CNY Snack : Peanut filled pockets { Kok Chai }

We're 11th day into Chinese New Year but these deep-fried snacks had finished long ago! :D

These turned out as I remembered, crispy with sweet peanut filling. I couldn't stop munching on them.

Kok Chai

Recipe via Malaysian Chinese Kitchen
serves :  32 mini puffs

Ingredients

For dough

300g all-purpose flour 

0.5 tsp salt  

120ml vegetable oil 

160ml water

For Peanut Filling

½ cup (75g) raw peanuts 

2 tbsp (18g) sesame seeds  

¼ cup (53g) sugar

• Instructions
  

  Filling

  1. Toast peanuts in a small fry pan over medium heat for 3 to 4 minutes until lightly brown. Remove and allow peanuts to cool. Coarsely chop or grind peanuts.
  2. Toast sesame seeds in the same pan for 1 to 2 minutes until lightly brown.
  3. Combine peanuts, sesame seeds, and sugar in a medium bowl. Mix well and set aside.

  Dough

  1. Combine all-purpose flour (rice flour, if usinand salt in a large bowl. Make a well in the center. Pour vegetable oil into the well. Mix with a spatula. Slowly add water a little at a time to form a soft, non-sticky dough. You may or may not require the full ⅓ cup (80ml) water.
  2. Remove the dough from the bowl and knead on a clean work surface for 3 to 4 minutes. Form dough into a ball and place it back into the bowl. Cover with a towel and allow dough to rest for 10 minutes.
  3. Remove dough from the bowl and shape into a cylinder about 12 inches long. Cut dough into 16 equal size pieces.

  Forming the Mini Puffs

  1. Take a piece of dough and shape it into a circle of about 2½ inches in diameter by rotating and flattening the edges. Place a teaspoon of filling in the center.
  2. Fold the dough into a semi circle. Seal by pressing and pleating the edges together. Repeat with the remaining pieces of dough.

  Frying the Mini Puffs

  1. Heat about an inch of vegetable oil in a wok to fry everything at one go or a small saucepan to fry in batches.
  2. Deep fry mini puffs over medium low heat for 4 to 5 minutes or until golden brown. Remove and allow mini puffs to drain in a metal strainer.
  3. Allow kok chai (mini peanut puffto cool completely before storing in air tight containers for up to 2 weeks.
   

Chinese New Year Baking : Almond London Cookies

Chinese New Year is once again around the corner (February 8th)! For this year, I thought aside from the staple pineapple tart, I should try my hand at another favourite cookies for the festival. When I saw a recipe for Almond London Cookies during my blog surfing, I knew I want to make these. These did not originate from London and I have no idea why this cookies exists in Malaysia. The cookie is basically a toasted almond wrapped with short cookie dough, bake lightly, then dipped into melted chocolate and finish off with a sprinkle of chopped/nibbed almonds.

For step-by-step tutorial, please go to Nasi Lemak Lover.


Almond London Cookies
Source : Nasi Lemak Lover (linked above)

150g whole almonds

30g nibbed almonds

170g butter (salted)

60g icing sugar, sifted

20g egg yolk (used 1 yolk)

300g cake flour (used plain flour)

300g chocolate

Method

1. Toast whole almonds in oven at 180°c for 13-15mins, and toast nibbed almonds at 180°c for 1-2mins. Set aside to let it cool completely before use.
2. Cream butter and icing sugar till light and pale.
3. Add in egg yolk, beat well to combine.
4. Add in cake flour, mix until it come together to form soft dought. Do not over work it.
5. To weight dough 6g each, wrap up a whole almond, and shape into oval shape.
6. Bake cookies at 160°c (fan forced) for 15mins or until golden brown, set aside to cool completely.
7. Melt chocolate over double boiler or microwave oven. Dip cookie in melted chocolate. Use a small fork, transfer coated cookie into a mini paper cup.
8. Sprinkle some toasted nibbed almonds on top. Chill in the fridge (~10mins) to set the chocolate before storing in air-tight container. Store in cool place to prevent chocolate from melting.

Steamed fish fillets, surimi with glass noodles

Happy Lunar New Year!
I have this carp fillets sitting in the freezer and since I'm unfamiliar with this fish, I was wondering what to cook with it. My thought process was, ok nothing too complicated like frying and too much effort since I'm not sure ..hahaa. So, let's just steam it in garlic, soy, shaosing wine and oil. Simple enough

Steamed carp fish fillets , surimi with glass noodles
Inspired by Thai steamed prawns like this one by The Woks of Life

Ingredients
350gm fish fillets
100gm glass noodles, soaked in warm water for 10-15 mins. until softened
Surimi sticks, imitation crab meat

seasoning
salt, to taste
2 cloves of garlic, chopped finely
oil for sauté
soy sauce, to taste
sugar, to taste
water, not too much
a dash of shaoxing wine (I've substitute with white wine)

Garnishing
Spring onions, green only
Coriander / Parsley leaves

Preparations:-
1) First prep. glass noodles as mentioned above. Set aside. You can do this in advance and keep in the fridge until you need it.
2) Start by heating water in your steamer. Meanwhile, on a plate, big enough for steamer. Lay the soaked glass noodles evenly. Then place the fish fillets/surimi sticks on top. Sprinkle salt over the fish, to taste
3) In a jar, mix together soy sauce, sugar, water and dash of shaoxing wine. Pour over the fish and glass noodles.
4) Sauté finely chopped garlic in oil, don't burn it.When ready pour all over fish and glass noodles.
5) When water is boiling in steamer, place the fish platter into steamer and steam for 10 mins. After 10 mins. check for doneness. If not continue to steam for another 5 and check again until it is ready.
6) Serve immediately garnished with spring onions and coriander/parsley.

Homemade Yee Sang / Yusheng

To understand what this is all about , please visit wiki

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 Chinese Pork Jery

In total I spent 40 mins. getting this ready. I wonder why I only bake this once a year?

The recipe could be found here.

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.

Pineapple Tart

recipe coming soon..I need recall which recipe and filling did I use..

update 28/01/2015 :- another post on pineapple "tarts" is up

Homemade Chinese Pork Jerky (Bak kwa) 肉乾

Wow! Homemade Pork jerky needs only 6 ingredients!
If you cook Asian food at home, my guess is you'd already have 5 of the 6 ingredients in your pantry.

The ingredients are :-
1.Ground pork 2.Light soy sauce 3.Dark soy sauce 4. Fish sauce 5. Cooking wine (I used white wine) 6.Sugar


For the exact recipe check at Little corner of Mine


Ingredients:
450gm minced meat, with some fats
1-1/2 tbsp fish sauce
1 tbsp dark soy sauce
1 tbsp light soy sauce
1 tbsp cooking wine
1/2 cup sugar


Method:
Pre-heat oven at 125°c.

Put minced meat in a big bowl. Add in the seasoning. Use Chopsticks and stir in one direction until minced meat becomes gluey.

Put some gluey minced meat on a *parchment paper. Cover with a big cling wrap (I think plastic sheet is better) and use a roller to roll the minced meat to 2mm thick. (*Do not use aluminum foil as it will stick!)

Put the parchment paper with minced meat, on a baking tray.

Bake in preheated oven at 125°c for 20 minutes. **After that, increase the temperature to 180°c and bake for about 20-30 minutes. Keep a close watch, as it burns easily at this stage.

Cooled and cut into pieces.

Jerky all stripped and ready to be devour! You may also make a sandwich with these meat garnish with cucumber

Howdy!

Say hi! to my bangkit bears :)

Yes, those cuties are kuih bangkit ; a type of chinese cookies made from tapioca flour. Auchan was having a chinese kitchen promotion and brought in lots of ingredients which normally not available on their shelves. We made a trip there last weekend so that I could finally stock sesame oil and hoisin sauce...woohoo! Then I was ecstatic when I saw tapioca flour!!! Got to have 'em , don't know what to do with them (never used it before *blush*) , but got to have it!

Next, of course the drill is to search for a recipe. Found quite a number of interesting use for the flour; however, I think the one from Little Corner Of Mine was the easiest, plus she had included useful tips to obtain the right texture for the cookies.

The tips work superbly! The slightly browned base gives a smokey (not burnt!) taste first when popped into the mouth and it just melts in the mouth ...mmmm . How fun to see the initially skinny bears gained weight (raised) after coming out of the oven :D

Peanut cookies

Lately, all I could think about is food!! It doesnt help that there're so many food blogs offering easy recipes. Like this peanut cookies, preparation took me about 30 mins. only.

The first batch was burnt but guess what? I ate the not-too-burnt ones and I'm hooked! So, I baked it again the next day since it's doesnt require too many ingredients and its ready in a jiffy.

.

Verdict : One by one they melt in the mouth..oh, very addictive! You should really try it :)

.

Note : First trial the cookies weren't sweet enough. So, i've increased to 1/3 cup of sugar following the recipe of the link below

.

Peanuts cookies click here for recipe

source : Little corner of mine


(A)
1 1/3 cup unbleached all-purpose flour/ plain flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
(B)
1/4 cup sugar (or icing sugar for more melt in the mouth texture)
80g ground coarsed roasted/toasted peanuts
(C)
1/3 cup + 2 Tbp. canola oil

1 egg, beaten for egg wash

Method:

1. Sift (A) into a bowl.
2. Add (B), mix well.
3. Add (C), stir with a fork, the mixture will be crumbly.
4. Use your hands, scoop up the mixture and press it into balls. Place on parchment paper lined cookie sheet.
5. Glaze the peanut cookies with egg wash.
6. Bake at preheated 350'F oven for 20 minutes.