sauce and quite a bit of sugar. When cooked, the sauce (because of the sugar) thickens up (and sometimes tends to stick to the bottom of the wok), but this ensures that the chicken pieces are coated perfectly.

It’s almost like biting into a boiled sweet, where the shell first cracks and then the tender chicken piece inside is revealed.

Steamed lap cheong and lap ngap (Chinese sausage and waxed duck)

This has traditionally been a Chinese New Year dish with us, as waxed duck is one of those things we get during the festive period. I’m sure there’s something on Wikipedia as to why this is so (but I’m not going to research that just now).

The taste of this always reminds me of when I was in school, as this was one of the simplest dishes that could be made for dinner. Chuck a few pieces of Chinese sausage and waxed duck onto a plate, put that on top of some rice in the rice cooker, and half an hour later, a lovely meaty smell is wafting around. We usually drizzle some dark soy sauce over the dish and that blends quite well with the oil that is steamed out of the duck and sausages, really lovely gravy for hot, steamed rice.

(OK, a tiny bit of flash photography coming up ...)

Claypot fish with Japanese tofu, baby sweetcorn and vegetables

This is a new dish in that it wasn't one of those I had when I was a kid. My mom tried something similar when she was in London, and tried making it at home and it turned out really nice! Not sure what fish she used but it's a white fish, and the chunks were deep fried before being stewed in the claypot together with the tofu and vegetables. With the hot gravy over steamed rice, absolutely perfect.

Aubergine with dried prawns (har mai)

This is another one of the new dishes learned from restaurants, and mastered through practise. Pieces of aubergine are coated in a light flour batter before being deep fried (this is one looooong process, believe me) and once that's done, they're removed from the wok. The small prawns (fragrant, and used to add a new dimension to dishes) are sauteed in hot oil, with some seasoning, before the aubergine is thrown back into the wok for one more thorough stir and the dish is ready to be served.

Fish and vegetable curry

There have been a few version of this curry dish through the years, but they are largely similar in that this is a slightly sour curry (fish curries in Malaysia tend to be) flavoured with assam skin to give it the limey, tangy taste, and the vegetables used are usually a combination of ladies fingers (okra), aubergine and green beans. This is one of my favourites because it doesn't feel that heavy like curries usually do, mainly due to the limey lift from the assam skin. A plate of steamed, fluffy rice drenched in this gravy, with a crumbling of poppadum (and a fried egg) is possibly one of the nicest dishes I've had.

Stewed pork in soy sauce (lou chu yuk)

Now THIS is definitely on top of the league of childhood dishes, and I can understand why. Aside from it being so unbelievably tasty, it's also not a difficult dish to cook once you've got the seasoning and ingredients right. The pork is stewed in a sauce made from soy sauce (light and dark), star anise, garlic cloves and white pepper. Once cooked for a few hours, the meat and sauce almost melt into each other, resulting in a stew with the most tender, flavoursome meat. Fantastic with rice (you're beginning to see a trend now, aren't you).

To round it off, one of my favourites of all time (I was craving this a few days ago).

Baked beans with fried egg and sliced onions

Yes, possibly a combination of items guaranteed to give your social life a decline, but who cares when you get a dish that good in return? When I mentioned this recipe to my friends, the most common reaction I got back was one of slight suspicion, mixed in with curiosity.

If you like all these 3 ingredients separately, how can you not like it together? It's the ultimate in comfort food and if you know you're not going out (for the next few days), throw these 3 ingredients together and you'll have a warm, tomatoey, beany dish perfect for ... guess it ... white rice!

Mmm I'm hungry.

M’sia home cooking – Kuching laksa

The first time I had Kuching Laksa was when I was a kid, and my parents had brought back some laksa paste from Sarawak (courtesy of some friends who had brought it back as a souvenir). It took many tries to finally achieve that slightly sour, lemak taste made famous by this particular region in Malaysia (instructions on the packet = not so good).

These days, we’ve got it down to a T, and it’s one of my favourite noodle dishes.

Obviously, the secret to making a good Kuching Laksa is the soup paste itself. Buy the correct brand, and you’re half way there. Next, you have to use good quality ingredients to top the noodles with. Mushy prawns won’t do it. You have to have fresh, crunchy, big prawns to make the dish good.

We also use shredded chicken (bones used in the soup) and fish cake pieces for the noodles. Other ingredients could be served along side the bowl of noodles, such as foo chuk but putting too much into the bowl of noodles would just overcrowd it.

Most importantly, the chilli dip accompanying the noodles must be fresh and slightly tangy with a twist of lime juice to freshen it up. Each spoonful of noodle topped with just a tiny bit of chilli makes for a wonderful taste sensation.

Despite being such a great alternative to the curry laksa or assam laksa, it’s not that commonly found in West Malaysia. There are, of course, a few stalls selling this but you would have thought that by now, something as tasty as this would have at least made it into each coffeeshop.

M’sian cooking – Char kuay teow

Onion – the one on the right looking like it’s been to one too many dinners (though it wasn’t dinner, oh the hysterics).

I’m not even sure why I’m posting this picture up, but the pestle is not something you usually find in an English kitchen, and it was looking quite used so I decided to take a picture of it.

Oookay, so, char kuay teow means fried kuay teow. Kuay teow is flat, rice-flour noodle commonly used in soups, or, you guessed it, fried. Sometimes also known as hor fun, depending on which part of the country you come from.

To get a reaaaally good char kuay teow (you know, the kind which makes you wish you hadn’t begun eating that portion of yours so you could start eating it all over again, yes that kind), you need:

a) a very, very hot wok, preferably a seasoned one which has seen better char kuay teows



b) good quality kuay teow – thinner ones which come fresh are better than the dehydrated ones you find as the rehydration process sometimes breaks up the noodle strands and you get fried broken pieces of noodles.



Some people like a mixture of yellow noodles with the kuay teow, as this gives a nice contrast in texture and taste. Pictured above is mainly, again, you guessed it, yellow noodle. The kuay teow is in the pink bowl.

c) a mixture of soy sauce, oyster sauce, sesame oil, prawn stock or prawn essence – this is pretty much what makes or breaks the dish. A good prawn stock can be made by frying up the heads of the prawns (which will be mentioned later) in oil, until cooked, and discarding the prawn heads, keeping just the orange-coloured oil. Mix that with the other sauces mentioned with a bit of sugar to get a bowl of sauce which can be splashed into the wok in a professional manner.

d) peeled prawns

e) eggs – not necessarily with condensation as shown above. It was really hot, and these eggs had only JUST been taken out of the fridge. The eggs are thrown into the dish just before serving, kinda like the glue bringing the dish together.

f) Chinese sausage, or lap cheong – cut into small pieces and shallow-fried to give it a nice, crispy bite. This is added into the kuay teow dish at the start to give the oil the flavour it needs.
g) chopped garlic
h) oil
i) chives, cut into 2-inch long pieces
j) beansprouts

Now, to get from bits of ingredient to the finished product.

1. Heat up the oil in the seasoned wok.
2. Throw in the chopped garlic, Chinese sausage and some chilli paste if you like it spicy. Let that fry for a while until the flavours start blending.
3. Thrown in the noodles – only a handful, please. I know this because I usually throw in more than I should, because it looks so little in the big wok … Stir that around in quick, precise movements, like all professional CKT chefs do.
4. Three to four tablespoons of the sauce mixture, depending on how you like the dish to be. Keep stirring, nearly there …
5. Push the noodles to the side of the wok, and crack the egg in the middle of the wok, adding some sauce into the egg while stirring it to scramble it. Before the egg cooks completely, stir the noodles back into the mixture, let it cook for a tiny while more. Add in the beansprouts and chives (so that it only just cooks), and then …

SERVE

This is one of those dishes you really should try while you’re in Malaysia. Otherwise, Hare & Tortoise in the Brunswick Centre (nearest tube Russel Square) does a pretty decent version too. It’s not on the usual menu, as we ordered it from a ‘new items’ piece of paper, so maybe if it gets enough orders it might make it to the popular menu.

I can actually taste this.

Home-cooking in London, all the way from Malaysia

My kitchen, if it could speak, must surely think that food either comes in leftover form, or fresh from the freezer straight to the oven. It’s not that I don’t like cooking, because I do. I just don’t seem to have the time, or motivation to cook most of the time.

Which is why when my mom decided to give the stove a good run for its money and cook us a huge meal of curry chicken, I felt the need to take a picture of the meal and write a whole post about it. Avid readers will note that my first post on the blog was about my cooking, albeit one which took more than a day and was slightly burnt and bitter. Despite that, I assure you I can cook. I just choose to blog about the unsuccessful bits, that’s all.

Sure, that’s what they all say.

Here’s what my mom cooked. Having discovered where the spices, pots and pans were kept in my kitchen, my mom and paps decided to cook a huge pot of curry chicken for dinner. Not an easy task, I tell you. Not when it involves trying to get a huge piece of chicken to become little pieces, with a plastic chopping board.

Hours later, we had curry. Very delicious curry with soft and tender chicken. So absolutely fantastic eaten with a ladies fingers (or okra) and prawns in sambal, a fried egg and some rice. A London-style Malaysian meal which really outshone the dishes from most restaurants here.

160509 M’sia Taiping home-style cooking

The Chinese way of showing warmth and welcome to guests is what I consider to be the best way of all; offer them lots and lots of food. Instead of saying ‘How do you do’, or ‘How’s the weather’, the common way of greeting someone (direct translation) is

‘Have you eaten?’

Perhaps this explains my obsession with food.

When we were in Taiping, my really generous and kind relatives insisted on cooking us lunch, despite us having had quite a filling breakfast. Thing is, this is the foundation of all the recipes we know, as in, they originated from here. How could we resist?

My relatives started their cooking at 8am that day, and this really made us appreciate it even more. They chopped the vegetables, marinated the meat, boiled the soup and just cooked and cooked away until it was lunchtime and we arrived to find a table full of plates, full of food, and lots of it.

This is the eight-treasure chicken dish, which was a first-time dish tried out that day. The eight treasures refer to the eight ingredients in the dish. From what I could see, there were Chinese wood-ear mushrooms, broccoli, Chinese mushrooms, gingko, chicken, another type of Chinese mushrooms, and 2 other ingredients which I could find but I’m sure went into the dish to complete the flavour.

Pineapple and cucumber pickle, which was so refreshing in its sweet, sour, light and fresh flavours. Perfect as a palate cleanser in between other dishes.

Yellow bean steamed fish head, and despite its exotic sounding name, this is quite a commonly-cooked household dish. Consisting of tau-choo (yellow bean paste) and chopped chillies, the fish head is steamed which makes the jelly-like textures of the meat even softer and more absorbent to the sauces.

Wild boar curry – now this is not an ordinary dish in any home-cooking. Wild boar is not commonly sold in the markets, so not many people know how to cook this dish, but my relatives have perfected the skills to make the pork extremely soft and tender, so much so that it almost falls apart when chewed. The potatoes are boiled before being cooked in the curry so they’re already fluffy and can absorb all the flavours from the curry.

Stir fried choi sum with garlic, crunchy and al dante with just a hint of garlic – delicious.

Ipoh beansprouts which are famous for being shorter than the other type of beansprouts, and juicier. The length of these sprouts actually increase the longer you leave them uncooked, so it’s best to buy them fresh on the day of cooking and have them earlier ie for lunch. Stir fried or quickly blanched in hot water, and garnished with fried shallots and some spring onions, this is one of my most requested for dishes.

Black bean pork ribs (tau si pai kuat) – another Taiping specialty. Pork ribs cooked in lots (and I mean lots) of black beans, and stewed until the meat becomes fall-off-the-bone tender, the gravy is best eaten with hot rice.

Such lovely home-cooked dishes from lovely people.