sesame seed oil

How to Make Crispy Salmon with Ginger

My son loves Salmon fish, in fact it is the only fish that he would eat. So in an attempt to get him to eat fish without telling him or forcing him to eat fish, I decided to deep fry this slim slab of salmon so that he would eat fish.

It’s really a very easy recipe, and basically I deep fried the fish in sesame seed oil and garnished it with julienned silvers of young ginger.

* please note that I have included amazon affiliate links to the products that I use, so check them out if you wish to support me, and if I can get these items from NTUC Supermarket, I would just indicate.

Recipe

Ingredients

1 slab of Salmon (as Salmon is really expensive, I usually slice them into thin slices so that we can have it throughout the week)

4 tablespoons of Sesame Seed Oil (I use Chee Seng Sesame Seed Oil [NTUC] for my cooking as it has a very nice flavour to it)

2 inches of Young Ginger (you can also use any kind of ginger, but young ginger is always best)

Method

  1. Julienne the young ginger into strips and then fry it up in the sesame seed oil until brown and fragrant.
  2. In the same oil, add more if you need, otherwise, you can fry the Salmon fish, skin down first over a slow heat, so that you can get a nice crispy skin, and the salmon fish doesn’t harden too fast.
  3. Turn the salmon fish over on all sides to fry until it is slightly brown. Salmon fish tends to cook easily, so you don’t want to have too high heat when frying it.
  4. Serve simply, garnish with the ginger. No need for additional soya sauce if you don’t want to, but if you like, then drizzle a little Lee Kum Kee Premium Light Soya Sauce [NTUC] for taste.

Bon Appetit!

Steamed Soon Hock

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Steamed Soon Hock

I purposely titled this as Steamed Soon Hock for the fun of it. I guess it doesn’t really matter since it is after all the best fish in the whole of Singapore. Any style you cook it, it would be fantastic. For this, I cooked it Hong Kong style.

I was at the wet market this morning and the fishmonger uncle greeted me as “老板!” and immediately I felt a damn shiok feeling. The morning suddenly seem brighter and the $50 in my pocket started singing “so long farewell..”. It’s always like that at the fishmonger’s. His fish is fresh and unfortunately expensive. But today he was selling Soon Hock! And they were going for $15 a kilogram. I got one and it was only $9!! Unbelievable.

Recipe

Ingredients

1 Soon Hock (it was about 600 grams which was sufficient for the two of us.)
2 stalks Lemon Grass (I decided to use lemon grass to flavour the stomach of the fish as ginger might be a little too strong)
2 stalks Leeks (I juliened the leeks into 3 inch lengths, this is the garnishing for the fish after steaming.)
3 tbsp Kikkoman Soya Sauce (I use Kikkoman because it is I feel the taste is quite consistent.)
5 tbsp Olive Oil (I pour hot oil over the fish after steaming it, so this oil has to be smoking hot. I pour it gently little by little so that it cooks the leeks as well.)
1 stalk Coriander Leaves (for garnishing – nothing else)
1 tsp Sesame Seed Oil (for flavour)

Method

1. Wash the Soon Hock and make sure the fish is gutted and cleaned.

2. Boil a kettle of water and prepare to steam the fish in the wok (I assume you know how to steam fish?). Once the water is ready, pour the water into the wok and prepare the steamer tray for steaming.

3. Chop the lemon grass and stuff the stomach cavity of the Soon Hock (fish). Steam the fish for 15 minutes. In another pot, boil oil over a small fire. Boil the oil until smoking hot. (For this you got to time yourself.)

4. While waiting for the fish to steam, you can juliene the leeks into fine strips.
5. Once the fish is cooked. Place the leeks on the fish and pour the hot oil over the leeks (to cook them) and drizzle the soya sauce and sesame seed oil over the fish. Garnish with coriander leaves.

Bon Appetit!

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Fresh Soon Hock fish

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Chop the lemon grass

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Stuff the cavity of the fish with lemon grass

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Leeks

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Coriander leaves

Drunken Sesame Chicken

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Drunken Sesame Chicken 嘛醉鸡

This is an improvement to my previous recipe Chicken in Rice Wine. That recipe is great but this is much better. I discovered that by adding more sesame oil and also hua tiao jiu together with the hakka rice wine, the results were a sweet caramelized chicken.

I like to cook this with chicken wings as they have the gelatinous fats that would be so delicious once you pressure steam and fry the chicken in a clay-pot.

Make sure you add just the right amounts of ginger and if possible fry them until they become brown and almost burnt. When the dish is done, your clay-pot might be a light charred due to the sugars in the hakka rice wine caramelising, some of the chicken parts are burnt slightly due to the heat, but that is fine. A delicious chicken dish with steamed rice or best with porridge or congee.

Recipe

Ingredients

4 Chicken Wings with Drunplets (separate the drumlets from the wings and also the wing tips)
Lots of Ginger *maybe 8-9 cm of one inch thickness* (sliced thinly)
1/4 cup of Hakka Rice Wine
1/4 cup of Shao Xing Hua Tiao Jiu
White Pepper
2 tbsp of Light Soy Sauce 
1 tbsp of Dark Soy Sauce
2 tbsp Olive Oil
4 tbsp Sesame Oil

Method

1. Marinate the chicken parts with light soy sauce and white pepper. Allow the meat to marinate at least for 5-10 minutes.

2. Sliced the ginger thinly, and then heat the olive oil and sesame oil in a clay-pot over low fire. Then fry the ginger strips until brown and crispy.

3. Add marinated chicken meat into the clay-pot for cooking. Over medium fire continue to cook until chicken pieces turn whitish in colour. Add dark soy sauce and continue cooking over medium fire. Finally add the Hakka Rice Wine and Hua Tiao Jiu and allow the chicken to simmer and cook over a slow fire. Remember to close the lid. Once cooked serve with steam rice.

Bon Appetit!!

Stir Fry Chicken

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Stir Fry Chicken

After a brief hiatus from cooking, actually it has been more like writing recipes. I have been cooking just not posting my new dishes. I wanted to try some classic favourites to see if they will turn out just as fabulous as the ones that I find at the restaurants.

For example, I recently tried the three egg spinach, which incidentally is my family’s favourite dish that we would always order when we go PuTien Chinese Restaurant. I tried it the other day and it turned out to be quite alright, just that the century egg I used was the soft centre types which resulted in the soup being quite a murky green.

Anyway, I have been cooking a lot of chicken in rice wine lately and as much as I liked the dish, it was a little too frequent. So today I decided that I would cook it the way I cook frog legs, in sliced ginger and lots of spring onions. Simple and delicious.

Recipe

Ingredients

1 Chicken Drum (deboned)
4 stalks of Spring Onions
5 thin slices of Ginger
2 tbsp Oyster Sauce
1 tbsp Light Soya Sauce
Drizzle of Sesame Seed Oil
Sprinkle of White Pepper

Method

1. Debone the chicken drum (usually I get the chicken butcher to do it for me). Then cut the meat into small bite sized pieces. Marinate with light soya sauce, oyster sauce and white pepper with a light drizzle of sesame seed oil.

2. Mix with your fingers until meat is coated and leave it for about 5 minutes to marinate.

3. Wash and cut the spring onions into 6 cm lengths and split into two portions. Then slice 5 thin slices of ginger.

4. Heat oil in the pan/wok and fry the ginger and first portion of spring onions until fragrant. Then add the lightly marinated chicken meat to stir fry. Keep doing this until the meat is cooked. To test if the meat is cooked – taste it.

5. Add the remaining spring oinions midway of frying the chicken so that the greens will still be green and not all softened. Once cooked serve with steam rice or white porridge. Easy.

Bon Appetit!

Pork Trotters in Black Sweet Vinegar

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Pork Trotters in Black Sweet Vinegar

I found a bottle of black sweet vinegar in my cupboard and thought – better quickly use or else spoy. So I decided to make Pork Trotters in Black Sweet Vinegar. Nice bo? Well nice or not, we will know after I cook it.

Incidentally if you are a mother-to-be without a confinement nanny, you may wish to follow this recipe and cook for yourself. If you can’t cook, ask your husband to cook. If he can’t cook, then too bad. But this recipe is so easy, anyone can cook. So no excuse if your husband cannot cook. Just follow only.

If you are a traditional mother-in-law-to-be and you don’t know this Cantonese delicacy, dont be ashamed. I also not Cantonese. I just see what works and if it works, then we all learn together. Sure nice one. However, if you want to be strict about it, then maybe this recipe might not work the magic for you. But if you wanna make it for dinner (like what I am doing) then can try-and-see.

Ready? Let’s try it.

Recipe

Ingredients

1 Kg Pork Trotters (pork hand)
4 large Eggs (hard boil)
100 grams Ginger
100 grams Rock Sugar
5 tbsp Sesame Seed Oil
1 bottle of Chan Kong Thye Black Sweet Rice Vinegar

Method

1. Blanch the pork trotters to remove scum. Then discard water. Pour sesame seed oil in wok and fry ginger (rough sliced) until fragrant. Add blanched pork trotters to fry until seared.

2. Boil the eggs until they become hard boiled eggs. Once everybody is ready, dump them all into a large pot and add the entire bottle of black sweet rice vinegar and 1 bottle of water (use the same bottle). Add rock sugar. Do a basic taste test. If nice then sure nice one.

3. Boil at high heat until bubbling, then reduce heat to allow it to simmer. You generally want to reduce the amount of liquid by about half. This will thicken the sauce and at the same time allow the fatty parts to gelatinized (is that a word?!) and your pork trotters will be absolutely fabulous.

Bon Appetit!

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Blanched Pork Trotters

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Rough Sliced Ginger

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Stir Fry Pork Trotters and Ginger in Sesame Seed Oil