Chicken Feet Dim Sum Style

This is my Mum's recipe and she makes it for us everytime she comes over becoz hubby loves chicken feet, the dim sum type that is. Usually I'm pretty lazy to make it myself because it traditionally calls for marinating the chicken feet in salt and some chinese wine and then deep frying them in hot oil. That's a pretty scary process in itself because the oil really splatters. We had also experimented with cooking the chicken feet in the oven, not quite the same but a heck of a lot healthier, unfortunately creates a lot of smoke in the oven too.

I have recently found pre-fried soy sauce marinated Chicken Feet in the freezer section of the Ang Mo Supermarket at Toa Payoh. This makes everything so easier! You just need to soak them in water to make them 'bloom' till they've basically doubled in size. This process is the same even if you fry them yourself. Then drain them and put them aside.

Fry off some garlic and star anise in a pot or pan large enough to hold all the chicken feet. Add oyster sauce, salted black beans (dried/canned/bottled), Chinese wine, chopped chilli, sugar, plum sauce, light and dark soy sauce and add enough water to cover the feet. Cook until the chicken feet are tender and until the sauce thickens. You can also thicken the sauce with corn flour slurry. Season with chicken powder and pepper and add a drizzle of sesame oil.

To get your chicken feet tender faster it's best to use a pressure cooker or thermos pot.

An interesting Wedding

Tonight we attended a rather messy wedding which turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Weddings can be very draggy, with guests waiting endlessly for the banquet to finish (I'm talking about the Chinese weddings here). But tonight I attended my first buffet style wedding in Singapore held at Changi Golf Club. The wedding venue is quite small, but romantic as it was by the beach. The wedding solemnisation and the party supposed to have been held outdoors but unfortunately the weather turned for the worse with rain pouring down. So the outside area had to be diverted to indoors, tho there was space available, there didn't seem to be any staff from the club available to help move everything indoors. So everything was really really messy. The wedding party had to be split up into two separate rooms. I guess it was just a little poor planning and poor implementation of any back up plans they had. It's times like this that I think the experience and services of a wedding planner would have been helpful. I could tell how upset the bride was and I really felt for her, to watch her wedding day get all messed up by the weather. The poor lass.

Having the dinner in buffet style meant that the guests could eat and leave early rather than having to wait for all the guests to arrive and wait for each course to be served. We were out of there by 7.30/8pm rather than the usual 11pm! And the funny thing was they didn't have a tea ceremony (it was hubby's relative), I guess maybe things were too messy and they decided to skip it.

There's one thing that irks me about weddings here. Guests here don't seem to bother getting all dressed up. Jeans and t-shirts can be seen or worse, cargo shorts! Eventho today's venue was a little bit more casual I think that it's still important for the guests to make a little effort to dress up. I think it's just a sign of respect to the couple. In Australia you'll see the men wear suits and the gals in nice outfits. In Jakarta the girls really dress up for weddings (sometimes going overboard till your guests resemble a fashion parade), the men will usually wear batik shirts. And you should see the bride's and groom's mothers, they're usually in evening gowns. Maybe in Singapore people just can't be bothered to dress up becoz it's too hot or maybe because they have to take public transport sometime making it a little uncomfortable to be dressed up.

Caelyn's Birthday Cake and Our 6th Wedding Anniversary

We bought a cake to this week's family dinner so that Caelyn could have her Happy Birthday song. She'd been singing Happy Birthday all week since she saw the video from her 1st birthday party so we thought it would only be fair for her to have her 'moment' and have us record it (every year hopefully). Her cake was rather yummy, chocolate with blueberry filling. It wasn't too sweet which was great for the littlies and the oldies...hehehe. On the downside her cousin got jealous and all through her birthday song video in the background you can hear him shouting nooo noooo nooooo. He has this thing where he thinks all birthday cakes are 'his'.


The 16th Dec, which was Caelyn's actual birthday, was also our 6th Wedding Anniversary. So we went off and had our own little celebration. We would've left her with the in laws, but unfortunately one of hubby's Uncles passed away so his parents were at the wake. Too bad, but here are the photos.

I really love the Sourdough Bread Bowl

Caelyn's Spaghetti frm the kids menu...it was lot! And cheap for only $6 at Swensens, came with child sized Orange Juice.

BBQ chicken wings...finger lickin good.

Thai Savoury Pork Ribs with Snake Beans

This recipe although requires a number of ingredients and a bit of prep work, is well worth it.

Serves 4-6

Ingredients:

• 675g Pork Spare ribs or Belly of Pork (Time saving tip: in the frozen pork section there is a pack of frozen pork labelled Sweet and Sour pork, basically it's pork with some fat on it that's been pre-cut. Use this, it's quite tasty and tender.) If you don't like pork, sub with chicken.
  
• 2 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup water
• 1 tbsp palm sugar
• 1 tbsp fish sauce
• 150g snake beans, or fine green or runner beans, cut into 5cm lengths
• 2 kaffir lime leaves, finely sliced
• 2 red chillies, finely sliced, to garnish.

For the Chilli Paste

• 3 dried red chillies, seeded and soaked
• 4 shallots, chopped
• 4 garlic cloves, chopped
  (For the above 3 ingredients, you could get away with bottled minced chilli that already has shallots and garlic in them. And then add a couple of extra fesh garlic/shallots if you wish)
• 1 tsp chopped galangal (if you cook a lot of thai food, keep some sliced galangal in the freezer, ready to use).
• 1 stalk lemon grass, chopped (lemon grass also freezes really well, I always have some in the freezer).
• 6 black peppercorns (just sub with ground black pepper)
• 1 tsp shrimp paste/belachan
• 2 tbsp dried shrimp, rinsed
  

1. Put all the ingredients for the chilli paste in a mortar and grind together with a pestle until it forms a thick paste.
2. Slice and chop the spare ribs (or belly pork) into 4cm lengths.
3. Heat the oil in a wok or frying pan. Add the pork and fry for about 5 minutes, until lightly browned.
4. Stir in the chilli paste and continue to cook for another 5 minutes, stirring constantly to stop the paste from sticking to the pan.
5. Add the water, cover and simmer for 7-10 minutes or until the spare ribs are tender. Season with palm sugar and fish sauce.
6. Mix in the snake beans and kaffir lime leaves and fry until the beans are cooked. Serve garnished with sliced red chillies.
   

Steamed Chinese Meatballs with Black Pepper Sauce (Bottom of the jar recipe)

This is a good way to incorporate fish into your family's diet if they're a bit picky or iffy on eating fish.

I basically get some skinless, boneless fillets of fish and either mince them by using a cleaver or mince using a food processor. Or you can even let them stay a bit chunky if you want. Combine with some minced pork and some minced garlic and season to taste. Add a dash of sesame oil. At this stage, with wet hands, you can shape the meat mixture into round balls. For variation I stuffed the balls with a small square of seafood stick and chopped shiitake mushrooms.

In a small bowl, combine some bottled black pepper sauce with some oyster sauce, tomato sauce, worcestershire sauce and water. This is my own concoction, of course you can just use the black pepper sauce on its own. But I only had a little bit of the black pepper sauce left, hence I call it my 'bottom of the jar recipe'. Pour the sauce over the meatballs and let steam for 20 minutes. If you're afraid your kid won't eat the black pepper sauce, you could steam the balls first then take one or two out for the child and pour over the sauce and steam till warmed through.