Sup Ekor or Oxtail Soup

Just had the felling of drinking those Malay type of soup and so, I bought a bag of oxtail from the butcher the other day and wanted to try cooking it myself.

Here it goes .

Ingredients:

• 500-600g of oxtail
• 2 teaspoon of cumin seed
• 1 star anise
• some dried chills (I omitted this cause my daughter is drinking, she don't like it spicy)
• a small piece of cinnamon stick
• 1 carrot cut big chunk
• 1 potato cut chunk
• 1 tomato, quartered
• a little oil
• 1/2 teaspoon of salt
• a handful of chopped spring onion
• a handful of parsley
• half a big onion, sliced and fried till crispy, for serving
• 1.5l water

Steps:

1. Wash the oxtail, and dry it.
2. Pound the star anise and cumin seed together till it is quite fine and form a paste. put them in the muslin cloth.
3. Pan fry the oxtail till brown all side, leave the cinnamon stick in the oil too.
4. Put the oxtail, cinnamon stick and the paste in muslin cloth in the pot (I uses the pressure cooker). Add in the water. Boil for 2hours. I boil mine on high for 15mins and low fire for another 15mins. If you using chilli, add in now too.
5. Add in the potato, carrot and tomato and cooked for another 2hours (mine another 20mins).
6. Season before serving with salt and top with the rest of the ingredients.

Buckwheat Cupcakes

Bought a bag of buckwheat flour to make soba but gave up caused it needs to be fresh otherwise it will break. So, decided to try turn it into cupcakes.

Made two version with the same cake batter, top with dark chocolate chips and the other is shredded cheddar cheese.

Ingredients:

• 155g soften butter (unsalted)
• 3g baking powder
• 100g self raising flour
• 100g buckwheat flour
• 50g yogurt
• 100g sugar
• 2 large eggs
• toppings (mine was dark chocolates and cheddar, choose what u like)

Steps:

1. Cream the butter and sugar till light and fluffy. Add in egg and mix well.
2. Then mix in the self raising flour and buckwheat flour and baking powder. Mix it well.
3. Finally add in yogurt and stir well.
4. Scoop on the cups and top with the items you like. Bake for 15 to 20mins at 180c. I used air fryer and that requires 12mins at 160c.

Kimchi

A friend had just requested for my kimchi recipe, which I totally forgot to blog about and hope that I don't forget the steps and the ingredients yet.. :p

Ingredients:

• 1 head of chinese cabbage/napa (roughly 1-1.2kg)
• 1 cup of coarse salt
• 1 sink of water or a big pot of it
• 6-7 pieces of korean anchovies (it is big and a lot more flavourful then the normal ikan bills)
• 3 cups of water
• half an apple - cut to small pieces
• a small piece of ginger (roughly 3cm x 1cm) - cut to small pieces
• half a big yellow onion - cut to small pieces
• 3-4 pieces of garlic - cut to small pieces
• 1/2 cup cooked rice
• 2 pieces of raw squid, cleaned and cut to small pieces
• 1/4 cup of salt
• 1 to 1.5 cup of korean chilli flakes
• 3 tablespoon of sugar (i used brown ones)
• 1 leak - cut to 3cm length
• 1 carrot, julienned
• a bunch of spring onion - cut to 3cm length

Steps:

1. This first step need to be prepared a week in advance or you may buy ready made fermented shrimp (cencaluk) or fermented squid. Mixed the 1/4 cup of salt with the raw cleaned squid in a container. Leave it to ferment in the fridge for a week.
2. Cut the napa to small pieces of roughly 3x3cm size. Seasoned the sink of cold water with half the cup of salt. Next layer a layer of napa in it, sprinkle with the balance of the salt, another layer and sprinkle and repeat till all the napa is soaked in the cold water. Used something heavy to press it down. Soaked for at least 2-3 hours till the leaves are all lifeless and soft.
3. Rinse the napa off the salt water (at least three rinse) and dry it. You may keep the water to wash veggie or fruit instead of wasting it.
4. Boiled the 3 cups of water with the anchovies for at least 20mins. Leave it aside to cool.
5. Place the rice, apple, squid (if using shrimp, no need to do this step), ginger, garlic, onion with a little of the anchovies stock in the blender and give them a blitz till it is all smooth.
6. Stir in the mixture into the chilli flakes and sugar till even. If too thick add a little more of the stock. If using shrimp, add in now.
7. Mix the leak, carrot and spring onion into the chilli paste.
8. Now prepare your container to store the kimchi. I used a big container, you may do it in few small one.
9. Rub the chilli paste on the napa leaves evenly, piece by piece and layered it on the container. When you are done with all,  pour in all the stock to the chilli paste, mix it well and pour it over the leaves.
10. Leave the kimchi to ferment a day at room temperature before transferring it to the fridge to store. The longer it is outside, the more fermentation will take place.

Cheat Curry Fish Head

I bought a big fish recently and got the fish monger to cut the fish to half for us and hubby requested for fish curry. So, I cooked up this cheat version so that I don't need to get so many ingredients and spent to much time (I have a baby and a 6yo to attend to).

So, this is the fish head curry...

Ingredients:

• one fish head, roughly 600g
• a big handful of frozen okra (no fresh one available since mine is last min decision to cook and shop for ingredients)
• 4 pieces of taufu pok
• 1 tablespoon of shredded coconut
• 2 tablespoon of onion
• a few leaves of curry leaf
• one chopped tomato
• 2tablespoon of nyonya sambal (bottled from asian grocer)
• 2 tablespoon of baba's fish curry powder
• 1cup water
• 0.5 cup milk
• 1 tablespoon oil
• salt to season

Steps:

1. Clean the fish head, season with a little salt and air fried it at 180c for 15mins. 
2. At the last 5mins, add in the taufu pok to air fry too.
3. Heat up the wok and add in the oil. Saute the curry leaves and onion till almost brown.
4. Stir in the water, curry powder and sambal.
5. Then add in the okra, taufu pok, tomato and fish head.
6. Simmer for 7-8mins for each side of the fish and turn and simmer another 5-6mins.
7. Finally, add in the milk and shredded coconut and let it thicken a little.
8. Season before serving.

Collagen Broth

I saw someone posted  collagen broth that she used as soup based and has lots of goodness, I decided to google it and give it a try.

It is sort of almost the same as preparing the soup based for ramen, but shorter time and less ingredients. There is no onion, leek, shallots, etc

I used mine for my ramen served with kimchi, shredded seaweed and air fried beef fingers slices.

Ingredients:

• a big handful, roughly 500g of chicken feet
• 1kg of bone marrow (that's the type of name labelled for the bone) 
• 1 chicken carcass
• 4l of water

Steps:

1. Boiled some water and placed the bone in there to boil for about 4-6mins. Washed the bones clean
2. Then put all the ingredients in the big pot and boil for 3-4hrs. Mine is sort of a cheat. I used the thermos cooker pot and I boiled it for 40mins, placed in the cooker pot for over night and boil it again and leave it there for another 3-4hrs.
3. Used the filter to filter the soup before storing in the container. I have one just in the fridge that I'm using it now and the other container in the freezer coz I'll be using it later.
4. Season with salt before using or you can omit that if you are like me, prefer the original taste.

Steamed Glutinous Rice

Everytime someone posted something I like on Facebook, it gets me wanting to cook them. And here it is steamed glutinous rice. Cooked this few times de but just didn't blog down the recipe each time.

The glutinous rice served with a quick curry chicken.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups of glutinous rice (I uses the thai one this time), soaked for 3hrs with cold water
• 4 tablespoon of finely chopped shallots
• 2 tablespoon of finely chopped garlic
• 2 pieces of lap cheong (waxed sausage), cut to small slices (roughly 0.5cm each) 
• 3 pieces of chinese dried mushroom, soaked and cut to small slices
• 1 big handful of dried shrimp, soaked and roughly chopped
• 1/8 teaspoon of five spice powder
• 1 tablespoon of oyster sauce
• 1/8 teaspoon of salt
• a big dash of pepper
• 4 tablespoon of oil
• a big handful of chopped spring onion for garnishing

Steps:

1. Heat up the oil and fry 1/2 tablespoon of the shallots. Once brown and crispy, set aside for garnishing.
2. Heat up some water in the steamer.
3. Then fry the lap cheong for about a 1min before adding in the  dried shrimps.
4. Stirring for another 1 min, add in the shallots. When they are about to brown, add in the garlic and mushroom.
5. Finally stir in the rice and seasoning. Cook for about 4-5mins.
6. Scoop the rice into a bowl and leave it to steam for about 20-30mins, depending to how soft you want the rice to be. My hubby likes it "al dente" so I had mine steamed bout 25mins.

Mooncake

Last year, I just suddenly feel like making moon cake but realised that I have no mould for it so there is no shape and just simple one. I cooked up some red beans and mashed it and that's the filling. Even the golden syrup was cooked by myself... hehehe...

Then I decided to order the mould online but didn't get the chance to bake it given the morning sickness that just kicked in at that time.

So, this year, I try to make use of the purchase and not waste it. First I make the baked version using the same filling, cheese.

For the filling, I'm trying to clear the mascarpone stock I have from the tiramisu recently.

Ingredients:

• 100g mascarpone cheese
• 100g cream cheese
• 50g sugar

Steps:

1. Cream them till sugar is well mixed and the cheese is creamy and a little hard.
2. Scoop them up according to required amount on greased paper and leave it to chill in the freezer. This will make it easier to fill up the moon cake.

This, the recipe I adopted from the Facebook Healthy Meal for babies.

Ingredients:

• 90g of golden syrup
• 38g peanut oil
• 150g flour
• 1 egg

Steps:

1. Mixed all the ingredients (except the egg) till it is all even and form a proper ball dough.
2. Pinched out the required according to the size of your mould, mine was roughly 60g (can be more if need it taller). Flatten the dough and filled up with your preferred filling (approximately 25-30g).
3. Roll up the dough and insert into the mould to shape.
4. Knock the moon cake out.
5. Brush with egg wash and bake at 180c for 20-25mins (I uses air fryer 160c for 15mins)

Meanwhile for the snowskin, this is the recipe:

Ingredients:

• 25g glutinous rice flour
• 25g rice flour
• 20g corn flour
• 50g brown sugar
• 120ml milk
• 20ml peanut oil
• 25g fried glutinous rice flour (just put on the pan and fry till it is light brownish, stirring it constantly. should take less then 5mins to get this)

Steps:

1. Mixed all ingredients properly (except for the fried glutinous rice flour) till even and non clumpy.
2. Steam over high fire for 15mins.
3. Let it lightly cool to warm and dust with the fried flour. Kneed till soft, fluffy and smooth.
4. Pinched out the required according to the size of your mould, mine was roughly 60g (can be more if need it taller). Flatten the dough and filled up with your preferred filling (approximately 25-30g).
5. Roll up the dough, dust with fried flour and insert into the mould to shape.
6. Knock the moon cake out and done.