Homemade Yee Sang / Yusheng 鱼生

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Homemade Yee Sang / Yusheng
Ingredients
carrots, julienned
daikon, julienned (I've used local white radish)
cucumber, julienned
pomelo segments then into pieces (I've substitute with grapefruits) 
+ and other crispy vegetables to your liking
raw salmon (I've used smoked)
friend wonton skin (I've homemade based on this recipe by kitchen simplicity  )
Garnish
pinch of 5-spice powder
pince of white pepper

pickled Japanese ginger (I've made my own by shred ginger finely+water+brown sugar+salt+vinegar)
Salad dressing
Plum sauce (I've used apricot jam)
sesame oil
1 lime juice
pickling juice from ginger
Methods :-
1) Prep. the ingredients the vegetables and fruit. Put the prepped veg., pomelo, fried wonton skin and salmon in a bowl or arrange nicely on a plate. Sprinkle on the seasoning. Mix all the salad dressing ingredients together. Drizzle salad dressing all over the bowl/plate. Check seasoning, adjust if need to. Mix well and serve.

Baked spring rolls

On Chinese New Year, my family would make spring rolls; a favourite of mine because I love fried foods. Chinese spring rolls as far as my knowledge goes, is deep fried. The spring roll wrappers could be bought at the wet market or the frozen section of the super/hyper market. These wrappers are moist and must be kept moist until ready to use unlike the dry rice wrappers for the Vietnamese spring rolls.
For this occasion, since the Chinese spring roll wrappers are not available to me, I've used the Vietnamese dried type. Filling for spring rolls for me growing up only consisted of carrots,jicama, dried shrimp stir fried. I've noticed many add mince meat but. that is completely up to you. Just make sure the fillings are not too wet.
Once stir fried vegetable and meat have been cooled. Pre-heat oven at 180°c.
Soak Vietnamese spring roll wrapper one wrapper at a time in cold water, lay flat and fill it up with filling. wrap. brush with cooking oil. place on baking tray with parchment paper. Repeat process until fillings is finish. Once wrapping done, sprinkle sesame seeds on top of each spring roll. Place in oven and bake for 15 mins. check if the skin is crispy. if it is, then it is done. Otherwise, keep baking until skin is crisp.
serve hot with any Asian dipping sauce of your choice.

Homemade peanut dipping sauce

By now, many have figured out the short cut in making peanut sauce. It's really not hard especially if you have peanut butter in your pantry. However, in my case, peanut butter is not regularly featured on my grocery list as I'm the only one who eats it and that's dangerous! :D
One day a dish really needed this sauce to make it complete, so I thought why not give it a go with  toasted peanuts in packet that I've got on hand. The recipe still needs tweaking but the result was very promising !

Homemade Peanut dipping sauce

Ingredients (estimate only)
Peanuts, toasted, it depend on how "peanutty" you want it
oil for cooking
onion, minced
dried red chillies, to taste
anchovy paste, to taste
salt and sugar, to taste
water, as needed

Method
1) Heat oil in sauce pan. Sauté minced onion until translucent. Add in the anchovy paste, dried chillies and peanuts. Stir it a bit. add water , not too much. you can adjust later. cook until peanuts are blendable.
2) Remove from sauce pan and blend to the preferred texture (smooth or chunky) , pour in back to pan . At this point, season with salt and sugar, also adjust water, if needed.
3) Serve room temperature or hot.

Hungarian Steamed Buns { Gőzgombóc }

Going forward, I'll switch to this Hungarian steamed buns recipe when making Chinese steamed buns. Unlike my previous chinese recipes, this produced buns which were so light and fluffy! It has to be said that they are best eaten hot out of the steamer. If you do have left over, then re-steam for short few minutes to soften it again.

Gőzgombóc

serves : 6 pcs.

You must go to the source for a detailed pictorial at Aprosef

Ingredients :-

Dumpling

250gm Flour

15gm yeast

20gm sugar

1 gm salt

1/2 egg yolk

1/2 egg (size “m”)

125ml Milk (2.8%)

10gm butter

1 lemon zest

Stuffing

60gm plum jam, thick divided into 6

To serve with

egg custard

ground poppy seeds

Preparation :-

1. Mix all ingredients for dumplings, knead until a smooth round shape. Place shaped dough in a greased bowl. Grease also the top of dough. Coer with cling film. Let it rest at warm place for 60 mins. Or until size doubled.
2. Once dough doubled in size, roll out and divide into 6 smaller balls. Use you hand flatten it a bit and wrapped in the portioned jam. Take note the jam should be stuffed in centre to avoid leakage. Close dough by pinching it. Shape into nice round.
3. Set aside the stuffed dough. Cover with cling film. Meanwhile set the steamer and when water is boiling. Steam dough on high heat for 15 mins.
4. Serve with custard and sprinkle with ground poppy seeds.

Pineapple Tarts II

These melt-in-the-mouth tarts are a must during the Chinese New Year; which falls on Feb 19, this year. To make this recipe even easier, I've replaced fresh pineapple with canned ones.

Pineapple Tarts

via IndochineKitchen

Yield 700 g cookies

Ingredients:

For pineapple jam 2 kg pineapple, roughly 4 medium sized pineapples 600 g sugar 3 cloves 5 cm cinnamon stick For cookies 200 g butter 50 g confectioners' sugar 40 g powdered milk 280 g flour, low gluten or all purpose 20 g cornflour 2 egg yolks For egg wash 3 egg yolks 1/4 tsp condensed milk

Directions:

For pineapple jam Puree pineapple in an electric blender till smooth. Combine puree with sugar, cloves and cinnamon stick in a pot. Cook over low heat for 3-4 hours, stirring continually. When it thickens and can be piped or rolled, remove from heat. The jam will thicken during cooling. Prepare this one day in advance. You will end up with 500-600 g pineapple jam, enough for one batch. For cookies Preheat oven to 150 degree Celsius Sift flour, powdered milk and corn flour twice. In a mixer bowl, combine butter and sugar. Cream till light and fluffy, about 4-5 minutes, over high speed. Add egg yolk, one at a time. Beating well. Add flour mixture into the bowl and beat over low speed using paddle attachment. Do this for 4-5 minutes, until everything is mixed well. Work with 50 g of dough one at a time. Roll dough between plastic sheet to 0.2 cm thickness. Pipe pineapple jam on top of the dough. Roll the dough to cover up the jam completely. Use a pair of scissors to cut them up into 4cm log and arrange on greased pan. Brush with egg wash mixture twice using small pastry brush. Bake in preheated oven till golden, 15-20 minutes. Let cool and store in airtight container.

Cantonese egg tarts { 蛋挞 }

Egg Tarts is a popular dessert amongst the Cantonese community. The tart shell should be flaky and light while the egg custard silky smooth. As you can see from mine, it is neither :D. I'm still in the process of refining my technique. The reason I'm posting here is to note down the recipes that I've followed.
 
Cantonese Egg Tart { 蛋挞 }
For the tart shells, recipe from Anncoo Journal

125g Cold butter - cut to cubes

120g Icing sugar, sifted

1 Egg

1/4 tsp vanilla extract

320g Plain flour - sifted

• Cream butter and icing until light and fluffy. Add in egg and mix well.
• Pour in flour and mix for few seconds, stop machine.
• Use a rubber spatula to fold the flour mixture into a soft dough.
• Put soft dough in a plastic bag and chill in the fridge for 30 mins or freezer for 20 mins.
• Divide the pastry into 15 small balls and evenly press into 15 tart moulds. If you find the pastry is too soft and sticky, just return it to the fridge to harden a little.
• Prick the bottom of the pastry with a fork to allow steam to escape as the shell bakes.
• Bake in preheated oven at 180C for 10 minutes or until lightly brown. Remove from oven and leave to cool.

For the filling , recipe from Yummy Bakes
200g boiling water

150g sugar

5 eggs

250g fresh milk

1. Dissolve sugar in boiling water, let it cool, add egg and fresh milk.  Do not beat, just stir and mix.
2. Strain the mixture and pour into the pre-baked tart shells  Bake at 180C for 20 mins or until cooked.

Hungarian crepe { Palacsinta }

Hungarian crepe is not as thin as the French ones; but it is still very light. I love them with ground walnuts, cinnamon and sweetened with sugar. My husband prefers them with custard and jam but you can fill them with any sweet/savoury combo. It will work .

Hungarian Crepe {Palacsinta}
serves : 12 crepes
Ingredients
125gm plain flour
2 eggs
1 sachet vanilla sugar
1 pinch of salt
250ml milk, cold
40gm butter, melted
vegetable oil, for greasing
Preparation
1) In a bowl, place flour, eggs, vanilla sugar and salt. Add in the milk gradually, mix until you get a smooth batter. Finally add in the melted butter (not hot) and mix well. Let it rest in the fridge for minimum of 30 minutes.
2) Once batter has rested, heat round non-stick frying pan with a little oil. Take a ladle and spoon approx a ladle of batter onto frying pan. Adjust the quantity of batter according to the size of frying pan. When the edge of the crepe starts to crisp, flip over and let it heat for few seconds and the crepe is ready. Repeat process until you finish the batter.