minced pork – 好心人

Yu Kee Bak Chor Mee (Review)

June 17, 2015 by Ho Lang

Yu Kee Bak Chor Mee (Review)

The NTUC Foodfare at Sembawang MRT just opened after a brief period of renovation and this time around I think they got it right. The layout of the place is now more sensible and it actually is much more spacious for their customers. Maybe they heard the cries of the populous masses that flow through their doors everyday.

But that’s not the purpose of my rambling, don’t worry. I don’t usually rant and rave about food court renovation designs.

So it seems Yu Kee has opened its own Bak Chor Mee. Yes, the famous Duck Rice guys are also selling BCM. I can’t say that I would disagree with their move, after all there is no existing Bak Chor Mee place at the food court.

So by this offering, their profits increase. People are predisposed to eating bak chor mee in the morning especially me. I love bcm and I can eat it everyday. It is comfort food to me.

So the question is, “is this yu kee bak chor mee any good?” The honest answer would be, “it fills the gap” (tongue in cheek). It is not exactly the best bcm, but it has all the elements of a standard bcm should carry.

My wife thinks I love bcm too much to give these guys a bad review. But there is nothing much to penalise them for. It’s not fantastic but it is not bad either. And especially so in the early morning when the other shops are not yet functioning, I think they make a very nice bak chor mee.

Try it if you are nearby, but I won’t drive my Ferrari down for this.

Special Fried Egg

May 16, 2015 by Ho Lang

Special Fried Egg

I called this dish Special Fried Egg because I really didn’t want to call it Fried Egg with Prawns Pork Minced and French Beans. That would be a tad too long for a title of dish, and remembering that it is important to name your dishes so that it won’t be too obvious. So there, Special Fried Egg.

Of course there is nothing very special about this dish except that it has quite a few ingredients all combined together. Fresh glass prawns are really good for this although a tad expensive. You may just use grey shrimp. Much cheaper and you won’t burn a hole in the wallet. Add regular minced pork and French beans and there you go. Comfort food that every kid who used to eat at home before fast food chains came along and dominated our tastebuds with salt and all things unwholesome.

Putting this special fried egg together was really a walk down memory lane for me. My nanny used to cook this dish for lunch every other week. It has become somewhat a cult classic for me. The taste, textures, the classic burnt edges. They all make up what this classic dish should be.

Recipe

Ingredients

3 large Glass Prawns
60 grams of Minced Pork
10 pieces of French Beans
2 whole Eggs
Light Soya Sauce

Method

1. De-shell the prawns and use only the meat. Chop into a paste. Then mix with the minced pork. Now use a heavy cleaver, chop and continue to combine the two ingredients until they become one paste.

2. Cut the French Beans into small pieces. Discard either ends. Assemble all the ingredients into a large bowl. Crack the eggs into the bowl. The egg acts as the social glue. Add soya sauce about 1 tbsp.

3. Now use your hands to mix. I like getting my hands dirty. Leave it to marinate a while.

4. Add oil into a wok (if you don’t know what a good wok looks like, you may want to refer to this Helen Chen non-stick pan). Turn heat up high. Pour the mixture into the frying pan and allow it to cook and congeal. Then do the magic flip and repeat on the other side. Use as much oil as you like. It has to be cooked nicely.

Bon Appetit!

Special Fried Egg

Szechuan Minced Pork

March 7, 2015 by Ho Lang

Szechuan Minced Pork

My family loves Szechuan vegetables stir fry with minced pork. It’s Wah-Shiok!! Just thinking about it makes me immediately 想要吃.

So I decided that we will have porridge today for lunch and cook up a dish of White Stomach Fish 白肚鱼. Just went to my regular fishmonger this morning and I saw a whole tray of that lovely fish and thought, mai-tu-liao and bought the entire tray. They look fresh. Well we will know soon. Sometimes buying fish is a hit and miss experience. The trial is to build trust between you and your fishmonger.

Oh a note on yesterday’s White Fungus Huai San and Chicken Soup, the wife said it was nice in flavour but that I made a blunder of not soaking the white fungus first! It was such a newbie mistake coming to think of it. Sigh. So naturally when the soup was ready, it was dry. The soup had all gone into the spongy white fungus!

Anyhoo. We learn from our mistakes and strive to be better! Back to the dish of the day. This is gonna be good. Try it.

Recipe

Ingredients

50-60 grams Minced Pork
1 small packet of ready-to-fry Szechuan Vegetable (you can get these from NTUC)
4 cloves Garlic
Dark Soya Sauce
Chinese Parsley

Method

1. Put a little oil, about a tablespoon into the frying pan. Minced the garlic and stir fry a little until fragrant. Add minced pork into the pan. No seasoning required. Fry until meat is about cooked.

2. Add Szechuan Vegetable and continue frying. Add a little bit of dark soya sauce and fry until fragrant. Perfection never look and tasted so good. Garnish with Chinese Parsley.

Bon Appetit!

Spicy Szechuan Vegetables with Minced and Pork Belly

November 30, 2014 by Ho Lang

Spicy Szechuan Vegetables with Minced and Pork Belly

This is a childhood classic for me. I remember the nanny cooking this for lunch on a few occasions, although I can’t really remember the details of what she cooked though, I mean who can? It’s been so many years. Alright, I know I said I had a photographic memory before, but this is different.

So when she told me that it was from Szechuan province, from a far away place and that it traveled very far to get to our home. It was a little unbelievable at first. She said that everyone from that place simply loves and adore the vegetable, and that they would eat it day and night. I thought that they must be extremely proud and sad at the same time eating it. I mean I would be proud knowing that the world was eating my “vegetable”, but yet at the same time, I would be sad because everyone in the world would think that it was all that we ate all day. There was probably nothing much else to eat. Of course I am sure they do eat other vegetables but as a child, we thought in absolutes.

Years past and the dish has become commonplace in many cai fan 菜饭 places. Some places do it well while others just cannot make it. Anyway, wifey wanted to eat this dish and since we had the szechuan vegetable in the fridge, I thought that it was also good time to cook it.

My rendition of the classic dish is to add pork belly and minced pork with some chilli padi and a dash of dark soy sauce. I bought my szechuan vegetable from the wet market, which basically meant that it was likely to be spicy and very high in salt content. There are different types of szechuan vegetable that are being sold in the supermarkets and these are already shredded nicely for the cook and they are not so salty. They come in a variety of spicy and non-spicy which really helps if you want to make a non-spicy version.

Recipe

Ingredients

half a dollop of Szechuan Vegetable – purchased from the wet market, high in salt content and spicy
100 grams of Pork Belly – following from the recipe for preparing boiled pork belly
150-160 grams of Minced Pork
a tbsp of Dark Soy Sauce
4-5 pcs of Garlic
4 pcs of Chilli Padi

Method

1. Soak the szechuan vegetables in a bowl of hot water. I realised that it is better to slice them thinly first before soaking. This would help a lot. Recommended to soak at least 30 minutes. While that is soaking, mince the garlic and heat up the oil in the wok. Fry until fragrant.

2. Add in pork belly and fry, moderate the heat to a medium. Then add the minced pork and fry until the colour just change which suggests that it is semi-cooked. Then add in the shredded szechuan vegetable along with the shredded chilli padi. Fry the dish until it is more or less cooked, then add a dash of the dark soy sauce and continue stirring. The end result should look a little bit like the picture below.

Bon Appetit!!