Ryunabe, Niseko, Hokkaido

Tags

Chinese, dinner, healthy, Hokkaido, hot pot, japan, japanese, niseko, Niseko restaurants, restaurant review

I’m not the biggest fan of hot pot. One has to brave steam, heat, slippery floors and distasteful arrays of unappetizing raw meat with platters of bland looking vegetables upon entering a typical hot pot restaurant. If that wasn’t enough, you’re served with broth that tastes exactly like boiled water and you’re expected to cook the said raw meats and vegetables in this sorry excuse of a broth.

I’ve been to Hai Di Lao, and thankfully had a better experience, what with the waitresses cooking the food for you and you’re given the option of much tastier soups. The meats and Co, however, still have much room for improvement.

I was therefore pleasantly surprised when we stumbled upon this place (ok fine, in all transparency, I stalked friends who were also in Niseko).

The broths offered looked and sounded extraordinary; thick fish soup with Hokkaido milk, fish maw and chicken broth and lastly a seafood and tomato soup base. A far cry from the feeble broths offered elsewhere at other hot pot restaurants that pale to near invisibility when compared to this. Ryunabe is unfortunately also very expensive, so we chose to only focus on the hot pot and ignored the sashimi/alcohol.

The dips and condiments were satisfactory as well, spicy chopped chili, sesame sauce, chopped raw garlic and spring onions. After dithering for a bit between the fish soup and chicken soup we settled on the latter.

Behold!

Just look at that soup! It certainly tastes like proper rich Cantonese soup that is topped up again and again whenever required. I would have been content with just the soup alone.

But then the meats arrived, beautifully marbled and precisely fanned out on pretty plates, each with a little piece of paper containing cooking instructions down to the very second of cooking.

Meats of the highest quality I’ve ever seen in a hot pot place. With the exception of some top notch shabu restaurants of course but I think I would prefer Ryunabe still for its delicious soup bases. Shabu broths tends to consist of either water or a thin subtle broth of dashi, so clearly Ryunabe scores higher in the soup base department.

The non beef items included pork slices, fresh, rosy pink fish, some dumplings and a bowl of beautifully arranged vegetables.

Almost forgot the udon, by which time we were stuffed and could not quite finish it. Even in food comatose mode we could tell the the udon is better than most. Everything on the table was top notch, perhaps the dumplings were average but that’s the only exception.

The waitress topped up our soup at least 5 times, not because it all evaporated and dried out, but because we kept drinking it by the bowlfuls. It was that good.

We sobered up as we got the bill though, but absolutely no regrets, it was a terrific meal. Garlic and all.

They also deliver and set up a hot pot meal for you to enjoy in the comfort of your apartment if you wish. After a long day on the slopes it does sound tempting indeed.

191-22 AZA YAMADA, KUTCHAN-CHO, ABUTA-GUN, HOKKAIDO.

Restaurant Phone : (+81)0136-555-304

Reservation Tel: (+81)0136-555-304 & (+81)090-5953-5168

Shaoxing Wine Ginger chicken

Tags

chicken, Chinese, easy, easy meals, easy recipe, ginger, ginger wine chicken, healthy, Home Cooking, scallions, sesame oil, shaoxing wine, shaoxing wine ginger chicken, South East Asian, spring onions, white pepper, wine, wine chicken

This dish brings back a lot of memories from my Warwick days. For some reason I remember that the preparation process was long and tedious back then! It involves deboning chicken thighs/drumsticks and skinning and julienning ginger. At the present though, I no longer find it as long and dreary a process. Perhaps I could attribute it to… better knife skills? Or maybe just better knives, I don’t think my knife skills have improved at all since then!

This is a very warming, hearty dish and the sauce is lovely with freshly cooked white rice. It’s currently a favourite with the family and guests who happen to try it! It doesn’t take very long nor need many ingredients and makes a perfect addition to the dining table. I include pictures from two attempts at cooking this dish and I realized that I naturally throw the same ingredients into the pan, despite starting off with perhaps a couple less ingredients in one of the photos. That goes to show that agaration (the South East Asian technique of cooking by guesstimating) isn’t very far off from precision after all!Ingredients from trial number 1Ingredients from trial number 2.

But don’t worry, I’ve consolidated the ingredient list and summarized it as below:-

Ingredients (Serves 4)

• 2-3 stalks of Spring onions including the white bits with roots removed
• 3 inches of ginger, peeled and roughly julienned
• 4 Chicken thighs with skin on, deboned
• 3 tbsp Shaoxing wine
• 3 tbsp clear chicken stock/broth
• 1 tsp kicap manis
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1 tbsp sesame oil

Chicken marinade

• 1 tbsp Shaoxing wine
• 1 tbsp sesame oil
• 2-3 tbsp soy sauce
• white pepper
• 2 tsp dark soy sauce
• 2 tsp corn flour

Cooking Instructions

Upon deboning the chicken, remove the skin from two of the chicken thighs and discard. Keep the skin on for the remaining two chicken thighs. We want some chicken fat rendering in the gravy but not too much!

Trim off the excess fat and remove the tendons from the chicken. Tendons are tough to cut through and unpleasant to eat so be thorough in removing them whenever preparing chicken! Once that is done, cut the chicken meat into bite-sized, uniform pieces so they cook at the same speed. 

Place the chicken in a bowl and lightly mix in the chicken marinade with your hands. Let it sit for 10-15 minutes at room temperature.

In preparing the scallions/spring onions, cut them into thirds or 2 inch sections. You can take some of the green sections to slice thinly for garnishing as well.

Heat up some oil in a pan/wok on medium fire. When the oil is hot enough (i.e. if you drop a piece of ginger into the oil it starts to sizzle right away), slide the ginger into the oil gingerly (I’m so funny I know) and fry for a minute until the ginger starts to turn a little golden and the gingery aroma seeps out. The point of this step is to flavour the oil with ginger as well as prep the ginger so it’s at its best to mingle with the chicken.Add the chicken pieces and fry until half-cooked.

Then, flip the pieces over and add the chicken stock, sesame oil plus Shaoxing wine and cover to cook for a minute. We’re quick-braising/stewing the chicken with some moisture, not searing it to death. Remember, the chicken has to be swimming in a luscious pool of delicious gravy!Upon uncovering, add the spring onion sections into the pan/wok and stir fry for a little while more. Taste to check if it needs more white pepper or salt.

And it’s done!Not the fanciest of dishes but highly satisfying and easy on the stomach. Healthy too!

Check out the before and after picture of trial number 1. I used 10 thighs for that round of cooking!

Wiped clean. ❤

Lobster glass noodle soup with shaoxing wine.

Tags

big head prawn, big head prawn noodle soup, Chinese, chinese lettuce, chinese soup, chinese soup noodles, coriander, dinner, easy meals, glass noodles, healthy, Home Cooking, huatiao, large prawns, lobster, lobster glass noodle, lobster glass noodle soup, lobster noodle, lobster noodle soup, lunch, Noodles, One bowl meal, prawns, seafood, sesame oil, shaoxing wine, Soup, South East Asian, stew, wine broth, wine soup

Here is the second half of the lobster (first half of which went to making the lobster pasta) and the easier recipe of the two. The original version called for fresh river prawns/big head prawns but since I had the lobster, I figured I could use that instead and add in some large prawns as a bonus. Since there is no recipe that I could refer to online I tried to recreate the taste the best I could remember. Turns out I’m actually quite satisfied with the results! Now without further ado, the recipe:-

Ingredients (4 pax)

• 1/2 lobster
• 6 large prawns (in my first attempt I used 3, but the attempt with 6 prawns tasted better)
• 1 inch ginger, sliced
• 1 tbsp minced garlic
• 1 tbsp minced onion
• 1/2 cup Shaoxing wine (maybe a dash more if you like)
• 5 cups chicken stock
• Chinese lettuce (I used a quarter of a head), cut into bite sized pieces
• 1 tsp sesame oil
• 150g Glass noodles
• Spring onions chopped into large three inch sections.
• Coriander for garnish
• Finely chopped spring onions for garnish
• salt

The array of ingredientsGlass noodlesLarge lobster.

So we shall start with the prawns. De-shell all the prawns and set the shells/heads aside. Do NOT throw them away! Then devein them and cut each prawn into three sections.Size of the prawn heads and my hand, just for comparison. Lots of flavour in those prawn heads! 

Cut the lobster into half. If the lobster is as spiny as this one, do use a towel and be very careful when handling it. A pair of strong kitchen scissors would be a great help here.

More pictures of the lobster… as you can probably tell, I’ve added pictures from a second lobster noodle attempt into the mix. The second lobster looked way fresher and more succulent with its firmer white flesh and golden globules.

When you’ve managed to cut the lobster into half lengthwise, chop the tail into three parts and dig out some of the flesh from the head (I forgot to do that here) and set that aside with the prawns. Leave the orange/golden stuff behind.

Heat up some oil in a large pot and fry the ginger, garlic and onions until the onions are translucent and the aroma of the ginger comes out. It helps to crush the ginger before or during this step.Add the prawn shells and fry until half cooked (almost that coral colour they become when they’re fully cooked) before adding the lobster head to the pot.Continue frying for a minute or so, adding a little oil if it gets too dry. Then add the shaoxing wine to soak up all that flavour that’s coming from the prawn shells and lobster head. I actually would have liked to add another half cup of shaoxing wine but I was worried my family may not like the taste so I stuck with half a cup, but go ahead and use that extra half a cup if you like. 

Add the stock and simmer for around 15 minutes before turning off the heat. Cover the pot with its respective lid and leave it for perhaps an hour.

Then, remove the prawn shells from the stock (if you had a strainer bag in the first place, use it to hold the prawn shells because it can be a chore to pick them out from the soup).

Toss in the lobster and prawn meat that was set aside earlier, along with the spring onion sections, lettuce and glass noodles. The reason why we cook the shells and the meat separately is so that we can extract the most flavour out of the seafood from the shells without overcooking the meat, which is only added at the end. If you were to cook the meat right at the start, you’re going to end up with some very hard, overcooked and dry chunks of prawn/lobster which is such a waste of good seafood.

Place the lid back on and bring the soup to a boil.

Add the sesame oil at the end and season with salt. Top with chopped spring onions and coriander. Easy peasy!

Spicy and Sour Szechuan Pork glass noodles

Tags

Chinese, dinner, glass noodles, hot and spicy noodles, lunch, ma la, Noodles, pork, sichuan, sichuan glass noodles, sichuan hot and sour noodles, sichuan peppercorns, sweet and sour, szechuan, szechuan peppercorns, vinegar, zhejiang vinegar

Spicy and Sour Szechuan Pork glass Noodles

Back at Warwick I ate a lot of junk food. By junk food I mean instant noodles and pre-frozen meals. There’s one particular type of instant noodles that I used to love, some sort of Szechuan spicy glass noodles in numbing, vinegary soup and peanuts. I used to add lots of bacon to it, a sinful, spicy bowl on a cold winter day.

I don’t know where I can find this particular brand of instant noodles anymore so I searched online to see if there’s a recipe that comes close to the description of “Szechuan, spicy, numbing and sour” and I was pleased to come across this recipe ;D I adapted it slightly, not much change, and I loved the result! I must say though that there’s quite a bit of seasoning that goes into the noodles.

Ingredients (recipe taken and adapted from http://tofoodwithluv.blogspot.sg)

• 150g sliced pork tenderloin (or minced pork if you prefer it)
• 80g glass noodles
• 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 1 tsp grated ginger
• 1 1/2 cups chinese cabbage, cut into 1.5″ x 1.5″ squares
• Oil for frying

• 1 tbsp chilli powder (or more)
• 1 tbsp chilli oil (“la yu”)
• 1/2 tsp chilli bean paste (“Douban Jiang”)
• 1 tbsp light soy sauce
• 1 tbsp Shaoxing wine
• 1/2 tsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp chicken stock powder
• 1/3 cup water
• 2-3 tbsp Chinkiang black vinegar
• 1 tbsp rice vinegar
• 1/4 tsp sesame oil
• 1/2 tsp finely ground toasted Szechuan peppercorns/ or about 3-4 kernels crushed whole Szechuan peppercorn (or more if you like that numbing taste)
• 1 spring onion, sliced
• A handful of Chinese coriander/cilantro for topping

• Marinade:
• 1 tbsp light soy sauce
• 1/4 tsp pepper
• 1/4 tsp sesame oil
• 1 tsp cornflour
• 1 tbsp water

Method

1. Marinade the pork and set aside for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, cook noodles in boiling water for 10 minutes or until cooked. Rinse under cold running water for a minute until all the starch is gone. Leave it to sit in a bowl of iced water so the strands don’t stick.
2. Heat up 1 tbsp oil in a wok and brown the meat, if you are using minced meat, break it up as you go along. Push the meat aside and add 1 1/2 tbsp oil. Fry the garlic and ginger, then add the chilli powder, chilli oil and chilli bean paste. Fry for about a minute, then mix through with the pork.
3. Add the soy, wine, sugar, vinegars, chicken stock powder and water. Bring to a boil and simmer 1-2 minutes until the sauce is slightly reduced. Add sesame oil, Szechuan pepper and turn off the heat.
4. Toss the blanched vegetables and cooked noodles in the sauce until it’s thoroughly incorporated and transfer to a serving dish. Top with some chopped spring onions and cilantro.

Pan fried eggplant dipped in egg

Tags

Chinese, easy meals, Egg, eggplant, healthy, pan fried eggplant dipped in egg, pan-fried, quick meals, side dish, Snack, truffle oil

Yes I know the picture above makes this post seem like it is about pot stickers instead of eggplant. I’m saving that post for another day. Today it is just the eggplant.

Ingredients

1 fat eggplant, sliced into equal thickness (around 0.5 – 0.7 cm would be good)

1 egg, beaten and seasoned with a pinch of salt and white pepper. If you like you can also drop a couple of drops of truffle oil into the egg mixture

2 tbsps Olive oil for frying

Instructions

1) Heat up the oil in a frying pan on medium high heat

2) Coat each side of the eggplant slices with egg before placing them in the pan.

3) Fry until the bottom down side of the eggplant slices turn golden brown, before flipping it to fry the other side

4) Pat off the excess oil or place the fried eggplant onto some paper towels.

5) Serve

Stir fried pork tenderloin in dark sauce and onions

Tags

Chinese, healthy, Home Cooking, mains, onions, pork, tenderloin

 

This is one of my brother’s favourite foods. As he’s a picky eater, I thought I’d make this for dinner. Made this in Whistler, Canada during the christmas holidays. We go almost every year and there’s always a kitchen in the winter lodging where we can cook our meals. Of course, the kitchen was probably not made for serious cooking… probably meant for stuff like heating up soups, making instant noodles and the such but not that we cared 😉 We’re Asians! We like our stir fry and rice! This year I even brought my own condiments and essential ingredients like soy sauce, dark sauce, ABC sauce, corn flour, sesame oil etc. I was almost asleep on my feet, cooking in the kitchen after putting in a long day of snowboarding in the powder, but I enjoyed myself 🙂

Ingredients (Serves 6-8)

1) 500g pork tenderloin at room temperature

2) 1 tbsp ABC sauce (kicap manis)

3) 1 tbsp dark soy sauce

4) 1/2 tbsp soy sauce

5) 2 tbsp sugar

6) 2 tsp cornflour

7) 1/2 tsp sesame oil (optional)

8) 1 large green onion, sliced

9) 5-6 tbsp Chicken stock

Cooking method

1) Prepare the pork by cutting it into slices. The way you cut it is important to retain the succulence and tenderness of the pork. As you can see from the photo below, I’m cutting it lengthwise, or “along the grain“. To do this, I cut up the tenderloin into four separate pieces so I can cut along the grain for each of the hunks of meat to result in bite sized slices (see pictures below). I find that if you cut horizontally, the meat tends to dry up quickly and would become rubbery and harder in texture. If you follow this method there is absolutely no need to use a meat tenderizer and the meat stays tender even after a night in the fridge and a reheat! The other important bit is that the pork has to be at room temperature when you cook it.

2) Marinade the meat with soy sauce, dark sauce, ABC sauce, sesame oil, sugar and flour. Leave for about half an hour at room temperature.

3) Fry the onions first until translucent and gold around the edges (they turned out kinda white in the photos but it’s supposed to be a little golden!) and set aside in the serving plate.

4) Station your chicken stock next to the frying pan (I used half of the chicken stock in the bowl below)

4) Heat up your pan to medium-high heat and add some oil to cover the surface of the pan.

5) Once your pan is hot (doesn’t need to be smoking hot as it tends to burn fast), place your pork in the pan (yes I’ve overcrowded it but it still came out awesome ;p) and brown both sides. The pork should not be sticking to the pan.

6) Add the stock to the pan and cover for 30 seconds.

7) Remove cover, stir through, cover again and lower the heat to medium.

8) Stir every 30 seconds for another minute or two until the gravy thickens and pork is cooked through.

9) Ladle the pork onto the serving plate atop the onions and spoon the sauce all over the pork and onions

The result is really juicy pork in sweet dark sauce, the perfect accompaniment for fluffy white rice.

 

The rest of the dinner I made that day:

Shredded Chicken and Mushroom Hor Fan

Tags

Chinese, healthy, Home Cooking, Noodles, South East Asian

Shredded Chicken and Mushroom Hor Fan

This was one of my favourite dishes back in secondary school when I was studying in Queensway (Singapore, not KL where I wouldn’t have so much freedom to buy food like this 🙂 ). I’d walk over to the hawker center across the road and buy a packet of chicken hor fan in dark sauce with plenty of green chillis and the special chilli sauce they had at the store. Then I’d bring it home and eat it comfortably in my air conditioned room. Bliss~

It’s been a while since I had it, since I don’t know where the Hor Fan uncle has moved to now. So I looked up recipes for chicken Hor Fan online and I must say there weren’t very many recipes on chicken hor fan. Mostly Ipoh Hor Fan. I did manage to find one that I adapted and used. The ingredients are pretty simple and doesn’t need a lot of work to make. I’m only lacking the special chilli sauce from Uncle’s stall =( I can’t remember what it tastes like anymore, only that it was very good.

500g of kuay teow

Ingredients (for 1 pax)

1. 1 Chicken breast (or half if you’re not a big eater)
2. 250 gm fresh or packaged Kuay teow/hor fan/flat rice noodles (the thinner ones are preferable)
3. A couple stalks of chye sim washed and chopped into two equal lengths

For the sauce

1. 1 dried Chinese mushroom (I used Japanese mushroom since I didn’t have the Chinese type), soaked in hot water until soft and slice. Remove the stem
2. 1 cup chicken stock
3. 1 tsp light soy sauce
4. 1 tsp dark soy sauce
5. 1 tsp oyster sauce
6. 2 tsp corn flour
7. 1/2 tsp sesame oil
8. Pinch of salt
9. 1 tsp sugar

Cooking Instructions

1. Prepare the Kuay teow according to the packet instructions. For the packet that I used, I slid the semi fresh noodles into some hot water (put some salt into the water to flavour the noodles) and let it soften a little before separating the noodles with chopsticks. Shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes, otherwise you’d have soggy mush on your hands. Drain water and arrange kuay teow in the serving plate. Just so you know, the picture below shows 500g of cooked kuay teow … you need half of this for one serving.

2. Season the chicken with salt and pepper and boil it. Once it is cooked, shred the chicken and top the kuay teow with the chicken pieces.

3. Blanche the vegetables in boiling water for about 1 minute, stems first as they take longer to cook. Don’t overcook them as you’d want to keep the vegetables crunchy.

4. Combine all the sauce ingredients, bring to a boil then simmer until the sauce thickens. Taste as you go along and adjust to your liking. The sauce should have a heavy enough taste to flavour the noodles.

Pardon the random bits of corn floating around, I had used some corn and carrot chicken broth as the base.

5. Once the sauce has thickened, pour over the chicken and noodles.

Serve with a spicy sauce and garlic oil. It was good, but one of these days I will try to create a chilli sauce to go with this dish. Perhaps something spicy, sour and sweet would be nice I think. 

Chicken Udon Noodle Soup

Tags

Chinese, healthy, Home Cooking, Noodles, One bowl meal, Soup

Chicken Soup made with whole chicken and spare ribs

This is one of the easiest dishes that you can prepare beforehand. It is basically just udon noodles and chicken soup. You can even cook a big pot of chicken soup and freeze it. If you ever feel a little peckish or in need of a hot bowl of noodles and soup, just pop some frozen soup into a saucepan and heat it up before adding to the noodles. Of course you can reach for your favourite instant noodles like Indomie, tomyum, instant ramen and the like. However if you are like me and have outgrown your fair share of instant noodles having OD-ed on them in college/university, you would come to appreciate the healthy, non-MSG broth. Just as with instant noodles, you can add whatever toppings you desire. My usual toppings tend to be fishballs and vegetables.

Ingredients

Soup (for 7-8 pax)

1. 1 Whole chicken
2. 3-4 Spare ribs chunks
3. 4-5 Cloves of peeled Garlic, smushed
4. Optional: 2 Medium Carrots, 1 Large Onion and some fresh Corn
5. 2-3 tbsp Soy sauce or to taste
6. 1/2 tbsp White pepper

Noodles

1. Udon noodles (You can buy these from supermarkets in packets)

Toppings/Condiments

1. 4 Fish balls per bowl
2. Vegetables, you could use spinach, pak choy, whatever you like
3. 2-3 Chilli padi pieces per person, sliced
4. Soy Sauce

Cooking Instructions

1. Rinse the chicken in running water and get rid of any remaining feathers. Clean out the cavity of the chicken and rinse with running water as well. 
2. Next, remove excess fat and skin of the chicken. You do not want all the extra chicken grease floating about on the surface of the soup. I like to remove the head of the chicken (I feel guilty and sick everytime I fish out the chicken head from the soup so I just remove it at the start) as well as the tail of the chicken as I find the smell/taste too strong. Kind of like… chicken bum =(
3. Lower the chicken and spare ribs into boiling hot water for about 5 minutes to get rid of the extra blood and fat. Throw out this water after 5 minutes and replenish the pot with fresh hot water. Make sure you have enough water to cover the whole chicken and have about 2 inches of water above the chicken.
4. At this point you can add the garlic. If you prefer your broth to be a little sweeter, throw in some chunks of carrot, onions and fresh corn. You may add sliced ginger as well if you like.
5. As the water boils, skim off the scum and fat from the surface of the soup. You can recognize it by the dirty looking froth that emerges after several minutes of cooking the soup. These would consist of fat and blood and if not removed, will cloud the soup. Continuously skimming off the scum as you cook will give you a clear, appetizing broth.
6. Keep the pot on medium-high heat for about 40 minutes, then turn off the gas and let it stand for another hour. Season with white pepper and light soy sauce.
7. Prepare the udon according to the packet instructions, make sure you do not cook the udon in the chicken broth itself as it imparts its flavour into the soup. Not yummy at all. Also ensure that udon is still chewy, don’t overcook it as it gets mushy.
8. Drain the water from your noodles and place in serving bowl.
9. Cook your fishballs and vegetables in the soup.
10. Ladle your soup, fishballs, vegetables and some chicken meat into the serving bowl over the noodles.
11. Serve with cut chilli padi and soy sauce.

Udon noodles and the vegetable of your choice

Udon soup in Chicken broth served with cut chilli padi and soy sauce

Amah’s Orh Kuay (Steamed Yam Cake)

Tags

Chinese, light meals, nonya, Snack, South East Asian

 

 

Steamed yam cake topped with red chillies, fried shrimp, spring onions and fried shallots

This is a snack found in South East Asia, each family would most likely have their own special recipes of making the steamed yam cake. I like to think of it as a Straits Chinese (Nonya) dish as I always eat it straight out of my Amah’s kitchen and I’m unashamedly Nonya-biased.

This is a dish that takes some preparation time as well as plenty of practice to get the consistency right. A dry batter would give a tough cake while a wet batter makes for a cake that falls apart too easily. Once you’ve got the basic yam cake, pair it with chilli sauce (my Amah also has a good recipe for this) and top with plenty of sliced red chillies,   fried shallots, shrimp, and spring onions. Coriander works as well too.

Now I have to disclaim, my Amah’s sense of measurement is, like many chinese grannies out there, by agaration (sense of feel, with no particular weight towards using measuring tools). Agak agak all the way. Apparently the amount of ingredients she uses each time changes as well according to my aunt. So this is as close as I could get for proper measurements.

 

Ingredients (for one turnip cake, enough to feed 10-12)  

1. 500g dried shrimp, heh bee (soaked overnight in water)
2. Rice flour (1/2 pack which would be around 300g, Erawan brand – a thai brand)
3. 1 large yam (make sure its firm not mushy)
4. Aginomoto (1 tsp)
5. White pepper (6 shakes)
6. Salt (1 tsp)
7. 3-4 bowls water (I suppose this is a soup bowl size? Refer to pictures to agak agak the water content)
8. Sliced Red Chilli, chopped spring Onions and fried Shallots for garnish
9. Cake tin

Cooking Instructions

1. Soak shrimp overnight in water. Drain the shrimp and reserve shrimp water

2. De-skin the yams and cut into chunks. If you’re like me and have never handled yams before, here’s a pictorial:

3. Wash the yams, drain off the water and set aside.

4. Mix the shrimp water, rice flour, aginomoto, pepper and salt along with the bowls of water and stir til combined 

5. Deep fry the drained shrimp on high fire with lots of oil to cover it. Doesn’t matter if it bubbles over, make sure its fried long enough so when it cools it is crispy

6. Remove shrimp from the wok and get rid of excess oil, leave enough oil to fry the yams.

7. Fry yams until tender on high fire, make sure there’s enough oil so it doesn’t stick. May want to cover the wok while it cooks

8. Add a helping of shrimp to the rice water mixture

9. Once you’re able to easily break into the yam with a fork, add the rice water and shrimp mixture and lower the fire to a slow burn.

10.  Stir til mixture thickens to a paste, randomly mashing but not overdoing it

11.  Ladle into the greased cake tin once it’s become thick and gloppy

12. Steam for an hour

13.  Serve with fresh red chillies, fried shallots, fried shrimp, chilli sauce and I’d put in coriander as well. It tastes best with homemade chilli sauce and fried shallots instead of store made ones. Will put up the recipe for chilli sauce soon.

And there you have it, a savoury yam cake topped with bright garnishes and sweet spicy chilli sauce. A snack I often ate in the sweltering hot weather under the cooling fan in my Gran’s living room. Nothing beats the homemade flavor.

Steamed yam cake topped with red chillies, fried shrimp, spring onions and fried shallots