If you ever have a meal in Chinatown food court, at least one of the stall sell Deep Fried Pork Chop. Some of them are served with this kind of dipping fish sauce, but others aren’t.

Ingredients for Pork Chop

• 6 slices of pork chops
• 1 tbsp of garlic puree
• 2 tsp of grated ginger
• 2 tbsp of soy sauce
• 1 tbsp of sugar
• 1 tsp of salt
• 1/2 tbsp of Shaoxing rice wine
• 1/2 tbsp of Five Spice powder
• corn starch
• oil for deep frying

Ingredients for Nuoc Cham sauce

• 1/2 cup water
• 1/2 cup fish sauce
• 1 lime or more, to taste, or vinegar
• 2 cloves of garlics, minced
• 3 small chillies, chopped (you could throw the seeds)
• sugar to taste
• 1/2 cup grated carrot

Instructions

1. Marinate pork chops with all the ingredients except corn starch, for at least 30 minutes. Overnight for the best result.
2. Heat oil in the pan for deep frying.
3. Coat pork chops with corn flour. Tap the excess and deep fried until golden and crunchy on the outside.
4. For the Nuoc Cham sauce: mix all the ingredients together. Can be kept in a jar in the fridge.
5. Serve pork chops with rice and stir fry vegetables like bok choy, kailan, or spinach.

Culinary tradition: Taiwanese, Vietnamese

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Well, back to the topic Kwetiau Siram. Kwetiau means rice noodles and Siram means pour, because the sauce is poured on top of the fried noodles just before serving. Because I never cooked the sauce before, I surfed the web to look for some clues. To my surprised, all the things I could found was that the rice noodle is boiled not stir fried. Hmm funny, I never seen the boiled style before in Indonesia and yet all the recipes pointing to that. I asked the Kwetiau Siram admirer (a.k.a hubby), and he said to stick with the stir fried style.

I posted the Kwetiau Goreng recipe before, so in this post I only post the sauce recipe.

Ingredients

• 500 ml chicken stock
• 500 ml water
• 1 egg
• salt to taste
• 4 cloves garlic, mince
• diluted tapioca flour
• oil

Instructions

1. Heat oil in the wok. Add in garlic and fry until browned. Set aside,
2. In the sauce pan, boil the chicken stock and water.
3. Add salt to taste.
4. Whisk the egg with fork slightly and pour into the saucepan. Do a quick stir.
5. Add diluted tapioca flour to the mixture to thicken the sauce. (You could add a little at the time and stop when the right consistency is achieved)
6. Pour the serve to the individual serving of Kwetiau Goreng. Topped it with fried garlic and serve immediately.

Culinary tradition: Indonesian

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Butcher: How many kg for the spareribs?

Me: ehhhmmmmm…. give me 3 kg please

Butcher took 4 big pieces of ribs and weight, and they were about 2.3 kg. Suddenly I thought to myself, OMG it was a bit too much if she added more ribs. I shouted my change of mine.

Me: so sorry.. I changed my mind.. that would be enough thank you (fiuhhhh… what a relieve)

On Sunday morning, I thought this BBQ type of thing would be just perfect for our weekend brunch. So there I was, standing in the kitchen at 9 o’clock, peeling my herbs and pureeing them. By 10.30, my toddler had his ribs with steam rice, and he absolutely loves it. I don’t think the chilli affect him because you can’t really taste the spiciness because of the other herbs. We all had a lovely and full-filling brunch. I suddenly regret myself forbidding the butcher to give me 3 kg instead of 2.3 kg. My husband kept coming back to the kitchen to get some of those sticky juicy spare ribs. When I asked him whether I actually need to cook them twice as much quantity, he agreed. Ehmmm… so I actually should ask for 5 kg of spare ribs to satisfy all the meat eaters at home.

Ingredients

Recipe adapted from The Around the World Cookbook

• 1 kg American pork spare ribs
• 1 onion
• 2 garlic cloves
• 2 cloves shallot
• 2.5 cm fresh ginger
• 1/3 soy sauce (half sweet soy sauce and half the salty one)
• 2 red chillies
• 1/3 cup of tamarind juice (soaked about a thumb size of tamarind in hot water)
• 2 tbsp palm sugar
• 2 tbsp oil
• salt and pepper

Preparation time (duration): 30

Culinary tradition: Indonesian

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The fried pork cutlets are really nice, tender and full of flavour. For some reasons, which I don’t know exactly why, they don’t taste greasy at all as the deep fried stuffs should be. As for the sauce, you could check out the Kylie Kwong style (click on the lick provided under the Ingredients) or you could follow mine. My sweet and sour sauce is simple and it is kind of an Chinese-Indonesian everyday sweet and sour sauce. You could add pineapple, peas, capsicum in the sauce. It just happened that I didn’t have any of them available in the fridge.

Ingredients for the pork

Recipe adapted from Kylie Kwong : Sweet and Sour Pork, for details click here

• 600 gr pork neck fillets
• 1 1/2 tablespoons cornflour (cornstarch)
• 1 tablespoon cold water
• 2 egg yolks, lightly beaten
• 3 teaspoons light soy sauce
• 2 teaspoons sesame oil
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• oil for deep frying
• 1/4 cup plain flour
• 1/4 cup cornflour (extra)

Cooking time (duration): 60

Culinary tradition: Chinese

Please leave your comment/suggestion if you find this recipe useful. Can’t wait to hear from you and Thank You!!!

However, I found two ingredients that I was not familiar with, Rose wine and maltose. I wasn’t so sure that I will able to get these ingredients if I mentioned their English terms. I asked my friend whose mother tongue is both Mandarin and Cantonese  to check out the website and spelled them for me in Indonesian. I was hoping that it will make my shopping a little bit easier for me to pronounce it to the shopkeeper. Well at least I prepare myself just in case they don’t know the English term. But to my surprise, they understand what I am looking for.

Time to buy the meat. I have been checking the price of pork butt to make a perfect tender juicy BBQ. OMG, they are about  $22 a kg. Gosh thinking about feeding all the meat eaters in my household, I need at least 2.5 kg for one dinner. No way in the world. Second choice is pork belly, they are about $11-14 a kg. But they are way too unhealthy and fattening. I have to go with my favourite part of the pork, armpit. Yep, you heard me the armpit part. They are about $6.50 a kg. The fat is not as well spread as the belly, but at least it has its lean and fatty part. The most important thing is that they are economical and they are good enough for my BBQ Pork. I always go with this part every time I want to make pork satay.

If you would like the recipe, please click here. The only additional thing that I add to the recipe is sweet soy sauce also known as Kecap Manis. I add them to the sauce for brushing to increase the burning and stickiness to the meat. Finally, I ended up with having no BBQ Pork buns because all the carnivores have eaten all my Char Siu. Well, I have commit my self to make the buns as soon as I have time. This time I will make different filling to avoid the spying eyes of all the carnivores.

Preparation time (duration): 45

Culinary tradition: Chinese

Please leave your comment/suggestion if you find this recipe useful. Can’t wait to hear from you and Thank You!

Eating this dish is like committing a crime to your own body. The fats contained in the pork is so obvious, visible, and confronting, but I cooked them anyway. The dish is irresistible once you smell the ginger infused with the sweet soy sauce. It is always a hit on our dinner table. I like to cook mine with chillies, however I could not slice the chilies for the sake of my beloved son. He loves the dish too. I have to cook the chilies in whole, and apparently by doing so it reduces the heat and spiciness of the chilies.

When I stayed at my grandparents house, I used to eat Sweet Soy Pork with Ginger, or what I call Babi Masak Kecap. My grandma cooked Babi Masak Kecap in different way than mine though, because she does not use some of the ingredients I do. I was told by my mother in law that by using Chinese red vinegar in cooking pork dish, it would tenderize the meat, so following on her advice, I added some to mine.

My twist on this recipe is that the ginger has to be pureed, and it makes a huge difference to the taste of the dish. I used to cook mine with the thinly sliced ginger as my grandma’s does, but there was that day a.k.a my lazy day. I used to prepare all of my puree fresh garlic, ginger and chili in containers available in the fridge for me to use anytime. Anyway, instead of slicing thinly my ginger, I just used my ready stock puree ginger instead. So there it was, an accidental secret recipe was invented.

Ingredients

• 1.5 kg pork rasher, cut into 5 mm thick (see note)
• 3 cloves garlic, sliced thinly
• 2 cloves shallot, sliced thinly
• 2 tbsp of ginger, pureed
• 5 small red chillies (optional)
• 1 1/2 tbsp Chinese red vinegar/Ang Ciu
• 1 cup of sweet soy sauce/Kecap Manis
• 1 cup of water
• 2 tsp of salt
• dash of pepper
• oil to stir frying (see note)

Preparation time (duration): 60

Culinary tradition: Indonesian, Chinese

Please leave your comment/suggestion if you find this recipe useful. Can’t wait to hear from you and Thank You!!!

My grandmother loves to cook fried chili eggplant. I never dare to even try them. They looked so withered and overcooked, it is just like a meal for a toothless person. And all those sparkly oil looked like that they have been immersed and absorbed into the eggplant. Once you bite on them, your mouth would be filled with an overflow amount of fried oil. That reason always made me think twice for tasting them.

When I moved to Australia, I practically have to do all my chores and other things by myself, including cooking my own meal, which I never done before back in my country. Because we have so many maids in Indonesia, I just feel like entering the kitchen would make the space narrower. Even if I tried to help the fun things in the kitchen, like making cookies, my grandmother and her little helpers would chase me a way. I guessed I made their work more complicated and difficult than it should be.

Anyway, back to my story. When I arrived in Australia, I realized that I have to start learning to cook a decent meal so I wouldn’t have to buy those expensive take away. My flatmates love to cook so this was my chance to learn and practice my cooking skills. One night, we cooked stir fry eggplant with plum sauce. It was actually not as bad as I thought it should be. I felt so guilty for ignoring my grandma’s fried chili eggplant that when I went back to Indonesia the year after that I ate hers and it was good. I had so many wide varieties of meals back in Indonesia and it has made me to become so picky in what should enter my mouth.

Here is my tip before you start cooking your eggplant dish, that is to not forget to sprinkle generous amount of salt on to the eggplant, and make sure they are all well coated with salt. Or otherwise your eggplant will suck up all the oil or juice dry. I did fried my eggplant with generous amount of oil before, and it sucked up all the oil like they were been in a long thirst strike. Now, all I do is just put a little amount of oil in the pan, and let them cook until really tender and change color.

Ingredients

• 200 gr mince pork
• 1 medium size of purple eggplant
• 2 chilies, diced
• 1 tomato, wedged
• 1 tbsp of mince garlic
• 1 shallot, diced
• 1 tbsp of sambal oelek/cobek/terasi or pureed chilli
• 1 tbsp of tomato sauce
• oil for stir frying
• sugar, salt, and pepper to taste

Preparation time (duration): 30

Culinary tradition: Indonesian, Chinese

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It is said that the first people who tasted the old woman’s cooking were a farmer and his son who arrived late to the city during a terrible rainstorm. They were forced to find shelter in the old woman’s home having found that all of the inns were full. Pleased with the company, the old woman prepared them a meal, including the dish now known as Ma Po Dou fu. The dish was so delicious that soon each time the father and son passed the old woman’s home, they would stay for a meal. In this way, the old woman’s renown spread as others joined the father and son in visiting and staying at her home. These visitors would often bring the ingredients for her dish so as not to burden her larder. As time passed, the dish evolved.

I am not really a big fan of tofu myself, but since my husband and my son loved them so much, I started to search for various tofu dishes in the web, including Mopo Tofu. I used to buy those Japanese ready mix Mapo Tofu sauce available in the Chinese groceries because buying a Mapo Tofu take away is so damn expensive. However, since I found some great recipes of Mapo Tofu on the internet, I tried to ‘mix and match’ so the flavor suit my family’s taste bud. I never scrambled the tofu as what it is supposed to look like because my toddler loves the tofu as well. If they are scrambled, the sauce would immerse in the tofu and it will be too spicy for a 2 years old. Thank God a little bit of chili never bothers him.

Cooking time (minutes): 30

Culinary Tradition: Chinese

Please leave your comment/suggestion if you find this recipe useful. Can’t wait to hear from you and Thank You!!!