Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup

So much for healthy eating. An interstitial on Food Network came on last night about Taiwanese Beef Noodles and a bulb went off in my head.

OK, it may be a stretch but it's kind of healthy. I didn't add too much oil and it's a soup nonetheless. I'll keep deluding myself into thinking this is healthy. Ohm ohm ohmmm....

Serves 2:

• 300g beef brisket, cut into cubes
• 1 tablespoon chilli bean paste
• 3 shallots finely sliced
• 1 knob of ginger, peeled and sliced
• 1 spring onion, cut into half
• 1 star anise
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 4 whole peppercorns
• 3 tablespoons Chinese rice wine
• 1 tablespoon dark soy sauce
• 1 beef stock cube
• 2 large bowls of water
• Light soy sauce to taste
• 2 servings narrow kway teow

In a large pot, heat 3 tablespoons oil over high heat. Sear beef cubes till browned and set aside.

In the remaining oil, saute ginger, anise, whole peppercorns and cinnamon stick till fragrant, then add shallots and continue sauteing until soft and translucent. Add the bean paste and saute, then pour in the water, followed by rice wine, dark soy sauce and stock cube. Throw in the spring onions and bring to a boil. Turn down the heat to low and simmer for 3 hours until beef is soft and tender.

When soup stock is ready, season with light soy sauce to taste, strain and set the beef aside. Parboil the kway teow in boiling water until tender and drain. Place noodles in a bowl, add meat and ladle soup over.

Red Rubies in Coconut Milk

I was eight when I learnt to make this from my Aunty Jo. I used to love sitting on the floor of the kitchen of my grandfather's house watching my Aunty cook. It fascinated me to no end, watching her pound spices and cook up a storm from memory, tossing ingredients in by taste and experience. The aromas were intoxicating and I would always score a sneak preview of the day's meals.

I remember asking her for something sweet... and she smiled and said she'd make something special just for me. She showed me how to peel and cut the water chestnuts, and the amazing trick with the plastic bag. I think I may be the only person in the family who has learnt her recipes and it's a tradition worth preserving.

For 2 servings:

• 8 water chestnuts, peeled and diced into small cubes
• Tapioca flour
• 4 drops red food colouring
• 3 tablespoons sugar
• 3 tablespoons water
• 1 cup coconut milk
• Crushed or shaved ice

First, make a syrup with the sugar and water. Set aside to cool while you prepare a large pot of boiling water.

Place water chestnuts in a clean plastic bag, add red food colouring and shake well to colour them evenly. Then add some flour and shake. Keep adding flour and shaking until the water chestnuts are evenly coated and turned from red to a light pink.

This, for example, needs more flour:

It's done when it looks like this:

Dump the contents of the bag into boiling water, the red rubies will float to the surface and turn translucent when done. Scoop and rinse through cold water to stop the cooking process, then place in the syrup.

To serve, place red rubies into a bowl, along with any other preferred ingredients like tinned lychees, longans, jelly cubes or date palm seeds (atap chee) along with a heaping of ice and pour over enough coconut milk to cover.

So simple, pretty and refreshing. The perfect dessert for a hot sunny day.

Other items on the Red, White and Ooohhh menu:

• Grilled red pepper and sundried tomato pasta
• Mozzarella and cherry tomato salad
• Boeuf bourguignon with mashed potatoes
• White chocolate and cherry cupcakes
• Raspberry macarons with a buttercream filling
• Cream scones with homemade raspberry preserves and freshly made whipped cream

Stirfried Vegetarian Tang Hoon

In the spirit of random throw-togethers of whatever's left in the fridge, coupled with hunger pangs after a day without eating, I threw this stirfry together.

The tang hoon is left over from the Chinese New Year steamboat. Chye sim from mee swa soup day. Fried shallots from prawn mee soup day. Talk about an impromptu mash-up.

What the hell, it tastes good, and I basically shovelled the food into my mouth with a spoon like a barbarian. I'm not hungry any more. Mission accomplished!

You can add any other ingredients you want, like shrimp, meat, mushrooms etc... This is a fridge clean-out dish so it doesn't really matter.

Serves 2:

• 3 bundles tang hoon, soaked briefly in water
• 2 eggs, beaten lightly
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 4 stalks chye sim, cut into bite-sized pieces
• 2 tablespoons oyster sauce
• 1 tablespoon light soya sauce
• 1 teaspoon dark soya sauce
• Pepper
• Fried shallots

Heat a tablespoon of oil in a wok. Fry garlic till fragrant, then add vegetables and cover with lid and let cook till tender. When cooked, set aside.

If using meat, heat up another tablespoon of oil and sear the meat till cooked and set aside.

Add eggs and lightly scramble, then add noodles and all the seasonings and mix well. Add the meat, vegetables and fried shallots and stirfry till everything is mixed.

Prawn and Pork Rib Noodle Soup

It's all about the stock baby! Or in more colloquial terms, "Hae Mee baby!"

Simmer for hours and hours and hours and you'll get a rich, thick, cloudy broth of porky prawny goodness.

The aromatic herbs give the broth a deep character, and the garnishings complete the dish with a spicy and fragrant kick.

It's a bit of a bitch to prepare, so save this for weekends. Be warned, the soup will need to simmer for about 5 - 6 hours, so start in the morning for dinner.

This will essentially be my Friday project, so I'm hoping GBF, Miss Z, Mr DB, Miss A and Mr P will enjoy my toiling over a hot stove. Well, not quite, more like watching TV and golfing as I let the slow cooker do it's job.

Serves 4

• 24 prawns
• 500g pork ribs
• 200g of lean pork
• 80g ikan bilis (dried anchovies)
• 4 cloves of garlic, chopped
• 1 star anise
• 5 cloves
• 1 stick cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon whole black peppercorns
• 1/2 teaspoon five spice powder
• 1 tablespoon dark soy sauce
• 2 teaspoons brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon ground white pepper
• 4 tablespoons oil
• 1.2 litres water
• 300g yellow noodles
• 300g bee hoon (rice vermicelli)
• 50g kang kong, blanched
• 50g beansprouts, blanched
• 2 fishcakes, sliced
• Fried shallots
• Sliced fresh red chillies
• Chilli powder

Remove heads from prawns and shell, keeping the tails on. Reserve them for the stock. Make a deep slit along the top of the prawns and remove the black vein. Set aside in fridge.

In a large pot, heat the oil over high heat. Chuck in star anise, cloves, cinnamon, peppercorns and five-spice powder and sizzle till fragrant. You may want to use the pot lid as a shield, those spices have a tendency to crackle and pop something real bad.

Add pork ribs and lean pork and sear, then add prawn head and shells. Add the ikan bilis and garlic and sprinkle over the brown sugar. Fry for a further 5 minutes, then add water.

Bring to a boil, then turn down heat until the broth is gently simmering. At this point, you can also transfer to a slow cooker. Let simmer for 5 - 6 hours until the pork ribs are falling apart tender.

Remove the meat and strain the broth to remove the herbs, spices, prawn shells and other grimy bits. Skim off the scum from the surface as well.

Return the pork ribs to the broth. Slice and set aside the lean pork.

To assemble the dish, cook the yellow noodles and vermicelli in boiling water, drain and place in bowl. Add some beansprouts, kang kong, fishcake slices and lean pork slices.

Boil raw prawns in hot broth till just cooked and arrange 6 prawns in each bowl. Add a few pieces of pork ribs and ladle hot broth over the entire majestic scrummilicious damn thing.

Garnish with heaps of fried shallots, sliced red chiilies and a dash of chilli powder.

What can I say? I'm in prawny porky heaven.

Other items on the Childhood Comforts menu:

• Mee Swa Soup 
• Nonya Kaya

Mee Swa Soup

Variants of this dish was probably ubiquitous at anyone's childhood dinner table. It's a basic pork broth, with chunks of meat, vegetables and noodles. The home-cooked version of instant noodles, or a low-fi mee hoon kueh.

I haven't eaten this in nearly 15 years, and the inexplicable craving demands I must have it NOW.

Serves 2

• 200g minced pork
• 2 teaspoons sesame oil
• 2 tablespoons chinese rice wine
• 2 tablespoons oyster sauce
• 1 teaspoon dark soya sauce
• 1 tablespoon light soya sauce
• 2 cloves minced garlic
• 10 shallots, finely sliced
• 3 bowls of water (this will reduce to 2 bowls, so use whatever bowls you'll be using to serve)
• 6 prawns, shelled and cleaned (I bought them, but forgot to add them. They're still in my fridge. Damnit!)
• 4 dried chinese mushrooms, soaked till soft and sliced (Left them out because I forgot to buy them)
• 2 bunches chye sim, cut into bite-sized pieces
• 4 small or 2 large bundles of mee swa
• 2 eggs

Season the minced pork with the sesame oil, wine, soya sauces, oyster sauce and garlic. Leave to marinate in fridge for an hour.

Heat 4 tablespoons of oil in a wok on high heat and fry the shallots till golden brown and crisp. Set aside and leave oil in the wok.

A little note on fried shallots. They go from uncooked to burnt really fast. So, when you see them getting light brown, take them off the heat. They will continue cooking till golden brown in a more controlled manner, and gives you time to scoop them out without burning. If you're using them immediately, drain on paper towels. Otherwise, store them in airtight containers with the oil.

Sear the seasoned minced pork, breaking up into small lumps. Once cooked, pour over the water and add mushrooms. Bring to boil and then turn down the heat and let simmer for an hour.

When ready to eat, add chye sim and boil till just tender. Spoon the meat and veg into serving bowls, leaving the soup in the wok.

Slip in the mee swa and cook for a 2 minutes, then ladle into bowls. Mee swa cooks really fast, so watch it carefully. It's better to serve it slightly undercooked as the heat will continue to cook it.

At this point, the soup will be thicker, so add a bit more water if needed. Turn the stock up to a boil and crack in the eggs and add prawns. When the eggs are lightly poached, scoop into bowls and arrange prawns on top. Ladle the remaining soup to finish off.

And finally, the piece de resistance... Top with a generous mound of fried shallots, some tang chye and enjoy.

I want my mummy...

Other items on the Childhood Comforts menu:

• Prawn and Pork Rib Noodle Soup 
• Nonya Kaya

Childhood comfort food

This is why I seldom cook Chinese food. The preparation is a pain in the ass that's why. Between Miss Z and myself, we peeled and sliced the Mount Everest of shallots. Why you may ask?

It's the first month into my new Tai-Tai life and frankly, I'm not taking all too well to it. In short, I'm bored, completely out of sorts and not quite sure what to do with myself. There's only so much TV I can watch and golf I can play. Being a Tai-Tai is overrated I say. Although, my swing is getting better.

Anyway, when I'm feeling this disconcerted, I always crave the comfort foods of my childhood. Dishes that my Mum used to make, or foods that my Dad used to love.

The Sunday morning ritual used to be breakfast at Chin Mee Chin, with soft-boiled eggs and homemade nonya kaya slathered on soft buns.

If I pretty-pleased nicely enough, he would take us to eat Beach Road Prawn Mee at East Coast. And please don't ask me why Beach Road Prawn Mee is at East Coast, it never made sense to me either.

And finally.... my favourite weekday dish was Mee Swa Soup. The dish was simple enough, which brings me back to the mountain of shallots.

I'll be re-visiting my childhood favourites, hence the need for massive amounts of fried shallots.

Keep watching this space for Mee Swa Soup, Prawn and Pork Rib Noodle Soup and Nonya Kaya.

Singaporean BBQ Chicken Wings

This is a must-have at any BBQ, and this is my mum's recipe - with a few of my modifications of course.

If you're not going to barbeque these chicks, then roasting in the oven at 180C for 30-40 minutes till golden brown works well too. For a deeee-lish beer snack, deep fry the wings and serve with a sweet Thai chilli sauce.

Smoky, spicy, caramelly and absolutely to die for, the trouble of starting up the barbeque will be well worth it.

For 8 wings with drumlet attached:

• 2 tbsp peanut oil
• 1 tsp sesame oil
• 2 tbsp chinese rice wine
• 1 tbsp honey
• 1 tsp five spice powder
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 2 tbsp ginger juice (Pound ginger and squeeze out juice. Ginger is a natural meat tenderizer so your chicken wings will be melting off the bone when cooked. Plus it gives it a spicy zing.)
• 1 tsp dark soy sauce
• 1 tsp light soy sauce
• 1 tbsp Japanese teriyaki sauce (optional)

Wash and dry chicken wings and marinade with all ingredient except the soy and teriyaki sauces. Cover with cling wrap or place in airtight container and marinate for at least 3-4 hours, or overnight ideally.

The reason why you should only add the soy sauce or any salt to any marinated meat just before cooking is that salt leaches the juices out from the meat and causes it to toughen. Now you know.

Before cooking, add soy sauce and skewer onto metal or wet bamboo skewers. Soaking the skewers in water prevents it from burning when on the barbeque. Skewering them opens out the wings and helps the meat get crisp and brown evenly. It also makes for faster cooking which is always welcome at a barbeque.

As you barbecue the wings, use the leftover marinade to baste for extra flavour.

See the rest of the BBQ Bonanza menu here:

• Roasted garlic hummus
• Mussels in white wine broth
• Singaporean BBQ chicken wings
• Fish in lemon, butter and dill sauce
• Honey, mustard and herb beef kebabs 
• Mediterranean salad
• Roasted garlic mashed potatoes

Cheater Chicken Rice

Here's another quick-fix weekday meal. Fast and easy to make, even faster to wash up.

I love Chicken Rice, but it's also fattening. This is an easy version that's oil-free, but full of flavour.

Once again, the trick is stocking up on some store-bought essentials ahead of time:

• Chicken stock - This is essential for any kitchen. You'll need it in most recipes, and replacing water with stock provides an extra burst of flavour.
• Chicken rice paste - Woh Hup is good.
• Frozen chicken
• White rice
• Chicken rice chilli - I like SingLong.

Serves 2:

• 1 cup rice
• 1 cup chicken stock
• 5 tablespoons chicken rice paste
• 2 pieces chicken parts, diced into bite-sized chucks
• 2 pandan leaves, bruised and tied into a knot (optional)
• Chicken rice chilli and dark soya sauce to serve

Wash the rice and drain the water. Add chicken rice paste, stock, pandan leaves and chicken meat to the rice and stir. Cook, eat and enjoy.

Quick and dirty 6-ingredient chicken curry

If you're a curry snob, then this recipe is NOT for you.

But if you are, like me, a time-strapped working stiff who needs to throw something together in a hurry, then this is the perfect no-fuss dish. Great for days when you get home at 7ish after a long hard day at work.

You have no time to go to the supermarket, waste time prepping or even wash dishes. The natural urge to is to make a detour on your drive home and tar pow some food, or reach for the phone to call McDonalds home delivery. Travel and waiting time considered, it'll take at least an hour and you won't be eating till 8ish.

So, it's gonna take an hour any which way, you might as well whip up something home-cooked and give your body and taste-buds a break from crappy msg-laden junk food. Here's how to get this recipe done in under an hour.

When you do your regular grocery shopping, stock up on a few packs of curry powder and packaged coconut milk. The potatoes, onions and curry leaves can keep up to a month in your fridge. The chicken parts you can freeze and white rice in a rice cooker is a no-brainer.

• You get home, put your crap down, turn TV on and pour yourself a big glass of wine - 5 mins
• Chuck frozen chicken into microwave and nuke - 2 mins
• Wash and cook rice in rice cooker - 3 mins
• Small sip of wine - 5 secs
• Peel and dice onion - 3 mins
• Peel and cut potatoes - 5 mins
• Grab packaged curry powder, coconut milk and curry leaves - 1 min
• Big gulp of wine - 10 sec
• Actual cooking time - 10 mins
• Sit in front of TV and drink more wine - 30 mins

Total cooking time - 24 minutes
Total time from getting through the front door to putting food in your mouth - 59 minutes 15 seconds

Serves 2

• 4 pieces cut chicken parts (Breast, thigh or drumstick. If using wings, use 6-8 pieces.)
• 3 small waxy potatoes, peeled and halved
• 100g pack of your favourite curry powder
• 10 curry leaves
• 1 large red or yellow onion, diced
• 500ml coconut cream (Kara brand is good)

Heat 2 tablespoons on high heat in a pot. Throw in the curry leaves and let sizzle for a few seconds, then brown the diced onions till soft and translucent. Add curry powder and let the heat cook the spices till fragrant, about 2 minutes. If you prefer more heat in your curry, add a few tablespoons of packaged chilli paste.

Add chicken, making sure it's evenly coated with the curry powder paste and cooked through. This will take about 3 minutes. Once the chicken is cooked, drop in the potatoes and pour in the coconut milk. Top up with some water to ensure that the chicken and potatoes are covered. Bring to a boil, then turn down heat to low and let simmer for 30 minutes or until chicken is tender. Season to taste with salt.

I did the math on the wash-up count:

• 1 cutting board
• 1 knife
• 1 veggie peeler
• 1 pot
• 1 cooking spoon or ladle

If you count the serving dishes and rice cooker:

• 2 bowls or plates
• 2 spoons
• 2 forks
• 1 rice cooker pot and lid

How's that for quick and dirty curry, with a quickie clean-up?