Pickled Lotus Root

Pickled Lotus Root is so delicious! I had one big lotus root which I sliced up for soup. I cooked all of it in the soup and once the root was tender enough I took half of it out. Be careful not to overcook it because you still want to have a crunch and bite to it.

Drain the cooked root and rinse with some water if you wish.  Then place in a bowl. 

Mix some sliced red chilli, you can use chilli padi/birds eye chilli for extra kick, add some vinegar, sugar and a bit of fish sauce. Adjust the seasoning to your liking, it should be a balance of sweet and sour and spicy. Pour the mixture over the roots and mix and marinate thoroughly. This is best left for half a day in the fridge so that the roots absorb the flavours.

Enjoy and let me know what you think!

Vietnamese Fresh Spring Rolls

Made this beautiful dish to bring over for the weekly family dinner. I don't think the in laws are used to eating something so 'out of the ordinary' (to them anyway), but I was glad to see my mil actually enjoying it and it goes to show that she's more adventurous than I give her credit for. My fil on the other hand who was having a cold kept on saying he didn't want to eat it cos it was 'cold'. He actually thought it came from the fridge. Kept on insisting it was cold even before he tried it. But at least he did try a bite. I think they weren't so used to eating Thai basil because of the strong flavour and fragrance. Mil seemed to enjoy it, but not so much sil. What's important is my darling hubby telling me that it was delicious and that's all I needed to hear :)

I bought the prawns at Pasar that morning and boiled it myself. It was soo good and sweet. The other fillings included marinated pork, thai basil leaves, vermicelli and curly lettuce. I cut the spring rolls in half so that it wouldn't be so daunting to everyone. This is a great dish for entertaining, cheap, easy and you can make the rolls and the dipping sauce it in advance!

Step by Step for beginners:

Prepa. ration:

1. Get your prawns and just drop them in boiling water till they change colour. Once they change colour, take them out and soak in cold water or just run the tap over them to stop them cooking and cool them down. Then peel the prawns and if you wish, half them so you can make them go a long way, meaning 1 roll will only use 1 prawn rather than 2. But if you're generous and u can't be bothered then just leave it whole.

2. Boil some water in another pan. While that's happening, wash your lettuce leaves (curly lettuce is prettier) and if using, thai basil leaves, spin dry or towel dry.

3. Get some rice vermicelli. If you use fresh ones then you only need to dunk them in some hot water. You can even use the same water you boiled your prawns in, this cuts a step and saves reboiling water. Fresh ones only need a few seconds, dried vermicelli will take a few minutes. Remove from the water and run tap water over it to stop it cooking and set aside.

4. Once the water in the other pan is boiled, turn off the heat and get your wrapper. Dunk it in the hot water while rotating it. You don't need to dunk it till soft, just till it's wet and lay it on a plate or cutting board. The water will actually absorb into the wrapper and soften it, that's why you don't have to dunk it till it's limp and soft.

5. Then get the prawns and lay them on the wrapper. Lay them down towards the other end of the wrapper away from you. If you've halved the prawns then make sure you put the stripes or orange side down. Then lay your lettuce leaves beside the prawns closer to you and put the basil leaves on top and some rice vermicelli. Then fold the sides towards the middle and then roll the skin away from you making sure it's tight and there you have it!

To make peanut dipping sauce, add equal amounts of peanut butter and hoisin sauce and mix well.

To make the vinegar dipping sauce, pound some garlic and chilli, transfer to a jar with a lid and add sugar, water, vinegar/lemon and fish sauce and shake till thoroughly mixed. Taste and adjust. 

Best Gyozas (made by me!)

I love Gyoza...Dumplings....Guo Tie....Potstickers...or whatever you want to call them. It's that little bundle of meat encased in a soft chewy skin with a crispy brown bottom. We used to make the skins ourselves. It's pretty simple, just flour, salt, and warm water kneaded till it forms a ball. But it's troublesome to roll it out yourself. So I've been buying the ready made ones - the ones that says Guo Tie skin. But I was never really satisfied with them because they were too big and too thin causing breakages in my gyozas and then once cooked it looked all wrinkly and unattractive. Till recently that is, when i found the Holy Grail of gyoza skin. They call it Taiwan Jiao Zi Pi or Taiwan Dumpling skin. These are soft and small and do not break easily. You don't even need to put water around the edges to seal it as it was soft and pliable enough to simply press the skin together. The best thing about these skins is they had just the right amount of chewiness and the bottoms stayed crisp for longer too.

Usually when making gyozas you'd put them in a pan and pour water into the pan, cover with lid and cook till there's no more water. Then take off the lid and pan fry till the bottoms become brown and crisp. But on our recent trip to Tokyo we saw that they actually steamed the gyozas first before pan frying. So that's what we did and it worked wonderfully. Next time I will try putting the water in the pan method with this new skin and see if it comes out the same.

Do u see the difference? The top on is the Taiwan skin.

Taiwan Skin

thin flimsy other dumpling skin

I love gyozas so much, I can really stuff myself with them. And surprisingly Caelyn loves them too. But of course she likes them cos of the chewy skin...but hey I'm not complaining cos I put a lot of wombok and chives in the meat mixture, so it's good for her.

Here's the 'recipe'. I don't have exact measurements as always.

Filling Ingredients:

Minced Pork
Grated ginger
Grated/minced garlic
Wombok shredded finely
Chives diced finely
Oyster Sauce
Sugar
Salt and Pepper to Taste
Dash of Chinese Cooking Wine
Dash of cornflour

Put the minced pork together with the ginger, garlic, oyster sauce, sugar, corn flour and seasoning in a big mixing bowl. Mix the mixture with your hand until it becomes slightly sticky. The reason  you mix it until it gets sticky is to make the meat more tender. In the past I never really did this and just mixed everything in with a fork, but it really does make a difference. Set aside for 15-30 minutes for the flavour to develop. Set it aside before you put the veges in because the veges will make your mixture watery and in turn cause your dumpling skins to go all soggy. Then add the vegetables you've chopped up and mix it some more with your hand until it's mixed in. You can even use a food processor to chop up the wombok. A lot of liquid might come out of the wombok, squeeze it out before you add it to the meat mixture. You can substitute with any veges really or leave them out altogether if you don't fancy veges. But if you don't put veges, your dumplings may be a bit dry, what you can do is add mashed up tofu to it which will help moisten the meat.

Serve with a dipping sauce of Black Vinegar mixed with fried garlic, Soy Sauce, Sesame oil and Chilli Sauce.

Check out this youtube video by Cooking with Dog for instructions http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8MBX-SXnmg