Home Made Luncheon Meat

I had been rather lazy recently and have not been updating the blog as often as I used to. But I guess I can't miss this recipe out. Made this specially for a friend that is currently pregnant and craving for luncheon meat.

Ingredients:

• 500g pork minced (I used ready store minced and I have no idea the fat vs lean composition)
• 100g pork belly (rind removed) - cut to small pieces
• 30g chicken (coincidentally got left over)
• 30g plain flour
• 30g potato starch
• 1tbsp sugar
• 2tbsp soy sauce
• 1tbsp sesame oil
• 1tsp ginger juice (I can't squeeze that much so actually just shred some into the mixture)
• 1tbsp chinese cooking wine
• 1tsp paprika
• 1tsp 5 spice powder (I think it is rather over powering, should reduce to max 3/4tsp should do)
• 1tsp white pepper powder
• 2 egg whites
• 1/2tsp salt

Steps:

1. Place the cut pork belly in the food processor and blend till the meat are finely blended. 
2. Add in the chicken and minced into the food processor and blitz it for roughly 10-15seconds. This is to further processed the meat till they are very fine so that the texture of the luncheon meat is not coarse.
3. Add in the rest of the ingredients and blitz for another 20seconds to get all ingredients mixed properly and evenly.
4. Prepare either a bowl or pan or whatever container that you will want to use to steam the meat. Oil the container and place the mixture into the container. Press the meat down and try to compact it as much as you can. It is rather hard to do this since the mixture is very bouncy and soft. I just used the back of the spoon to press it down. 
5. Oil the top of the mixture and then cover the container with an aluminium foil. Then use your hand to further compact the meat down by pressing over the foil.
6. Prepare a wok of water and set to steam the meat. I used the Philips electrical pressure cooker and just pour in cold water and put in the container. Use something heavy to place at the top of the aluminium foil. This is to prevent the meat from expanding during the steaming process and create air bubbles in the luncheon meat.
7. If you are steaming it manually, steam over high heat for 45mins. With the pressure cooker, I used steam mode and steam for 20mins.
8. Once done, removed the container and let it rest. Do not remove the aluminium foil. This is to ensure that all the moisture can be retained in the meat and not have juices flowing out when you cut it. Since the weather is  rather cold still tonight (I guess it is below 11c), I waited for bout 15mins before opening and removing the whole piece of meat to cut (rested another 10mins out of the container before cutting).
9. Fry the meat the way you like or like me, place it in the air fryer at 180c and fry for 7mins on each side.

Keropok Lekor aka as Malay Fish Fingers

This is oil fried version

This is air fried version

This is how it looks like before slicing to fry

What happens when you are in the land that you don't get what you crave for easily or almost not available, you try making it yourself. Keropok lekor is one of my favourite snack from the night market back home. This is actually my second attempt of making this snack. The first was a failure maybe due to the type of fish used. I used basa fillet the first time and it tasted more just like normal fish cake and lack of that spongy feel for the thick type and not crispy for the thin type.

This time, I used barramundi and it works nicely. Maybe it is due to the "kaoness" of the fish. It is the stickiness effect that the fish achieve after being mashed.

Here is the recipe for this yummy snack:

Ingredients:

• 450-470g of fish fillet (I used barramundi, you can use tuna or even ready made fish paste
• 1 1/4 cups of tapioca starch
• 1/4 cup of plain flour
• few pieces of ice cubes
• a pinch of salt
• 10g butter
• 1cup plain flour for dusting
• 1 pot of salted water for boiling
• oil to fry

Steps:

1. Place the 6 ingredients in the food processor. Mix till it is even.
2. Dust the working top with plain flour and scoop the mixture out to shape.
3. Divide the mixture into 6 parts and dust it generously with the plain flour.
4. Shape it into long tube of roughly 12cm with diameter of 2.5cm. Place them aside.
5. Boil the salted water. Once boil, place in a few pieces of the fish tubes and let it boil for bout 4-5mins. It is ready once the tube floats in the water.
6. Remove the fish tubes and let it dry and cool down.
7. Once it is cool and dry, slice it to the thickness of your preference and fry.
8. If you using the air fryer, it takes about 8-10mins at 200c. Time varies with the thickness you cut the cracker.

Home Made Almond Milk

Ingredients:

• 150g (approximately, didnt weight) almond (I used those with skin, so got to waste time removing, try to get those without), soaked overnight to remove the skin, then soaked for at least another night
• 5 cups water

Method:

1. Soak the almond for at least a night to ease the skin removal. Remove the brown skin. Then soak for another night. The reason I remove the skin is cause I wanted to use the almond meal later for baking. If you are just throwing it away (try not to waste), dont bother then. 
2. I uses the magi mix, but I guess should be the same with the other food processor or blender. Just sieve off all the water and blend it for about 20seconds and slowly add in water. Blend till you see the entire mixture is smooth and fine.
3. Use those fine sieve or cheesecloth to sieve the milk. Press the almond meal till dry so you get all the milk. Leave aside the almond meal for other recipes. Can use it for baking or make some vegetarian food dishes.
4. I then double boil the milk for bout 20mins and ready to be served. 

Pizza with home cooked tomato sauce

The big and small bosses both wanted pizza and hence, pizza we make. Hehehe...
Instead of the normal bread dough, I googled for some inspiration and ended up with this olive oil dough which is yummy, with some accidentally modification.

Ingredients for the dough:

• 1.3cups of lukewarm water
• 0.75 tablespoon of yeast
• 0.5 tablespoon of salt
• 0.5 tablespoon brown sugar
• 1/8 cup of extra virgin olive oil
• 4cups of self raising flour (this is the accident)
• 1/2 cup flour for kneading or shaping use

Method:

1. Premix all the ingredients in a bowl, except the flour.
2. Have the flour in the magimix and slowly add in those wet ingredients till they mix well. Let the mixture mix for about 5mins. 
3. Take it out and leave it in a container with cover to rest (not air tight) for roughly 2 hours.
4. Take it out, give it some "boxing" and kneading. Refrigerate overnight if possible, otherwise at least for 2-3hours. 
5. And it is ready to use. Take the amount required and flatten it. Give the bottom of the pan or paper or pizza stone a spray of olive oil before putting on the pizza dough. This will avoid sticking and gives the dough a soft fluffy taste.

For the topping, I have some home cooked tomato sauce and other toppings like mushroom, pepperoni, sliced chilli, fresh spinach leaves, surimi.

To prepare the tomato sauce (if you want enough for the above):

Ingredients:

• 8cloves of garlic, finely chopped
• 10 tomatoes (leave it in a pot of boiling water for about 3-5mins to help removed the skin), cut and chopped, keep about 1cup of the water
• 3 tablespoon of balsamic vinegar
• 1/2 teaspoon of salt
• 1/8 teaspoon of pepper
• 1 tablespoon of brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon of olive oil
• 2 tablespoon of finely chopped bacon

Methods:

1. Saute the bacon and garlic with the olive oil till the bacon is crispy and brown (medium high fire).
2. Add in the chopped tomatoes and season with the rest of the ingredients. Add in the water from the tomato and simmer it for about 5-10mins.
3. If you like your sauce to have the tomato texture, use it directly. Otherwise, you can blend them till smooth before using it to smear all over the top of the pizza dough.

Pork Burger Patty

Made this last night for hubby to bring for lunch today, to go with the muffin we bought that was on sale... :D

Ingredients:

• 100g of pork belly (or the Chinese called it the 3 layer meat), skin removed, cut to cubes
• 200g of lean pork meat, also cut to cubes
• 1/2 medium size onion
• 3cm x 1cm size of ginger, skin removed
• 4 tablespoon of rolled oats
• 3 cloves of garlic, skin removed
• 3tablespoon of chinese cooking wine
• 1 tablespoon of sesame oil
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon of soy sauce

Methods:

1. Add in first 6 items in the ingredient list in the blender (of course, I need to maximise my pressie, again, into the magi mix small blending bowl). Blend till all fine all well mixed. If mixture is too dry, add one or two tablespoon of water to it.
2. Season with the rest of the ingredients.
3. Wet both hands and scooped about 3 tablespoon of mixture and formed the shape of a burger patty. Place it on top of cling plastic wrapper. Continue till all ingredients are used up. 
4. Refrigerate the patties in the fridge for at least 4hours. 
5. Pan fry on the pan for 4mins on each side and served the way you like it... :D

Kai Tan Kou (Egg Cake, no oil)

During the last month in KL, the girl was at my mom's house and I just found out that the girl likes kai tan kou, so I decided to hunt for the recipe to make it. What more now with the new toy, it makes baking even easier.

The only setback I noticed so far (only used it twice), there is no speed, either auto or pulse...

Anyway, here is the little teddy cake saying hi!

Ingredients
1 large egg
30gm sugar
¼ tsp vanilla extract

30gm plain flour
1/8 tsp baking powder













Ingredients:
2 large eggs
50g brown sugar
1/2tsp vanilla extract
50g flour
1.4tsp baking powder

* Need to increase the amount coz I notice this only make 5 of my teddy... so little.

Method
1. Place a greased kuih balu mould into a preheated 200C oven.

2. Whisk egg for bout 1min until light, pale and frothy.

3. Add sugar and vanilla extract and beat until thick and creamy.

4. In another bowl, sift together the flour and baking powder. Slowly add in the flour mixture little by little and each add, pulse the mixture a little

5. Scoop batter into the heated greased mould. Fill to the top of the mould.

6. Bake at 200C for 8 minutes or until the top is golden brown. The time and temperature depends on your oven. So, need to do a little test and trial or know your oven well.

7. Remove kuih bahlu from mould with the aid of a skewer and leave to cool on a wire rack. Continue with the the rest of the batter (step 5-7).

8. Store in an airtight container.

Homemade Egg Noodle Soup

Finally unpacked my wedding anniversary cum valentine's pressie from hubby. It arrives late afternoon on the day before our shipment arrives, so I wasn't too keen to get it unpack coz the whole place is so messy and not that I have the time to do anything with it yet.

And, the first thing I made was egg noodle. The girl loves noodle and I'm sort of worried that the dried noodle is not that healthy after all compared to the one mommy made with some love of course.. hehehe... :p

The noodle was served with honey soy pan fried pork (the pork was sliced, marinated with soy sauce and honey only, then pan fried with some olive oil).

After searching and searching, I finally settled for the recipe from http://chefwo.com/update-version-egg-noodle-recipe/ with some modifications to the method since I'm not using hand to do this.

Ingredients

• 500gm all purpose flour
• 1 egg yolk
• 1 3/4 cup of cold water
• 1 1/4 tsp of salt

Method

1. Put in all the dry ingredients in the big bowl of the magi mix and then the egg and cold water.
2. Blend with the dough mixer for about 5mins.
3. Leave it to set for an hour while I go prepare the pork to marinade, cut the broccoli and setup the noodle maker (also a new toy.. kekeke)
4. Take it out and knead and use the noodle maker to cut it as per instruction. Remember to keep dusting with flour. I used like almost another cup of flour for it.
5. Time to test your noodle perfection. Hold one strand and pull, you should be able to pull it very long! Isn’t it great!
6. Since I don't have a noodle dryer/rack and lack of time, what I did was laid it on the top of a big container straight to dry.
7. While drying, pan fried the pork, boil the soup, add in the broccoli and then just dump all the noodle in it.
8. Served... slurp slurp..

Next time, I'm gonna try putting in more eggs, less water.