Bak Kut Teh (Pork Bone Soup) (肉骨茶, Juk6 Gwat1 Caa4)

This recipe was updated on 30 Jun 2015. Some instructions and ingredient quantities were changed.

I had this dish at my local Singapore/Malaysian restaurant. It was so good, I wanted to make it myself, and so I went to my local Asian market and found a prepared packet of spices to make this dish. As I read the recipes on the Internet for this dish, I realized that there is no one way and just about any ingredient can be used to make this dish. The package of spices I bought is actually made in Taiwan, so I’ll have to try other brands in the future and contrast the taste of the soups.

The literal translation of the Chinese name for this dish is meat bone tea. There’s no tea involved in making this dish and is commonly made with pork spareribs. I also saw recipes using cut-up chicken, which I would like to try using in the future. A whole rack of spareribs would be too much, so fortunately my supermarket sells portions of a rack which weigh about 2 lbs. (1 kg.). You need clean and parboil the cut up pork before cooking it in the soup so that the finished broth is clear.

Enjoy!

Shrimp with Crab Sauce (Haai5 Zap1 Haa1, 蟹汁蝦)

Shrimp in Lobster Sauce is a standard dish that you’ll find at Cantonese restaurants. Since I was fresh out of lobster, I substituted Dungeness crab in its place. You make this dish backwards. By that I mean for most stir fry dishes, the meat is cooked first, then the vegetables, and finally the sauce. Since this dish only requires the vegetables to be stir fried, the baby bok choy gets cooked first, then the sauce, and finally the meat. The shrimp is cooked by the heat of the sauce, so a thick sauce is made using the crab and eggs after the vegetables are cooked. The sauce can be made using chicken stock, but since I had lobster stock, I used that. The lobster stock was made using the Lobster Noodles (Lung⁴ Haa¹ Min⁶, 龍蝦麵) recipe.

Enjoy!

Lobster Noodles (龍蝦麵, Lung4 Haa1 Min6)

Happy New Year! For the first dish of the New Year, here’s a lobster noodle dish. The traditional recipe puts the cooked lobster pieces with the shell over a bed of cooked noodles using a chicken stock based sauce. This recipe is differs from the traditional in three major techniques, the first being stir frying the ingredients like a chow mein dish, the second being using shelled lobster meat, and the third being a sauce made from lobster stock to further emphasize the lobster flavor. The stock is made by boiling the lobster shells after removing the meat. Any lobster stock not used in this recipe can be used in other dishes.

I found that using kitchen shears is the best way to remove the meat from the lobster shells, especially the small legs that contain that hard to get at lobster meat. If a whole lobster is too much of a challenge, you can substitute lobster tails. Since I’d rather eat lobster without having to pick out the shells, I remove the meat from the shells before cooking. The cooked lobster shells provide a deep red color to the traditional dish, but I’d rather eat the lobster than look at it.

Enjoy!

Chili Paste with Fermented Soy Bean Beef Tendon (湖南豆豉辣椒牛筋, Wu4 Naam4 Dau6 Si6 Laat6 Ziu1 Ngau4 Gan1)

This recipe was updated on 16 Oct 2014. Some instructions and ingredient quantities were changed.

Beef tendon is usually eaten in a stew with beef outside flank, which can be found in the Beef Flank and Tendon Stew (燜牛筋牛腩, Man¹ Ngau⁴ Gan¹ Ngau⁴ Naam⁵) recipe, but beef tendon can be the star of the dish all by itself. Beef tendon is tough and requires long slow cooking, at which time it becomes soft and gelatinous, so making this dish is a two-step process. The first step is to soften the beef tendon through slow cooking, and the second step is to stir fry the beef tendon with vegetables. I use a slow cooker in the first step since I can just cook the beef tendon unattended. The beef tendon itself is nearly tasteless, so the other ingredients give the dish its flavor, with the beef tendon supplying the texture to the dish.

Enjoy!

Hot Bean Sauce Cashew Beef (辣豆辦腰果牛肉, Laat6 Dau6 Faan6 Jiu1 Gwo2 Ngau4 Juk6)

This recipe was updated on 21 Apr 2015. Some instructions and ingredient quantities were changed.

 

Everything in this dish, except for the beef, came from a can or bottle. So if you have a can and bottle opener, you can make this quick cooking dish. Bamboo shoots are a staple of Chinese cooking. They can be purchased bottled, canned, preserved, and fresh, and also as strips, as slices, or as whole shoots. For this dish, I used canned bamboo shoot slices, but you can easily buy them fresh at your local Asian market. The cashew nuts give an added crunch and the hot bean sauce gives the dish its spicy flavor.

Enjoy!

Steamed Chili Lemongrass Black Bean Chicken (鮮辣椒檸檬葉豆豉蒸鷄, Sin1 Laat6 Ziu1 Ning4 Mung4 Jip6 Dau6 Si6 Zing1 Gai1)

This recipe was updated on 24 May 2015. Some instructions were changed.

Steamed lemon chicken with black bean sauce is a recipe my Mom gave me when I first moved out of the house. I still have the 3x5 card (you remember those!) she gave me with that recipe many years ago. This variation of that quick cooking recipe uses lemongrass in place of lemons, with the addition of chili sauce to give the dish some spice. Since lemongrass is used instead of lemon, the dish has a hint of lemon rather than the stronger flavor a lemon supplies. The zucchini pieces are arranged along the edge of the plate to enhance the dish’s presentation.

Enjoy!

Asian-Style Carnitas

This Asian spiced inspired slow cooker recipe has its origins from the Mexican Pulled Pork (Carnitas) recipe, which was adapted from the Mexican Pulled Pork recipe at America’s Test Kitchen. Their original premise was to develop a recipe that did involve lard or deep frying to produce the carnitas’ crispy outside. Their solution, after oven-braising the pork in a Dutch oven (this recipe uses the slow cooker instead), was to use the broiler after coating the pork with a reduction of the remaining liquid and fat. The method works great and I’ve modified their technique to use the barbeque grill instead of the broiler to get a smokier flavor incorporated into the pork. The resulting carnitas are soft on the inside and a crispy brown on the outside, with that distinctive smoked flavor from the grill. The condiments are also Asian inspired with spicy Sriracha sauce adding a distinctive spicy hot kick to the dish.

Enjoy!