Step 1
Get one of those dory fillets you see in the hypermarket fridges.
Step 2
Slice them up.
Step 3
Slather the fish slices in batter.
Step 4
Chop up some onions.
Step 5
Fry the battered fish pieces and onions in olive oil. Add tomato ketchup to taste.
Step 6
You’re done! It’s an amazingly simple almost-instant dish. Heh.
I figured a pig’s tongue would be rather long, considering the size of the greedy animal, but I was still surprised by the sheer length of it. It prompted me to do the Gene Simmons pose – reckon this pig’s tongue beats his anytime. ;)
Well, since pig’s tongue is considered offal – it’s pretty cheap. I got it for RM 3.90 for the entire muscle. Tongue used to be a common food in England but they use ox tongue instead of our porcine friend. I don’t know how to cook it, but I figured I might as well give it a shot and see how it turns out.
I have worked with pig’s heart (both sliced in soup and with the entire organ in pasta), pig’s tail and even pig’s ears (which is quite delicious but missing from my archives due to a catastrophic category mishap). I’m not quite sure what to do with pig’s tongue but that’s never stopped me before. Heh!
I settled on slicing up the muscle into bite sized pieces after it has been defrosted. Give it a tongue lashing. Discipline it with your knife! It’s all muscle so I decided to marinate it first before stewing it.
You will need:
I mixed everything into the sliced pig’s tongue and gently massaged the condiments into it. I don’t know if it makes a difference, I just felt like doing it. This is left for about 2 hours before the cooking process started.
Stewing pig’s tongue is easy – you just need to dump the marinated muscle into a pan and cook it slowly on low heat. Whenever you see the gravy evaporating, just add more soy sauce. I left it for about an hour, turning it over once in a while. You can still see the papillae and taste buds of the pig on the tongue! Amazing!
The finished dish tasted rather good to be honest. It’s not as tender as I’ll like it to be, but I reckon that can be remedied by smashing it with a hammer (or using meat tenderizer). It has a nice texture to it – it’s yielding, but firm. The chewy stewed pig’s tongue goes very well with steamed rice.
…and besides, there’s just something about introducing another animal’s tongue to your own that’s very appealing in itself. :)
I bought this freakishly huge pomelo on a whim while grocery shopping last week. A friend of mine saw this in the produce section and said it looks larger than my head, which prompted the photo above. It really is larger than my head – by quite a fair bit. I have never seen such a gigantic pomelo before so I got it and its been sitting in the pantry ever since.
I am no stranger to pomelos – my maternal grandma had a pomelo tree in her yard and it seems that the damn things seem to fruit every single fucking day!
There will always be a bountiful harvest of pomelos, sliced and served on a plate whenever we went to visit. I hated fruits back then and I can’t say I’ve ever been a fan of pomelos since I was a kid. The bountiful harvest wasn’t to blame – my paternal grandma had a mango tree and I loved mangos. I still do.
The problem with pomelos is that it has a tart and bitter taste that didn’t agree very much with my youthful taste buds back then. I would eat it but not on its own.
…but why are we talking about pomelos anyway?
Well, coz the damn thing has been there for almost a week, taking up space and I’m looking for a recipe to use it in.
Bah Kut Teh Recipe #3: Bak kut teh soup with pig’s heart
A proper bak kut teh dish MUST have pork in it. It doesn’t matter what cut of pork (or offal) but the oink must be in the soup at some point.
This is the third and final installment of a three-step cooking process with my bak kut teh recipe. The first one is Chik kut teh with oily chicken rice and the second is the simple Bak kut teh ramen with drumstick and egg.
Here comes the final dish of the series (sorry for the delay) where the bak kut teh soup has been stewed through all those two recipes, absorbing all the tastes and flavors in the process. The soup is delicious. It’s orgasmic. It just needs:
A bleeding heart! *cue “We have a bleeder!”
Well, a pig’s heart anyway. These things are pretty cheap, you can get a whole pig’s heart for about RM 4. I’ve cooked with pig’s heart before and can attest to the taste and texture of this wonderful organ in the portfolio of porcine delights.
Start by slicing the pig heart into manageable pieces…
…before dumping it into the soup. There’s a lot of clotted blood inside the poor pink animal’s heart and you might want to remove that or just cook it as clotted blood. It really doesn’t make much of a difference as long as you wash it first. :)
Let the pig’s heart simmer for about 30 minutes and you’ll end your bak kut teh adventures on a high note. The broth is hearty and the pig’s heart is chewy and absorbs all the flavors, producing a delectable slice of <3.
Bah Kut Teh Recipe #2: Bak kut teh ramen with chicken drumstick and egg
This is the second meal that we usually have after a bak kut teh cooking session. Remember the first recipe of chik kut teh with oily chicken rice? You’ll still have a lot of leftover BKT soup after that so here’s a quick and easy meal for breakfast!
Take a chicken drumstick out of the fridge and dump it straight into the leftover soup. I didn’t defrost it so as you can see, the intense change from freezing cold to boiling hot warped the bone of the chicken. Heh! You just need to boil this on high heat for 3 minutes for the chicken to cook.
Next, transfer the cooked chicken drumstick and a bit of bak kut teh soup into a smaller cooking pan. I do this to avoid stray bits of noodles from going into the main BKT pot. Crack an egg into the new pan of soup for a more complete ramen meal. It’s probably wise to use low heat now if you like your eggs to be firm and yet have a runny yolk.
The final step is to open a packet of ramen and put the brick of instant noodles into the soup. The best thing about this is that the BKT soup is more than tasty enough to stand on its own and as a bonus, you have extra ramen flavor sachets which you can use in the future. I love eating 3 packets of instant noodles with 4 packets worth of flavor sachets. :D
Let it cook for about 3 minutes and you’ll have a healthier version of ramen – a hearty bak kut teh broth ramen with chicken drumsticks and an egg. You can also try adding crab sticks if you like your breakfast ramen with more condiments. It’s delicious! :)
Bah Kut Teh Recipe #1: Chicken bak kut teh with oily chicken rice
Bak kut teh or pork bone soup is a hearty herbal delight that’s very versatile and delicious. We’ve come across a routine that can make the same BKT soup last for 3 meals with three very different recipes. However, I hear you asking – Why chick kut teh?
Well, for one thing, pork is damn expensive in KL. It’s really cheap in Sarawak. However, the main reason is coz this is fast and easy to cook without compromising on taste!
I remember when I was a kid, there was this huge Nipah scare and everyone stopped consuming pork. Chik-kut-teh outlets practically sprouted like mushrooms overnight! There were even dedicated chick-kut-teh restaurants when people started saying that it tasted just as good as pork. However, they were all gone within a year and people went back to eating real pork bak kut teh when the outbreak was over. Heh!
Note that this recipe is still not halal since we found the BKT package in the non-halal section of the hypermarket.
You will need:
This was actually inspired by the photo on the BKT package. You can use any brand you like but we found that this is the best tasting one we’ve come across so far. Yew Chian Haw BKT mix can be located hanging beside the open meat refrigerated shelves in the non-halal section. The ingredients are fresh and the bak kut teh package has to be put in the fridge (crisper section) so it won’t go bad, unlike regular ones which can be stored at room temperature. It serves 4-6 people and that’s how we managed to extend this into three meals.
It’s the second time we’ve cooked this. Drumsticks are the best cut of chicken that you can use – BKT soup requires a bone based meat for flavor. The trick is in the marrow that leaches out after boiling. :)
First off, bring about 3 liters of water to boil and dump in the contents of the bak kut teh package. Put in two whole bulbs of garlic and add 2 heaped tablespoons of salt to the pot. The garlic tastes great when eaten like that. Unfortunately, we only had about 3/4 of a bulb left so we put in the cloves of garlic instead.
It’s important to note that you should not peel the garlic or it’ll disintegrate during the boiling process.
Let the soup boil for about an hour on high heat and turn off the stove. Add in the chicken drumsticks and continue to let it simmer for another half hour on low heat. You can put in as many chicken drumsticks as you want – we put in 5. I usually eat 3 drumsticks and my girlfriend eats two.
While all that is happening, prepare the oily chicken rice by dissolving an OXO chicken cube into some water and adding it to the rice. We use 1 chicken stock cube for every two cups of rice.
Pour about a teaspoon of oil into the rice and chicken stock mixture and turn on the rice cooker.
The garlic infused oil makes the rice taste richer and the bits of parsley lends a bit of much needed color into the entire shebang.
Scoop out the chicken drumsticks after the 1 1/2 hours of boiling is up and serve it with the oily chicken rice. You can chuck the BKT stock in the fridge for future use – it’s only going to get better each time as it absorbs the essence of each meal. :)
The garlic and parsley infused chicken rice goes very well with the piping hot chik kut teh. The drumsticks have absorbed the herbal notes of the BKT soup and it’s delicious! The meaty herbal soup complements the oily chicken rice and it’s great for those rare cold nights.
It’s a simple but rich treat that easy to make and delicious to boot!
Bulus is a fish that has become a staple in our kitchen. It’s commonly called silver whiting (sillago sihama) and it’s a wee little fish. The largest ones are not much bigger than a sausage. It’s easy to cook (always a plus point) but relatively expensive at RM 19.90 per kg.
Damn, I’m starting to sound domesticated aren’t I? Prices of fish indeed…
Anyway, I say relatively because there are a lot of other species of fish like catfish, kerisi, gelama etc which comes in under the RM 10 price point and this is double that. It comes up to about RM 1 per (small) fish. However, what bulus (silver whiting) has in its favor is that most of its weight is fish meat – there’s no large head or bones to take up excess weight.
The flesh of ikan bulus is also sweet and has an almost silky texture so it’s worth the price premium. :)
Silver whiting is best served marinated and deep fried with corn flour. It’s also wise to ask the hypermarket people to descale and gut the fish so you don’t have to do it yourself.
Our marinate sauce:
Light soy sauce
McCormick Season-All salt
Heinz brown sauce
Just marinate the bulus using the ingredients above (or change it depending on what you have in your kitchen cabinet) and sprinkle some finely chopped raw garlic on top. Leave this for about 30 minutes.
Anyway, have you noticed that all the garlic has disappeared in the photo below? No, we didn’t discard it, there’s a trick here that we use to make it taste better.
Stuff the raw chopped garlic into the (gutted) fish’s stomach right before you spoon the corn flour over the silver whiting. It’s a simple but neat touch that gives you a tasty surprise when you bite into it. :)
We use Brown & Polson corn flour (the ones that come in a rusty hued can) to coat the bulus. This is a product that goes back ages. I remember seeing cans of this in my grandma’s kitchen. Heh!
Slide the garlic stuffed fish into hot boiling oil and flip it once in a while. It only takes 3 minutes to cook due to the size and with that amount of cooking time, it’ll be crunchy enough to eat whole – bones, head and tail.
It’s delicious!
This is a recipe I remember eating a lot of during my first real relationship. My ex-girlfriend’s mother cooked this all the time and with a bit of effort I managed to replicate her recipe. I don’t eat a lot of vegetables but I like certain ones and this one is a hit. :)
Ladyfingers or okra is quite easy to work with – my parents usually just dunk it in hot water for a couple of minutes and eat it just like that. It’s very healthy.
However, this is a better tasting version that I picked up from an ex-girlfriend’s mom (who’s a great cook). It requires:
Lady’s fingers (okra)
Surimi (crab sticks)
Tomato sauce
Dark soy sauce
Brown sugar
What makes this slightly different is all in the sauce. This sauce is very delicious when used with lady’s fingers. You’ll want to mix tomato sauce and dark soy sauce in a 1:1 ratio. Pour another measure of brown sugar (2:1 to the existing sauce mix) on top to sweeten the entire thing.
Surimi is meant to be the “treasure” beneath the bed of ladyfingers. Put it into boiling water and take it out after a few seconds. Surimi (crab sticks) cooks really fast so get ready to fish it out when it floats to the top (to me this means that it’s cooked, I could be mistaken). ;)
Put the lady fingers into the boiling pot after that and wait for about 2 minutes. A spatula would be useful in speed cooking – just press the okra down into the hot water. Ladyfingers also doesn’t take long to cook – you want this to be slightly firm and crunchy on the outside.
While the ladyfingers are cooking, put a bit of hot water into the sauce mixture to melt the brown sugar. I just used the closest available one – straight from the pot. You just need a TINY (a bit of an oxymoron to use caps to emphasize moderation) amount so just sprinkle a little from the spatula you use for the lady fingers.
Take the lady fingers out, chop off the head, and slice it vertically using a very sharp knife – two slices down each one is optimal but if you come across a particularly small finger, just once slice would do. This releases the Gooey Stuff (TM) that’s so good about okra.
Just arrange the sliced lady fingers on top of the bed of surimi and pour the sauce over it. It’s now ready to eat! :D
This dish cools really fast so it’s best if you cook it last.
Serve immediately and savor the texture and tastes of the messy goo mixed with sauce and surimi and the occasional crunch of lady’s fingers. :)
ABC soup is basically a soup where you dunk in everything that’s available to make a clear broth soup. The traditional (if such a word can be used to describe this) method calls for:
An onion (whole)
Carrots
Potatoes
Tomatoes
I used to think that ABC soup is called that because it’s easy as 1-2-3 (or ABC) but I’ve been thinking about this old folk tale about the stone soup story. There are variants of this story but the one I heard is about this traveller who comes into a village hungry with nothing but a pot.
He asks the villagers for some ingredients to put into the soup but no one wanted to part with anything. He then announces that he’s got a “magical stone” that makes wonderful soup and proceeds to fill the pot with water and puts the stone inside. So, he’s sitting there, stirring what amounts to nothing but water when a curious villager comes over and asks if it’s done.
The traveller says not yet, but it would help if someone had carrots to put in it. Enhances the flavor, the dude casually mentions. The villager grudgingly says that he might have some carrots at home and adds it to the hot water. This became a cascading effect as the villagers watched the traveller cook his soup – each one started contributing their own stuff – a bit of meat, some onions, tomatoes etc and lo and behold – it was the best soup they’ve ever tasted.
There’s a moral in there somewhere but that’s not why I’m writing this post. Heh! ABC soup has become something of a staple in our cooking since it’s quite versatile and very easy to cook. You basically need onions (sliced in half), carrots (diced), potatoes (whole if you use the tiny ones) and tomatoes (sliced in half).
Just use to golden rule:
PEEL the stuff that needs peeling
SLICE the stuff that needs slicing
DICE the stuff that needs dicing
You bring a pot of water to boil, add some salt to taste and dunk everything in. Allow this to simmer for 30 minutes or so and it’s ready to eat!
The best thing about this is that even if you can’t finish it you can still eat (we use more ingredients than soup) it in the middle of the night. There’s this thermos like thing (except it’s much bigger) that we use to keep it warm.
I can just scoop some out and eat it at 3 am in the morning if I’m hungry. ABC soup is easy to cook and infinitely customizable – we’ve put leftover minced meat inside too, it goes very well with just about anything. It’s really healthy compared to the other stuff I eat too. :)
a.k.a. Drooling Smiley Face Kiwi Fruit Rice with Fish Roe and Pork
My girlfriend bought a lot of Kiwi fruit weeks ago – there were 8 of these French green kiwifruits and she’s eaten only one during all that time. I’m not a fan of fruits in general so it remained uneaten for several days.
I noticed the furry little things in the fridge during the weekend and thought it’ll be a waste to let it rot. I decided to remedy that by cooking something that sounded good – Kiwi fruit rice! :)
It was the perfect solution!
You will need:
Kiwi fruits
Yoghurt
Fish roe
Kwe Hua meat
Century eggs
Rice
Yes, this is another variant of my preserved meat meals. Heh! However, I decided on going for presentation this time – I’ll make a smiley face out of this sweet and savory meal!
I’ll like to call this Drooling Smiley Face Kiwi Fruit Rice with Fish Roe and Pork. I’ll explain the “drooling” part later. :)
I used 3 kiwi fruits and sliced it into circles.
That was a mistake. I should have peeled it before doing so coz it became rather hard to remove the skin after slicing.
Told you I wasn’t good with fruits. >.<
Anyway, I mixed 2 cups of rice with 3 kiwi fruits, one lonely fish roe and a piece of waxed meat before turning the rice cooker on.
That’s the beauty of this – there’s no additional cooking needed, everything is done by the rice cooker. :)
It was ready after 10 minutes. I originally made it to look sorta like a face but then I realized I could make it look MORE like a face by arranging the fish roe as the “nose” and the waxed meat as the “mouth”. That leaves the “eyes” – century eggs. :D
The finishing touch was some fresh yoghurt – this is the plain unflavored ones, don’t use the flavored ones, it’ll ruin the taste of the dish.
I dabbed a generous portion on the waxed meat “mouth” to look like it was drooling. Food is all about presentation as well. ;)
I took a tentative scoop of rice…
…and was amazed. The fruity citrus tang of the Kiwi combined with the sour yoghurt and rice tastes exceptionally delicious! It’s very refreshing! It’s tastes like…a beach holiday with the warm sun on your back and the cool breeze from the sea coming in.
It tasted like what an oasis would seem to someone wondering in a desert for 2 days without water.
The waxed meat and fish roe provides a savory twist to it. I ate one mouthful of the kiwi + yoghurt + rice and alternated it with waxed meat + fish roe + century egg + rice.
It’s like having a main and a dessert in one dish!
It is surprisingly good, I kid you not! Let your adventurous palate roam with this unique dish and check it out for yourself.
You can also forgo the meat and just cook Kiwi fruit rice and pair it with yoghurt for a dessert dish – I’m sure it’ll taste equally good. :)
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