Lychee ham with goma sauce

This is a quick and easy fix, perfect as a starter or serve in a party. The best part is you can store these two simple ingredients inside your kitchen and whip it up whenever you have guests or need a quick snack. How should I describe the taste? How about ... with every bite, the fruity lychee juice will ooze out creating a refreshing sensation? Or a taste of sophistication from the combination of lychee sweetness + salty ham + fragance of the sesame from goma sauce? The combination goes well, hope you will like it too. Here's the recipe.

Ingredients
2 pieces of ham
8 lychee
Goma sauce (aka sesame sauce, I am using Mizkan brand)
Roasted sesame seeds
Toothpicks

Methods
1) Cut each slice of ham into 4 strips and wrap a lychee with each strip, secure with a toothpick. For the lychee I rinse with water before use to get rid of the can smell.
2) Heat pan with a little oil and pan fry the skewers till both sides are slightly brown.
3) Serve with Japanese goma sauce and sprinkle roasted sesame seeds.

Note
Here's an image of how the goma sauce bottle looks like, it goes very well with salad and cold dishes too. http://www.soshiok.com/article/2786

Easy peasy dish! Bon Appetit!!!

Ebi Mayo

I was preparing Japanese cusine for dinner and wanted to cook prawns but I don't want to make tempura because it requires deep-frying. Searched the internet and discovered there's this dish call ebi mayo. Anything with mayonnaise will taste good to me especially prawns. So here's my modified recipe to share. Beware, this is another finger-licking yummy dish ;) Can tell that I am a prawn-lover isn't it?

Ingredients
8-10 med/large prawns
1 tbsp sake/cooking wine
Salt and Pepper
1-2 tbsp corn flour
1 tbsp cooking oil
2 tbsp mayonnaise
1 tsp honey
2 tsp ketchup
2 onion rings
Corriander leaves (garnishing)

Methods
1. Remove prawn shell, devein and leave tails intact.
2. Marinate the prawns with sake/cooking wine, salt and pepper for 15 mins or longer.
3. Heat oil in pan, I am using happycall pan but other pans work as well.
4. Pan fry the onion rings till the surface become golden brown. Dish out and place on plate.
5. In a bowl, mix mayonnaise, honey and ketchup. Set aside.
6. Coat the marinated prawns with corn flour and pan fry using the remaining oil in the pan till the prawns turn pink.
7. Push the prawns to a corner of the pan, pour in the mayonnaise mixture and give it a few stirs to blend well. Combine the prawns and mixture, mix well and serve on top of the onion rings. Add corrainder leaves as garnishing.

Steamed Golden Pomfret with fermented soybeans

I love this version, this is different from just putting the fermented soybeans on top of the fish and steam it. This method fry the ingredients to bring out the fragance before steaming with the fish. Is definately a keeper!

Ingredients
Golden pomfret
Salt and pepper
1 tbsp salted fermented soybeans
3 garlic cloves (minced)
1/2 red onion (cubes)
2 inch ginger (thin slices)
1 tomato (sliced)
1 tbsp cooking wine
Spring onion
Cut red chilli

Methods
1) Pat dry the pomfret and marinate with salt and pepper.

2) Heat the pan with little oil and sautee garlic till fragrant, add onions and fry for 1-2 mins. Add ginger slices and continue to fry until fragrant. Push them to one side of the pan and add in the fermented soybeans, mash them lightly with the spatula. Fry till fragrant and combine everything inside the pan.

3) Top the pomfret with those that you have just fried and place sliced tomato at the side. Sprinkle with a tbsp of cooking wine and steam until fish is cooked.

4) Sprinkle with spring onions and cut chilli, cover the lid and off the flame for a minute.

5) Serve.

Cheesy Garlic Prawns

I love prawns and love to whip up prawn dishes with different sauce or spices. My friend passed me a tub of cheese dip, those that you dip with nachos or fries and here it comes another prawn dish coated with cheese dip. This is a very simple recipe and the reason I am recording here is to remind myself how to cook this the next time...hahaha... I tend to forget how I cook especially when I am not following a recipe :P

Ingredients
8 medium prawns
Salt
Pepper
Garlic Powder
A knob of butter
1 tbsp cheese dip
Dried mixed herbs

Methods
1) Marinate prawns with salt, pepper and garlic powder for at least 15 mins.

2) Heat the pan and melt a knob of butter.

3) Pan fry the prawns until both sides are cooked.

4) Add in cheese dip and make sure the prawns are well coated.

5) Sprinkle with dried mixed herbs and serve with garlic paste (optional).

French Apple Tart but the easy way out

This is short-cut method to make the apple tart, in fact not really a tart as I am using Pampas frozen puff pastry for the crust. Just one of those days where I have craving for apple tart but too lazy to make the crust from scatch ;)

Ingredients
1 sheet of Pampas frozen puff pastry
1 red Fuji apple (you may need 2 if using smaller apples)
1/4 cup of sugar or lesser
1 tsp cinnamon powder
3 tbsp unsalted butter
1 tbsp apricot jam
1 tbsp water

Methods
1) Pre-heat oven to 200 degree celsius.

2) Peel the apple, remove the core and stem. Slice thinly and set aside.

Wonderful tool to remove core and stem

3) Line the baking tray with greased baking paper for easy removal later as the juice of cameralised apple tends to overflow.

4) Leave the frozen puff pastry in room temperature for about 5 minutes and place it on the baking paper. Don't leave in room temperature for too long, the pastry will turn sticky and difficult to handle. For this model, rolling of pastry sheet is not required.

Bought this Pampas puff pastry frozen pack from Phoon Huat

5) Arrange the apple slices in rows by overlapping each other leave no gap. I made a mistake by placing too many slices all the way to the edge of the pastry. For this puff pastry, it is best to leave about an inch uncovered with apple slices for the edges to puff up. Hence I figure out row of 3 will be the most ideal.

6) Sprinkle the sugar with cinnamon powder generously over the arranged apple slices. Note that I used less than 1/4 cup as my red Fuji apple is sweet on its own. If you are using green apple, you will need more sugar.

7) Cut the butter into small cubes and place them over the apple slices. Brush the butter on the sides of the pastry as well.

Ready to bake!

8) Place inside oven anf bake for about 45mins or until the apple sliced turned brown. Halfway through the baking, turn the baking tray to the other side.

9) Microwave to melt the apricot jam with water, glaze the apple slices lightly with the melted jam and serve.

Serving the tart warm with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream

Notes

1) The photo attached is a 4 row apple tart, if you are making a 3 row tart the sides of the puff will look flaky with a better presentation and taste. The photo (pear puff pastry) below shows how it looks like if you leave more space at the sides, they will puff up nice and crisp.

2) Be mindful with the sugar and jam quantity, if you refer to the recipe posted below I have reduced a lot from the originator's recipe.

3) 10 Jul'12 ~ Just realised that the originator used green apples, that explains why their recipe call for so much sugar. Going to try green apple next time.

Recipe modified from http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/french-apple-tart-recipe/index.html


Prawn Mee 2 styles ~ Soup or Fried???

Prawn lovers like me will sure to enjoy both local dishes, the soupy prawn mee and the fried Hokkien prawn mee. And I want to try making these two dishes from scratch, I have saved up a bagful of prawn heads and shells to make prawn broth. Last Saturday, I started in the morning boiling the broth so that it will be ready for dinner. I am using a recipe found on-line to make my prawn broth.

Prawn Soup Noodle

Recipe adopted from http://www.soshiok.com/article/4576. This is how my sinful prawn broth looks like during the process of making.

As there're only 2 of us, I didn't use up the broth. I freezed the balance into 2 bags approx. a soup bowl size and reserve for the next dish ~ fried hokkien prawn mee.



 Fried Hokkien Prawn Mee

Ingredients
6 medium prawns
50-70g pork belly
1 squid (cut into rings)
3 garlic cloves (minced)
1/2 medium pack yellow noodle
1 small pack thick beehoon
2 eggs
Handful of chives or spring onions
Bean sprouts/ Fishcake (optional, I didn't put)
Fish sauce or sugar to taste
Pepper
Sambal chilli and lime

Prawn Broth
I used a bag of my prawn broth made the other day, you could do it instantly if you don't have the broth pre-made. Use about 20 prawn heads and shells (the more the better) and boil with 2 soup bowls of water for 30 mins over low fire. Drain the broth and standby, it should be the size of a soup bowl.

Method
1) Heat 1-2tbsp of oil, sautee garlic and add in pork belly. Stir fry for a while and add in squid rings and prawns.
2) When the prawns start to turn pink, ladle in half portion of the prawn broth. Simmer for a min.
3) Add pepper and either fish sauce or sugar to taste. This depends on whether your broth made is sweet enough. If it is sweet, add a little fish sauce to enhance the taste. Otherwise add sugar to sweeten the broth. Personally I prefer my fried hokkien mee to come with a tinge of sweetness.
4) Stir in yellow noodles and thick beehoon, ladle the balance broth and simmer for 1-2 mins over medium fire. Becareful not to dry up the noodles.
5) Pour in beaten eggs, wait for awhile and scramble them. Throw in chives/ spring onions.
6) Serve with chilli and lime.

Note
I didn't use the full pack of yellow noodles. I noticed they come in various pack sizes so it depends on how much you want to cook. The above recipe is good for 3 pax. I go by guts feel when throw in both the noodles.