House of Annie

Mingling Sweet and Savory

The key to this dish is to intermingling of savory flavors with sweet creamy flavors. This dish is reminiscent of the Malay style of cooking with loads of coconut milk (masak lemak) but instead of coconut milk, Jessie has substituted evaporated milk instead.

Evaporated Milk

And the highlight of the dish is the fried curry leaves. If you’ve never had fried curry leaves, you’ve missed out my friend. There is nothing like it.

Fried sage can’t hold a candle to fried curry leaves. The aroma, pungency and savory factor of the leaves makes it one addictive eats! You need to get yourself to an Indian grocery store and find some fresh ones if you can because they are totally worth it. And in this dish, it is the star!

The other aromatics help of course—chopped garlic, minced shallots, and some small bird’s eye chillies. All these ingredients pack a wallop and make for an enticing dish that keeps you coming back for seconds and thirds and…you get the picture!

Curry Leaves, Shallots, Garlic and Chillies

Recipe for Fried Pork with Evaporated Milk

Ingredients:
1 lb pork riblets or pork belly, cut into chunks
2 Tbsp tapioca starch (or cornstarch will work too)
1 tsp salt
dash of pepper
enough oil to shallow fry the pork riblets

For sauce:
3-4 shallots, minced
3-4 garlic cloves, minced
3-5 bird’s eye chilli pepper, diced small (number is up to you depending on how much spice you can handle but you must have at least a few)
a large handful of curry leaves (about 5-6 thick stalks)

half a can of evaporated milk, about 1 cup
1 Tbsp sugar
1 tsp chicken bouillon (or to taste)

Method:
1. Mix pork riblets or pork belly with the tapioca starch, salt and pepper and allow to sit for about half an hour to an hour.

Pork Riblets Marinating

2. Heat up oil in a wok and fry the riblets until golden brown on all sides, about 4-5 mins per side.

3. Once pork is thoroughly cooked through, remove from oil.
4. Remove all but 3 Tbsp of oil from wok.
5. Throw in the shallots, garlic, chillies, and curry leaves into the hot oil and stirfry till the curry leaves start to smell really fragrant and become slightly crispy. Make sure that you don’t burn the garlic and shallots.

6. Return pork to the wok along with the above ingredients. Cook pork a little longer (if fish, this part if not necessary but because it is pork, you want to meat to get a little bit more tender).

7. After about 10-15 mins, pour in the evaporated milk, followed by the sugar and chicken bouillon.

8. Let the whole dish simmer for a little while in this sauce (if needed, you could add a bit of water). Adjust seasoning—it should be savory with touches of sweetness and spicyness.
9. Plate up and eat with plenty of rice. Yum!

Fried Pork with Evaporated Milk

Try this dish and I guarantee you will love the combination of flavors. If you have a nice white fish (like dory), you could replace the pork for fish (except that the batter for the fish is slightly different and you don’t put the fried fish back into the sauce—you just pour it onto the cooked fish).

Enjoy!

Cheers, Annie

Since these curry leaves came from our neighbor’s tree, I am entering this in the Grow Your Own recipe roundup this month, hosted by Andrea of Andrea’s Recipes.

Leeks, Thai Basil, Green onions and Chillies

I always keep some some sliced pork in the freezer that I had divided up for days just like these when I am in a hurry but wanting to make a stirfry quickly. I would get some tenderloin or country style pork ribs and slice up the meat into thin slices. Then put them into quart-sized ziplock bags and lay them out as flat as possible. Then freeze them. Don’t forget to label them—meat somehow takes on an undistinguishable character when it freezes (is this pork? chicken? beef?—yeah, I’ve been there!). Once you have them frozen in this way, it is so easy to take them out to defrost. The thin flat layer makes it a quick defrost when you’re in a hurry.

Marinating Sliced Pork

Armed with my leftovers and meat, I was set to go. I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to season it but I decided to just let my instincts take over. And it worked really well. The soy-based sauce complemented the basil and leeks very well and made it somewhat Malaysian. The fish sauce, Thai basil and chilli gave it a Thai flavor. I guess you could call this a Thai-Malaysian fusion dish! (If the fusion is both Asian, would you still call it fusion? Hmmm…somewhat confusing eh? ^_^)

Confusing terms maybe, but the flavors were spot on. The leeks were just wonderful with the pork. And the Thai basil gave it a nice licorice-y sweet flavor. Somehow, they all played so nicely together even though in the beginning I worried that I would have too many competing flavor.

Pork with Leeks and Thai Basil Recipe

Ingredients:

1lb pork, sliced
2 leeks, sliced thin
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup Thai basil leaf
1/2 bunch green onion, chopped
1 red chilli, sliced
1-2 Tbsp vegetable oil

Marinade:

2-3 Tbsp soy sauce
2 Tbsp dark soy sauce
1 Tbsp sugar
1 Tbsp fish sauce
1/2 Tbsp oyster sauce
1 tsp white pepper
1 tsp salt

Method:

1. Season the pork with the marinade ingredients and leave to marinate for 30 minutes.
2. While pork is marinating, prep the rest of the ingredients: chop the garlic, slice the leeks, chop the green onions, slice the red chilli, and remove the leaves of the Thai basil from its stem.
3. Heat wok over high heat and put in the vegetable oil. Throw in garlic and leeks and stirfry, making sure to keep tossing them around so as not to burn them. Continue to stirfry till leeks are slightly wilted.

Stir-frying Leeks

4. Add pork, along with all the marinade and toss around for about 5-8 minutes until pork has cooked through.
5. Lower heat to medium, add the Thai basil, green onions and chilli and toss to mix.
6. Taste and adjust flavors—the dish should be distinctly salty-savory with a hint of sweet, smoky, caramel notes from the thick soy sauce and sugar.

Dish out and enjoy over rice.

Pork with Leeks and Basil

So next time you find yourself looking in your fridge and you have a host of different herbs inside looking to be used up, be adventurous and put them together in a stirfry. You just never know what new flavors you might unearth as you play with your food.

In the meantime, you can of course, always intentionally get all these ingredients and try out my dish to see if it works for you the way it did for me.

Enjoy!

Cheers, Annie

How’d it Get So Tender?

Oh, during the dinner, Nate and I had a discussion about how they had gotten the pork so tender and the beans so creamy. We ended up pondering double-boiled soups, pressure cooker cooking and slow cooker cooking. All of which I could not do as I didn’t have any of these items at home. Oh well…

I started the soup in the late morning as I wanted to make sure that I gave the soup plenty of time to simmer to get optimum flavor. I did my usual parboiling of the bones and tossing out water from the first boil. Then I started the bones again with new water.

Once that came to a boil, I put in my presoaked black beans and lotus roots along with some red dates. As soon as they all came to a boil, I turned the soup down to low and let it simmer for more than 4 hours.

How do I Get it So Tender?

After that time, I must say, my beans did not soften and get creamy the way the restaurant’s did. It wasn’t hard but it wasn’t creamy. I even made sure not to add any salt until the end as I had learned that beans don’t soften up when you add salt while cooking it. But somehow, the beans still had some bite to it. I couldn’t wait too much longer so I seasoned my soup and a little later served it for dinner.

Esther still drank up the soup and ate the beans but she told me, “mommy, the beans are not as good as the one we had yesterday, but I still ate it!” I guess that is not the worst criticism to get. Overall, I managed to achieve the same flavors in the soup as the restaurant but I didn’t manage to get the tenderness in the meat or the beans. If you know how I could have done this without using a pressure cooker or crockpot or double boiler, would you leave a comment and let me know?

Pork Lotus Root and Black Bean Soup Recipe

Ingredients:
500g pork bones (usually the neck bones are good to use, or rib bones are also good)
8 cups water
10 red dates, washed and rehydrated
4-5 tubular pieces of lotus root (choose the ones that look least bruised and discolored), joints cut off and sliced 1/4 inch thick)

Sliced Lotus Root

1/2 cup dried black beans or peanuts, soaked for several hours before use (at least 2-3 hours)

Dried and Soaked Black Beans

salt to taste
dash of fish sauce
pinch of chicken bouillon

Method:
1. After parboiling pork bones and tossing out water from first boil, rinse bones and boil again in 8 cups water.
2. Once water comes to a boil, add red dates, black beans and lotus roots. Let stock come to a boil again and then set the fire to low and let simmer, covered for 4-5 hours.

3. Once the pork bones, beans and lotus roots are tender, add seasonings—about 2 tsp salt, 1 tsp fish sauce and a pinch of chicken bouillon (or to taste). Stir and simmer to incorporate flavors. Taste and adjust seasonings accordingly.
4. Serve and enjoy!

Cheers, Annie

This recipe using lotus root was entered into the Weekend Herb Blogging recipe roundup, organized by Haalo of Cook Almost Anything and hosted this week by Lynn from Cafe Lynnylu.

The Thai Orchestra

I first got to know about larb when I lived in Hawaii and a group of Thai students arrived at my International dorm to stay for one semester. They cooked Thai food everyday and they were so generous in sharing all they made. I never ate as much Thai food as I did that one semester. As a matter of fact, I ate so much Thai salads and other dishes that I ended up developing a sore in my mouth from all the lemon juice they used in their cooking! The pain was totally worth it!

Whenever I make this dish now, I always think of my Thai friends fondly. They showed me that Thai food was an orchestra of different yet complementary flavors that would make beautiful melody in your mouth. You’d think they would be complicated but most of their recipes were simple and a matter of taste—a little bit of this and then that, taste, and add more to get the right balance. And here’s the wonderful thing about larb—it invites improvisation.

That semester, my friends made larb numerous times using ground pork, ground chicken, fish paste, and even cut up hotdogs. The herbs and vegetables that went in it also depended on what was available—cilantro, mint, Thai basil, sawtooth leaf, green onions, tomatoes, red chillies, and shallots. Use all or some of them as you wish or have on hand, with the only one that I find most necessary being the shallots.

Crunch Time

As a final touch, add a dusting of roasted rice powder for that nice crunchy mouth feel. I didn’t know where to buy roasted rice powder here in Kuching. In San Jose, I would normally just pick up a pack from the Asian grocery store. But it’s really easy to make it yourself. All you need is some raw rice that you roast in a dry, hot wok until the rice is nicely browned. Cool it down and then grind it with a spice grinder or in a mortar and pestle until you have fine granules of rice. Any extras can be kept for the next time you need it.

Once assembled, you just need a host of raw vegetables to act as the conduit for the larb. These vegetables are the counterpoint for larb’s yumminess. Usually, I like to use sliced cucumbers or iceberg lettuce cups to hold my larb as their refreshing crunch goes perfectly with the full-flavored larb. Other good options include green cabbage, French endive and bell peppers.

Thai Larb Recipe

Ingredients:
1 lb ground pork (or ground chicken, fish paste, or sliced hotdogs)
1 Tbsp vegetable oil (or you could even get away with just using a little water)
1 Tbsp fish sauce (we like the Three Crabs brand)
4-5 shallots, sliced thin
2 Tbsp roasted rice powder

Use a combination of 3 or 4 of the following herbs (or all if you so desire, just adjust amount if using all):
1/2 cup Thai basil, sliced
1/2 cup cilantro, sliced
1/3 cup green onions, sliced
1/3 cup sawtooth leaf herb, sliced
1/2 cup mint leaves, sliced
1/3 cup cherry tomatoes, quartered (about 8-10 cherry tomatoes)
1-2 (or more) Thai bird’s eye chillies, sliced thin (or black pepper if you can’t take the heat of the chillies)

For the sauce:
Juice from one lemon
2-3 Tbsp fish sauce
2-3 Tbsp sugar (or Thai palm sugar, or a sugar substitute which is what I use)

Method:
1. Heat up wok over medium heat and add vegetable oil (or water). Add ground pork and 1 Tbsp fish sauce and stir around till it is broken up and cooked through. Remove and cool.

2. Chop up your herbs and shallots. Add them to the cooked pork.

3. Add sauce ingredients. Taste and adjust seasonings. The larb should have a balance of salty, sour, sweet and spicy. Adjust to your own liking. Some prefer it sweeter, others more sour or salty.

4. Finish by mixing in the roasted rice powder.
5. Serve along with raw vegetables like sliced cucumber, iceberg lettuce, green cabbage, French endives, and/or bell peppers.

Enjoy!

Cheers, Annie

Since this recipe uses shallots, I am entering this post in this week’s Weekend Herb Blogging roundup, hosted by Haalo from Cook Almost Anything.

As I adjust to work, I don’t really know what will happen with my cooking. I know that I will still cook. I just don’t know if I can do elaborate meals quite as often.

More Quick Dishes

What this will mean is that you will see me posting more dishes that are quick to prepare. So for you working moms out there, this should come in pretty handy. Case in point—we had spaghetti tonight for dinner—it was fast and delicious and I made enough that Nate and I will both have it for lunch tomorrow.

What made this easy was that I had made a large batch of my breakfast sausage a week ago and frozen them in small patties (besides using them at breakfast, they are wonderful for spaghetti!). This morning, before work, I took four patties out and left them to thaw in the fridge. I also took out some dried shiitake mushrooms, rinsed them, and then left them to rehydrate in the fridge.

When I came home, I just needed to boil some water, chop some onions and garlic and open a can of whole tomatoes. Everything else was pretty much ready—follow my instructions on easy pasta and voila! Dinner on the table in 30 minutes.

Then just now (which is about an hour after dinner), I’m actually cooking pork adobo which is a stew that does take some time for tomorrow’s dinner (I will post a recipe for this soon). Who says you can’t cook and hold a full-time job?

It’s all in the planning. I really don’t want to give in to take-out all the time so I’ve decided that I’m going to have to try to plan my meals better. Once the adobo is done, all I’ll need to do tomorrow will be a quick stir-fry vegetable and rice and again, dinner will be served.

Now, this really has nothing to do with this post’s recipe. I just had to get that off my chest as I haven’t written in a while and I wanted to let you, my readers, know that I haven’t disappeared off the face of the earth. I’ve just been trying to get settled in (what with Chinese New Year, then my birthday and now starting work, I’ve been quite overwhelmed!).

An Inspired Riff

So now that you understand the silence, I wanted to share this recipe. It’s a riff off a fried chicken recipe that we tried over Christmas at a friend’s house. My friend’s husband had marinated some chicken and then fried them up. We just could not get enough of it. It was so delicious!

Of course, typical of most Malaysian cooks, he just threw things together without measuring. But he did tell me what went into his marinate—salt, a bit of sugar, tumeric powder, ginger juice, shallots, and curry leaves. I have been determined to try it since then.

One day when I had some pork tenderloin to cook up, I remembered his fried chicken and used his ingredients as an inspiration to create this stir-fried pork dish. What I did was I marinated the pork slices with salt, sugar and tumeric powder. Then I sliced up some ginger into really thin slices and fried them till they were crispy. I removed them from the oil and set aside.

In the same oil, I added sliced shallots and sauteed them, threw in some curry leaves and then the marinated pork along with one sliced tomato (just a last minute addition that I thought would give more flavor). Stir-fried everything till the pork was cooked through, then plated up and garnished with the fried ginger.

Spiced Pork with Fried Ginger and Curry Leaves

Ingredients:
1 lb pork tenderloin, sliced thin
1 1/2 tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp sugar
1 tsp tumeric powder
2 inches ginger knob, skinned, then sliced and julienned thin
3-4 shallots, halved and sliced thin
1 medium tomato, halved and sliced thin
1-2 sprigs fresh curry leaves, stem removed
2-3 Tbsp vegetable oil

Method:
1. Marinate pork slices with salt, sugar and tumeric powder for about thirty minutes.

2. Heat up wok and add vegetable oil. Fry the ginger till brown and crispy over medium heat. Remove ginger from oil and set aside.

3. In the same oil that has been infused with the ginger, add shallots and saute till translucent and just beginning to take on some color.
4. Add curry leaves and saute for another 30 seconds to a minute.
5. Add in pork and saute over med-high heat till pork is just turning opaque.
6. Add tomatoes and continue to toss till pork is cooked and tomatoes have started to exude their juices, another 2-3 minutes. Taste and adjust seasoning.

7. Plate up and garnish with fried ginger.

Enjoy over rice!

This pork dish turned out really tasty (of course fried chicken is ALWAYS tastier—my major weakness!) and the addition of curry leaves, ginger and tumeric powder gave it a savory spiciness that was reminiscent of Indian flavors. We all enjoyed it very much and it didn’t oil up my house too much at all.

It’s a nice and semi-quick meal that the whole family can enjoy! The slicing and frying of the ginger being the only humbug thing—which I bet could be easily adapted by just grating the ginger into the marinate. I still have to try to make the fried chicken but in the meantime, give this recipe a shot.

Cheers, Annie

Since the curry leaves came from our neighbor’s tree, I am entering this post in the February “Grow Your Own” roundup.

Us with our Indonesian friends at Kapiolani Park

(thanks for scanning the pic, Nina!)

Before that time, I’ve only ever had Malaysian satay and I will tell you now that to me, Malaysian satay is the best in the world. But it’s hard to make—there are tons of spices to grind and the ingredients list are a mile long. I only reserve making those on really special occasions (or now that I’m home, I just leave it to others to make for me). Indonesian satay, on the other hand, is much easier to prep and the flavor is really good but different.

The main difference is that Indonesian satay calls for Kecap Manis (“Ket-chup Ma-niss”). And not just a little bit of it, it calls for a huge amount of it. Let’s just say that if you wanted to know what Indonesian satay tasted like—it basically tastes like kecap manis with some spices thrown in. And this is not a bad thing—kecap manis is seriously addictive stuff. If you’ve never tried it, you need to go get yourself some from your Asian grocery store (I recommend the ABC brand) and be careful that you don’t end up guzzling it once you get a taste of it.

Falling in Love All Over Again

Coming back to this beach grill outing—we were all sitting around and my friends, Nina and Joe and some of their other Indonesian friends were grilling the satay sticks and next thing you know, they were done and we were handed some. I took a bite and fell in love. It was so delicious, so sweet yet slightly spicy—like a jazzed up chicken yakitori (something else that is heavily soy-sauce and sugar based!) with a peanut sauce that was also drenched in kecap manis, bird’s eye chillies and lime juice (both Nate and I could not stop eating—thankfully they had made enough for us pigs!).

Unfortunately for me, I totally spazzed on getting the recipe from Nina and Joe. The fortunate thing is that we got to eat them several more times while in Hawaii. But once we left Hawaii, I didn’t think about it too much and I certainly didn’t think to make them myself. And after several years, I had completely forgotten about these Indonesian satays. Then, just recently, while reading Rasa Malaysia’s blog, I saw them there. She had a guest blogger (Rita from Mochachocolata-Rita blog) who posted the recipe for Indonesian Sate. Those memories just came flooding right back and my need for them was suddenly quite desperate.

So, I set about getting all the ingredients. First, I bought some kecap manis (thankfully, after checking out a few stores, I found the one selling the right brand!). Then I got the chicken, the bamboo skewers, and the chillies. Everything else I had at home. I was good to go!

ABC Brand Kicap Manis

I ended up making both chicken and pork satays. I had a bag of pork meat sitting in my freezer that was perfect for this so I decided to try it. And after the grilling was done, Nate and I ate much too many sticks for just our small family (these were not Indonesian sized sticks, they were almost double the size!). I must say, they were not as good as what I recall from my memory of it but then again, this was not eating at a park by the beach in balmy Hawaii! But Nate pronounced them delicious and ate more than 12 sticks to prove his point! We were rolling off the table by the time we were done!

Have a try—it’s really quite simple to do and addictive to eat.

Indonesian Chicken and Pork Satay Recipe

adapted from Rasa Malaysia ala MochaChocolata-Rita
(makes about 40-50 sticks depending on how much meat you stick on them)

Ingredients:
50 bamboo skewers (be sure to soak your skewers for several hours before using so that when you grill them, they won’t burn)
500g chicken meat cut into bite-size pieces (I think I had about a lb or more worth of chicken—750g?)—dark meat preferable
500g pork meat cut into bite-sized pieces (it’s better to get pork that has some fat in it)

Marinade ingredients:
3 cloves garlic, minced fine
2-3 shallots, thinly sliced
2 red chillies, chopped (optional)
1 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp ground white pepper
2 tsp ground coriander seeds
2 tsp ground nutmeg
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp vegetable oil
1 tsp salt
2 Tbsp soy sauce
loads and loads of Kecap Manis (I’d say between 1/3-1/2 cup or maybe even more!)

Pouring Kicap Manis Over Marinade Ingredients

Basting ingredients:
1/4 cup kecap manis
1 tsp fish sauce
1 shallot, thinly sliced
juice from 1 calamansi (or 1/2 lime)
1 lemongrass pounded on the end to use as basting brush

Dipping sauce:
1 cup chunky peanut butter (or you could use ground up roasted peanuts)
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup palm sugar (about 1/3 of a block), chopped
1 clove garlic
2 shallots
1 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp ground coriander seeds
salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp vegetable oil (peanut oil would be great!)
1 tsp fish sauce
as many bird’s eye chillies as you can handle, chopped
1/4 cup kecap manis, or more
3-4 calamansi juice or juice from 1 large lime

Method:
1. Marinate your meats in the marinade ingredients. If you’re worried that you won’t be able to tell which is chicken and which is pork, just separate into two bowls and pour marinade over both to cover.

Chicken in Indonesian Satay Marinade

Indonesian Chicken and Pork Satay Skewers

4. Once satay sticks are ready, prepare your grill. (Nate says: I used the bottom bowl and charcoal ring of my WSM, lit off some charcoal, and spread it out in an even layer.)
5. Prepare the basting ingredients and set your satay sticks on the grill. Baste with the basting sauce. (Nate says: the coals were so hot, the satay only needed to cook a few minutes per side before flipping. Next time, don’t use so much charcoal!)

Grilling Indonesian Chicken and Pork Satay

6. For the dipping sauce: blend together first 9 ingredients (or if you’re like me, just pound them in a mortar) and transfer to a small pot. Set to boil and then simmer to incorporate all the flavors. Add chillies, kecap manis and calamansi or lime juice. Stir and taste. Adjust if necessary.

Once your satay meat is done, serve with the dipping sauce. Eat and repeat. Try to stop if you can.

Indonesian Chicken and Pork Satay

Enjoy! Enjoy even more if you’re doing this by the beach in Hawaii ;-)

Cheers, Annie

What’s *your* favorite beach food memory? Leave us a comment and share your stories!

Hungry for more grilled food? Click below:

"Huli Chicken" recipe

Foodbuzz 24, 24, 24: Ultimate Rib Showdown, Part 1

Grilled Ribeyes on the WSM

Malaysian Chicken Wings: Two Ways

Killer Kalbi Recipe