The Bug

It has been a very cold start to the winter. As expected, there have been people coughing, sneezing and blowing their noses in the office. Lots of bugs going around. I caught one myself too. Luckily I caught the cooking bug, which is quite a nice, healthy variety (except when it compels you to buy expensive gadgets and exotic ingredients which will remain idle once the bug has gone).

Last week, I felt like I had fulfilled all my cravings to last a year. These were some of the dishes I made:

Crab Noodles without the Crab

When we have noodles with crab at the restaurant here, what I really look forward to is not the crab, but the noodles. The noodles would have soaked up the sauce and the fragrance of the holy trinity - spring onion, garlic and ginger lingers with every bite of the noodles. I substituted the crab with prawns and fish fillet. The dish turned out better than I expected... it was restaurant-class!

Char Tow Kway

There is a Char Tow Kway stall in the market near my house in Malaysia. Each time I walked past the stall there would be a long line of people waiting for the husband and wife team to cook up their order. They cooked the tow kway in a large girdle greased with lots and lots of oil and the secret ingredient... lard.

I made the tow kway with rice flour and shreded white radish then steamed for half an hour. It was rather sticky when it came out, and in no hurry to eat it, I put it in the fridge. The next day, the texture was much firmer and manageable. I cut it into cubes and fried it with chai poh, lap cheong, garlic and egg. I wished I had some lard though. It would have made the difference, I believe.

Siu Mai

Siu Mai is one of my favourite food when I was a child. Later, when I came to Australia and discovered the bursty big prawns in each har gao, I neglected the humble pork only filling of the siu mai. Last week I decided I must have them again. I was scratching my head to how to wrap these little fellas, luckily the trusty www advised to cut the four corners of the wonton skins off and hey presto!

I mixed 2:1 portions of minced pork to minced prawns, then mixed in some spring onions, salt, sugar and egg to bind. The result was really yummy siu mai! I topped each one with corn, pea and carrot. Sound familiar? Yeah... straight from the bag of mixed veges I keep in the freezer...