Hong Kong Soya Sauce Fried Noodles - 豉油王炒面

One of the dishes which I simply cannot resist when I am in Hong Kong, is a good plate of the plain, simple Soya Sauce Fried Noodles. Totally simplistic in its make up and yet so flavourful and satisfying. This is somewhat similar to our morning breakfast favourite, the economy Fried Beehoon/ Fried Noodles. These are commonly fried in big herd-feeding batches with just soya sauce and a little bean sprouts and are usually sold in a good fulfilling portion for a humble 80 cents to a dollar - hence the word Economy. We have since then turned affluent and started to add a myriad of side dishes (the likes of fried egg, Luncheon meat, chicken wings, curry vegetables etc...)  to make this into quite a yummilicious  feast. However, as delicious as the Economy Fried Noodles could be, one will never find it on the menu of a Chinese restaurant. The Hong Kong Soya Sauce Fried noodle, however, often comfortably shares a place in the menu with fancy dim sums and gourmet abalones...

The critical component to a great Soya Sauce Fried Noodles is a good soya sauce. A premium grade soya sauce lends nuances of delicate flavour and fragrance to the dish which instantly elevates this otherwise simple, no frills dish to its classic, evergreen status.
After the soya sauce, the choice of noodle would understandably be another important component for this dish. Dried egg noodles are usually quickly blanched in hot water to soften the noodles before they are fried to a dry, glossy consistency. The other accompaniments cooked together with the noodles are as humble as they come - bean sprouts and a little Chinese Chives are the staple fare. Sprinkle on a handful of toasted sesame seeds and this proudly becomes restaurant worthy. Enjoy!


Recipe :
Dried Egg Noodle               200g (blanched quickly in hot water to soften. Drain and set aside)
Premium light soya sauce     2 tbsp (生抽王）
Premium dark soya sauce    1 tbsp (老抽王）
Oyster sauce                       1/2 tbsp
Sugar                                  1/8 tsp
Pepper                                Generous dash

Bean sprouts                       1 loose cup
Chinese Chives                    1/2 loose cup ( I didn't have this with me so I omitted this)
Toasted Seseame seeds       Generous sprinkle.

Method :
1. Heat 1 tbsp of oil in a heated wok.
2. Add bean sprouts and fry for 1 minute over medium heat. Add softened noodles and fry for 1/2 minute over high heat.
3. Add all seasoning and continue to fry noodles over high heat for about 2-3 minutes.
4. Add in Chinese chives and fry for another 1/2 minute. Sprinkle on toasted sesame seeds and dish out. Serve with chilli sauce.

Lotus Seed Paste Pau - 莲蓉包

I shall officially admit that the yeasted species have bewitched me. First the sweet soft buns and now, the snowy white chinese steamed buns aka Paus.  I have been making paus everyday over the long weekend here and have been enjoying every minute of it. It helps when the friends and family to whom these were distributed gave positive feedback. I am happy to have a chance to work on  this again as it is rare nowadays that I  get to repeat the same recipe. The best way to hone and improve is really to practice - there is absolutely no other ways around it.

The versatile Pau recipe makes this alot easier as there are many different types of filling that one can vary to retain it's allure.

Today, I take the easy way out by wrapping it with White Lotus Paste. Easy because, this is readily available at this time of the year when Mooncake Festival is just round the corner. Almost all bakery ingredient outlets now carry a variety of lotus paste. I got mine from Kwong Cheong Thye - a low sugar version from Hong Kong that is fragrant and smooth.


Make these small enough and you may find yourself devouring one bun after another like me. I like my Paus bulging with filling. I used to feel very cheated when the commercially available versions stinge on the quantity of the filling. Now that I am making these myself, I am beginning to think that apart from the reason for cost stinging,  poor pau making technique may have something to do with the pithy dollop of filling. To pile on the filling in the buns, the dough needs to be rolled out carefully such that the center is thicker and the peripheral rim thinner. Failure to do this, would usually have the filling burst through the thin dough when it is being steamed.

With enough practice, I am now able to pile on more filling than dough for this lotus paste bun. So fulfilling, so generous and oh so satisfying!
So what Pau should I attempt next?

P.S. : In case you are wondering about the sear mark on the buns... I stamp these with the searing iron I bought a few years back in Japan... curiosity got the better of me then and it has been sitting in my kitchen drawer ever since... :)


Recipe :
Dough Recipe found here

Filling : ready made lotus paste.

Method :
Please refer to here.
Size of dough for each bun is 19g. Weight of lotus paste portion for each bun is 22g.

Chinese Chicken Pau - Following The Heritage Trail

When I started blogging about 2 years ago, someone left a nice message for me in my comment column. An outstanding baker, this lady had commented how happy she was to see a fellow Singaporean blogger bake French pastry when most of the time, the local food blogging scene are only limited to chiffon cakes, brownies, muffins....  I felt flattered by the comments but at the same time, an uneasiness had also set in. As much as I enjoy experimenting with macarons, madeleines and cupcakes, I also know that these have never been part of my core heritage. I grew up in a humble Asian household where we ate more kuehs than pastries.

It would be sad if our generation and the younger generations that follow would only know how to bake macarons and cupcakes. That is why I was really thrilled when I was able to get a place in Valerie Kong's Pau Class at Shermay's Cooking School. A hands-on class, we got to prepare our own Pau dough from scratch and we also learnt how to roll and pleat the dough - a skill I had desperately wanted to acquire and improve. Valerie's simple and clear instructions was easy to follow and quite a few of us were suprised that we were able to get the hang of it pretty quickly.


Emboldened by the session, I decided to compare the different Pau recipes I have in my cookbook library. This dough recipe that I am sharing here is not Valerie's recipe. This is a Mantou recipe that I found in a Hong Kong Dim Sum cookbook. The amount of yeast and baking powder for this recipe is much lower than Valeries' and I was intrigued by the addition of milk to the dough. What was missing from the cookbook was clear instructions. So the newly acquired knowledge at the hands-on Pau class was really valuable. I am very very pleased with this recipe - an easy dough to handle, the buns turn out very soft and fluffy.  I had used Valerie's Chicken filling for this exercise so I will not publish the recipe here. However, with a dough like this, one can easily wrap it with one's favourite filling - be it sweet or savoury.

I would be proud to present these Pau to family and friends. I know that many will be pleased for these are flavours and food that we have grown up with.

P.S. : If you are interested to learn about Pau making, look out for Valerie's  classes at Shermay's. I heard that all the Pau classes are now full so the earliest that these will be repeated would most likely be next year. So you may want to enquire with the school.

P.S. : I am also hoping that this would qualify for Edith's Heritage Food Trail event. Somewhat unorthodox as it does not really celebrate my Hainanese heritage in particular but I do hope you can join in the fun at Edith's.


Dough Recipe : (from Dim Sum in Hong Kong)

Hong Kong Flour            150g
Dry Yeast                         2g
Baking powder                 2g
Sugar                                28g
Milk                                  75g
Shortening (crisco)           2g (or lard)

Method :

1. Place all ingredients into a mixer and blend until smooth at low speed.
2. Ferment for 10mins at room temperature.
3. Blend in mixer again for 5 mins.
4. Divide the dough into pieces of 19g each. Roll out to form a round wrapping of about 2 inches in diameter.
5. Place filling in the center of the wrapping and pleat the edge to seal the bun with a round top.
6. Proof Pau at room temperature for 45 mins.
7. Steam Pau over boiling water for 15mins.

Hong Kong Egg Tarts - Flaky Egg Tart, 酥皮蛋挞

I have always wondered about the Egg Tart. It has all the elements of a western pastry, from the short crust/ puff pastry and the egg custard to the little tart molds but yet, I have only seen them offered at Chinese Dim Sum restaurants or bakeries in Chinatowns. There is no doubt that these had originated from Southern China. Some postulated that Southern China/ Hong Kong, through their interaction with the Western world could have adapted the egg tart from the English tart. These custard filled tarts have also been associated with the Portugese egg tart pastry, Pastel de Nata. Whatever it is, we know that the Chinese love their egg tarts. I have so far identified three basic varieties of Dan Ta, as they are fondly referred to in cantonese.

The one featured in my last post, has a short crust pastry which is easy to handle and is generally the variety most would try to bake at home. The key is to make the crust just thin enough to hold the glorious silken tender custard.

The second variety is the Portugese egg tart which uses a puff pastry crust and is filled with an egg custard mixture that would caramelise upon baking. If one uses store-bought ready rolled puff pastry, this could be the easiest egg tart to whip up at home.

The third variety is what is normally served at dim sum restaurants and comes with a flaky crust that can only be achieved with an obscene amount of shortening and deft pastry folding skills. The recipe requires one to wrap a highly oily dough with an oil free 'water dough' . This is not unlike making puff pastry from scratch but the ratio of the oily dough to water dough is much higher, thus rendering this a very difficult dough to handle... especially in warm and humid Singapore. I have been told by a dim sum chef that at the restaurant, they would normally roll out the dough (开皮) in a cold room. Once the dough is rolled out, it is folded in 3 folds, rotated 90 degrees and rolled out again. This process is repeated twice while for the third time, instead of 3, the dough is folded in 4 folds before it is rolled out to the desired thickness and cut to size. This process gives the dough the nice layered flakiness.


It was with a little bit of gungho spirit and a little hubris that I embarked on the venture of baking this at home. I don't have a cold room to work in and I am not skilled enough to work as quickly and deftly. As a result, even though my crust still tastes lovely and flaky, the discernible pretty layers were missing. I also experimented with the oven temperature to find the right balance to bake the crust to a crisp but not turn the custard into rubber ducky.

I have to admit that this is not the easiest recipe to work with and I am glad that I have managed to roll and fold the dough as required. However, there is still room for improvement. Lining the tart cases more evenly would have to come with practice and deftness ... especially so for a dough that wilts under the heat of the thumb.


Recipe :

Pastry Dough :
Oil Dough
Shortening                 180g
Butter                         50g
Plain Flour                 150g

Water Dough
Bread flour                 29g
Plain flour                   90g
Egg                             12g
Custard Powder          7.2g
Water                          60g

Egg Custard Filling : Refer to here

Method :
1. Mix ingredients for Oil Dough together in a cake mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix until smooth and wrap dough between plastic sheets and chill for 3-4 hours.
2. Mix ingredients for Water Dough in a mixer fitted with the dough hook and blend until dough is no longer tacky to touch.
3. Wrap dough between plastic sheets and chill for 20mins.
4. Roll out Water Dough and place oil dough in the middle, fold and roll as illustrated below:


5. After final fold, roll out dough to about 0.5cm thickness, cut out rounds with a cookie cutter and line tart molds with the dough.
6. Fill the lined tarts cases with egg custard.
7. Bake for 13 mins at 200C.
8. Remove from oven, cool down and serve while warm.

Hong Kong Style Egg Tarts - Nostalgic Saint Honore Egg Tarts

I didn't quite expect the kind of positive response for my Danish Butter Cookies when I posted them. Interestingly among the comments for the posts, almost all of them alluded to nostalgia of some form or other... key buzz words included : Nostalgic, Memories, Childhood, Reminisce...  Yes, nostalgia is a powerful ingredient as is eloquently captured in Joycelyne Shu's new book. If you have been a fan of her blog, Kuidaore, then you will enjoy her book. Filled with great nostalgic treats, most of them entrenched in a deeper and more passionate sense of history and root that are keenly appreciated through her own personal experiences....

For me, I have come to conclude that Nostalgia,as a flavour, is like a good wine that needs aging and maturing. The older you get, the fonder and the more potent it becomes... as in, for example, there is more nostalgic punch when a 50 year old reminisces about something he or she has eaten at the age of 10 vs a 20 year old dreaming about a taste he/she had when he/she was 10.

Do not over think when you are dealing with flavour elements that has strong lineage to memories and childhood. Very often than not, you will find yourself working against the usual theory and definition of good flavours. The dish can be crude and unpalatable to others but douse it in a coat of warm fuzzy nostalgia, they can beat Pierre Herme's Macarons anytime! Such is the liberating power of Nostalgia. To question or doubt Nostalgia only suggests that subject is frigid and uptight.

I was in Hong Kong 2 weeks ago wandering along the famous Shanghai Street. It was there that I spotted these oval shaped tart molds. The first imagery that came into my mind was Saint Honore Cake Shop's oval egg tart.  For those who are old enough to remember, Saint Honore Cake Shop from Hong Kong, made a brief but illustrious appearance in our local bakery scene here in the eighties. They opened their first shop at Marina Bay and aggressively advertised about their oval shaped egg tarts. I recall queuing for their tarts during their first few opening weeks....and the shop assistants' sing-song Hong Kong English accent. Simple fare that caught on like wild fire.  I know I was besotted. Their egg custard was smooth and shiny, tender and wobbly....the pastry crumbly and thin.


I also couldn't understand how a popular shop like theirs did not survive in Singapore. Did they not expand fast enough or was the market too immature for slightly more sophisticated pastry back then? I have no idea but Saint Honore is still operating its pastry chains in Hong Kong today and till date, their oval shaped egg tarts remain on of their perennial favourites....

When I decided to recreate the egg tart with these molds,  there were a couple of elements which I knew I had to nail : a thin short crust pastry shell that would hold its form and a tender, silken tofu like egg custard. Googling over internet, I found a couple of forums discussing about this but it was at this site that I found something comprehensive and promising.... I am very pleased with the results and I suspect if you were to try it, you would be too.




Recipe :

Pastry
90g              Unsalted butter
40g              Powdered sugar
12g              Egg
170g            Plain flour
8g                Evaporated Milk

Custard
160g            Eggs
80g              Castor Sugar
50g              Evaporated milk
210g            Water

Method:
1. Cream softened butter with sugar until white and creamy.
2. Add egg (12g) and mix until well incorporated.
3. Add evaporated milk (8g) to (2) and mix until well incorporated.
4. Add in flour and mix well.
5. Chill the dough in the fridge for an hour before dividing the dough into 10 portions. Press the dough into a tart mold and press well to line the tart mold. Chill the lined tart molds for 15 mins. In the mean time, prepare custard.
6. Prepare custard by mixing all ingredients for custard together.
7. Pour custard mixture into tart casings.
8. Bake at 250C for 10 mins until custard sets.

Radish Cake with Seafood and XO Sauce

It took my 2 weeks' business travel to pry me away from my cookies. Taking a break sometimes, opens up the mind for new stimulation. The stimuli for this post came in the form of an amazing XO Sauce I found in Taiwan. Unlike the supermarket versions that we get here, this is chock full of precious flavourful ingredients such as dried whole baby scallops (not the shreds we normally get), dried whole shrimps garlic and chilli . The bottles of XO sauce we normally get in Singapore are expensive and for most of them, the solids would only constitute 50% of the bottle, the rest being made up of a mild chilli oil. With this Taiwanese XO sauce, the hefty bottle was packed almost to the brim with the precious ingredients. Sold at 250NT (about US$8) for a substantial 500g bottle, this is what I would consider great value for money!  This would definitely be on my replenish list when I return to Taiwan next time.
For those who do not have access to this, fret not, head over to Trissa's or Pickyin's blog to learn how to make this sauce from scratch.

There are a million ways to use the XO sauce. It is completely addictive when eaten on its own with steamed white rice, brown rice or glutinous rice. When you are in a hurry, it can be used to toss with noodles or spaghetti. It is also a great stir fry seasoning for vegetables or meat.

Here, I have chosen to use the sauce with the very tasty Hong Kong style Radish Cake. Commonly offered at Yum Cha (dim sum), the Hong Kong style Radish Cake is a steamed rice cake filled with bits of chinese sausage, dried shrimps and shitake mushroom. This can be eaten on its own or more commonly, pan fried to crisp up the skin. In the recent years, restaurants here have started to stir fry these with XO sauce, seafood and bean sprouts... a la Chai Tau Kuey.


I got the recipe from Celebrity Chef Sam Leong's 'A Taste Of Home' . However, I do suspect that there is a typo in the recipe. Instead of Rice flour, the book had asked for Glutinous rice flour. I had to throw out a batch and replace the glutinous flour with Rice flour. Also, whenever I steam rice cakes at home, I make sure that I 'pre-cook' my flour prior to steaming the liquid batter. This can either be done by mixing very hot water into the flour mixture or stirring the flour batter over low heat to thicken it up before steaming. Most recipes may just call for steaming the liquid batter directly over boiling water but I find this impractical for house cooks like us. Our stoves will never be able to generate the kind of heat intensity to cook the rice cake through.


So, if you've enjoyed this dish at Dim Sum restaurants, you can now replicate this at home now.... and eat to your heart's content!

Recipe : (Adapted from Sam Leong's A Taste Of Home)

Prawns                 8 medium, peeled
Cooking Oil          1 Tbsp
Bean Sprouts        100g, Blanched. (don't need to be too precise, I think I only used 50g)
Chinese Chives      100g (Kuchai, I used a few sprigs.Add according to your liking)
Spring Onions        100g (same as above)
Eggs                       2 Beaten

Radish Cake
Cooking Oil           1 tbsp
Dried prawns         1 tbsp (soaked in water for 10mins, then minced)
Chinese Sausage    20g     (minced)
Dried Shitake Mushroom   2 pieces (soaked in water for 10mins, then minced)
Water                    500ml
Rice Flour              75g
Potato Starch         20g
Corn Starch           20g
White Radish         100g (shredded and squeezed dry)
Sugar                     1/2 Tbsp
Salt                        1/2 tsp

Seasoning
Water                   4 tbsp
XO Sauce            1 Tbsp
Oyster Sauce        1/2 tsp
Sugar                    1/8 tsp
Dark soy sauce      a dash
Sesame Oil            a dash
Chinese Cooking Wine a dash

Method :
1. Prepare Radish Cake : Heat 1 tbsp of cooking oil in a wok. Fry dried shrimps, Chinese Sausage and mushroom until fragrant. Ladle out and set aside.
2. Mix 250ml water with Rice flour, Corn flour and Potato Starch flour and set aside.
3. Place remaining 250 ml water in a pot with shredded radish. Bring to boil. Add in sugar and salt seasoning.  Pour boiling mixture into flour mixture in (2).
4. Stir well. Return mixture into pot. Heat over low heat and stir continuously. Once mixture starts to thicken a little add in (1).
5. Continue stirring until mixture becomes almost pasty.
6. Pour mixture into an oiled 21 cm square tin.
7. Steam over vigorously boiling water for 35mins.
8. Cool down completely (refrigerating over night if possible). (Rice cake will still be soft after steaming. Do not try to cut)
9. Cut Radish Cake into small squares. Heat some oil in a frying pan. Sear cake over high heat to crisp the surface.
10. In a hot wok, heat oil . Add bean sprouts, chives and spring onion. Stir fry briefly, then add eggs and cook until just beginning to set.
11. Add radish cake and ingredients for seasoning. Fry until fragrant and egg is cooked. Dish out and serve hot.