Twice Cooked Pork (Sichuan style)

A delicious combination of thinly sliced crisp pork belly, stir fried with chilli and sweet bean pastes which provide lovely sweet, salty and spicy aromatic flavours.

It’s called twice cooked pork because you cook the pork twice (!) by simmering the pork belly first and then stir frying the pork belly in a wok.

Ingredients 

•    450g pork belly
•    ginger – 2 slices and 2 minced teaspoons
•    garlic – 2-3 cloves, crushed
•    star anise – one whole
•    spring onions – chopped into 4-5cm lengths
•    shaoxing rice wine
•    leek – 2, chopped diagonally at a steep angle
•    garlic shoots – chopped into 4-5cm lengths
•    shallot – sliced  thinly
•    red and green chilli peppers – deseeded and chopped
•    dried chillies – 4-5 soaked and drained
•    chilli bean paste – 1 ½ tablespoon
•    sweet bean oaste – 1 tablespoon
•    dark soy sauce – 1 teaspoon
•    light soy sauce – 1 teaspoon
•    salt
•    pepper
•    sugar

(Quantities are a guide only, please add to taste and add as much chilli as you want to your desired heat rating)

To make the twice cooked pork. I put around 450g of pork belly in a pot with a splash of Shaoxing rice wine, pinch of salt, two slices of ginger, one star anise and a spring onion chopped into 4-5cm lengths. Cover the pork with cold water and bring to boil. Then reduce the heat to simmer and cook (half cover the pot with the lid) for 20-30 minutes, until the pork is just cooked through. Remove the pot from the heat and allow the pork to cool in the stock. Then remove the pork from the pot (when you smell the pork it has a really nice aroma from the ingredients infused into it as it was simmering it in the pot). Place the pork onto a plate, cover with glad wrap and refrigerate for 2-3 hours. This will make the pork firm and easy to slice thinly.

Slice the cold pork belly thinly, as thin as a slice of bacon.

Heat a wok with peanut oil and fry the pork belly slices until golden brown and slightly crisp, and the fat has melted a little (the layers off fat in the pork belly will become translucent). Remove and set aside.

Stir fry the leek and garlic shoots for 1-2 minutes until golden and set aside [Note: I chose to pre-fry the leek and garlic shoots to add back into the work later on because they are quite bitter raw and requires cooking to sweeten its flavour, the other option was to blanch the leeks and garlic shoots first. When you are cooking a stir fry it should be quick, so it is best to you precook your meats and veges until they are about 50-70% done first to add back into the wok. This ensures that nothing is overcooked (or undercooked) and the meat and veges retain their individual flavours.]

In the wok, fry some crushed garlic, minced ginger and sliced shallot until fragrant, then add in some chilli bean paste and sweet bean paste, and fry for 30 seconds.

Add the pork slices back into the wok and fry for 30 seconds, then add in some shaoxing wine and a little of the pork stock (the water that was used to simmer the pork) and fry for a bit. This deglazes the wok.

Then add in the leek, garlic shoots, spring onion and chillies, and fry for 30 seconds and then add in some soy sauce, salt, pepper and sugar to taste.

Stir fry everything together for a few more seconds, then serve.

Here are some of my other pork belly recipes:

• Vietnamese braised pork belly with eggs in coconut juice (Thit Heo Kho Trung)
• Braised pork spare ribs with pumpkin
• Roasted pork belly - sui yuk
• Kakuni (Japanese Braised Pork)
• Braised pork belly with daikon
• Chinese BBQ Pork 
• Communist Pork (Red Cooked Pork)
• Baki Kecap (Indonesian braised pork in sweet soy sauce)

Stuffed Tofu and Chilli

My motivation for making this dish was to recreate ‘yong tau foo’, one of my favourite dishes to eat when I go out for Dim Sim, which is basically tofu stuffed with a prawn/pork mixture.

I am a big fan of tofu. If I am eating out at a Chinese restaurant I have to order a tofu dish.

Tofu is generally accused of being bland but you never eat it on its own. It has very little flavour or smell on its own but I think that’s the beauty of it because cooking tofu is about infusing it with flavour and making it into something really tasty. It has a great texture and absorbs flavours cooked into it really well. If anyone ever tells me that they think tofu is bland, I will tell them that they are not cooking it right. Tofu should not taste bland!

Kind of like bread you know, it’s pretty bland but you never just eat bread on its own (unless you are a poor arse uni student or traveling around Europe and can’t afford anything else to eat). You can spread some jam on bread or fill it with some meat and veges, or make it into something fancy like French bread or fairy bread.

To make my yong tau foo I bought some firm fried tofu and then made a filling mixture with around 40% minced pork and 60% minced prawn, and added in some finely diced spring onion, coriander stalk and carrot. Then I seasoned and flavoured the mixture with a little bit of the following:
•    salt
•    white pepper
•    shaoxing rice wine
•    oyster sauce
•    fish sauce
•    sesame oil
•    soy sauce
Then I used one egg white and a bit of cornflour to bind it all together.

Combine all the filling ingredients onto a chopping board and chop to mix together/mince and develop some elasticity (see photos from previous post on fish patty).

Put the filling mixture into a bowl, cover with glad wrap and refrigerate for a few hours.

I made a sauce for the tofu by lightly frying some garlic and ginger together in some peanut oil. Then I added in some chicken stock into the saucepan. Bring the sauce to boil and add in some soy sauce, oyster sauce, salt, sugar and pepper to taste. Then thicken the sauce with some cornflour.

To make the stuffed tofu - slice the fried tofu in half and gently scoop some tofu out from the center. Spoon some of the filling on top of break tofu (be careful not to break the tofu!). Steam the tofu for 7 minutes and then remove the tofu from the steamer and carefully drain away any liquid. Pour the sauce over the tofu and continue steaming for another 3-5 minutes or until the meat is cooked.

Served garnished with coriander. 

If you would like a little heat, you can try stuffing some chillies.

Split and deseed some large chilli peppers and stuff them with some of the filling mixture. Steam the chillies for around 7 minutes until the filling is nearly cooked through. Finish off by frying in a an with some peanut oil until all sides of the chilli are golden brown, starting with the filled sides down.

Cooking Tips from P. J. O’Rourke

Patrick Jake O’Rourke is an American political satirist, (gonzo) journalist and writer. He is known from his libertarian, sometimes conservative and anti-leftist viewpoints.

If you have read any of PJ O’Rourke’s work, then you would know that he is quite a humourist. PJ never fails to make me laugh but also be enlightening at the same time. I went to a lunch talk by PJ last year when he toured around Australia promoting his book On the Wealth of Nations and afterwards I shook his hand and he signed my book!

Even if you do not share the same views/ideological beliefs as PJ, there will be times when you read something of his and think ‘he makes a good point’.

Here are some of my fav PJ quotes –

“The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it.” 

“There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.”

“Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.”

“Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power.”

As you can see PJ provides a lot of political commentary, but enough about politics because this is a cooking blog afterall. There is a cooking related reason for introducing you to PJ.

In 1987, PJ wrote a book called The Bachelor Home Companion: A Practical Guide to Keeping House like a Pig (one of the funniest books I have ever read!). This book devotes two chapters to cooking which I wanted to share.

I will provide extracts of cooking related information by PJ from his Bachelor Home Companion below with my random commentary in italics.

What basic cooking equipment should a bachelor have in his kitchen? PJ lists the following items.

•    Buck knife
•    Fire extinguisher
•    Bottle of Jack Daniels
•    Long stick
•    Aspirin
•    Alka-Seltzer
•    Hungry dog to eat whatever you have ruined

But what if you don’t possess any cooking utensils? PJ provides some emergency helps.

•    Cook a toasted sandwich by wrapping it in aluminium foil and ironing it with a steam iron. A steam iron can also be turned upside-down and held in place with books to make a hot plate.
•    Make your own beef jerky by letting meat sit out on the countertop for a week.
•    Dangle a cube steak in front of a blow dryer.
•    Turn TV dinner directly into cold leftovers by allowing them to thaw.
•    Use a low-speed electric drill to turn any fire into a rotisserie.

PJ provides some useful information on ingredients used in cooking.

Meat – Despite the fact that meat is made from a dead animal, it shouldn’t smell that way. Try this test for meat freshness: close your eyes and see if you can tell the pork chops from a gym locker.

Fruit – Is a vegetable with looks and money. Plus, if you let fruit rot, it turns into wine, something brussels sprouts never do.

Bread – Commercial white bread, though not food by any stretch of the imagination, does turn anything you put between two slices of it into lunch. No home should be without some.

Salt – Keeps your blood pressure up to the pitch of modern life and improves all foods. Without salt, pretzels would be nothing but breadsticks with bad posture and potato chips would be potatoes. Use salt in everything.

But what if you don’t have any food around the house? PJ provides some easy things you can make to eat when you don’t have much food around the house.

Emergency Tomato Soup – Made with hot water and ketchup. (Cold water and ketchup makes Emergency Bloody Mary Mix)

Sandwich Sandwich – A slice of bread between two slices of bread.

How do you know when to throw out food? PJ provides some tips on how to tell when foodstuffs spoiled and should be discarded.

Dairy products – Milk is spoiled when it starts to look like yoghurt. Yoghurt is spoiled when it starts to look like cottage cheese. Cottage cheese is spoiled when it starts to look like regular cheese. Regular cheese is nothing but spoiled cheese anyway and can’t be anymore spoiled.

Wine – it should not taste like salad dressing

Chip dip – If you can take it out of its container and bounce it on the floor, it has gone off.

Obviously, the chapters on cooking would not be complete without some recipes. Here is PJ’s recipe on how to cook a steak.

Buy the most expensive steak you can find, about as thick as the heel of Bass Weejun. Salt and pepper it liberally and don’t worry that salting the steak before it’s cooked will make it tough. Salt does not make steak tough. Poverty makes steaks tough, sometimes absent entirely. Put half a shot glass of any kind of oil but motor or olive oil in a skillet. Heat up until the oil smokes like hell. Now take the batteries out of your smoke detector and put the steak in the pan. Fiddle with the steak, turn it over a lot and poke it constantly with a fork and knife. This does nothing for the steak, but it keeps you from wandering off and starting to watch a basketball game and turning the T-bone into a flight jacket. As soon as you think the steak should cook just a little longer, stop cooking it.

That’s enough, if you want more, buy the book! I hope you have had a laugh.

 

 

Chocolate Fondant

Most people would agree that chocolate is awesome and what better chocolate desert to have than a chocolate fondant with its oozing melting chocolate insides, served hot, straight from the oven with icecream.

Ingredients (for 2 dariole moulds)

•    50g butter, plus extra for greasing
•    cocoa powder for dusting
•    50g dark chocolate, chopped into pieces
•    1 egg
•    1 egg yolk
•    60g caster sugar (around 1/3 cup)
•    50g plain flour (around ½ cup)

Method

Grease the moulds by brushing melted butter all over the insides and then add in a spoonful of cocoa powder.  Tip the mould around so that the cocoa completely coats the butter and tap out any excess.

Place a bowl over a pan of barely simmering water and slowly melt the chocolate and butter together, then leave to cool for about 10 minutes.

Whisk the egg, egg yolk and sugar together in a bowl until it is thick and pale, then sift in the flour and beat together.

Gently fold in the melted chocolate mixture into the egg mixture and mix together until combined.

Pour the batter into the prepared moulds and chill in the fridge for at least 20 minutes (this allows the chocolate to set a bit).

Preheat oven to 170C, place the fondants on a baking tray and bake for 12 minutes until the tops have formed a crust and the fondants are starting to come away from the sides of their moulds.

Remove from the oven and run a knife around the edges of the fondant to loosen, invert onto a plate and slowly ease the fondant out of the mould.

Serve with icecream!

Fish Patty

A tasty dish which is great on its own or with some rice. You can also thinly slice and pop into a sandwich/roll or chuck into a salad.

Ingredients
•    375g fish paste
•    300g prawns (shelled and deveined)
•    500g mince pork
•    1 egg, lightly beaten
•    1 teaspoon cornflour
•    ½ teaspoon salt
•    ½ teaspoon pepper
•    ½ tablespoon fish sauce
•    1 tablespoon soy sauce
•    1 tablespoon oyster sauce
•    1-2 spring onion, finely diced

Method
Combine all ingredients on a chopping board and use a big cleaver to chop everything together repeatedly to mix, mince and create elasticity.

 

  

 

  

  

  

  

  

 

Then put the mixture into a bowl and refrigerate for at least 4 hours or overnight.

Spoon out the mixture and mould into a patty shape, and cover all over with Tapioca Starch.

 

 

Shallow fry in oil until golden brown.

 

 

Remove and let rest for 5 minutes before slicing.

Araluen Chilli Festival

The Araluen Chilli Festival will be on in Fremantle at the Esplanade next weekend!
•    Saturday 13 March 12noon-8pm
•    Sunday 14 March 10am-5pm

(Note: The festival has moved from Araluen to Fremantle)

This event is a celebration of the unique culinary and cultural aspects of chillies. It features a diverse range of stallholders, entertainment, cooking demonstrations and you will be able to buy everything chilli from fresh foods, plants, pickles, chutneys, olives, cheese, chocolate, wine, beers and much, much more.

Tickets are $15 for adults, $8 for children (5-15 years old) and for a family it’s $40.

Why should you go?

+ Eating chillies help to clear congestion (ever noticed the opening of your nasal passages after eating a hot curry if you have a cold!).

+ Eating chillies can help you burn fat because capsaicin increases your metabolism, which aids in the fat burning process.

+ If you suffer from diabetes, consuming chillies reduces the amount of insulin needed to lower the body’s blood sugar levels after eating a meal.

+ Chillies contain more Vitamin C than oranges and more Vitamin A than carrots!

+ Chillies are a natural anti-oxidant and can help prevent cancer.

+ Eating chillies make you feel good because when you eat chillies it ‘burns’ your tongue and leads to your nervous system releasing endorphins (this is why eating a hot chilli dish can be so satisfying!)

+ Chillies are great for pest control as they act as a stomach poison, anti-feedant and repellent to a number of pests.

How do we sleep while our ‘tongues’ are burning?

What makes chillies hot is the compound called capsaicin which produces a sensation of burning in any tissue with which it comes into contact.

What do people do when they have eaten hot chillies and it’s burning their tongue?

Drink lots of water?!

FAIL

Drinking cold water may immediately quell the burning sensation due to the coolness of the water, but the water will distribute the capsaicin all throughout the mouth and throat, causing more pain once the water is swallowed. This is because capsaicin is an alkaloid oil and not water-soluble (it’s like washing away grease with water!).

Have you ever wondered why Mexican’s give you some sour cream with their meals and Indian dishes give you a dollop of yoghurt?

Capsaicin is soluble in fat, acid or alcohol. This means that consuming any dairy products will help like drinking milk, eating yoghurt or ice cream, and drinking juices containing acids such as tomatoes, lime and lemons will also provide relief…..or get your self a scotch on the rocks!

can't touch this, dun dun dun dun, dun dun, dun dun, can't touch this

If you have ever handled chillies than you would be aware that it burns your hands and it continues to burn even after washing repeatedly with soap and water.

It’s important to get rid of this chilli on your hands because failure to do so can result in painful burning of the eyes or skin or any other part of your body that you may touch (ie: guys be careful when going to the toilet!)

Because soap is alkaline, washing with soap and water may not rinse away all the capsaicin.

Try rubbing some olive oil on your hands before chopping chillies peppers (capsaicin is oil-soluble, so rubbing oil loosens the compound). After chopping, rub lemon or lime juice on your hands (the citric acid in lemon and lime juice counteracts the alkaline in the chillies capsaicin) before washing with soap and water to help get rid of capsaicin from the skin.

You can also rub salt onto your hands, this helps to neutralize the effects of capsaicin.

Or you can just wear rubber gloves and look like a surgeon dissecting chilli matter.

Please note:

The hottest part of the chilli is not the seeds, but the white pith that surrounds them and runs in thick veins through the pod.

As a general rule of thumb, the larger the chilli, the milder it is. Smaller chillies tend to be much hotter because they contain proportionally more seeds and veins than the larger varieties.

Warning:

Eating chillies can kill you.

Report - Chef dies after eating 'super hot' chilli http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/chef-dies-after-eating-super-hot-chilli/2008/09/30/1222651028585.html

Eat at your own risk!

Crème Caramel

A classic French desert, crème caramel comprises of rich custard that has a lovely silken texture with a layer of soft caramel on top.

Crème caramels are also common in Vietnam where it is known as bánh flăng or kem flan (they were brought over by the French!).

 

Makes around 6.
 

Ingredients for caramel

• ½ cup sugar
• ¼ cup water

Ingredients for custard

• 2/3 cup sugar
• 2 cup milk (500ml)
• 1 ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 large eggs
• 4 large egg yolks

Method
To make the caramel – put the sugar and water in a saucepan and bring to boil over medium heat. After a few minutes it will boil furiously and slowly start to change colour from blonde, to light brown and then to a dark caramel brown. Swirl the saucepan around to even out the caramelisation and ensure an even colour. Once the mixture has reached a deep caramel colour, immediately remove the saucepan from heat and pour equal amounts into each mould (I use dariole moulds). Hold the moulds at the top of the rim and swirl to coat the bottom and halfway up the sides (be careful as the moulds become quite hot from the caramel). Let cool for a few minutes and allow the caramel to set.

[Do not stir the mixture when it is cooking or let the caramel go too dark as it will burn and add a burnt taste]

To make the custard – heat the milk and vanilla extract in a saucepan over medium heat until the surface barely breaks a simmer/to scalding point, then remove from heat and  let steep for around 20 minutes to let the vanilla flavour infuse into the milk.
 

Whisk the eggs, egg yolks and sugar together until the mixture is a pale yellow. Continue whisking and slowly drizzle in the hot milk to temper the eggs so that they won’t curdle (ie: so that you don’t cook the eggs). Pour this mixture into the caramel lined moulds.
 

Set the moulds in a baking dish lined with a paper towel (this helps to prevent the moulds from sliding around). Fill the baking dish with boiling water so that it comes to about two thirds up the sides of the moulds. Cover the baking dish with foil (this is to prevent a skin from forming while the custard cooks). Bake at 170C in a preheated oven for 45 minutes until the custard just sets and doesn’t jiggle, and a knife inserted into the center comes out clean. Remove from oven and let the custards remain in the baking dish for an hour, then remove the custards from the baking dish and allow to cool to room temperature before refrigerating. Cover each mould with plastic wrap and chill in the fridge for at least 6 hours or overnight.
 

To serve, fill a bowl with hot water and place a mould in the water for around 20 seconds, then carefully run a knife around the inside of the mould. Place a serving plate on top and quickly upturn the crème caramel and jiggle around/shake up and down to loosen (until you hear a satisfying splodge!). Then slowly remove the mould, allowing the caramel to gently spill down the edges of the crème caramel.