Mango Pudding for Chinese New Year

 

Gong Hey Fat Choy Dear Readers!


This weekend heralds in the start of Chinese New Year- a time for families to get together, celebrate, and of course feast! What a great excuse to head out to some of my favourite restaurants and indulge in a few dishes at Yum Cha as well

I wanted to post a recipe or two as my celebratory contribution, but there are so many traditional New Year foods and superstitions that I don't want to step on any toes and have decided to keep it simple with a very easy recipe for one of our favourite yum cha desserts- Mango Pudding

Now although it's such a simple recipe, I've made a few changes to make it lactose free and supermarket friendly. The usual Evaporated Milk has been switched out for Coconut Milk and I've opted for Gelatine instead of Agar Agar as it's easier to find. The flavour is only slightly different, and the set is just a little softer, but it still tastes terrific and is a fabulous ending to a heavy meal



 Mango Pudding- Yum Cha Style!

2 Cups Mango Puree
1 cup Coconut Milk or Cream
1/3 cup Castor Sugar
3 tsp Gelatine Powder
decent pinch of Salt



Pop the coconut milk, sugar, gelatine and salt into a saucepan and heat gently. Stir until the sugar and gelatine is all dissolved, but be careful not to let it boil or the gelatine will start to break down and your dessert might not set

Bring off the heat, then add to the mango puree and blend it all together thoroughly

See, gorgeous and smooth!

Pour into molds/ serving dishes and chill in the fridge for a few hours or until set through

Admittedly the yum cha dessert we know and love is usually a much brighter yellow, but mine is made nice and fresh and I think it tastes just as great- and bonus points for not making me sick with lactose either. Win win!

So Dear Readers, what celebrations does your family enjoy, and what is your favourite Yum Cha/Dim Sum dish?

 

Cosy Chicken Congee

Poor littlej is sick in bed

The warmer weather seems to have stirred up any latent flu bugs and in a desperate effort to get as many victims as possible, they are jumping on anyone foolish enough to have run 3.5kms in sleet last week for school athletics before staying up to 1am to finish off a Science project....  Oh dear, at least she'll learn her lesson before college when pressure and performance really start to pile on


Eating really hasn't been fun between sniffles and sneezing, so to coax her to partake of some nourishment I put together one of the ultimate comfort foods out there- Congee
So warming, so soothing, not much chewing or digestive energy required, and did I mention delicious? Perfect invalid food, or for when you just want a big bowl of hugs instead


Congee has so many variations, but I stuck to a very basic one with chicken stock, ginger and spring onion being the main flavouring. The thickness of the soup or porridge is also open to interpretation, but I favour a fairly thick mix and use a 1:12 ratio of rice to stock to make mine juuuuust riiiight

Cosy Chicken Congee

1/2 cup Jasmine Rice
6 cups Chicken Stock
2 or three Spring Onions
thumb size piece of Ginger
1 teaspoon Sesame Oil
big pinch White Pepper
Toppings to taste- keep reading

Peel the ginger, then cut it into nice thin matchsticks. Give the spring onions a bit of a bash with your knife just to encourage them to give up their yumminess during cooking

Pop the rice and sesame oil in your rice cooker (or pot) and give it a good mix through, then add in everything else and stir once or twice

Pop the lid on, set and forget! I love using my rice cooker this way, it's such a gentle way of cooking and I don't have to fuss with it at all. If you are using the stove top instead, you need to very gently and slowly simmer your congee for at least an hour or until the rice really starts to break down and loose it's shape definition

My rice cooker takes three cooking cycles to get the congee the way I like it. As you can see it bubbles away getting quite thick and gluggy- but don't worry, that's the right consistency

This is the congee after cooking, each little rice grain is desperately trying to maintain it's structurally integrity, but you can see it's a losing battle

Now give the congee a good brisk stir and glorious gloopiness will result. See the lovey golden strands of ginger? They are nice and soft as well and add a lovely subtle sweetness when you bite into them

If you're not sick and have a decent appetite, one of the really fun things about congee is the toppings! You can jazz it up any way you want, but some of my favourites are: drizzling with gf soy sauce, a few drops of sesame oil, finely sliced spring onions, coriander, sliced boiled eggs, crispy fried onion and garlic. You can also include sliced chicken, pork or fish, fried tofu or just about anything that takes your fancy- Yummo!

So Dear Readers, would this tempt your appetite and what's your tried-and-true recipe for the flu?

Thai Pearl Dumplings

I may have mentioned once or twice in the past, just how much I love Yum Cha/ Dim Sum/ Asian Dumplings.

The only problem of course, is finding ones that are InTolerant Friendly for InTolerants like me.

Apparently I'm not the only one out there who craves a good dumpling or two, as the most viewed post on my blog by far is the one on Gluten Free Chinese Dumplings.
http://intolerantchef.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/gluten-free-chinese-dumplings.html

This recipe used Glutinous Rice Flour (not related to gluten at all) and fresh Taro to make gorgeously slippery little dumplings or rice rolls that were truly just as nice as the ones I get at my favourite Dim Sum restaurant.

As it's obviously touched a culinary nerve or two, I thought I'd expand a bit on the Asian Dumpling theme a bit in the coming weeks, starting with today's offering of Thai Pearl Dumplings.

These have got to be the easiest dumpling skins around, just Pearl Tapioca Balls and water, that's it. How easy is that! An added bonus it that they are absolutely delicious, very chewy though, so be prepared for a multi textural experience with these little lovelies.

Dumpling Skins


1 cup Tapioca Pearls
1/2 boiling Water
Pinch Salt



Cover the tapioca pearls with cold water then drain immediately

Pop the pearls back in the bowl, add the salt and boiling water and stir well

Cover and put them aside while you make the filling

Really, you could stuff the dumplings with whatever filling you like. I wanted to try and replicate one of BigJ's favourites from our local Thai restaurant, that's full of sweet caramelised peanuts mixed with minced pork. Sounds strange? Well, by the time you balanced out the sugar with fish sauce and lime juice, you get that whole Sweet/Sour/Salty balance that's essential in any Thai meal.
In this case the filling needs to be quite assertive as the dumpling skin is pretty tasteless on it's own, and needs that wow factor when bitten into

Dumpling Filling

300gr ground Pork or Chicken
1/2  cup Crushed Peanuts- I dry roasted them in the fry pan for about 2 minutes first for a much stronger flavour
1/4 cup Brown Sugar
1/4 cup (ish) Fish Sauce
1/4 cup (ish) Lime Juice
1 big Tablespoon crushed Ginger
1 big Tablespoon crushed Garlic
1 big teaspoon Lemon Grass Paste
Spring Onions finely chopped




Cook off the mince meat, ginger, garlic and lemon grass until sealed

Add in the brown sugar, sauce and juice and keep stirring until it all caramelises and changes colour to a deeper brown colour. Keep an eye on it though as it could catch quickly. If you're having a hard time, add in a touch more sugar and a splash or two of water as needed

Taste the mix, and adjust the balance of flavours by adding more fish sauce/juice/sugar until it's juuuust right. Take off the heat.
Toss through the peanuts and spring onions, then set aside to cool

Now the fun part!

First things first, take off any rings- your hands will get all gunky and you'll be grateful you heeded my warning





Gather the tapioca into a ball and knead it until it comes together

Roll it into a sausage shape, then cut into twelve equal pieces- I started with 24, but changed my mind :)

Wet your hands in a bowl of cold water, then flatten the balls in the palm of your hand while making a kind of little cup to hold the filling

Place a spoonful of filling in the middle of the cup

Scrunch your hand around the filling

Pinch the edges together, smoothing it down with with a wet finger to encase the filling totally and making a nice round ball

This makes about 12 golf ball sized dumplings You could make them smaller, but it would certainly be harder to pat the dough out thin enough

Pop the little dumplings into a steamer for about 20 minutes, or until all the dough goes from white to totally translucent I sprayed the bottom of the racks with a little oil as these dumplings are very,very sticky when they're hot

They look like jelly fish on the outside, don't they?
Now I tried one of these while they were still hot, and while the flavours were nice the texture could be challenging to some people. The dough was sticky, stretchy and very gloopy- hard to chew and swallow actually. There's a reason these are traditionally served just warm or at room temperature :)






















The dough goes more opaque as it cools down

The usual way of serving these dumplings is to pop some herbs like mint or coriander and chilli onto a lettuce leaf

Wrap up into a cute little parcel, and serve with some sauce to dunk them in. This was a much nicer way of eating them, the lettuce gave a nice crunch as well as giving your teeth something to grip onto!

Nice sweet filling, a soft crunch of the nuts, chewy soft dumping then the crisp lettuce leaf all added up to a lovely lunch indeed. My family loved them, but I don't think I'd serve them to quite young children as you really do need to chew these well :)

So My Dear Readers, what's your favourite type of dumpling, and where do you go to get it?

.

Stuffed Eggplant Yum Cha

I know I've mentioned how much we love Yummy Cha

As well as enjoying it out and about, I've been slowly building up my own set of gluten and dairy free dishes for when we can't be bothered going out.

Sometimes you just get a hankering for that one dish, and it's nice to be able to whip it up or pull it out of the freezer ready to go when you are.



This is another one of my favourite Yum Cha dishes, Stuffed Eggplant, it's also pretty much the same as Stuffed Tofu, so I count them as the one dish really. The eggplant is so silky, stuffed with a soft delicious filling and then covered with a thin crispy shell of crunch to finish off the sublime taste and texture sensation, and the tofu is the same, just a bit bouncier when bitten into which is just as nice as well.




I'm not going to actually give 'real' measurements for the recipe today though Dear Readers, as it really depends on the size of your eggplant/tofu that is the carrier for this dish.



My filling ingredients for today were some nice pork rashers, shiitake mushrooms and spring onions






















I started by finely chopping some nice pork rashers. I wanted some fat to keep the filling moist and I didn't want it cut too fine as I also wanted some nice texture to chew on as a contrast to the silkiness of the eggplant flesh




















I also finely chopped my spring onions and the shiitake mushrooms-  Home Grown!












Then to the flavouring ingredients: ginger,white pepper,garlic and chili paste. You need more of this than you might think as really the tofu and eggplant are quite bland on their own and need a fair bit of ooomphing up. I used a good heaped tablespoon of each, and could have added just a touch more



















Mix together thoroughly. I find that using my hands really is best for this kind of thing, and it's fun to mush it all up as well

If you want to check the seasoning, you can take a small amount and quickly cook it off - steam, fry, microwave, whatever- then adjust accordingly



















Drain and pat dry the tofu



















Cut in half- hopefully a bit neater than this though




















Cut the eggplant into lovely half moons a bit over a centimetre thick, the slice a pocket through the centre of each without cutting all the way through the back






















Pack the stuffing in nice and firmly or it will be too lose and fall out once cooked





















Turn the tofu into a cute little sandwich by carefully loading it up with a decent amount of packed pork filling as well




















Place the eggplant and the tofu into a lightly greased steamer basket, and steam for about 10/12 minutes or until the filling is cooked and the tofu is bouncy firm

















Let it cool down, then cut the tofu into nice cubes- I cut mine into 6 pieces







Put the egg white into a shallow dish, and break up lightly with a fork.



















Dip the pieces of tofu and eggplant into the flour, then the egg whites, then back into the flour again- making sure to shake off any excess at each dunking.

You could just mix the two together to make a slurry type of batter if you want instead, but I like the way this coating is firmer when it's cooked





















Heat your oil and fry off the pieces until they are nice and crispy and starting to brown






















Drain quickly on a rack while you do the rest, this will stop them going soggy





















Cross section of both the eggplant on top, and the tofu underneath. Nice and cooked through inside but nice and crispy outside, yummo




















I served my Yummy Cha dish with a nice dollop of chilli bean sauce, but you could have them plain, with soy sauce, black bean and garlic sauce, or whatever takes your fancy.

These will definitely go into my Dim Sum repertoire for the future and are a sure favourite already!


















So Dear Readers, have you tried this dish before, and would you chose the tofu or eggplant version?




















Now, as promised I have a Second Blogaversary Give Away!

This time the prize is a Junior Master Chef Burger Kit
















to enter, just leave a comment on this post telling me if you'd like to win. I will draw the winner by my patented Cat-Raffle Method as usual, and announce the lucky person next post. Good Luck!





















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