梅菜扣肉 – Preserved Mustard Veggies w/ so delicious pork!

This is one of my favourite-est dishes in the world. and the last time i ate this was maybe 6 years ago. I used to only eat the version my grandma cooked, and ever since she started getting sick and past away, i have not eaten a good version of this dish ever since.

I wanted to cook it the way she used to cook it, cause that's the one i know best. Her's did not involve steaming or cooking the pork and veggies separately. Hers with all together in one pot with loads of yummy salty sauce to go with rice or porridge. So i get out to replicate what she made. and i am so so so so so happy to say that i have done it! with great success. She will be so very proud.

This is a time consuming dish. but it is totally worth it. the 3 of us ate it for dinner for 3 straight nights.

  
Ingredients

1. 500g mei cai (you can use a mixture of sweet and salty or just salty – as you can see, i used 3/4 salty and 1/4 sweet)
2. 6 pieces of pork belly – i'm not sure of the weight though. but a good amount of meat
3. Light soy sauce
4. Dark soy sauce
5. 6 cloves or more garlic, crushed
7. A tiny star anise
8. Water

Directions

You have to wash your mei cai really well. The sweet one doesn't really need soaking but the salty one needs. So after washing, soak the salty mei cai for 3 hours, changing the water every hour.

While doing that, you can start to prepare the pork. I don't like hair on my food, so i pick all the hair out of the pig skin. then give it a good wash.

Boil a pot of water, and place the pork belly in. This cooks and gets rid of 'dirty' things on the pork, like excess blood etc..

Taking a few tablespoons of light soy sauce, sorta marinate the pork belly pieces in it, just for a few minutes. This gives it colour and fragrance when we fry it later.

In a wok, place a little oil and fry the pork belly till all sides are nice and brown. Some sides are more difficult to fry, so don't kill yourself if you can't get all the sides. The hot oil stings!

Place the pork, still hot, into ice cold water. and leave it there for as long as you can. This step is what gives you a wonderfully bouncy and melt in your mouth fats. You can leave the pork in here until your mei cai gets enough soaking time.

Then, slice the leaves of the mei cai into bigger chunks – about 1 cm and the stalk into smaller chunks – about 0.5cm.

Fry the garlic till fragrant and slightly browned. Then add in all the mei cai and fry till fragrant and dry. This can take quite long. I was actually watching tv and cooking this at the same time. but i used a really small – medium fire.

 
Fry fry fry fry till dry and nice. Since it takes a while, you can chop your pork into pieces while frying. Some of them aren't even totally cooked, but it's not a problem at all. Just chop them all up into big chunks. They will shrink slightly, so take that into consideration.

After chopping this up and when you mei cai seems to be done, take out the mei cai and place them on a plate. Adding a little oil, fry the pieces of pork.

It takes time to render the fat and get them all nice and crispy. So i did half a batch and got lazy so i didn't fry the other half. which i think was absolutely fine because these pieces shrunk much more and were harder after the frying and stewing. So half half is good.

Next, i added in 1 cup of light soy sauce and 1/2 cup of dark soy sauce and fried that together with all the pork. When you can smell the fragrance of the soy sauce, add in all the mei cai and mix thoroughly.
 
At this point, i transferred this mixture to a pressure cooker. You can transfer it to the normal pot and cook for around 2 hours or until the pork is amazingly tender. but i had a pressure cooker and we were hungry, so i transferred it to the pressure cooker and topped it up with 4 cups of water, or until the water covered the ingredients. Then add in the star anise – a tiny one or snap off 3 pieces of a big one – not a few hundred, like they like to do here..

Taste! I decided that it wasn't salty and dark coloured enough, so i added another splash of light and dark soy sauce. This is totally to your taste, but i make it slightly saltier because this is definitely a dish to eat with rice or porridge and not on it's own – although, we do eat it like that as well. haha!

Cover and cook! If you're using a pressure cooker, 30 minutes is great on medium pressure.

Next day tastes even better! Add hard boiled eggs before you keep it in the fridge and it will be perfect the next day!

 
Yum! Blogging about this has so totally made me crave for it again!!!

卤肉饭

I have done a post on this previously here. but this one. was done using a different cooking method and had a special ingredient in it.

The beauty of this dish is that, firstly, it is simple. Secondly, you can just add whatever seasonings you have on hand.

Ingredients

Pork Mince
Dark Soy Sauce
Light Soy Sauce
Huao Diao Jiu (or Sake, or whatever cooking wine)
Oyster Sauce
酱油膏 (Soya bean paste – entirely optional)
Water
Fried Shallots and its oil (Highly recommended)
Red onions
Pork Skin (optional)
Hard boiled eggs

Directions

In a pot, fry off some onions first to get them nice and caramelized. Then add in your pork mince and fry them. Keep frying them until all the liquid evaporates and you actually get some browning on the mince.

After this, it is really just a matter of pouring in all your seasonings and water and give it a good stir.

Pork Skin – with the pork skin, it helps to thicken the sauce at the end but usually requires a very long cooking time. So, i used my pressure cooker and it was so soft in just 15 minutes!

Hard boiled eggs – just boil them as you would and leave them in the soup to simmer together with the pork so that they get infused with all the flavours.

Best eaten with steamy hot rice and some green onions.

We really love this. Try it!

Minestrone Soup (Pressure Cooker)

Minestrone soup is one of our favourites and i have not cooked it in.. 2 1/2 years!

So i decided one day.. late in the evening that i wanted to make this, since my supply of veggies just got delivered. and if anyone is interested, i order my veggies from Fruit N Vegie Direct. 

So i chopped up all the veggies i had and tada!

Veggie Goodness in a bowl!

Ingredients

*You can really use what veggies you have on hand, these were roughly what i used

350g Green Beans
2 carrots
1 large onion
3 garlic cloves
2 desiree potatoes
2 stalks of celery
4 slice of bacon (optional)
1 spicy chorizo (optional)
1 can of diced tomatoes
Tomato Paste
Mixed dried herbs
3 bay leaves
4 cups water
Some white button mushrooms
Fresh corn kernels (frozen would do just fine too)
Chicken stock paste (optional)

Directions

Chop up your veggies into pieces. Not too big and not too small (in case they get too soft and mushy)

Leave the skins of the potatoes on for extra nutrients and they don't really make a difference anyway.

Bacon, if you like them. They melt into the sauce and you can't really bite into a piece of bacon. They're mainly there for flavour.

One spicy chorizo that we bought from the Eveleigh Markets at Redfern. These really made the soup spicy. i was even contemplating putting 2 of these. One of definitely enough. If you don't want it spicy, just use normal chorizos then.

In the pressure cooker, i use the saute function and fry off my bacon first, to render the fats. Then i add the chorizo in as well. When they get nice and brown, i added my onions to caramelize. When my onions are about done, add in your garlic. Fry fry fry..

Then i add in all my other veggies (i added the mushroom and corn kernels last). Give them a good mix around.

Add 4 cups of water. I gave it a good squeeze of my chicken stock paste (just to add some more flavour), add a can of diced tomatoes.

Stir them all together and you get the above picture.

Looks yummy enough already!

Then i cover the lid and cooked it under medium pressure for 30 minutes.

Watched tv for 30 minutes.

Came back, released the steam manually – takes around 2 minutes.

Open the lid and this is what you get!

 
The veggies have all cooked down and the fats rendered.

At this point, we tried the soup. It was peppery all right! But it's a flavour you get used it and it ain't that bad. but i found it slightly thin, so i added around 3 tbsp of tomato paste.

It definitely upped the tomato-y flavour and made the soup thicker.

I changed the settings to saute and let the soup boil down a little as well.

All it takes now for a complete meal is some pasta!

Any type you like, macaroni or broken spaghetti are all fine! Something you can eat with a spoon.

  

Yum Yum Yum. Perfect for a cold winter night. Warm and spicy. Healthy too!

*By the way, this can totally be cooked on the stove-top. Just follow the same steps and cook it partially covered until the potatoes and carrots are soft. It will take longer but be just as delicious!

Beer Beef Stew (Pressure Cooker)

My Fast Slow Cooker's maiden dish.

I had chuck steak and a can of beer.

This is what i decided to try to make in the pressure cooker.

 
It wasn't the most flavourful, because i didn't use too many ingredients in this to add flavour and i actually didn't have any veggies but the carrots. It was still quite delicious though and we finished it all up.

Ingredients

500gm chuck steak
2 carrots
1 can of beer
2-3 cups of water
Chicken stock paste
(Just sub chicken stock for the above 2 ingredients)
1/4 –1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
2 onions, big chucks (they will melt down when cooked)
2-3 cloves of garlic, chopped
Dried Herbs and Bay Leaves
a little dark soy sauce

Directions

Chop the onions, i used 2 in this dish because it didn't have too much flavour from a variety of ingredients, so i wanted the onions to shine in this dish. Remember to chop the carrots and garlic too!

 
Chop up the chuck steak and trim the fats. Very important. I trimmed some, but left a few in and it formed an oily layer on the top of my stew that i wasn't too fond of. So trim off as much fats as you can.

I seasoned my beef was a little salt and placed the pieces in a plastic bag with some plain flour. I covered the pieces in flour and fried them off using the saute setting of the pressure cooker.

I took the pieces of fried steak out. They are totally not cooked yet. just browned.

Then i added my onions and cooked till they were nice and translucent and brown. After that, i added the garlic.

When the onions and garlic all smell fabulous, add in the pieces of fried steak. Careful not to tear off the flour coating.

 
Add in your can of beer – whatever you have on hand, i don't drink so i have no idea what type of beer this is, i just found it in the fridge, it has been in there for a long time.

Add in the water – around 3 cups. (The pressure cooker needs a minimum of 4 cups of liquid, but i've cheated a little, and it still seemed perfectly fine. The thing is, liquids don't evaporate off, so you're always going to end up with a thin soup)

Squeeze a little chicken stock paste in.

Add mixed dried herbs, a few bay leaves and you're good to go.

Cover the lid and cook for 25 mins.

After it's done. Use the saute setting and let the liquid boil down.

(At this point in time.. the flavour really wasn't enough and it was too oily and liquidy. So fish got to work and he tweaked the flavour by adding some balsamic vinegar, a little dark soy sauce for colour and more herbs and spices – i would say, add the balsamic vinegar before the cooking process the next time.)

And this is what you end up with.

Nice beef stew – the chuck was fork tender.

I cooked some basmati rice to go with this.

Yum yum.

This was not the best maiden dish but it helped me learn the different functions of the cooker. It comes with an awesome manual.

Breville Fast Slow Cooker!

Hey!

So, fish used his rewards points to exchange me a Breville Fast Slow Cooker!

and… I LOVE IT!

It is my new favourite gadget!

The name says exactly what it is.

It is both a slow cooker (6/8 hours) and a pressure cooker.

You can also use it to cook rice and do steaming.

It is 6 litres. At first, i was afraid that it might be a little large for the 3 of us. but so far, the size is great.

This is how is looks like. It is quite large but it has a space on my limited countertop.

There ya go. A list of everything it can do.

The saute function is great. It heats up really well and browns food really well too.

The bowl insert is non-stick, which makes cleanup a breeze. Since i brown and cook everything in this one pot, washing up really hasn't been that difficult.

These are it's accessories. Some plastic utensils to use so that you don't scratch the non stick bowl, but i seem to have gotten used to cooking in the cooker with a long pair of chopsticks so i hardly use these. There's also the steam tray and trivet.

So far, i'm really liking it. Stay tuned for some action with my new favourite! :)