Posts tagged ‘Recipes’

Nov 20

Tonkotsu Ramen Base

15 hours.

In that time, you can catch up on much-needed sleep, clock in nearly two days’ worth of office hours, or fly from New York to London – and back.

Or you can slave over a boiling pot of tonkotsu ramen broth.

OK, so the fire was really the one flexing its muscles for 15 hours, while I cleared emails and pottered around the house. But many good hours of my life was certainly spent gazing into that magic pot, ooh-ing and aah-ing at the soup evolution.

I fell in love with tonkotsu ramen several years ago after my maiden encounter with its creamy broth in the winter cold, the perfect setting for piping hot soup. And since the first frost of the season has dawned upon us, it was time to try creating some of that collagen-y goodness.

I haven’t perfected the recipe for tonkotsu soup yet, but let me share some semblance of a solid base. Special shout-outs to Shizuoka Gourmet and No Recipes for inspiring this method.

Scroll down for pictures that chronicle the soupy evolution!

Ingredients
1 kg pork knuckles (or chunky leg bones), broken
500g chicken bones
1 bulb onion
1 bulb garlic
1 cup dried shiitake mushrooms, soaked
1 large carrot, sliced
4 sprigs scallions
Salt to taste

Method

1. Bring pot of water to a boil, then add pork knuckles. Boil till much scum comes out from the bones.

2. After 15 minutes, dump the gunky water. Scrub remaining scum off all the bones and rinse thoroughly.

3. Resume boiling pork knuckles with fresh batch of water, till scum no longer floats to surface.

4. At 3 Hours, add chicken bones, carrots, shiitake mushrooms.

Fry garlic and ginger till fragrant, and add to pot.

Fry onions till caramelised, and add to pot.

5. At 6 Hours, add scallions.

6. At 9 hours, watch the broth start to turn creamy!

7. At 12 hours, sigh in wonderment at the thickness of the broth.

8. At 15 hours, add salt to taste, and turn off the fire! Scoop out oil from the surface.

9. The tonkotsu base is ready! Now add your extra secret ingredients (I’m still figuring mine out) to complete the tonkotsu soup.

10. Serve with ramen noodles, beautifully molten-yolked eggs (recipe to come!), corn and char siew. The meat should have been Japanese cha siu, but I copped out and used some Chinese-style char siew I’d made earlier that week.

Presenting, the Grand Finale…

いただきます! (Itadakimasu!)

Going Bananas

When life throws you a bag of overripe bananas, bake a cake.

That’s just what I did when the bananas in my kitchen got really blotchy last week.

Banana flavours are most intense when the fruit is over-ripe. It’s not a pretty sight, but the flesh becomes real sweet and fragrant, perfect for a bakeout.

And here’s a great recipe that results in a very moist and fluffy banana cake that is slightly crisp on the outside!

The good news is, you need minimal tools for this recipe; just grab a large bowl, spatula and baking tin. No need for mixers and such.

You can slather the batter into a cake tin to yield a whole cake, or place it into a muffin tray to make cup-sized treats. I use the recipe quite interchangeably, and often enough. I called on this recipe recently for an impromptu breakfast to welcome some folks from Brazil!

Moist Banana Chocolate Chip Cake

Ingredients
2 cups cake flour
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1 1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2/3 cup sugar
2 eggs, lightly beaten (room temperature)
1/2 cup butter, melted
3-4 ripe bananas, mashed
1 cup chocolate chips

Method

1. Preheat oven to 190 degrees Celcius or 375 degrees Farenheit.
2. Sift the flour, ground cinnamon, baking soda and salt into a large bowl.
3. In another bowl, beat the mashed bananas, sugar, eggs and butter together.
4. Fold the banana mixture and chocolate chips into the flour mixture till just combined.
5. Place batter into muffin tray, or suitably-sized baking tin. For muffins, divide the mixture till each muffin cup is about 4/5 full. If desired, top each cup with a thin slice of banana and three chocolate chips.
6. Bake in preheated oven on the middle rack for 20-25 minutes, or until golden brown.

Makes 12 muffins, or 1 full-sized cake.

The recipe includes chocolate chips as well, because chocolate – well it’s chocolate, and it goes so well with banana flavors. Just omit chocolate chips for a plain banana cake. Enjoy!

Comments

Sep 9

14 Comments

Soy Ahoy!

I pull my disheveled and grumpy self out of bed. Ambling out, I catch a delicious aroma wafting from the kitchen.

Oh yes, I perk up, it’s Saturday morning! The day when freshly-bought packets of local food and soy milk await my stirring.

Spread across the dining table would be permutations of congee, fried carrot cake and fishball noodles. Or steamed rice cakes with radish and roti prata.

And there would be a weekly constant – an accompanying cup of warm soy milk, just the way I liked it.

Such acts of love were the devices of my early-riser dad who loved wandering to nearby food centres at dawn, and returning with truckloads of goodies.

As a kid, I’d liked to think of this routine as a Saturday surprise (because you never knew what food he’d come home with).

Last week, I had a strong craving for warm soy milk. Being thousands of miles away from home, I decided it’d be a good challenge to make the drink from scratch.

So armed with a bagful of soy beans and tips from a Taiwanese couple here, I adapted a recipe from Madam Choy’s Cantonese Recipes.

Homemade Soy Milk

Ingredients
500 grams soy beans, washed and soaked overnight
8 cups water
4 pandan leaves, tied into knots
3 tablespoons sugar, or to taste

Method
1. Drain the beans after having soaked them overnight.
2. Add water. Blend finely. I like to use a hand blender for its sheer convenience, but you can transfer to a jug blender as well.
3. Transfer blended mixture by portions into a large muslin bag (or cheese cloth). Wring the milk into a pot. Knead the bean pulp in the muslin bag and ensure the liquid has been drained into the pot.
4. Add pandan leaves into pot. Bring liquid to a gentle simmer for about 10 minutes, stirring regularly. Do not let it boil, or the milk will curdle.
5. Add sugar to taste.

Makes 5 glasses.

Soy milk was surprisingly easy to make, and tasted really authentic. This is definitely going to feature more regularly in my breakfast menus!

Comment

Aug 30

19 Comments

Divine Dark Chocolate Cupcakes

Sex and the City had it.

The Devil wears Prada featured it.

And it was a must-see during my third visit to New York City. Magnolia Bakery, situated on Bleeker Street in the West Village, is known for its cupcakes made world-famous in popular culture.

I’d brought my appetite for something classic and tried the Devil’s Food Cupcake, a cocoa sponge-cake topped with chocolate buttercream. It was pretty good – not cloyingly sugary, which is typically associated with cupcakes.

Still, I know of friends who pause a minute to admire prettily-piped buttercream frosting, before scraping dollops off their cupcakes. Because they find it too rich and buttery. Or think it’s fattening. Such audacity, I hear bakers hiss.

This got me thinking when I made some dark chocolate cupcakes last week.

Instead of incorporating a buttercream frosting – which is made of primarily butter, sugar and cream/milk – I wanted to make something less rich, less sweet and perhaps more universally appreciated.

So I decided on a whipped chocolate ganache frosting, made of pure dark chocolate and heavy cream. After all, nothing quite beats the decadent taste and luscious texture of pure chocolate as a base, right?

Here’s what I did, adapted from Lori Longbotham’s The Chocolate Deck.

Divine Dark Chocolate Cupcakes

Ingredients
Cupcakes
2 cups flour (not self-rising)
2/3 cup natural unsweetened cocoa
1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup buttermilk
1/3 cup water
3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 3/4 cups sugar
2 large eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla essence

Frosting
7 1/2 ounces (or around 210 grams) chopped bittersweet chocolate
1/2 cup heavy cream
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened

Method
Cupcakes
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Farenheit, or 195 degrees Celcius.
2. Line regular muffin pan with cupcake liners.
3. In a large bowl, sift flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt. In a small bowl, stir buttermilk and water.
4. Beat butter with an electric mixer on medium-high speed till fluffy. Add sugar and beat till fluffy. Add eggs one at a time. Beat in vanilla.
5. Reduce speed to low and add cocoa mixture and buttermilk mixture alternately, till blended.
6. Bake 30-35 minutes.
7. Cool cupcakes on cooling rack.

Frosting
1. Melt chocolate in a water bath, or bain-marie (to prevent burning of chocolate).
2. Mix in heavy cream.
3. Whisk butter.
4. Let cool and refrigerate covered, for half an hour.
5. Beat with an electric mixer on medium-high speed for at least 8 minutes, till thick enough to spread.

Makes 15 cupcakes.

Simply divine!

On frosting, I used the very simplest technique possible – short of dipping the cupcakes in the ganache directly. But more of that in the next post!

Update: How to Frost Cupcakes (Easy!)

Comment

Aug 26

11 Comments

Southern Fried Chicken, help!

With “The Help”, cash registers in chicken chains are probably going ka-ching this week.

The film centers around three women who brave the odds to tell the stories of black domestic help serving white women in the ’60s, in pre-civil-rights Mississippi.

Sure, it was a lovely film. I was dabbing my eyes incessantly and thoroughly soaking the single tissue I had. And Viola Davis was magnificent, lending gravitas to the movie with her beautifully nuanced portrayal of Abileen, a character facing personal tragedy and immense social injustice. (Someone give the lady an Oscar, already!)

But there was another star who may have stole the show and, I’m almost embarassed to say, kept me awake that night: sizzling fried chicken. Heh.

In the film, there were parades of freshly battered chicken crackling in the skillet, and close-ups of ladies taking bites of juicy meat.

That night, these scenes kept replaying in my mind…

… And there went by hours of counting drumsticks in my attempts to fall asleep.

The next morning, I knew I just had to get my hands on some fried chicken.

So I issued myself a challenge: cook – instead of buying – some good ol’ Southern chicken to satiate those cravings.

Here’s the recipe I used, adapted from here.

Southern Fried Chicken

Ingredients

10 (or around 2kg) chicken thighs
1 cup buttermilk
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon paprika
Salt & pepper to taste
8 cups vegetable oil for frying

Method

1. Put the flour in a large paper bag. Season the flour with paprika, salt and pepper.
2. Soak the chicken pieces in buttermilk for at least 10 minutes.
3. Put the chicken into the bag by batch. Seal and shake the bag – ala Minny in ‘The Help’! – to coat the chicken pieces well.
4. Place the coated chicken on a tray and cover with a clean dish towel, till the flour is of a paste-like consistency.
5. Fill the skillet or deep-frying pan (cast iron is best as it maintains temperature) about 1/3 to 1/2 full with vegetable oil. Heat till very hot, to ensure chicken is crispy.
6. Depending on the size of skillet, put in as many chicken pieces as possible, being careful not to overcrowd it as it lowers the temperature. Brown chicken in hot hoil on both sides. Once browned, reduce heat and cover skillet, allowing it to cook through for 30 minutes.
7. Remove cover and raise heat again and fry to ensure crispiness.
8. Once ready, drain the fried chicken on paper towels.
9. Fry the other batches of chicken, and keep finished chicken in slightly warmed oven before serving.

Makes 10 pieces.

And the finished product:

Oh, so sinful, but rather yummy!

Disclaimer: The author bears no responsibility whatsoever for soaring cholesterol levels and addictions developed from this recipe.

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Oct 12

6 Comments

Wild Mushroom Soup with Truffle Oil

I’ve been wanting to make this recipe for the longest time, held back only by my lack of an immersion blender and – okayyy – some inertia.

When I realised a jug blender was sitting unused at my mum’s place, I carted home this second-best option immediately.

If you’re looking for a wholesome starter for entertaining, the following is a non-dairy option you can consider. It’s an amalgam of recipes I’d researched and rejigged.

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Posts tagged ‘Recipes’

Tonkotsu Ramen Base

Going Bananas

Soy Ahoy!

Divine Dark Chocolate Cupcakes

Southern Fried Chicken, help!

Wild Mushroom Soup with Truffle Oil

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