Sea Cucumber with Scallops Claypot

 

Introduction:

The function of a sauce is to add flavour that will compliment the flavor and texture of a dish.

Whether served hot or cold should be well prepared and seasoned carefully so as to enhance the natural flavours of a dish.

Ingredients:

Three large processed sea cucumbers

1 packet frozen big Scallops

1 large carrot (sliced)

1 packet Snow Peas (trimmed)

Few stalks of cilantros

Method:

Remove veins and impurities from sea cucumbers, rinse and cut into large pieces.

Scald to remove the stench.
Heat up 3 tablespoons of cooking oil in the claypot.
Add the minced garlic and fry till fragrant.
Add the sea cucumber slices and stir fry for about five minutes.

Season with premium oyster sauce, one tablespoon superior dark soy sauce and a little coarse sugar

Add some home prepared chicken stock and leave it to simmer for about 20 minutes or until the sea cucumber turn softer.

Stir in diced carrots and snow peas.
Add a tablespoon of water into the wok and simmer over medium heat for about 8 minutes with the lid on.
If you wish, add a tablespoon of superior light soy sauce.

Cook the ingredients until your desired texture.

Thawed the frozen scallops and pat dry with paper hand towels.

In the meantime, seasoned the scallops with a pinch of salt and pepper and grilled the scallops until both sides turned nicely brown.

Drain and set aside.

Add the grilled scallops to the other ingredients and mix well.

Serve hot.

Garnished with a generous amount of chopped cilantros.

Recommendations:

Check out this link for more interesting Chinese New Year dishes.

https://flofoodventure.wordpress.com/category/chinese-new-year-symbolic-dishes/

Lemongrass Drink with Aloe Vera Cubes

Introduction:

Beat the heat. No sweat way to cool off than a cold home made Lemon Aloe Vera Jelly cubes with Lemongrass drink.

Method:

Check out this link on how to prepare the Aloe Vera Jelly Cubes.

https://flofoodventure.wordpress.com/2015/07/23/aloe-vera-ice-jelly-in-lychee-syrup/

Preparing Lemongrass Drink

Ingredients:

6 stalks lemongrass

Few pandan leaves (knotted)

1 – 2 slabs brown Sugar Cane (or to your desired sweetness)

(brown sugar cane provide a richer colour to the drink compared to normal rock sugar)

Method:

Remove the external layer of each lemongrass.

Wash and pound lightly each stalk with meat pounder.

In a medium size pot, add the lemongrass stalks, knotted pandan leaves and the raw sugar slab.

Add about 600 ml water and bring the ingredients to a boil about 20 minutes until fragrant.

Taste the flavour and adjust the water level or sugar content to your own taste bud.

Leave the pot to cool and refrigerate.

With a sieve, drain the residue and store the drink in a glass serving pitcher.

Cut the lemon Aloe Vera cubes and place them into individual glasses.

Pour the lemongrass drink and serve.

 Recommendation:

Check out this link for more interesting home brewed drinks.

https://flofoodventure.wordpress.com/category/home-brewed-drinks/

Food Tasting @ Charisma D’Venue

Introduction:

Delectable Halal food experience at Charisma D’Venue introducing interesting dishes with a blend of East Meet West cuisine.

 

Check my review at this link.

http://sg.openrice.com/singapore/restaurant/commentdetail.htm?shopid=74139&commentid=89875

http://sg.openrice.com/singapore/restaurant/index.htm

Recommendation:

For other of my reviews, click this link.

https://flofoodventure.wordpress.com/category/food-tasting-expedition/

 

Black Pepper Crayfish Tails

Introduction:

There’s definitely no denying the importance of matching a dish with the perfect
sauce.

Ingredients:

Eight pieces large crayfish

Fresh grounded black peppercorns

Unsalted butter

Brandy or Chinese cooking wine (Hua Tiao Chiew)

Chopped shallots and garlic

Bunch of scallions

Method:

Wash crayfish and remove the unwanted parts and set aside.

In a frying pan, add some unsalted  butter slices and cook the crayfish until it turned semi opaque and almost red.

In a clean pot add a little cooking oil into the wok together with two slices of unsalted butter.

Add one to two tablespoons of chopped shallots and some chopped garlic and cooked gently over low heat.

Add your desired amount of freshly grounded black peppercorns.

Mixed the ingredients well and bring to a bubbly boiled.

Returned the fried crayfish into the wok and mixed thoroughly with the sauce.

Add a few tablespoons of beef stock (if available) to dilute the sauce.

Cook the crayfish until the sauce has reduced slightly.

Drizzle with some brandy or Chinese cooking wine (Hua Tiao Chiew) before turning off the heat.

Garnished with a generous amount of chopped scallions for added flavour.

Its best to serve this dish immediately.

Recommendation:

Check out this link for more interesting crayfish dishes and how to cut the crayfish.

https://flofoodventure.wordpress.com/category/recipe-by-category-crayfish/

 

 

Foshan Sliced Cold Pig Shank

Introduction:

This dish is served cold and normally as a starter.

All you need is a good quality Large Pig Shank and the chilli sauce to compliment the dish.

Ingredients:

One large Pig Shank

Salt

Five Spice Powder

Chinese cooking wine (Hua Tiao Chiew)

4 to 5 Anise Seeds

1 tablespoon Szechuan Peppercorns

Method:

In a large pot, add sufficient water to cover the Pig Shank.

Add anise seeds and Szechuan Peppercorns and bring to a boil.

Boil for about 20 minutes.

Discard the boiling water and change to a new pot of water and again boil the Pig Shank for about 45 minutes to an hour depending on the size of the meat.

You may ask, how do you know the meat is cooked?

Introduce a chopstick and pork through the hardest section of the meat. If it goes through, than its ready.

Please note that the pig shank should be cooked just right not too soft.

Drain the cooked pig shank, remove the big bone from the meat.

Marinate with Chinese cooking wine (Hua Tiao Chiew) together with five spice powder and seasoned salt.

Wrapped the whole piece of marinated pig shank  with cling wrap and kitchen string to secure the meat from falling apart.

Refrigerate overnight and slice the cooked cold pig shank into your desired thickness.

Served with home made chilli sauce for that extra kick.

Recommendations:

For more Appetizers, check out this link.

https://flofoodventure.wordpress.com/category/appetizers/

Beef Goulash

Ingredients:

You may asked what is “goulash”.

Goulash is a soup or stew with meat and vegetables ingredients seasoned with Paprika and other spices originated from the medieval Kingdom of Hungary.

Ingredients

2 long strips fresh Beef Short Ribs

2 large fresh Red Paprika

2 large potatoes

3 large tomatoes

2 medium carrots

2 tablespoons minced garlic

1 large sweet onion

Home prepared vegetable stock (instead of beef bone stock)

1 tablespoon grounded Thyme leaves

Unsalted Butter

Salt and pepper to taste

Method:

Deseed the fresh Red Paprika and removed membrane and cut into chunks.

Cut the beef short ribs in large into large cubes.

Diced the potatoes, tomatoes and carrots.

Melt the unsalted butter over medium heat and cook the sweet onions until brown.

Stir in the one Red Paprika chunk, beef chunks and minced garlic.

Mix the ingredients thoroughly and cook until the beef is no longer pink.

Add the second Red Paprika chunks, diced potatoes, carrots and tomatoes, home prepared vegetable stock and one tablespoon grounded Thyme leaves.

Bring to a boil and cover.

Reduce the heat to medium low and simmer for about 45 minutes to an hour.

Add salted and pepper to taste.

Recommendations:

Check out this link for more beefilicious recipes.

https://flofoodventure.wordpress.com/category/beefilicious/

Kurobuta Rosu

Introduction:

I have always wanted to prepare my own Kurobuta Rosu which I ate few weeks back at the Japanese Restaurant.

I like the  juiciness from the fats and marbling of the black pig.

Two days back, I managed to get hold of six pieces of Black Pig Loin and immediately decided to prepare the Pork Chop.

You don’t have to cook fancy or complicated masterpieces.

Just fresh ingredients will do and don’t over marinate the meat with too much sauces.

Ingredients:

Six pieces Black Pig tenderloin

(look at the fats and marbling)

2 beaten eggs

Japanese breadcrumbs

Method:

Marinade the pork with a little superior light soya sauce and a tablespoon of corn flour.

Heat wok with sufficient cooking oil over high heat.

Control for the heat of the wok is important.

Dip each marinated pork with Japanese bread crumbs, beaten egg and again bread crumbs.

Gently slide the pork into the wok and deep fry until  both sides turned golden brown.

Drain on paper hand towel to remove excess oil.

Served with your favourite sauce.

See how simple it is.!

Recommendations:

Check out this link for interesting pork recipes.

https://flofoodventure.wordpress.com/category/recipe-by-category-pork-dishes/

 

Steamed Chinese Three Coloured Eggs

Introduction:

This is one recipe that definitely enhanced the food presentation.

A combination of three types of eggs namely chicken egg, salted duck egg and century egg.

For detailed recipe, check out this link for details.

https://flofoodventure.wordpress.com/2013/10/30/three-colour-egg-slices/

Recommendations:

Check out this link for more egg dishes.

https://flofoodventure.wordpress.com/category/recipe-by-category-eggs/

Salted Egg Prawns

Introduction:

The salted egg craze is still on.

From waffles, donuts, fries, pizzas, prawns,  croissants and the list goes on.

Ingredients:

4 salted egg yolk

12 pieces prawns (deveined, remove the prawn head but leave the rest in tact)

3 tablespoons Milk or full cream

Unsalted butter

1 tablespoon Chilli powder

Few stalks of scallions

Corn flour

Pinch of salt

Method:

In a pan, add milk, sugar, salt, chilli powder and salted egg yolk and stir fry for a couple of minutes.

Blend the ingredients in a blender until the mixture turned smooth but not too runny.

Set aside to cool before cooking.

In the meantime, coat the prawns with some cornflour  and deep fry until the prawns are cooked.

Leave the cooked prawns on paper hand towel to drain the excess cooking oil.

In a clean wok, add some slices of unsalted butter and bring to a semi boil, add the blended ingredients and finally the cooked prawns.

Mixed all the ingredients thoroughly and serve hot.

If you don’t have curry leaves, chopped scallions works well and add flavour to the dish of yummilicious Salted Egg Prawns.

Recommendations:

How about preparing your own salted eggs.

Check out this link for the details.

https://flofoodventure.wordpress.com/2014/08/31/home-made-salted-eggs/

Check out this link for more interesting prawn dishes.

https://flofoodventure.wordpress.com/category/recipe-by-category-prawn/

 

Buttered Crayfish Tail with Spaghetti

 

Ingredients:

12 pieces fresh crayfish tail

I packet of grated Mozzarella
1 packet of Spaghetti
1 can of tomato paste
6 tablespoons of Spaghetti Sauce
1 big onion (chopped)
2 tablespoons of olive oil

3 to 4 slices Unsalted Butter

1 tablespoon minced garlic

Grounded Parsley

Cleaning crayfish

Grasp the body of the crayfish and twist off the head.
Peel off the top part of the tail’s shell (that was closed to the head)
Pinch the end of the tail and pull off the bottom part from the meat.
Remove the black vein on the back of the tail with a knife or by hand.
Crack open the claws with metal claw crackers on the widest part of the claws or cut the claws open with a pair of scissors to access the meat.

Credit goes to the owner of the above diagram.

For this recipe, I discarded the top portion of the crayfish and used the tail portion only.

Method:

Boil the spaghetti in a saucepan with salted water. Takes around 10 minutes. Time will vary depending on the quantity cooked.
In a large saucepan or wok heat up some olive oil and begin to fry the chopped onions.
When the onion begin to soften, add the tomato paste, Spaghetti Sauce and cooked crayfish meat and cook for about 5 minutes.
By adding the ingredients you will give the dish a greater intensity and depth when eating.
At this point you can season with coarse salt and pepper and a bit of coarse sugar to your personal taste.
Finally add the pasta to the sauce and stir thoroughly so the sauce grabs the pasta evenly.
Top the dish with finely shredded mozzarella and extra crayfish meat (if available)

In a clean pan, add about three to four slices of unsalted butter and a tablespoon minced garlic.

Sautéed the minced garlic and when the butter starts to bubbled, add the crayfish tails and fry them evenly.

Add a tablespoon of Chinese cooking wine (Hua Tiao Chiew) and mix well.

Once the crayfish turned red and opaque, remove immediately from the pan.

Scoop your desired amount of Spaghetti, add the warm sauce, few tablespoons of  grated mozzarella and topped with a few pieces of the cooked crayfish and serve immediately.

Sprinkle a generous amount of grounded parsley for added flavour.

Tips:

This is only a guideline of how to prepare Spaghetti.

There are many variations, various sauces and ingredients to be used.

Don’t be afraid to experiment on the preparation and see what’s best for your taste bud.

Recommendation:

Check out this link for more interesting Crayfish recipes

https://flofoodventure.wordpress.com/category/recipe-by-category-crayfish/

If you are a lobster fan, you may want to check how I prepare some of my family favourite

lobster dishes.

https://flofoodventure.wordpress.com/category/lobsterlicious/