A taste of home

One of the things that I miss being away from Singapore is the food. Many people I have met often rave about the variety of food found in Singapore. Whenever I go back for a visit, I often feel like I'm on a food safari (ie hunting down my favourite food and devouring it!).

Being away from Singapore, I can't just go to the nearest kopi tiam for my cravings when it hits me. I've had no choice but to start to learn how to cook some local dishes. One of our favourites is 'hae mee' or noodles with prawns. On my last trip back, I was upset to find that the 'hae mee' stall near our place had closed down. I felt short changed.

I recently had a whole bunch of prawn heads and shells (my maid thought I was strange for not throwing it out) and decided to cook 'hae mee'. I even have extra big bowls for it so that TH can have an extra portion and slurp to his heart's content.

It's actually pretty easy to prepare just a little time consuming because I grind the prawn heads and shells before straining the stock. I love it when there is a red film to the stock. It's all the yummy sweetness from the prawn heads.

Ingredients:

1-2 kg prawns (de-shell and keep the heads and tails)
10 cloves of garlic
500g pork ribs
bean sprouts
kangkong
2-3 tablespoons of sugar
salt to taste

Fried shallots for garnishing

Method:

Fry the garlic with the prawn heads and shells till shells are a bit burnt around the edges.

Transfer prawn heads and shells to 1 litre water. Simmer. Add pork bones. Simmer for about an hour. Add salt and sugar to taste.

Scoop out prawn heads with stock and blend.Take out pork bones and put aside.

Strain the stock and add pork bones back to strained stock.

Simmer for 15 minutes. Add shelled prawns. Scoop out when cooked.

Add stock to egg noodles, bee hoon and serve with bean sprouts and kang kong.

Comfort food

When I was young, I loved going to my Mamma (grandma's). Not only did she have tonnes of sweets for me but she was a fabulous cook. She was a typical Nonya (Straits-born Chinese) in her sarong kebaya (every single day) and always cooking, cooking, cooking. One of my favourite dishes of hers was 'see u bak' or pork stewed in dark sauce.

For years I tried re-creating the dish from memory because Mamma had no recipe (of course). My mum (who was also a good cook) didn't know. Finally, a few years ago when my aunt was visiting me in Bangkok, I asked if she knew how to cook it and she did. Best of all, she cooked it the way Mamma did.

This is comfort food for me. Reminds me of the days when I'd sit in Mamma's kitchen with a bowl of see u bak in front of me and a slice of soft white bread (those days no such thing as whole grain/multi-grain etc) before dunking it into the bowl till the bread is soaked with the soup.

I cook this often as it is very easy to cook and it keeps well if not finished (actually tastes better after a day or two).

Ingredients:

1 cinnoman stick
2 clove
2 star anise
4 cloves garlic (intact and with skin)

4-6 big pieces of pork ribs (I use ribs that have more meat on them)
2-3 hard boiled eggs
3-4 pieces of fried tofu

Method:

Fry spices with garlic in a pot with 1 -2 tbs oil. When fragrant, put in pork ribs and fry for 1 minute.

Add water (about 500ml). Add dark soya sauce (4 tbs), light soya sauce (2 tbs). Bring to boil. Then simmer for 45 minutes or till pork becomes tender. Add hard boiled egg, tofu and salt to taste.

Serve with rice or bread.

Tofu, Japanese style

I have to admit that I'm not very health conscious when it comes to food. I love fried, salty, greasy food. My friends will tell you that my ultimate favourite food is fried chicken, especially the skin.

Ever since Sean was born, I have made an effort to cook healthier food. Sean eats the healthiest in our family as he was fed steamed vegetables, meat and fish for the longest time. Even now, he'd rather eat spinach than chicken. I suspect that he is a closet vegetarian!

We love tofu. We love Japanese food. There is a ramen shop nearby that serves this cold tofu. I decided to make my own version. It is easy to prepare (no cooking required), tasty and best of all, healthy!

Ingredients:

1 tub of soft tofu (sometimes referred to as silken tofu)

3-4 tbs soya sauce )
3-4 sesame oil ) mixed

For garnishing:

Fried shallots
Spring onions chopped up fine
Tuna flakes
Ground dried shrimp (optional)

Method:

Cut up tofu into cubes.

Pour soya sauce and sesame mixture over it.

Liberally sprinkle garnish on top. Serve.

Chicken rice

One of the things I miss most living away from Singapore is the food. You can take the girl out of Singapore but you can't take the longing for chicken rice away from her.

There is chicken rice here in Bangkok. They call it 'kao man gai' and they have the steamed or fried version. I have not found the roast version here yet. There is a chain of Singapore chicken rice stalls called Boon Tong Kiat but I found the rice bland and the they only sell steamed chicken.

I have had no choice but to cook my own roast chicken rice. The recipe is adapted from Periplus Malaysian favourites cooking book. Why adapted? I used the ingredients listed but tweaked it to suit my taste.

To me, the key ingredient is the chicken stock. What I normally do is boil a big batch of stock and freeze it for soups, porridge etc. The meat and vegetables from the stock I dice it up to make porridge for us or as feed it to my dogs as a treat. They love it!

Stock

Ingredients:

2 chicken carcasses
6 pork bones (optional)
2 carrots
2 big onion
2 corn
1 leek (optional)
2 stalks shallots
2 coriander roots

3 liter water

Method:

Wash chicken and pork bones.

Place all ingredients into big stock pot and boil, then simmer for 2-3 hours.

Strain the stock before packing and freezing it.

Chicken Rice

Ingredients for rice:

4 - 5 handfuls of rice. Rinsed.
8 -10 cloves garlic finely chopped
6 slices ginger
3 stalks pandan leaf (optional but it smells better with it)
3-4 cups of stock
Salt to taste

Method:

Heat up 4-5 tbsp oil in wok. Fry garlic and ginger till fragrant. Add in rice and fry till all rice is coated with oil and garlic.

Transfer rice (with garlic and ginger) to rice cooker. Add stock (I normally add the stock till it comes up to the first line of my middle finger when I place my finger on top of rice).

Add 1 tsp of salt. Add pandan leaves and cook.

Ingredients for chicken:

3 chicken thighs

Marinade:
3 tbsp sesame oil
3 tbsp light soya sauce
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp 5 spice

Mix ingredients for marinade and pour over chicken. Let it sit for an hour. Sometimes I marinate it over night.

Heat oven to 200 degrees. Place chicken onto baking dish. Pour 1 ladle of stock into the baking dish. Cover with foil and roast for 45 minutes. Remove foil to let skin crisp. Serve.

Mum's chicken chop soup

My mum was a late starter when it came to cooking. I remember when she first started cooking for us it was so bad we used to dread meal times. She blossomed to be a really great cook and I think TH married me partly cos of mum's cooking!

This dish is one that I think she concocted and I love it as it is a one dish meal (has meat, veg and carbo). It is simple to cook and keeps well. The leftover tastes even better as the meat and potatoes absorb the soup.

Unfortunately, like most cooks of her time, mum did not swear by cookbooks and precise measurements. I cook the same way too sometimes. I have inherited recipes from her that have measurements going like this "20 cents of dried prawns" Huh? Some of these recipes are older than I am so how would I know what 20 cents of dried prawns is like in 2008? So I estimate or 'aga aga' (as they say in Malay).

So, if some of the measurements in my recipes are not 100% accurate, please bear with me.

Ingredients:

Chicken fillet (about 6-10 pieces)
Biscuit (pounded to small crumbs)
1 egg (beaten)
1 big onion
1 potato
2 tomatoes

Chicken stock (1/2 litre)
Soya sauce (2 - 3 tbs)
Salt

Method:

Dice the potato into chunks. Fry till outside is browned (doesn't need to be cooked all the way)
Take it out. Drain oil and lightly sprinkle with salt. Put aside.

Dip chicken fillet pieces into egg and then coat with biscuit crumbs. Pan fry pieces till brown (doesn't need to be fully cooked). Take out put aside.

Cut up onion and tomato into mid size cubes.

Fill pot with chicken stock. Add onion and tomato.

Add soya sauce. Boil and then turn down heat to simmer. Add potato.

If there is left over egg, to stir in when soup is boiling.

When potato is softened, add in chicken. Simmer till chicken cooked and before biscuit crumbs disintegrate. Add salt to taste.