Pan Fried Salmon with Homemade Teriyaki Sauce 照焼三文鱼

I always enjoy eating Salmon Teriyaki bento set, to me a piece of fish with a bowl of rice is good enough as a satisfying meal.  But often that piece of salmon from the bento is just too slim or without skin. Yes I do enjoy eating with the skin especially when it's crispy, isn't that the best part?

This is not a difficult dish, the trick to fry the fish is to make sure that the base side on the pan is cooked before you flip it over. If it is not cooked, the meat or skin will stick to the pan and you will risk breaking the piece.

Arrggghhhh.... just when I need it most my bottle of Teriyaki sauce has finished. Did a search online and to my surprise it is very easy to make your own. Alright, ho-say liao (Singlish of great/ good) no more buying of the bottled sauce from now on ;) There are many recipes online, some added more than 6 ingredients and I took reference from one of the easiest and modified from there. This evening I only used 3 ingredients (sugar, Mirin 味醂 and light soy sauce), you could purchase Mirin from any supermarket at the Japanese section or Daiso. Mirin is a Japanese rice wine which has lower alcohol content and higher sugar content. 

Did I mention that the homemade sauce is as good as what you could get from restaurant/ supermarket? Try it, it is so easy! Besides being a sauce for salmon, can use it for squid, hamburger steak, meatball, Enoki mushrooms wrap with shabu, etc.

Ingredient
A piece of salmon about 250-300g (prefer not to use steak)
Salt
Cornflour

Teriyaki sauce (step 7)

1.5-2 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp Mirin
2 tbsp light soy sauce
1 tbsp sake (optional, I didn't add)

Method
1) Rinse the salmon and pat dry with kitchen towel.
2) Smear salt onto the salmon.
3) Just before cooking, coat the salmon with a thin layer of cornflour.
4) Heat the pan with little oil and place the salmon with skin side down using low-medium flame. Use your fingers to gently press from the top so that skin is fully in tact with the pan.
5) When the bottom side is done, flip over to cook the other side. Follow by the 2 sides for a short while.
6) Dish out the salmon.
7) In a bowl mix the sauce ingredients. Pour away the oil from the pan and over low flame add the sauce, it will bubble up immediately. Let it heat for a few seconds and off the fire, do not burn the sauce. Drizzle the sauce over the fish and serve while its hot.

Cordyceps Militaris Steamed Hairy Gourd with Minced Meat

Ingredient
1 hairy gourd (mao gua)
150g minced pork
Cordyceps Militaris
Spring onion as garnish

marinade for the meat :
1 tbsp oyster sauce
1/2 tsp sesame oil
1/2 tsp Chinese cooking wine
1 inch ginger (minced finely)
Dash of pepper
1 tsp cornflour

seasoning for sauce :
1-2 drops of dark soy sauce
1 tsp cornflour

Method
1) Marinate the minced pork for 15 mins.
2) Peel hairy gourd and cut into rings of about 1 inch thick. Use a spoon to remove the seeds at the center.
3) Place the gourd rings on a steamer plate and fill up the center with a scoop of minced pork.
4) Rinse the Cordyceps Militaris and place few pieces on top of the minced pork.
5) Steam for 10-15mins or until meat is fully cooked.
6) Remove from steamer and place the gourd rings on a serving plate.
7) Heat up the reminding liquid with dark soy sauce and thicken with cornflour.
8) Drizzle the sauce over the gourds and garnish with spring onion.

Wasabi Prawns on Skewers

Revisited this dish using the same recipe I had posted sometime ago, the difference this round is I coated the prawns with cornflour before frying and give it a cocktail style look by using skewers. Certainly looks more appetizing compared to previous post ;)

 

Recipe from: http://yukiecody.blogspot.sg/2013/02/wasabi-prawns-with-fried-udon.html

Creamy Butter Crab

Simply love seafood and crab is definitely one of them. We were pretty lucky managed to get the female crabs full of roe. Yummy!

Ingredient
800g-1kg mud crabs
2 garlic (minced)
1 can evaporated milk
50g butter
5-6 stalks curry leaves (discard stalks)
1 red chilli or some chilli padi (cut into slices)
Dash of fish sauce
1 tsp sugar
1-2 cheese slices

Method
1) Melt the butter, sauté the garlic till fragrant.
2) Fry chilli and curry leaves till fragrant then add in the evaporated milk.
3) Add in the seasoning and cheese, stir well and add in the crab pieces.
4) Cover lid and cook until the crabs are cooked. The sauce should be thicken but not dry up.

Best to serve with hot deep fried/ steamed mantou (mini buns) to enjoy dipping the buns with the delicious creamy sauce. 

Winter Melon with Chinese Almonds Soup 南北杏冬瓜汤

My mum is a Cantonese so from young I am used to drinking Cantonese-style soup. To bring out the full flavor of  Cantonese-style soup and enjoy soft tender pork ribs we always cook the soup for at least 2.5 hours. I am still practicing this way when I cook on weekends, however for weekday the soup needs to be less time-consuming. So in order to achieve that I have replaced the pork ribs with anchovies.

 南北杏冬瓜汤，清凉润肺止咳喘 

Although lately it hasn't been so hazy but I believed that we had lodged in a fair amount of particles into our lungs during the hazy period when PSI shot up to 400. Brewing some cooling beverages and soups will help to relieve the heatiness and sooth our throats. Winter melon is good in relieving heatiness, it has a cooling property and the Chinese almonds will benefit our lungs and throats.

Ingredient

1 piece of winter melon 400-500g

1 carrot

Handful of dried anchovies (rinsed and put inside soup stock/filter bag)

1 honey date

6 red dates

3 tsp sweet Chinese almonds (nan xing)

1 tsp bitter Chinese almonds (bei xing)

Salt to taste

 Method

1) Bring a pot of water to boil.

2) Cut winter melon into cubes and slice the carrot.

3) Add all ingredients (except for salt) to the boiling water and boil for 5 mins.

4) Reduce flame to medium-small, cover the lid and cook for 30-40 mins.

5) Add a pinch of salt to taste.

Other dishes I have cooked to complete the meal, stir fry bayam spinach with egg and bulgogi.

  

Polka dots swiss roll

Ingredient
(A) YOLK BATTER
3 egg yolk
35g castor sugar
60ml water
40ml vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla essence
70g sieved cake flour
1 tsp corn flour

(B) MERINGUE
3 egg white
30g castor sugar

(C) PATTERN
Food coloring

(D) FILLING
Whipped cream/ jam/ cut fruits

Method
1) Hand whisk egg yolks, add 35g sugar followed by water, oil, essence and mix well.
2) Add sieved cake flour and corn flour, whisk till smooth batter.
3) Mixer whisk egg white till foamy and add sugar until firm peak achieved.
4) Fold the meringue into the yolk batter in batches of 3.
5) Color a small amount of batter with food coloring and pour into piping bags. Pipe out the design either on parchment paper/ silicon mat placed inside a baking tray.
6) Baked at pre-heated oven of 180-190 degree Celsius for up to 4 mins depend on the design.
7) Once cooled, pour the remaining batter into the baking tray.

8) Knock out any bubbles by gently tapping the tray on the table.

9) Bake for about 10mins or until the cake is springy when touched.

10) Prepare another parchment paper and cover it over the tray, invert and remove the tray. The cake should be easily removed. Peel off the parchment paper/silicon mat carefully revealing the designed layer.

11) Prepare a new parchment paper and cover the designed side, invert the cake again so that now the designed side is at the bottom.
12) Spread a layer or whipped cream or jam and add cut fruits if you like.
13) Holding the parchment paper and roll the cake. Twist both ends of the parchment paper like a candy wrapper and place into fridge.
 

Lychee Lime Yogurt Mousse Cake

 

 It was my mum's 67th birthday and I wanted to bake her a cake. Spent the whole Saturday to work on this cake since it has 3 layers and requires hours of setting before you can proceed to the next layer.

  

I adore the color combination, very refreshing and lovely. Thanks to Nasi Lemak Lover for sharing the recipe (http://nasilemaklover.blogspot.sg/2013/04/lychee-lime-yogurt-mousse-cake.html). 

I did quite a bit of modifications to the cake especially the base and the lychee quantity.

 Here's a mini version using a muffin liner since I don't have any cake ring. Just want to try out the taste of the mini cake before I gave it out as a gift. Mini one can see the 3 layers very clearly with vanilla sponge cake as the base, lychee lime yogurt mousse at the center and pink lychee jelly as the top.