Beef and Bell Peppers with Fermented Bean Curd (腐乳青椒牛肉, Fu6 Jyu5 Ceng1 Ziu1 Ngau4 Juk6)

 

This recipe was updated on 26 May 2014. Some instructions and ingredient quantities were changed, and metric measurements added.

 

Fermented bean curd is the basis for the sauce for this dish. The bean curd has a distinctive sharp salty flavor that goes well with the sweetness of the bell peppers and the marinated beef. You can use more or less of the fermented bean curd in the dish depending upon your taste.

Enjoy!

Shrimp and Green Beans (青豆角蝦, Ceng1 Dau6 Gok3 Haa1)

This recipe was updated on 02 Dec 2015. Some instructions and ingredient quantities were changed.

This is an easy and tasty dish to make with ingredients available at your local supermarket. In order to reduce the green bean cooking time, they are microwaved first before cooking in the wok. If you had a restaurant strength burner to cook this dish, that step would not be necessary, but for most home cooks this is an easy way to speed up the cooking of the beans.

Enjoy!

Three Pepper Beef (三椒牛肉, Saam1 Ziu1 Ngau4 Juk6)

This recipe was updated on 04 Aug 2015. Some instructions and ingredient quantities were changed, and metric measurements added.

This is a spicy combination of three peppers and beef, with one being whole red chili peppers. These chili peppers were dried from my garden and weren’t that hot. While the homegrown dried chili peppers weren’t that hot, they were still very tasty. If you use store bought dried red chilies, they are hot and the quantity used in this dish would likely make your head explode (unless you’re accustomed to that level of heat), so feel free to reduce the amount used.

Enjoy!

Three Flavor Shanghai Noodles (三鮮上海麵, Saam1 Sin1 Soeng6 Hoi2 Min6)

 

This recipe was updated on 02 Aug 2015. Some instructions and ingredient quantities were changed, and metric measurements added.

I’ve always wanted to make this dish after eating at the local Muslim Chinese restaurant, which serves a dish called Three Flavor Dough Sliced Noodles (三鮮刀削麵, Saam¹ Sin¹ Dou¹ Soek³ Min⁶); the three flavors being beef, chicken and shrimp. I’ve adapted the ingredients to use Shanghai noodles and added a few other ingredients not found in the restaurant dish. Making this dish is more involved than your normal Chinese noodle dish since you need not just one flavor, but all three flavors available at once to make the dish, and it’s rare that I have all three available at the same time. While I had all the three ingredients available, I also made the Three Flavor Fried Rice (三鮮炒飯, Saam¹ Sin¹ Caau² Faan⁶) recipe.

Coin-sized Shiitake mushrooms are available at your local Asian supermarket. If you can’t find coin-sized Shiitake mushrooms, use the normal sized (larger than coin-sized) and cut them into ½-inch (15 mm.) wide pieces. Coin-sized Shiitake mushrooms are more for visual effect in the dish and taste no different than their larger counterparts.

There also are a lot of ingredients, both in number and quantity, used to make this dish. I used double the amount of noodles than I usually use to make noodle dishes, so there was always a question of whether or not my wok could hold everything. In my case, it worked, but this may be too much for your wok or pan. I’ve written the recipe to use only one pound (500 g.) of noodles to reflect the smaller amount. Feel free to reduce the quantity of the ingredients – especially the beef, chicken, shrimp, and noodles – to make this dish.

Enjoy!

Three Flavor Fried Rice (三鮮炒飯, Saam1 Sin1 Caau2 Faan6)

 

This recipe was updated on 04 Aug 2015. Some instructions and ingredient quantities were changed, and metric measurements added.

Here’s another three flavor (beef, chicken, shrimp) dish that you can get at my local Muslim Chinese restaurant. In order to make this dish you need all three flavors available at once, which can be a problem since you’re likely to make dishes with only one available. Since I made the Three Flavor Shanghai Noodles (三鮮上海麵, Saam¹ Sin¹ Soeng⁶ Hoi² Min⁶) recipe, I had all three flavors available and decided to go for it.

I use Lee Kum Kee brand Premium Oyster Flavored Sauce because it’s the brand I grew up with and has a good flavor. It’s a little more expensive than other brands, but it’s worth the price in my opinion. I once had a weak moment and bought an inexpensive brand of oyster sauce, and was disappointed in the flavor when compared to the Lee Kum Kee Premium brand. So get the good stuff!

Enjoy!

Chinese Sticky Rice (糯米飯, No6 Mai5 Faan6)

 

This recipe was updated on 02 Jan 2015. Some instructions and ingredient quantities were changed, and metric measurements added.

Happy New Year’s to everyone. For the first recipe of the year, here’s a simplified version of Chinese sticky rice. While there’s still a lot of preparation to make this dish, the recipe is much easier to make due to the use of a rice cooker than the classic version my Mom would make. All Chinese Mom’s have a similar recipe for this dish, the primary ingredients being sweet (glutinous) rice, Cantonese pork sausage, dried shrimp, and Shiitake mushrooms. The variation in recipes come from the way the ingredients are prepared, any additional goodies that get added, and the way everything gets cooked together to make the final dish.

This is one of the dishes my Mom would always make for holidays and for her (favorite) Chicken Stuffed with Sticky Rice (糯米鷄, No⁶ Mai⁵ Gai¹). She would carefully chop and brown all the savory ingredients, prepare the sticky rice, combine the ingredients, and then cook the whole thing in the largest pot she had. Needless to say, the preparation time and work for this dish was large, but the results were always worth it. The best part being that after cooking the rice, there would be a crust of sticky rice on the bottom of the pot, which was another tasty treat after being boiled with more water.

 

So being the curious cook that I am, I asked my Mom for the recipe many years ago, and tried to emulate her recipe with varying degrees of success for the past number of holidays when I was doing the cooking (mainly the dish turned out just OK). The main change to her recipe was that I used a rice cooker instead of a pot to make the sticky rice – which means no rice crust. So over the years, I varied the ingredients (adding dried scallops, dried oysters, and other ingredients), soaked (like she did) or didn’t soak the rice in the mushroom hydration liquid before cooking (the rice turned out too soft if soaked beforehand or didn’t have the right taste if not soaked), varied the ratio of glutinous to non-glutinous rice (using both white and brown rice), and the amount and type of liquid (stock, water, rehydration liquid) to cook the sticky rice.

 

The change I made to make this version of the recipe for my family’s Christmas 2012 dinner was soaking the rice for one hour before cooking in the rice cooker. I found the method in Carolyn Jung’s recipe for sticky rice at FoodGal.com. While there still is a considerable amount of preparation time required to make this dish, this version is far simpler and uses fewer ingredients than my previous attempts. My Mom gave an enthusiastic thumbs-up to this version and couldn’t wait to take leftovers home with her! So below is the recipe for my rice cooker version of my Mom’s sticky rice.

Enjoy!

Beef Curry Hong Kong Noodles (咖哩牛肉炒雲吞麵, Gaa3 Lei1 Ngau4 Juk6 Caau2 Wan4 Tan1 Min6)

 

This recipe was updated on 19 Oct 2014. Some instructions and ingredient quantities were changed, and metric measurements added.

This dish uses Hong Kong style noodles together with Madras curry powder in a stir fry. Hong Kong noodles are thin egg noodles and the literal translation in Cantonese is wonton noodles. While there aren’t any wontons in this dish, these noodles are typically used together with wonton in a soup broth, hence their name, and that leads to no end of confusion if you use the literal translation. So you’ll find dishes named in English referring to thin egg noodles, Hong Kong style noodles, and even vermicelli (whose use isn’t quite correct). Needless to say, the noodles are just really thin and are really good in a stir fry.

Enjoy!