Going With My Gut

Crab Fat Tagiatelle

 

This crab fat tagiatelle was the result of last night's dinner experiment. The instructions from around the table were to document the recipe as soon as possible, so I thought to share it with you guys as well, along with the highlights of the accompanying stream of consciousness during the experiment. (Feel free to skip right to the recipe below.)

The experiment came together because of a few free radicals floating around:

• My friend Melf (who loves crab so much she's been known to dress up as one... I kid you not) had made crab tom yum soup while we were on the road. I was dying to know what it would taste like, but there was no set date in sight to make it again. It's just not the kind of waiting I can handle
• Tom yum is normally a clear rather than muddy soup, so I didn't think to add the crab's roe and guts into the broth (although now it's sounding like that was the entire point). So I had a considerable bowl of the stuff left over from project crab tom yum.
• Food bloggers Chubby Hubby and Amy Ma had put forward a very intriguing blog post on crab fat linguine. I've been eating crabs -- roe guts and all, simply as part of any crab meal -- pretty much all my life, but had never heard of "crab fat" until that post. I was somewhere between intrigued and utterly mesmerised. I wanted to see what what kind of riff I could come up with

I didn't want us to feel gelat or sick from the richness of the dish after dinner (I just wasn't in that kind of mood yesterday). So I was thinking about how to lighten the taste of the dish. Raw cucumbers always taste lovely and refreshing. Would the combination work? I dunked a small cucumber piece into the bowl of crab roe and guts and tasted it. Damn! That's pretty good. (Note to self: Use it as dip sometime, at a party for a small group of friends I really like.) What if... I made cucumber "noodles", to add crunch in the mouth? I hate the smell and taste of cooked cucumbers though... so how to make sure it stays raw amid the tagiatelle?

Below are the results. If you've got a jar of crab fat ready to go (plain, rather than the well seasoned Filipino version in this case), this recipe should take no more than 30-40 minutes to make. And this means 30-40 mere mortal -- rather than Jamie Oliver -- minutes.

 

Above: Results of the crab tom yum experiment. Turns out I should have added the crab fat into the broth! Ah well. Practice practice...

 

Ingredients

Serves 3

A bowl of crab roe and guts scraped out from the shell and cavity of 3 cooked large brown crabs (these particular crabs were about 1kg each and had been boiled for 15 minutes)
6 little balls of tagiatelle (indicative size below)
1 cucumber, cut in half width-ways (so it looks like you have 2 short cucumbers)
1 lemon
1 small yellow onion
1/2 bulb garlic (6-8 cloves)
2-3 teaspoons dried chilli flakes
1-2 teaspoons ground black pepper
1/4 cup chicken stock (use a mix of olive oil and water as alternative if needed)
Salt to taste
A couple of sprigs of fresh dill, roughly chopped

 

Prep

• Use a vegetable peeler and scrape down the sides of the cucumber so that you get cucumber ribbons. Snack on the watery seedy centre that's left at the end!
• Squeeze a bit of lemon juice and sprinkle some salt on the cucumber ribbons. Set aside
• Thinly slice the onion and garlic. Set aside

Cooking

• Bring a medium sized pot of water to a rolling boil
• Add 2 teaspoons salt and a glug of olive oil to the boiling water
• Add the tagiatelle, and cook on medium-high heat for 10-12 minutes depending on how al dente you like your noodles
• When cooked, empty and drain the tagiatelle into a colander
• Using the same pot, warm up a couple of glugs of olive oil on medium heat
• Add the onions and garlic, pepper and chilli flakes; fry until the onions are translucent
• Turn the stove heat down to as low as possible
• Add the tagiatelle
• Add the crab roe and guts
• Toss with tongs
• Add the chicken stock / oil+water a little at a time as needed; just to make sure the contents stay just a little bit slippery
• Turn off the stove
• Squeeze excess liquid from the cucumber ribbons and add to the pot
• Toss quickly with tongs until the tagiatelle and cucumber ribbons are evenly coated
• Add salt and pepper to taste (watch out, as the crab roe mix is inherently very rich and briny)
• Plate the pasta
• Add a squeeze of lemon juice to each plate
• Garnish with a pinch of dill
• Feel not-so-secretly smug about mother in law's obvious and vocal delight at the dish

 

 

Potential Adjustments for Next Time:

• As far as the actual eating experience goes, this tastes more like summer than autumn
• Excavate the crab fat either raw, or semi cooked (e.g. after cooking for ~7 minutes) to get a more runny consistency
• Try courgette ribbons instead of cucumber
• Samphire would be amazing for crunch, but would it be too salty?
• Add wakame, or chopped flat parsley?

How about you? Any suggestions?

Grandma's Foochow Ang Chow Mee Sua

On the first day of every Chinese New Year my Grandma's household and ours wakes up in a cloud of the sweet warm heady aroma of ginger, garlic and chicken fried then simmered in homemade Ang Chow -- the thick residue of a wine made from glutinous rice and a vivid red yeast.

I'd tumble out of bed, and tuck into a big breakfast bowl of Ang Chow Mee Sua, this Foochow-Chinese style soupy coq au vin with blanched riceflour threads. What a start to the Chinese New Year! At some point later in the day I'd have an afternoon bowl of the same at Grandma's. And then very likely drift into a stupored nap after.

My Mum and I both grew up thinking Ang Chow Mee Sua was a traditional New Year dish. It was only earlier this year when I finally learned how to make the stuff from Mum and Grandma that we both found out that it's really a dish meant for birthdays and weddings. Grandma made it on the first day of every Chinese New Year because that was Grandpa's birthday! (That generation of Chinese usually mark their days by the lunar instead of Roman calendar.)

Above: Grandma shows Babs the ropes about rice threads at his first Chinese New Year lunch at her place earlier this year

Making Ang Chow from scratch is a disappearing art in Singapore. In the last couple of years Mum has had a regular stream of Ang Chow acolytes at home, so there's always a steady supply of Ang Chow residue and wine in her pantry. And an even steadier stream of friends and family eager to dine with my parents anytime during the year to taste the real deal, either for the first time, or to fix a craving.

For those who want to try making their own Ang Chow at home, I've documented the process here. If you already have access to some Ang Chow residue, I hope you enjoy this Ang Chow Mee Sua recipe as much as our family does.

Ingredients

Makes 6-8 servings

2 Tbs cooking oil e.g., olive, sunflower or vegetable
100g ginger, smashed
5 cloves garlic, smashed, keep skin on
10 tablespoons angchow residue
2 teaspoons sugar
1 whole chicken, chopped into segments with the bones left in. We prefer dark meat, so Mum sometimes uses just chicken legs, thighs, wings and feet
1 cup angchow wine
2 teaspoons salt
1.5 litres boiling water
1 skein of mee suah per serving

Directions for Chicken Ang Chow Soup

• Heat up a large wok on high heat and add cooking oil
• Fry the ginger and garlic for ~ 5 minutes
• Add the angchow residue and fry until fragrant but not burnt. Stir fast to prevent burning. Lower the flame if needed
• Add sugar and fry until the angchow is shiny
• Add the chicken and stir till angchow is evenly spread

• Add the salt and angchow wine
• When the mixture comes to a boil, add the boiling water
• Lower the flame and simmer for 20-30 minutes until the chicken is cooked through
• Remove the chicken pieces and keep separately from the soup, so that the meat does not disintegrate

Directions for Mee Sua

• Bring a small saucepan of water to a rolling boil
• Place a skein or 2 of mee sua in the boiling water and cook for a few minutes until soft
• Transfer the mee sua (not the cooking water) into a bowl. Add chicken pieces and angchow soup
• Add salt and extra angchow wine to taste, and serve up

Pak Meh's Hakka Suan Pan Zhi (Yam Abacus Seeds)

Suan pan zhi, or yam abacus seeds, was always a bit of a mystery to me growing up. I'd only ever see it and eat it in 1 place -- at Ah Pak (my Dad's paternal cousin and the current patriarch of the Soh clan) and his wife Pak Meh's house. And only ever on the first day of Chinese New Year. Some years we'd get a tasting bowl of it while visiting, some years it wouldn't even be there (I think those years we got to Ah Pak's too late).

All I knew was that suan pan zhi was a very old school Hakka delicacy, and it was bloody tasty with a lot of bite. So as part of my project to chase down my culinary inheritance, I entreated Pak Meh through my parents to teach me how to make this dish while I was in Singapore for Chinese New Year this year.

And not a moment too soon! Turns out Pak Meh had decided to "retire" from this dish from this year onwards. She's decided that her kids can make it next year or not eat it at all. Yikes!

And no wonder. Making the beads is hard work, requiring you to really put your back and arms into it. Throughout the session Pak Meh was critiqueing my technique -- I'll need to practise!

Researching suan pan zhi on my own later, I learned that the Hakkas eat this dish on festive occasions. The Hakkas (which liternally means guest people) were named such because they were a migratory group. Their cuisine tends to be made from very hearty ingredients that will keep (think salt and oil). Hence the use of the hardy yam here. Also, Hakkas have a stereotype of being good with money, so the yam gnocci taking on the image of the seeds of the abacus counting board allude to that.

More delightfully, an article on So Shiok! revealed that suan pan zhi is specifically from the Hakkas in Dabu in China's Guangdong province. This is where my paternal grandfather and great grandfather are from, and Dad and Ah Pak had already agreed to take me on my first pilgrimmage to Dabu this coming May. I can't wait to dig further into this story... and more of this dish!

Serves 4

Ingredients

For the Abacus Seeds:

500g yam or taro, peeled and cut into even-sized slices
200g tapioca flour

The ratio of yam to tapioca flour is highly variable. Pak Meh once used a yam : flour ratio of 4:1, which she said produced an amazingly intense fragrance and flavour, but a very short shelf life, even when kept in the freezer afterwards. Commercial ventures tend to use a 1:1 ratio, which helps the beads keep longer but produce a much starchier, chewier and less fragrant bead. Here we start with a ratio of about 2.5:1. Experiment to see what gets you your favourite balance of flavour and bite.

For the Frying:

30g dried cuttlefish, cut into thin strips
1 large cake of taukwa or hard tofu (preferably yellow rather than white for more attractive colour). Sliced then diced
200g dried shitake mushrooms, soaked overnight and diced
30g large cloud-ear mushrooms (sometimes also called Jews ears), soaked overnight and diced
30g dried shrimps or haybee, soaked for 20 minutes, drained then pounded
200g minced shoulder of pork
3 to 5 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1/2 cup spring onion stalks and coriander, finely chopped
5 cups vegetable oil
Salt, white pepper and fish sauce to taste

For the Garnishing:

A few stalks of coriander cut into finger-length sections
1 large red chili, sliced on the diagonal and deseeded

Making the Yam Abacus Seeds

• Sprinkle some salt over yam and steam for 15 minutes until soft and cooked (Check to see if a chopstick will poke through the yam)

• Put yam in a large pot, add the tapioca flour, and mash and mix while still hot to form a dough. This is quite a bit of work! You can start off with a potato masher, but eventually you'll need to put the back of your palms into it and really lay it in, pocketing bits of air into the dough as you go

• Make small balls, and use your finger to make a slight depression in the centre of each ball to make it look like an abacus seed. Try to make the "beads" evenly sized so that they can be evenly cooked

Boiling the Yam Abacus Seeds

• Boil a large pot of water and add the yam seeds one small batch at a time, stirring well to prevent them from sticking together. Boil for about 15 minutes, until the batch floats on the boiling water

• Remove the seeds from the boiling water with a strainer and coat with 2 to 3 tablespoons of oil to prevent sticking. Set aside in a sieve over a an empty pot to let excess water drip away (right)

Frying the Yam Abacus Beads

• Heat about 6 tablespoons of vegetable oil in wok on high heat
• Add the chopped garlic and stir-fry until fragrant
• Add the tawkua, pounded haybee and mushrooms and stir-fry for 2 to 3 minutes until fragrant
• Add the pork, cuttlefish and cloud year mushrooms
• Add 1 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon ground white pepper and 1 tablespoon fish sauce
• Stir-fry for ~5 minutes
• Add the yam seeds and stir-fry for 2 minutes
• Add the chopped spring onions and coriander and stir through for another minute
• Taste, and add salt, pepper and fish sauce and stir through if necessary
• Serve up in a casserole dish and garnish with the chili slices and coriander stalks
• Serve as a standalone dish or as part of a meal with rice

Parting Shot: Abacus Seeds Spreading and Taking Root

For those who would like to try this dish but are not yet ready to commit to making it at home, I found these leads online that suggest that you can try it at Mei Zhen in Singapore and Nam Chuan in Bangsar, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (I haven't eaten at these establishments myself). If you've tried suan pan zhi elsewhere, I'd love to hear from you!

For a Hainanese riff on this recipe, see Food, Travel, Recipes and Sights. For a Cantonese riff, see Audrey Cooks.

Grandma's Ang Chow (Foochow Red Rice Wine)

Above: Absolut Vintage

 

After a 3-week whistlestop tour of Thailand, Laos and Vietnam, we're back in Singapore briefly, primarily to celebrate my maternal Grandma's 95th birthday.

I could babble on and on about how and why Grandma is my role model. A few inadequately short anecdotes: she fought my grandfather to get her daughters secondary education (a privilege usually reserved only for sons in that generation), managed most of the finances and customer relations at my grandfather's tailoring business, spent many of her retirement years cooking up a storm of of delectable treats and sewing epic cross-stitch landscapes to raise funds for her church, and even now, is on top of all the ins and outs of all the clan's happenings probably more than any other younger individual in the family.

I spent many pf my younger years poring over Grandma's cross-stitch books and projects and skeins of threads. From time to time I also played the role of kitchen hand (or more probably kitchen underfoot) when she made Nonya desserts such as ondeh-ondeh or ang ku kueh, but stupidly was too young and clueless then to take detailed notes. Now that my interests have drifted and taken firm root in the kitchen, however, I'm racing to learn and collect as many of Grandma's old-school family recipes as I can.

Top on this list is her homemade Foochow Ang Chow (red rice wine), an increasingly disappearing craft in ultra modern Singapore. This recipe is Grandma's, handed down to my Mum, and now handed down to me, and all of you!

To Mum's credit, it sounds like she's improved on the original -- Grandma prefers Mum's wine to her own, so now has a call option on a portion of each batch of wine Mum makes!

 

Ingredients

2kg glutinous rice
5 pieces jiu piah (wine cake, right) from Chinese medical hall or grocery
75g ang kek bee (red yeast rice, right)
1/2 cup water, boiled, then cooled back down to room temperature
1 big glass or clay container with cover

*Top tip from Mum*: The wine cakes affect the taste of the wine significantly. Experiment with vendors until you get a taste you like, then stick to them like white on rice (or in this case red on rice).

 

Directions

• Wash and soak glutinous rice for at least 3 hours (preferably overnight), completely submerged in water
• After soaking, drain the water. Use fingers to poke holes all over the tray of levelled rice. The holes serve 2 purposes. From the holes, we can see the level of water. We want it to be half the depth of the rice. The holes also help the rice to cook faster
• Steam the rice for 30 min or until it is thoroughly cooked
• Loosen and spread the rice out to cool completely

 

 

• Dry-blend the wine cakes and the red yeast rice and pour the resulting pink powder into a big bowl
• Wet your hand in cooled boiled water
• Take handful of the cooled cooked glutinous rice (see photo below for approximate size of 'handful' and coat it with the pink powder)

 

 

• Put the powder-coated glutinous rice into a big container
• Repeat coating the handfuls of rice and placement in container until all the glutinous rice and powder is used up
• Use any remaining water to rinse any remaining glutinous rice or powder from working bowls into the large container

*Top tip from Mum*: If globs of rice fall on the floor, leave it and throw away. Do not pick it up and rinse and put it in the container. Bacteria picked up can ruin the wine.

 

 

• Place the container's cap, but do not tighten
• Set aside container in a cool dark place for 7 days
• On the 7th day, stir mixture in container then replace the cover, again loosely
• Set aside for another 23 days
• Harvest the wine and the rice residue on the 30th day

*Top tip from Mum*: It is imperative not to screw on the container's cap tight, as the fermenting process produces a lot of gas. Grandma once had a new, not-yet-fully-orientated housekeeper who took the initiative to screw on the container's cap. A few days later the container exploded in the middle of the night, scaring everyone in the house half to death! It didn't help that the bright red contents of the jar made the room look like the climax of Stanley Kubrick's film rendition of Stephen King's The Shining.

 

Harvesting the Ang Chow and Wine (Day 30)

 

 

The fermented mixture is in two sections, the bulk of which is on top. Scoop the drier fermented ang chow at the top of the container into jars. (This is a great opportunity to recycle coffee and salsa etc glass jars.)

 

 

Place a sieve on a pot and drain the wetter ang chow until most of the wine is in the pot. Scoop the drained residue in the sieve into jars. This residue is the key ingredient in the signature Foochow dish Ang Chow Mee Sua soup, usually eaten on a birthday or as part of a wedding because of its auspicious colour.

 

 

You'll end up with a couple of large jugs of cloudy wine.

Stick a funnel into a screwcap bottle (another great recycling opportunity), and hold a muslin sieve (or coffee 'sock') above the funnel. Slowly ladle the cloudy wine into the sock and let the clear wine drip through into the bottle.

 

 

The "cloudy" residue collected in the sock can be jarred separately and used as a very tasty coating for Ang Chow Fried Chicken and Ang Chow Fried Fish.

Cap the bottles of wine. The wine can be used for marinating meat and cooking, but also tastes pretty damn good on its own! Left alone, the wine will continue to mature.

In the spirit of being investigative (ahem) Mum and I did a sampling of a couple of ang chow wine vintages. The lighter wine you see here is 2 months old, and had a lighter, fruity taste, which could work as a hefty dessert wine. The darker wine on the right is 8 months old, and had a heavier, Chinese-herb-wine-esque taste.

Practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine prescribe this wine to por, or "mend" the health and strength of mothers who have just given birth. They also recommend this wine for lowering cholestrol (check with your doctor first though!)

 

 

Wine making anywhere is an art, and the variations and idiosyncracies of each winemaker are integral to the craft. Here are a couple of slightly different recipes I found elsewhere on the web for further reading if interested.

• Home Cooked Food
• A Singaporean Uncle in Australia

Warming the Cockles of My Heart #1: Singapore Char Kway Teow Recipe

If held at gunpoint and told to pick the one thing I miss eating most when I'm not in Singapore, I'd have to pick hum, or the Asian blood cockle. (I was hallucinating -- humming to myself? -- about the stuff for weeks in India before we arrived in Singapore in February.) Mostly because I simply haven't seen it anywhere outside of Southeast Asia.

I'm quite happy to snack on its English cockle cousin -- often pickled -- but its more rubbery white meat lacks that bloody edge of the Asian variety.

I suppose there's the porn version in Japan -- the giant akagai -- but the Japanese tend to purge the cockle's insides and slice it up, keeping its lovely sweet crunch but missing its slightly drippy, briny, earthy, slightly-disgusting-but-I-can't-help-myself-I-love-it guts.

Hum is a crucial ingredient in several Southeast Asian hawker dishes. @EatingAsia reflected my sentiments best when she said, "If it don't got blood cockles it ain't Malaysian curry mee... or char kway teow." Damn straight. You might prefer these dishes without. If so, I will try not to judge you, but let's face it, I will.

My favourite dish among these is Singapore-style char kway teow, a darker, sweeter version of its Penang rival. Because the amount of kay hum (extra hum) I ask of char kway teow hawkers is never enough, my brother and I have increasingly relied on my Mum's rendition to get our fix.

Short of you fellow humbugs bringing your own hum stash to your favourite char kway teow chef, I hope this recipe serves you as well as it has me. Let me know how yours turns out!

Ingredients:

For each portion of char kway teow, you will need a handful of

Kway teow, or wide flat rice noodles (at Singapore wet markets they are usually sold by the same people who sell beanspouts and tofu)
Chinese sausage, thinly sliced
Fish cake, thinly sliced
Chives, cut into finger-length sections
Beansprouts, preferably roots removed

(Looking at this photo below it's occured to me that Singapore hawkers also usually use a few pieces of pre-peeled, pre-blanched shrimp and a few squid rings, but I've never noticed till now that we don't use it in our home rendition. Add some if you like.)

You will also need

A generous drizzle of olive oil (my Mum's guilt-free substitute for the more purist-style pork lard)
Finely chopped garlic
1 egg
Dark soya sauce, to taste
Sweet sauce, to taste (we use Tiger brand, below)
Chili belachan to taste; and...
As many blood cockles as you can convince a purveyor to pre-shell for you

Sourcing pre-shelled hum in Singapore in recent years takes some effort due to the government's tightened regulations after a particularly nasty food poisoning scare.

Mum buys all our pre-shelled hum from this lady below at Marine Terrace Market.

You have to pre-order your pre-shelled hum in person. Placing an order on the phone is out of the question because she refuses to give out her phone number. And why does she refuse to give out her phone number? Because asinine clients in the past have pre-ordered pre-shelled hum from her and then stood her up, leaving her with very perishable inventory and a lot of time wasted. (Evidently a 2nd phonecall to at least cancel their order was too hard to make.)

Even if you show up in person, she may feign ignorance about offering hum-shelling services. She deals with us as all because of my mother's cajoling and (obviously) never having left her hanging with an orphaned bag of hum.

"Forget getting her number," I told Mum when she related the situation above to me, "Surely the thing to go is to give her our number instead, and tell her to call us anytime she has unclaimed hum!"

Char-ing the Kway Teow

• Best to cook no more than 2 portions at a time in the wok
• Get the flame under your wok really high and get the wok really hot
• Drizzle a generous amount of olive oil in the wok, to keep the kway teow slippery
• Chuck in 2 teaspoons of chopped garlic, and let sizzle for a minute
• Add 2 handfuls of kway teow, and 2 handfuls of chinese sausage spread out on top (to let the sausage juices and oils seep through the kway teow). Let sit for a few minutes until surfaces start to brown, then turn over the kway teow and repeat
• Crack 2 eggs over the kway teow and break up the egg over the noodle, then turn over the kway teow again. Let the egg cook through and start to break up

• Add 2 handfuls of sliced fishcake, and a teaspoonful of belachan if desired. Stir the kway teow
• Add 2 handfuls each of beansprouts and chives
• Drizzle in dark soy sauce (for saltiness) and sweet sauce (for sweetness) to taste
• Keep turning over the contents!
• Now, and only now, add your desired amount of hum. Adding them last (after you turn off the stove, even, so they cook in just the residual heat of the wok contents) will ensure they don't emerge grey and rubbery

• While our longtime housekeeper Aunty Kiew Moi has her back turned, I chuck in extra hum. Muahahahahaha!
• Do a few last stirs to mix the hum through, then serve up!

Coming Home to the Same Old Mee

After you've been away from home for a while, what's the first thing you absolutely need to sink your chops into the minute you walk through the door, as confirmation that "Ahhhhh.....I'm finally home?"

Said a few members of my lovely Facebook and Twitter community:

@Dan: "Anything noodlely and heart clogging- bak chor mee (kae liao), hokkien mee, char kway teow or laska. Well thats also kinda whats available from the nearest kopi tiam."

@Preeti: "Dal chawal + bhindi for me (rice + lentils and okra)."

@Nick: "Sausage and mash, gammon and eggs, pie and mash, montgomery cheddar cheese on toast with lea & perrins."

@Lucy: "Rozbif and cider, innocent smoothies, middle-eastern cuisine, crumble and custard. Ramen and Formosa Delights dumplings when going back to Singapore."

@Said Hwee Li: "Laksa, char kuay teow, deep fried dough fritters with soya bean milk."

@gnoserif: "THIS IS PRATAAAAAA...."

@cupcakesfortwo: "I can't eat anything after my travels, I must have peppermint tea before I can even think about food."

@michtan: "Bak Chor Mee! Peranankan Popiah! *salivate*"

@thegardenslug: "Prata or maggi mee goreng + Teh tarik :P"

How about you?

While I always come home to Singapore with a long to-eat list of hawker food, the first taste I want is a big steaming bowl of Myojo mee (noodles) pimped up with prawns, squid, cai xin, bean sprouts, and an egg beaten into the soup. With a side of pickled sliced green chili. Wolfed down right between chucking my bags in my room and taking a shower.

My Dad started this particular food habit of mine (among others). Growing up, anytime we were coming home from a family trip, he'd call ahead and ask our longtime family housekeeper Aunty Kiew Moi to whip a bowl of these noodles with egg, bean sprouts and haybee (dried shrimp). When asked what I wanted prepared, I'd just say, "That sounds good. One for me too."

Over the years we'd experiment with adding different ingredients. There were luncheon meat phases, cuttlefish ball phases, crabstick phases, exotic Japanese mushroom phases. There were pimp-my-ramen suggestions -- including cheese and strips of bak kwa (barbequed pork jerky) -- from friends. But the recipe finally stablised into the picture above: all fresh (besides the noodles); all fast to cook, good to eat (much like the ramen TV jingles of my youth). So much so that after I started traveling on my own, there was no need to even call ahead. Upon coming home, I'd simply poke my head into the kitchen to say hello to Aunty Kiew Moi, troop to my room to put down my bags, check my mail, amble back out to the dining room to the welcoming cauldron.

Nothing's changed, even now that I've lived away and abroad for almost 4 years. Thankfully.

Asking for the same homecoming dish every time is clearly a fix of comfort food for me. But recently I've started to wonder if on some level it's also a dose of comfort for members of the welcome-home-wagon. That no matter how long or how far I've been away from home, regardless of new experiences, new ideas, new friends, wolfing down with gusto the same old mee means that, at heart, I'm still the same old me.

Homecoming Myojo Mee Recipe:

Serves 1 homesick person

Ingredients:

1 packet Myojo mee (your choice of flavour. I like chicken curry)
1 egg
1/2 handful of cai xin, cut into finger-length sections
1 handful of small peeled prawns and squid, cleaned and cut into bite-size pieces
1/2 handful of beansprouts
Light soya sauce and white pepper, to taste

Directions:

Possibly overly fussy, but this specific sequence (perfected by trial and error over the last couple of decades!) optimizes the softness of the noodle and the crunch of the vegetables and seafood.

• Bring half a small saucepan of water to a rolling boil, sprinkle in the packet of seasoning from the noodle packet
• Add the noodles, let it cook for ~2 minutes
• Gently crack the egg in. If you like an eggy soup, use chopsticks to break up the egg and stir it around. If you want the egg whole but don't want it to catch at the bottom of the saucepan, make sure it sits on top of the bed of noodles
• Add the cai xin, let sit for 30 seconds
• Add the prawns and squid, stir for 30 seconds
• Add the beansprouts, stir for 30 seconds
• Check that the prawns have turned pink
• Empty the saucepan into a large bowl (contents first, then the broth, to avoid hot painful splashing)
• Add light soya sauce and white pepper to taste, if necessary
• Garnish with slices of green chili pickled in white vinegar (optional)

Just A Little Taste of Aunty Shaistha's Khara Seeve (Rice Noodles with Lentils)

I said in December, at the beginning of our 2 months in India, that Babs and I were doomed to fatness and bliss. To be precise, we both put on 4kg each while we were in India. This post is about the precise moment when I pushed off down this slippery slope.

A little context for the uninitiated: One of the big ways Indian relatives show their love for you is by feeding you. (I think the other big way -- if it's a very close relative, like a parent -- is that they buy a house for you. So that they know exactly where you are, so that they know exactly where to go to feed you.) If you tell them "I'm not hungry, I already ate," it's like you're telling an angsty 14-year-old who just wrote you an epic confession of their affection that you just want to be friends.

Most of the time this results in just garden-variety overfeeding. A mandatory 2nd or 3rd helping at any given meal. Fine. We do that anyway. For better or worse, our India relatives love us for it.

The thing is, some of our them love us a little too dangerously.

"You're going to get me into trouble at dinner. They're going to ask me why I'm not eating as much," I whispered weakly that December evening in Bangalore to Aunty Shaistha.

"You're walking to dinner. You'll be hungry again by then," she whispered back.

"But dinner is at Mahboob Pasha's house."

Mahboob Pasha is Aunty Shaistha's brother-in-law. He lives in the same building. One flight upstairs.

"It's just a small bowl. Just a little taste," she says.

Just a little taste then.

My tastebuds go into overdrive. My eyes bulge. My mind races. When was the last time I had a taste of rice noodles? London? 7 months ago?

"I don't... think... I can... stop at just one bowl..."

Aunty Shaistha smiled. She knew she has me in the venus flytrap of her khara seeve casserole now. And yet dinner obligations -- inevitably involving at least 2 mutton dishes -- remained at hand. Surely I couldn't tell them the saboteur of their lovingly prepared meal came from downstairs.

And so I found myself turning into a dinner bigamist. Slippety slide. And then find out our hosts upstairs pull the exact same manovuere any time we're trying to leave their house to go to our next engagement. Slippety slide. It doesn't matter that we've just come from downstairs, or that downstairs is our next engagement "So what you've eaten downstairs? You haven't eaten up here yet." Slippety slide.

And now, in Singapore, if I'm going out to meet friends for a meal, but something yummy is cooking at home, I'll sneak a little bowl before I head out. "Just a little taste," I tell my Mum.

This dish -- Aunty Shaistha's khara seeve -- is the dish that started it all. If you are able to resist, you are clearly a better human being than I. But probably a little hungrier.

Makes ~6 servings or up to 10 "little tastes"

Ingredients

Olive oil
1 cup yellow lentils, uncooked
1 large onion, chopped finely
2-3 tomatoes (depending on size), chopped
1 teaspoon mustard seeds
4 green chili, stems removed
A large pinch of curry leaves
1 small bunch of coriander, chopped
Salt to taste
1 packet rice noodles (Mehra brand was used here)

Directions

• Drizzle a couple of glugs of olive oil in a chef's pan set on medium-high heat
• On a separate hob on the stove, boil half a kettle of water
• Add everything except the rice noodles to the chef-pan, and fry for ~5 minutes
• Add boiling water until the chef-pan is half full
• Bash and twist the rice noodles while still in its packaging, to break the noodles into small sections
• Add the broken rice noodles to the chef pan
• Stir until the rice noodles and ingredients are evenly distributed, then let sit for about 10 minutes until the rice noodles have softend and soaked in all the liquid in the pan
• Add salt to taste if necessary

(Soup) Stock Tip: Tom Yum

Above: Tom yumyumyum

Tom yum soup is my panacea for many of life's minor troubles -- blocked sinuses, tummy upsets, and lousy moods. There's something about the combined sweetness, tartness and heat that comforts and stimulates all at the same time. During a 3 month period when I was commuting weekly to the Netherlands for work, Babs would pick me up at Heathrow and we would go home via Khao San on the corner of Chepstow Road and Westbourne Park Road; my favourite Thai restaurant in London run by a lovely woman called Pan, just so I could recharge with a double-portion of her tom yum seafood soup.

I learnt how to make this from scratch so that I could stop using the processed pre-fab soup packets. Don't be intimidated by the list of ingredients, once you get them together they just need chucking together in a pot.

I've tried to stay faithful to the traditional recipe in this post, with indications of what you can get away with leaving out if you don't have a comprehensive Asian grocer nearby. Apologies to the purists in advance!

29 September update: Just discovered Joelen's Culinary Adventures's blogging event with a soup / stock pot theme, and decided I just had to add this one into the mix! My original contribution to the event is my home-made Mushroom Soup recipe.

Above: The fiery red is from prawn shells, not chillies. Some of the spiciest tom yum soups I've had have no colour in the stock at all!

For Sweetness and Richness:

• White fish skeletons (e.g. hake, bream, pollock aka colin), heads removed and set aside. Use 1 if you're making 2-4 portions; 2 if you're making a larger pot
• 2 handfuls of dried shrimp
• 1-2 large onions, quartered
• A small bagful of prawn shells or crab shells or lobster shells (Optional but try this if at all possible for a luxurious kick! Babs and I both grew up in families that had a habit of buying fresh whole shrimp, shelling them in batches, and freezing the meat and the shells separately for later use)

Above: Many thanks to Steve Hall from the Handpicked Shellfish Company for the hake skeletons, the foundation of this tom yum soup recipe

For Tartness and Fragrance:

• 8-12 stalks lemongrass, lightly bashed
• Juice from 2-4 limes (don't add the lime rinds to the stock -- it will make the stock bitter)
• A handful of kefir lime leaves (if available)
• A handful of holy basil leaves (if available)
• Fish sauce, to taste

For Heat (dial this up and down according to your taste):

• 6-10 large red chillies, lightly bashed, seeds kept in
• 4-6 birds eye chillies, lightly bashed, seeds kept in
• A handful of black or white peppercorns
• 1 large stem of ginger, skin peeled, chunked up and lightly bashed
• 1 medium stem of blue ginger aka galangal, if available, chunked up and lightly bashed
• Tip: If you've overdone it on the heat, you can mitigate the effect by adding a little sugar to the stock. Go easy though!

Directions for soup stock:

• Combine all the ingredients above EXCEPT THE LIME JUICE above in a large stockpot of filtered water
• Turn the stove heat to medium-high, boil for at least 1 hour, preferably 2 hours.
• Strain the stock through a sieve or muslin cloth
• If you're feeling adventurous, rub salt on the fish heads and cook in the boiling broth after straining for the last 15-20 minutes. Fish aficionados will fight over the lovely tender meat on the head, in the cheeks and under the collars. The jelly around the eyes is also considered a delicacy
• I have to admit, I don't know how long this stock keeps if you freeze it -- I usually plow through all of it within 1-3 days! Advice, anyone?

If Serving as a Soup Dish, Add Your Desired Amount Of...

• Slices of solid-meat fish (e.g. pollock, salmon, trout)
• Whole shrimp, peeled
• Mussels on the half-shell
• Crab or lobster meat (if you really want to pimp it up)
• Mushrooms. Purists will use straw mushrooms; I really like using sliced up fresh shitake, and enoki aka golden mushrooms, which really absorb the tom yum flavour
• Add all of the above to the stock, and cook on medium-high heat for 5 minutes at most
• Add the fresh lime juice
• Garnish with fresh red chilli sliced on the bias, and a few coriander leaves

Make A Meal of It!

I often make this as a quick one-bowl meal, if I have leftover stock from the previous day. In addition to the ingredients above, I add a couple of handfuls of kang kong aka water morning glory, or baby spinach leaves, and 1 single-serving bundle of tang hoon aka glass noodles per portion. This can all go into the stock pot at the same time as the ingredients above, as the cooking time is equally quick.

Khao San
108 Chepstow Road
London, W2 5QS, United Kingdom
+44 20 7221 9984

Handpicked Shellfish Company
Wimbledon Park and Ealing farmer markets every Saturday, Queens Park every Sunday, and every other Wednesday at Swiss Cottage.

Easy Boxed Lunches for a Boxed Life

The last week(s?) have been spent trip planning and packing. The last 2 years of our lives are now in 31 boxes, and the next 1 is on 1 spreadsheet.

As our kitchen infrastructure, remaining time, and budgets tighten, the rules for making meals at home have become as follows:

1) Are the ingredients unfussy / easy to prep?

2) Can everything be cooked in 1 pot or pan?

3) Does it store and reheat well so that 1 cooking session can last 2 or 3 meals?

4) ... is it a punnet of strawberries from the farmers market?

The recipes below will hopefully provide a few ideas for when you're feeling over-worked and under-flush. Remember! Use what's already in your kitchen or very nearby. If an accessory ingredient is missing, improvise. These recipes are for when you already have enough stress in your day.

Asparagus and Cheese Frittata

This currently being the thick of asparagus season, they were going for £4 for 2 bundles at the Perry Court Farm stall at my Sunday morning haunt, Queens Park Farmers Market in London. So I went to get while the going was good.

The English summer bounty at the Perry Court Farm stall at Queens Park Farmers Market

Makes 2-4 portions

Ingredients:
4-6 eggs, depending on size of eggs and how much leftovers you want
1 bundle asparagus, segregated into fat and skinny stalks
1 medium-sized onion
1 large ball fresh mozzerella (cheddar or halloumi or brie will work too, if that's what's in the fridge)
1 tablespoon olive oil
Salt and pepper

• Set oven to grill at medium heat
• Finely chop the onion, and chop the fat-stalked asparagus into 2-3cm segments
• Turn stove on to medium heat. Drizzle the olive oil into the skillet, then add the onions and fry until they soften and turn slightly translucent
• Add the chopped asparagus, and stir fry for ~3-5 minutes
• Lightly mix 4-6 eggs in a bowl (leave room for yellow and white streaks), season lightly with salt, add to skillet and distribute evenly
• When most (but not all) of the egg is cooked, turn off the stove. Add half of the skinny asparagus across the skillet, cover with cheese of choice, then add the remaining asparagus to form criss-crosses as above
• Place the skillet in the oven just under the grill (you can leave the oven door open if you're worried about the skillet handle)
• Grill for 5 minutes. This will be enough to grill the asparagus and melt and brown the cheese
• Season with black pepper (I used a sprinkle of Turkish red pepper flakes as well - it brings more fragrance than heat)
• Divide into segments and serve with salad leaves

Fried Tang Hoon (glass noodles)

Carrots, spring greens and spring onions have been recent features in my Riverford Organic vegetable box. Perfect for this light, tangy, Thai-twangy dish.

Makes 4 portions

Ingredients:
Some combination of carrots, spring greens, any sort of cabbage, leeks, shitake mushrooms, golden / enoki mushrooms, spring onions
1 large onion, chopped finely
1/2 bulb garlic, chopped finely
~400 grams tang hoon (aka glass noodles, green been or mung bean noodles)
3-4 tablespoons fish sauce
2 teaspoons lemongrass powder
1 teaspoon white pepper
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
1 lime, quartered

• Slice all the vegetables into thin strips
• Soak the glass noodles in a bowl of cold water
• Using a wok or a large chef pan, turn stove to medium-high heat and add 2-3 glugs of olive oil
• Add the chopped garlic and onion and fry for 1-2 minutes until soft
• Add the vegetables. Carrots and spring greens take longer; leeks and mushrooms take much less time
• Season with lemongrass powder, white pepper, chili powder and fish sauce. Stir fry and let sit for ~7 minutes. You can add a few splashes of water to keep the bottom of the pan moist, but not too much as the vegetables will naturally "sweat"
• Add the glass noodles (but not the cold water) to the pan, and fold in everything together as the noodles soften. Season with more fish sauce and lemongrass powder to taste
• Slice the spring onions on the bias and add as garnishing
• Serve with a wedge of lime, to squeeze over the plate of noodles

Half and Half Vegetable Pasta

Named as such since half the veggies are cooked, and the other half added raw as garnishing right at the end. Aside from the olives, the vegetables used here once again came from my fortnightly Riverford Organic vegetable box, and The Tomato Stall at Queens Park Farmers Market.

Makes 4 portions

Ingredients:
1 large onion, chopped finely
1 large bulb of garlic, chopped finely
Olive oil
500g pasta (I used organic wholewheat). Spirals or penne can pick up bits of onion and garlic well
1 small jar of pesto
Salt and pepper

Cooked veggies: Any combination of broccoli, red/orange/yellow/green peppers, brown/field mushrooms, asparagus, courgettes, eggplant. Chop roughly and set aside

Raw veggies: Any combination of various-coloured cherry tomatoes, black olives in brine, green scallions / spring onions, wild garlic, flat leaf parsley, fresh basil.

• Bring a large pot of water to a fast boil. Add a pinch of salt and a drizzle of olive oil. Add the pasta, cook for 10-12 minutes depending on how al dente you like your pasta
• While waiting for the pasta to cook, chop up the "raw" veggies. I tend to slice the cherry tomatoes in half so they don't slip away when I spear them with a fork
• Drain the water from the pot, set the pasta aside. Wipe the pot dry, put it back on the stove at medium-high heat and add a couple of glugs of olive oil
• Add the chopped onion and garlic and fry for 1-2 minutes
• Add the veggies for cooking (broccoli will take the longest so add that first). Fry for 5-7 minutes. Never put the lid on the pot / pan when stir frying veggies - it will turn the greens a gormless yellow
• Turn off the flame
• Add the cooked pasta, and the jar of pesto, and the raw garnishing veggies. Season with black pepper. Stir until everything is evenly coated with pesto
• Season with salt only if the pesto hasn't done enough

If you're clearing out the fridge or larder anyway, feel free to pimp this up with shreds of ham or flaked smoked fish e.g. mackerel or trout.

Reheat, repeat.

Linguine “Wengole” (Linguine Vongole) recipe

I absolutely love the fresh and slightly tart kick from the fresh herbs and lemon juice.

Serves 6

Ingredients:
6 lbs of clams (in this case little necks)
500 – 750 grams of linguine
1 large bulb garlic
1 large onion
1 large bunch fresh flat-leaf parsley
1 small bunch fresh oregano
1 lemon
1 tablespoon flour (plain or wholemeal flour have all worked fine)
Olive oil
Sea salt and black pepper

For the clams and gravy:
Use the garlic, onions, pepper and olive oil to steam the clams.
Retrieve cooked clams and set aside.
Reduce the flame to low and continue to reduce the gravy.
Sift in the flour and mix, to thicken the gravy.

For the pasta:
Boil a large pot of filtered water, with a few dashes of sea salt and a glug of olive oil.
While waiting, chop up the flat leaf parsley and pick the oregano leaves from their stems.
When the water boils, add the pasta and cook for between 8-12 minutes, depending on how al dente you like it.
Drain the pasta then put it back in the pot.
Drizzle a couple of glugs of olive oil to the pasta and toss with the parsley and oregano.

Plate up the pasta, divide the clams evenly, and add 1-2 soup ladles of the gravy to the pasta.

Add one last small drizzle of olive oil to each plate, and a good squeeze of lemon juice.

Super fast Noodle Salad – Udon tossed with samphire, wakame and tobiko

It's one of those nights. You're home late from work. I mean late like it's summer you still got home in the dark. You're grumpy, and you're HUNGRY. You know if you go out and grab a box of fried chicken or a kebab or order pizza (again) you'll loathe yourself after. But today you really cannot be arsed to spend 30-45 minutes chopping prepping cooking washing etc etc etc. Bleah.

How about just boiling 1 saucepan of water and 10 minutes total?

Your salt cravings get naturally satisfied by the samphire, carb cravings by the udon, and your palette gets a little much-needed pampering by the silky dark green sheets of wakame and the rich pop-pop-pop-pop-pops of the vermilion tobiko beads. You get to feel good about getting greens into your meal, complete with sea minerals. And if you don't have the luxury of a dishwasher you can even eat the finished product right from the saucepan so you have less to wash up after.

No fuss, no muss, no grease, no guilt.

 

 

Ingredients for 1 serving;

• ~100-150g samphire (photo above). A cactus-like frond that grows on European coasts, with a refreshing seawatery crunch when you bite down.. Available at good fishmongers in late spring and summer. Use as soon as possible, though the batch I bought lasted a week in the fridge with no damage

• A palmful of dried wakame. This is seaweed, but not nori (nori is the roasted and rolled kind which is used for holding sushi rolls together). Silky with just enough bite when it unfurls in water. You won't need much more than a handful given how much they expand

• 1 packet fresh udon – fat buckwheat noodles. Available at Asian speciality supermarkets. Dried udon could work too but will require 3-5 minutes cooking time

• ~25 g tobiko – bright orange flying fish eggs, each slightly larger than a poppy seed. Not to be confused with salmon eggs, called ikura, also bright orange but about the size of a pearl. Available at Japanese markets. Special thanks to Melf who kindly picked up a tub for me from Natural Natural near the Finchley Road tube stop on this occasion

• Sesame oil

• Extra virgin olive oil

• Japanese red pepper

   

Here's what you do:

• Rinse 1 large handful of samphire in cold water

• Fill half a large saucepan with filtered tap water and bring to a boil on high heat on the stove

• Chuck in the fresh udon. Leave for 2 minutes, then agitate with a fork to help separate the noodles

• Add the samphire and a handful of dried wakame. Agitate for another 30 seconds to 1 minute (not more), then drain off all the water

• Add 2 large tablespoons of tobiko to the noodles and the greens, and toss

• Add a few drops of sesame oil, a tiny drizzle of olive oil, and a dash of Japanese red pepper. Toss again and tuck in

 

12 October 2010 update: I'm submitting this recipe for La Fujimama's Food Ninja Challenge. Come join the fun!