Category: Pork

Five spice peppery pork.

This dish was actually inspired by chinese roast pork belly or “siu yuk”, as locally known. While there’s no crackling or delicious melty lard to boast about, the pork is juicy, peppery and flavourful. Lovely with piping hot rice and some no-cook marinated cucumbers.

I love how stress-free cooking this dish is. Just dump all the spices together and marinate the pork for a couple of hours. Then, lay them on a griddle for a few minutes and voila, 5 spice peppery pork, DONE! To make the pork dish more complete, I served them on a bed of wilted onions, cooked with the same marinade too.

Ingredients

  • 1 tablespoon of five spice powder
  • 1 teaspoon of finely ground black pepper
  • 1 teaspoon of Lawry’s seasoned salt (you can use ordinary salt too)
  • 2 tablespoon of olive oil
  • 200 grams of pork fillet/pork steak
  • 1 medium size onion, sliced
  • some corn flour and water

# – First of all, put 1 tablespoon of five spice powder in a bowl.

# – Then, put 1 teaspoon of finely ground black pepper.

# – Followed by a teaspoon of Lawry’s seasoned salt. Of course, you can use ordinary salt too.

# – Lastly, put in a 2 tablespoons of olive oil. You can also use other types of cooking oil. Mix till combined.

# – Cut the pork fillets or pork steaks into strips as wide as your thumb.

# – Then, dump the pork into the marinade and stick them in the fridge for at least 2 hours.

# – When you’re ready to cook the dish, heat up a well greased griddle. I normally use a pastry brush to spread the oil to make sure the griddle is well coated.

# – Lay the pork strips on the griddle for about 3 minutes, or till you can see that the bottom parts have turned pale from the side.

# – Flip to cook the other sides for another 3 minutes or until the entire strip has turned pale. Set aside.

# – Now with the same griddle, chuck the sliced onions.

# – Stir around so that it’s coated with all the delicious bits left earlier by the porks.

# – Mix the leftover marinade with about 10 tablespoons of water and a tablespoon of corn flour, then pour over the onions. This is to moisten the onions up a bit. Cook for a couple more minutes till the onions have wilted to a consistency that you like.

# – The 5 spice peppery pork and onions are now done.

# – To serve, pile onions over some rice and then place the pork strips on the bed of onions. Garnish with spring onions.

# – Oh so delicious!!

Happy cooking!

Chinese Steamed Pork Ribs with Salted Soyabeans.

This is a dish that I grew up with and one that I’d always wanted to recreate since getting my own kitchen. Absolutely easy to make and so delicious, it’s no wonder that my mum served this for dinner at least once every week when I was younger.

The pork is juicy, tender and succulent. The salted soyabeans, or “taucu” makes a distinctive and delicious savoury sauce that goes extremely well with piping hot plain steamed rice. You can add more chillies for kicks but if you’ve got children at home, they can be omitted for a milder version.

Ingredients:

  • 400-500 grams of pork ribs
  • 2 tablespoon of salted soyabean paste or “taucu” (if they’re still in bean form, mash it with a fork or pestle & mortar or food processor)
  • 2 medium sized chilies or dried chillies, seeded and roughly chopped
  • 1 tablespoon of minced garlic
  • 2 tablespoons of minced shallots
  • 1 ginger about the size of a thumb, julienned
  • 5 tablespoons of water
  • 2 tablespoons of chopped spring onion (for garnish)

For marinating the pork:

  • 2 tablespoon of corn flour
  • 1 tablespoon of chinese rice wine
  • 1.5 tablespoon of sesame oil

If you don’t quite fancy visiting the morning market, it’s quite easy to get pork ribs at places like Tesco, Cold Storage and Jaya Grocer. The ones that I bought were about 400grams for just under RM12 from Cold Storage. I believe it’s probably slightly more expensive than the wet market but I guess you pay more for convenience.

# – Pork ribs from Cold Storage.

# – The ingredients for the sauce. Ginger not in picture thanks to my carelessness.

Lets begin…

# – Clean the pork ribs and cut them into more or less equal sizes then marinade with chinese rice wine, cornflour and sesame oil for at least 5 hours. Overnight is even better. So yes, adjust your timing as you don’t need to deal with the pork till about 1/2 hour before serving time.

# – When you’re ready to cook, heat up a pot with some cooking oil.

# – Throw in the marinaded pork ribs and brown them. No need to cook through. Remove them from the pan as soon as the pork changed colours from pink to patches of white.

# – Lay the pork out on the plate that you want to steam them in. Set aside. In my case, I used aluminium foil because I do not have plates that could fit into my steamer -_-

# – In the same pot, heat up a little bit of oil. Throw in the garlic, chillies and shallots. Fry till fragrant.

# – Next, throw in the ginger and fry it till you can smell the fragrance.

# – Put the salted soyabean paste and stir.

# – Add 5 tablespoons of water and stir. Let it simmer for a bit.

# – Remove the mixture from heat and pour it all over the pork ribs.

# – Steam for 20 minutes. If you don’t have a steamer, put a wire rack in a wok or very deep pan and fill it up with water. Make sure the wire rack is not submerged in water. When water starts boiling, put the plate of pork ribs onto the rack and cover with lid for 20 minutes. And if you’re using this makeshift steamer, remember to always check for water level and top up when it’s low.

After 20 minutes….

# – Garnish with spring onions. Delicious and very appetising chinese steamed pork ribs with salted soyabeans. DONE!

Be warned as it will makes you wolf down rice like a teenager!

Fresh raviolis for idiots with bacon tomato sauce.

I have a confession. Any cooking with flour involved often scares me. Perhaps it’s my total lack of talent, chronic lack of patience or even a genetic malfunction, I can’t seem to ever get pastry right.

I know, I know, practice makes perfect and I’m sure one day I’ll be able to produce decent looking and usable pastry but right now is sadly, not the time.

I however have a knack for cheating in my cooking, regularly skipping steps that would make any established cook/chef gasps in horror. Just because my bird brain feels that it’s “unnecessary”. Needless to say, more often than I prefer, I find my cooking inedible or as my BF put it….nauseating. I’ll feature more of my inedible, nauseating creations but right now is fortunately, not the time.

This is a post about how I cheated, succeeded and most importantly, how my BF ate everything, right down to the last drop of sauce. Ladies & gentlemen, I present the “FRESH raviolis for idiots”. You don’t even have to know how to roll out a pasta ;)

For raviolis:

  • 60 gm of chinese salted vegetables (“choi bou” in cantonese)
  • 80gm of any soft stinky cheese (I used Blue Jack)
  • 1 chilli, chopped
  • 1 packet of wonton wrappers

For sauce:

  • 4-6 pieces of streaky bacons
  • 1 chopped yellow onions
  • 1 tablespoon of dried basil
  • 1 can of tomato in juice
  • 100gm of chicken stock (you can make do with chicken cubes though I used homemade ones)

# – First of all, soak the salted vegetables in water for 1/2 hour. Remember to change the water at least twice during that time. Drain.

# – Also, take out the cheese and let it sweat and soften in room temperature.

# – Chop up the chili into as tiny pieces as possible.

# – And then you mix the salted vegetables, chillies and cheese together till thoroughly blend.

# – Lay out 20 pieces of wonton wrappers.

# – Put a teaspoon of cheese mixture on a wrapper each.

# – Use your finger to dab water all over the edge of the wonton wrapper.

# – Now use another wonton wrapper, lay it on top and press it down the edges. If you can, try to press down around the filling too so that there’s no air trapped inside.

# – If you fancy, you can use a ravioli cutter to cut around the edges to form nice scallop designs but since this is a recipe for idiots, don’t bother…hehe.

# – Wooohoo, raviolis for idiots. DONE.

Now…to make the bacon tomato sauce to go with your raviolis..

# – Cut up the tomatos if it’s not already cut in the can.

# – Heat up a pot and throw in onions and bacons to brown.

# – Pour in the cut tomatoes with its juice and chicken stock into bacons and onion mixture. Stir. The weird looking block in the picture is a piece of frozen homemade chicken stock by the way.

# – A dash of basil.

# – A dash of black pepper. Leave it to simmer while you cook the raviolis…

# – Boil a pot of water. Throw in a dash of salt. When it’s bubbling throw in the raviolis 5 at a time. It takes less than 2 minutes to cook. When cooked, they will float up to the surface and look very silky soft.

# – Prepare a plate, drizzle olive oil on it. You can omit this step but I don’t want to risk my raviolis sticking to the plate.

Also, instead of oiling the plate, you can just dump some bacon tomato sauce on it and place the cooked raviolis on top. Obviously I could have done this but it was my first time making this hence I was playing very, very safe.

# – Scoop up the cooked raviolis with a straining ladle and serve with bacon tomato sauce.

There, fresh raviolis without touching flour or eggs! I admit, they don’t rank very high when it comes to looks, but the taste?

Wow, I was prrrretttty impressed with myself. The salted vegetables (which had lost most of its saltiness from the soaking) gave the filling a good light crunch while the blue cheese contributed a creamy & savoury taste only a good cheese can. The chopped chilies gave the raviolis a kick and kept the dish interesting.

As for whether wonton wrappers can be passed off as pasta? My BF really thought I had made fresh pasta from scratch! The wrappers were thin but strong and they were silky and light after cooking. One of our best dinners to date!

Oh! And it was dirt cheap to make this too ;)