Japanese Coconut Custard Buns

Bread making is almost a weekly routine after picking up the know how.  Bread is such a convenient breakfast provided the family doesn't get bored of them.  I made these yesterday after discovering Christine's blog.   She has quite a few variations made from a tangzhong method base recipe which by far is my favourite break making method too.  I  love that it almost always guarantee soft and fluffy bread, the type of bread that we are more accustomed to.  

I used my breadmaker to knead, tang zhong doughs are quite sticky (confession again; I never knead  them manually, tang zhong or not :)).  I was very pleased with the outcome.  The buns turned out very well.   They were really soft and the crust was very thin too.

The recipe instruction was to divide them into 6 portions, which I find that is quite big for individual consumption.  The dough was approximately 720g which would mean 120g per bun.  I moulded them into 12 50g ones and 2 60g ones.  As mine was smaller, I didn't follow the steps of spreading the fillings and rolling them twice to spread out the fillings  (probably this was the reason a big portion was needed).  I took the lazy way and just wrap it in the centre :))

Here's how it look from the inside.   The fillings in the centre is not quite obvious.   The yellowish tint came from the butter and eggs.   Although not prominent, the taste is evident.  Love the thin crust!

The only thing that I would change is to make a bigger portion of the fillings (maybe add half a portion).



Recipe
Source : Christine's Recipes

Note: Please hop over to Christine's blog for a clearer step by step instruction with photos.

Ingredients of tangzhong

• 25gm  bread flour
• 125ml water (could be replaced by milk, or 50/50 water and milk)

Ingredients for buns

• 350 gm bread flour
• 55 gm caster sugar
• 5 gm salt
• 56 gm egg
• 7 gm milk powder (to increase fragrance, optional)
• 125 ml milk
• 120 gm tangzhong (all of everything made)
• 5 gm instant yeast
• 30 gm butter (cut into small pieces, softened at room temperature)

Ingredients for fillings

• 15 gm butter, softened
• 15 gm caster sugar
• 15 gm egg, whisked
• 30 gm desiccated coconut

Method of making fillings

1. Combine softened butter with sugar.
2. Add egg, stir well, followed by desiccated coconut. Combine all ingredients well. You can make the fillings while waiting for the 2nd round of proofing to complete or you might like to prepare it in advance, cut into equal portions, place it in fridge until needed. If they are chilled too long, place them in room temperature for a while before use. That would be much easier to handle.

Methods of making tangzhong

1. Mix flour in water and stir until smooth and without lumps. Cook over medium-low heat, stirring consistently with a wooden spoon, whisk or spatula to prevent burning and sticking.
2. The mixture becomes thicker and thicker. Once you notice some “lines” appear in the mixture for every stir you make with the spoon, it’s done.  Remove from heat.
3. Transfer into a clean bowl. Cover with a cling wrap sticking onto the surface of tangzhong to prevent from drying up. Let it cool. (Note : Christine recommends chilling the tang zhong for several hours and let it come to room temperature before use.  I did not take this step, I am not sure of the difference that it will make.)

Method of making buns

1. Combine all dry ingredients: flour, salt, sugar and instant yeast in a bowl. Make a well in the center. Whisk and combine all wet ingredients: milk, egg and tangzhong, then add into the well of the dry ingredients. Knead until you get a dough shape and gluten has developed, then knead in the butter. Keep kneading until the dough is smooth, not sticky and elastic.  If  using a bread maker add all wet ingredients into bread maker first followed by dry ingredients. Add yeast the last.
2. Knead the dough into a ball shape. Place in a greased bowl and cover with a wet towel or cling wrap. Let it proof till it's doubled in size.
3. Transfer to a clean floured surface. Deflate and divide the dough into equal portions of preferred size. Knead into ball shapes. Cover with cling wrap, let rest for 15 minutes.
4. Roll out each part with a rolling pin into an oval shape. Place custard filling evenly onto the surface of dough. Roll from top to bottom to enclose the filling. Flatten dough with pin. Again, roll from top to bottom. Knead into a ball shape. Repeat this step of rolling and wrapping fillings with the rest of your dough. With seals facing down, place the six balls into a greased baking tray or lined with baking paper, covered with cling wrap or a wet towel. Leave it for the 2nd round of proofing, about 45 to 60 minutes, until double in size (I wrapped the fillings into a flatten piece of round dough).
5. Brush whisked egg on surface of buns. Sprinkle sesame seeds if you like. Bake in a pre-heated 180C (356F) oven for 35 minutes, or until golden brown. At about 5 minutes before removing from oven, brush syrup on the surface of buns(optional, I did not do it). Transfer onto a wire rack and let cool completely.

Variations:

Step 1 - Used bread maker
Step 3 - Divided into smaller portions of 50-60g.

Step 4 - Filled buns with fillings, wrapped and seal at bottom.

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You Make My Life Special

Happy Birthday, son! I hope you had a great time. Each year on your birthday, I celebrate the blessings for being your mother for another year too.  It's through His grace that our souls are entwined together through this special bond that I treasure above all. As you grow from a little baby to a fine young man in years to come, my precious son you shall always be. I love you with all that I am. I pray that God will continuously shower you with his blessings, guide you and make you a man with virtue as your most treasured possession.  Amen!

This is the first birthday cake that I have ever made for him. He asked for a cake that looks like a true birthday cake, i.e. one with cream and all. Big challenge for Mum, I have been successful in staying away from the likes of it all this while. But...I would do anything for him...

He loves chiffons, so I went along this line, I found a Oreo Chiffon recipe at Honey Bee Sweets' blog.  She did hers in her tube pan but I wanted a round one.  From a link crediting the source of the recipe, I hopped over to Table for Two or More who did it without using a tube pan. With that as assurance, I was convinced a non tube pan would work too and it did.  Only thing was I thought it was a little 'short' which brought me to the idea of creating another layer.  I wanted to do strawberry but I couldn't find a single punnet of strawberry on that day.  I decided to use a sponge cake recipe and add some store bought strawberry filling.  Then came the disaster, the batter was too much for the cake pan, it overflowed!  I had to interrupt the baking process as the batter overflowed to the floor of the oven and it had begun to burn! It was really stupid of me to insist putting everything in that pan even though i felt that it was a little too much.  I think it was the size of the eggs that was the culprit.

Once bitten twice shy? I wonder where mine went on that night?? I should have just gone without the strawberry sponge, come to think of it the Oreo chiffon wasn't that short after all.  The stubbornness in me insisted that I stick to my new plan which was to surprise him with a double layer cake.  I salvaged whatever I could from the strawberry layer.  I put on some whipped cream, stacked the Oreo chiffon on top of the strawberry sponge and I got a taller cake.

So, here's the cake.  I was quite pleased with how it turned out.  I know the frosting leaves a lot more to be desired but I have to be a little forgiving to myself since this is my first attempt :)

Now let's take a look at what's inside... ta dah! See how imbalance the layers are! I swear that it wasn't that short, most probably the weight of what's above squashed it a little.  On top of that, if you scrutinized the photo, you will notice a small part at the bottom centre part of the cake that looks like a lump of flour.  Yucks and ugly, ugly when it came to that part of the cake, i really regretted putting on that strawberry layer.  The chiffon tasted really good though, I should have just stuck with it.  Next time I will remember that in occasions like these, 'Less is More'!  Thank God, this cake was just for the family...I have learned my lesson.

   

Apart from the cake, I made him this traditional birthday treat.  Red dyed hard boiled eggs and longevity noodles.   He said "Mum, do we need to be so traditional?" I guess he was just being nice instead of saying "Mum, you are so old fashion" :))

I took an extra step to make the yolks soft, just like the ones that you get in Japanese restaurants to go along with their ramen.  It turned out quite well.  As for the noodles instead of the traditional meat based savoury soup, i used our homemade Chinese Rice Wine.  Traditional or not, this was a simple but delicious bowl of noodles!

The finale for the day was dinner at his favourite Japanese restaurant, the Kampachi at Pavillion KL.  He never gets bored of the food there, it was just Oishii!

Recipe ~ Oreo Chiffon Cake

Source : Table for Two or More

Ingredients


(A)

• 65gm oreo, lightly pulverized together with cream 

(B)

• 5 egg yolks
• 50gm sugar
• 60gm milk
• 60gm corn oil
• 100gm cake flour, sifted

(C )

• 5 egg whites
• ½ tsp cream of tartar or 1 tsp lemon/lime juice
• 60gm sugar

Steps

1. Preheat oven at 180C.
2. Mix yolks and sugar together. Add in oil and milk. Then the sifted flour. Combine with a whisk until smooth. (Do not whisk or beat but just combine)
3. Beat egg whites until frothy, put in cream of tartar and beat until soft peaks. Put in sugar gradually and beat until stiff.
4. Fold ¼ of egg whites into (2) and then another ¼ of egg whites.
5. Pour egg yolk batter into the remaining egg whites and fold.
6. Put in pulverized oreos and fold until well combined.
7. Pour into a clean ungreased tube pan (22 or 25cm will be fine) and bake for 45 minutes.
8. Invert immediately upon removal from oven. Wait for it to cool down totally before removing cake from pan.

Recipe for Strawberry Sponge ? Next time maybe :))

Recipe ~ Hard Boiled Eggs with Soft Yolk

Ingredients

• Eggs
• Rice vinegar
• Ice cubes and cold water

Steps

1. Boil enough water in a pot to cover eggs up to 1 inch above the eggs.
2. Turn off flame.
3. Put eggs into the boiled water.  Cover the pot
4. After seven minutes, transfer the eggs into a bowl of ice water.
5. Add in a teaspoon of rice vinegar into the ice water.
6. Remove eggs after 10 minutes.
7. Peel to remove egg shells.

Refer here for Longevity Noodles with Rice Wine recipe.

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There but not there yet?

If this is not your first visit here, I hope you noticed my new look. I have been toying with the idea to give the blog a new look for awhile. On one hand, I yearn to have a new look, on the other I was worried I would create a mess out of the whole thing and end up doing fixing and cleaning up instead of getting a new one. All it takes is just a missing 'quote' somewhere and the whole thing will be screwed up. So I toyed and I toyed...until I decided to dirty my hands and took 1 week to get this whole thing in place :)

What do you think of the new look? I hope some of you would agree that it is a nice if not fresh change. I wanted a more dynamic look and something that will be easier on the eyes (I hope) . It needs some fine-tuning still, I am 'there but not quite there yet', there are some loose buttons out there, so bear with me if you hit one.

Aptly, just like my new look, this meal that we had for lunch yesterday, would fall into the "there, but not quite there yet" category too. Why so? The main dish was the Korean inspired JapChae (stir fried noodles with vegetables). This dish would probably be categorized as a side dish in a true Korean style but of late I am trying to put more greens on the table so this one got upgraded as the main. Another Korean side dish, the Myulchibokkeum (stir fried anchovies in korean paste) would probably be there to accompany. Instead, I made something close enough, the simple Malay style Sambal Ikan Bilis (stir fried anchovies in chili and shrimp paste) with homemade chili paste. Mind you, this simple looking dish with its crunchy anchovies and burning sensation is a class of its own too.

Truly, there are so much resemblance between Asian food, the JapChae is pretty similar to the Chinese Chapchai (mixed vegetables) too. So all in all this meal was neither Korean nor Malay. Perhaps "Fusion" would be sophisticated word that I can borrow for this mixed up meal, maybe?

Besides, I have to confess that this might not be a true Korean JapChae too because I didnt follow any authentic Korean JapChae recipe. I think this is a simple stir fry dish similar to the Chinese Chapchai. You can use any vegetables that is preferred and slices of shitake mushroom. Stir fry them with some sesame oil, a clove or two of garlics. Season with some soy sauce and some anchovies powder for the extra flavour. When it's almost done, add in some glass noodles that have been cooked by boiling it in water and drained. Sprinkle with toasted sesame seeds and it's all ready.

A simple but satisfying meal it with these 2 dishes and a bowl of white rice for me and my family :)

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Snowy Finale

I am dedicating this post to my little sister thousand of miles away, I love you and God knows how much I miss you especially during festivals. I know you are touched but please don't roll those tears :p You should be smiling at those lovely little mooncakes :)

One last batch of mooncakes before the festival. Gave in to the temptation to try making more flavours. Made little ones, this time. Little one means less gluttony (technically) and of course lesser time and material too. Nice when the purpose is to have fun.

Snow skins ones are pretty simple, especially with ready made paste around. In fact, there are premix for the skin around too. The lady in the shop actually recommended using premix, she said they stay soft longer. Hmm, i wonder why...

I played around with 4 flavours. No artificial colouring used, all au naturale. I used this basic recipe for dragon fruit snow skin mooncake and played around to get other flavours

• Red ~ Dragon Fruit Red Bean
• Green ~ Green Tea White Lotus
• White (with slight orange shade) ~ Calamansi Cream Cheese Lotus
• Brown ~ Coffee Cream Cheese Lotus

I did not have any mini size mooncake moulds, I used a jelly tray instead. Imprints are not clear and a little out of shape, due to the pressing and knocking to get them out.

I used half the recipe to yield 12 pieces of my mini size mooncake.

Recipe

Source : Debbie Teoh on inSing.com

Skin Dough

• 150g ‘koh fun’ (cooked glutinous rice flour)30g-50g icing sugar, sifted
• 70g shortening/ crisco
• 100g red dragon fruit puree
• 50-60ml cold ice water

Filling

• 500g lotus paste/red bean paste
• Extra koh fun for dusting

Steps

1. Skin the red dragon fruit. Next, using a small electric blender, puree the dragon fruit flesh to yield 100g of fruit.
2. Sift the cooked glutinous rice flour and icing sugar into a mixing bowl.
3. Mix in shortening and dragon fruit puree with the sifted ingredients, adding cold water slowly until a soft pliable dough forms.
4. Dough must not stick to the hands; Add 1 -2 tablespoons more cooked glutinous rice flour if needed.

Verdict

• Unfortunately the dragon fruit one doesn't stay soft for long when it is chilled (it was stated in the recipe that it to be brought to room temperature though)
• Strangely enough, the calamansi one stayed soft. Why so? It beats me! I read somewhere that Marriot Singapore has a Calamansi Cream Cheese, never had a chance to see or taste it. I had homemade Calamansi Sour Plum ice-cream in my freezer (the ice lolly type), so I used it instead of water (i.e. 150ml altogether). I like this best! Slightly tangy, salty and creamy from the cheese ball. This is worth a try!
• Coffee with cream cheese and coffee paste tasted good too, but could be a little bias coming from a coffee lover :) To get coffee paste, mix lotus paste with instant coffee paste over a low fire until it's evenly mixed.
• All in all, ok but could do with improvement, next year maybe :)

Happy Mid Autumn Festival!

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Rush Rush, Hurry Hurry for your Mooncakes

It was like yesterday that I asked myself if it was too early to start making mooncakes, believe it or not, the festival is around the corner already, just a week away to be precise! In no time many of us will be rushing to either buy, make or eat these cakes!

This will be my wrap up post on Jelly Mooncakes. I made quite a fair bit for own indulgence, gifts for loved ones and also to meet orders from a few close friends. Toyed with some flavours and these ended up as my pick. 4 lovely flavours in contrasting colors to fit in a gift box, Red Dragon Fruit, Pandan Sweet Corn, Cendol Red Bean and Coffee Peach.

Making them is not too difficult but the process is quite time consuming. First off, one will have to cook the fillings separately, it's not like the baked or snow skin ones where ready to use fillings are available for sale. Personally I find the most tedious part would be the waiting for the 1st part of the skin to be half set before dropping in the fillings and fill it up with the remaining portion of the skin. It has to be half set otherwise the filling will separate from the skin when it is cut.

Here's the recipe for the Cendol Red Bean flavour. This turned out to be a favourite among many. The photo does no justice to it, it looks rather pale compared to the rest. But in reality it's really pretty, white with greenish hue from the cendol strands, jade like if I may say so.

I am submitting this for Aspiring Bakers #11: Mid-Autumn Treats (September 2011) hosted by Happy Home Baking.

Recipe
Source :Adapted from Mooncake Selections by Khoo See Yew

Makes : Approximately 8 pieces (with similar moulds)

Ingredients for Filling

• 50g gm. caster sugar
• 5g agar-agar powder
• 125 thin coconut milk
• Few pieces of pandan leaves
• 150g cooked red bean, blended
• 62ml thick coconut milk

1. Boil sugar, agar-agar powder and thin coconut milk in a pot until agar agar and sugar dissolves.
2. Lower flame and mix in red beans and thick coconut milk.
3. Pour in small bowls and let it set.
4. Remove from bowl, use a fork to scratch surface (top and bottom). This is to make sure the filling and skin will stick to one another.

Ingredients for Skin

• 185g sugar
• 13g agar-agar powder
• 825ml thin coconut milk
• 150ml thick coconut milk
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 150g cendol
• Few pieces pandan leaves

1. Boil sugar, agar-agar powder and thin coconut milk with pandan leaves in a pot until agar agar and sugar dissolves.


2. Lower flame and mix in cendol, salt and thick coconut milk.

Assemble

1. Pour in some skin agar agar into mooncake mould.
2. When it is half set, put in the filling then pour the balance skin mixture into the mould until full. Let it set.
3. Chill in the fridge before serving.

A peek into Coffee Peach :)

Coffee Peach

Ingredients for Filling

• 100ml water
• 4 gm agar-agar powder
• 35gm sugar
• 75gm peach flavour yogurt
• 1 egg yolk
• 10ml lemon juice
• 50g fresh cream
• 50gm peach (blended)

1. Boil sugar, agar-agar powder and water in a pot until agar agar and sugar dissolves.
2. Mix yogurt, egg yolk, lemon juice, fresh cream and blended peach in a separate container.
3. Lower flame and mix in no. 2.
4. Pour in small bowls and let it set.
5. Remove from bowl, use a fork to scratch surface (top and bottom). This is to make sure the filling and skin will stick to one another.

Ingredients for Skin

• 80gm brown sugar
• 5g agar-agar powder
• 400ml water
• 100ml evaporated milk
• 1tbsp cocoa powder
• 1tsp instant coffee powder

1. Boil sugar, agar-agar powder and water in a pot until agar agar and sugar dissolves.
2. Lower flame and mix coffee and cocoa powder. Stir until completely dissolve.
3. Stir in evaporated milk.

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Wa Si Hokkien Lang

Do you know your roots?? Yes? Do you know enough about it then? Edith of Precious Moments' invitation to participate in her Heritage Food Trail event got me thinking for awhile. I was touched that she left a personal note to extend the invitation. Thanks, Edith.

Well, I only know this fair bit about myself. As we say in our dialect, Wa Si Hokkien Lang meaning I am Chinese, from the Hokkien clan, and if I were to trace it down a little deeper, I was told our family originated from the Eng Choon sub-clan. Basically this means, our ancestors came from the Fujian Province of China. Being what is known as the Banana kind to our fellow Chinese (i.e. Yellow Outside, White Inside aka Chinese who doesn't speak/read Chinese but English), we never got much exposure about our Chinese roots. Although I don't read Chinese, I am proud to say I can speak Hokkien fluently. We needed it to talk to our grandparents, Ah Mah (grandma) and Ah Kong (grandpa) otherwise they would need to learn how to speak English instead (which i think they did pick up a smattering bit along the way :)) Nowadays, I tend to be more appreciative of the ability to converse in our dialect. Whenever I meet somebody from the same clan, we break into our dialect (they say those from the same clan are distant relatives, in most cases the distance beyond imagination). Unlike back then, I remember it felt so proud to be able to speak English to a fellow Chinese. Getting more appreciative of my roots, a sign of old age?

Now how many Hokkien dishes do I know? Most of what I think are Hokkien dishes were introduced to me by my Ah Mah, in fact I have a "Ah Mah's Inspirations" category which I intend to build to cherish her memories. Ah Mah didn't really hand down her recipes, hers were built over the years through experience and stored within her memory. For the times that we remembered to ask when we were not too busy indulging, it would be in "agak-agak" (estimate) units which can become more complicated when one discovers she has her very own measuring tools. We have ourselves to blame for not putting in much practice and also by allowing Ah Mah to spoil us.

When I was young, I always had the impression that whatever Ah Mah made belonged to our clan but nowadays I am not too sure anymore because I see so many similiarities among the other clans, it becomes a little more tricky, making me wonder "Is this ours or theirs?" Maybe it's my ignorance that is causing this confusion. Hopefully, I will learn more through Edith's event. However, I am pretty sure I wouldn't go wrong with this one, since it popularly known by its Hokkien name, the Bak Chang (steamed meat rice dumplings). No, this post is not about Bak Chang, simply because I don't make them very well. So, here I am with it's close cousin, Steamed Glutinous Rice in Hokkien Style :)

It was known as Ee Peng to the family. My strongest memory of this dish would be eating it when we celebrated the full moon of a new addition to the family. Besides this, we had pickled ginger, red eggs and the angku kuih too (a type of sweet steam cake). At that time these celebrations were not too far apart since there are close to 30 of us in my generation, within the extended family that is :) Ah Mah was indeed proud of her broods.

The rice is stir-fried with dried shrimps, shitake mushrooms, meat, chinese sausage before being steamed. Dark soy sauce being the main seasoning used, complements the dish (which by itself is already very flavourful) with a nice aroma and its dark brown colour. I maybe wrong but I think we Hokkien Lang like dark soy sauce, a lot of our dishes are 'black black' in colour! This dish is quite similar in taste to the cantonese version of Loh Mai Kai commonly found in Dim Sum restaurants. The difference is in the Hokkien version the accompaniments are mixed into the rice, as such one gets to eat them throughout in a more even manner.

Here's the recipe based on what I learned from Ah Mah's version and I made reference to Wen's version on Wen's Delight just to make sure I was on the right track.

I was contemplating whether to continue with this when I noticed that Honey Bee Sweets had already posted this dish on her blog in conjunction with the same event while I was preparing this post (yes, I am that slow, unfortunately). I decided to go on when I noticed that her recipe is slightly different. I thought why not go ahead and share it so that we can also see the different variations in each other's home.

One would also see this in many other sites. Ah Mah's version had little tofu cubes and we don't use ginger in it. Another thing, we don't steam or serve it in little bowls in an upside manner like the Loh Mai Kai although i am not sure whether it's just for photography effect. I believe none is superior than the other but don't we all treasure our house version, priceless for all the love, the stories and the memories behind it.

Recipe

Ingredients

• Glutinous Rice - 300g (Soak for 3 hours and drain)
• Pork - 150g (Cut into small strips, season with 1 tsp oyster sauce, 1tsp soy sauce, 1 tsp dark soy sauce and 1/2 tsp corn flour)
• Dried Shitake mushroom - 50g (Soak to soften and cut into strips)
• Dried Shrimps - 40g (Washed, drain and leave some in whole and chop others to smaller pieces)
• 3 pieces of fried tofu (Cut into small cubes and fried)
• 1 Chinese sausage (Sliced)
• 7 Shallots (Sliced)
• 2 cloves of Garlic (Chopped finely)
  

Seasonings

• 2 tbsp dark soy sauce
• 1 tbsp light soy sauce
• 2/3 tsp salt
• 1 tsp pepper
• 1/2 cube chicken stock

Garnish

• Fried Peanuts
• Fried Shallots
• Chopped Spring Onions

Method

1. Heat oil in wok and stir fry shallots until slightly brown. Remove 1/3 and drain dry for garnish.
2. Add in garlic.
3. Add in dried shrimp, continue to stir fry until fragrant.
4. Add pork and mushroom. Stir fry until pork is cooked.
5. Add in rice and seasonings.
6. Add in 2/3 bowl of water and let in simmer until water dries up.
7. Transfer into steaming tray and steam for 30-45 minutes until rice is cooked and soft.
8. Garnish with peanuts, shallots and chopped spring onions.

I want to take this opportunity to dedicate this post in Ah Mah's memory in conjunction with Edith's Heritage Food Trail event.

On a lighter note, fellow Hokkiens or those who speak this dialect or even those who don't (to hear what our dialect sounds like), check out this funny song, Wa Si Hokkien Lang.

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When Mum is Lazy...

Are Mums allowed to be lazy?? All in One Meals, I am pretty good at this especially when the lazy bug bites :) But All in One is pretty cool is it not? Shortcuts and laziness aside, although no frills, these All in Ones are still nutritious and balanced meals, this I don't mess around with. Some thoughts put in to ensure essentials from the food pyramid gets thrown into that 1 lazy dish. Fuss free cooking and fuss free eating too. With mine, I assure you it's almost always a 1 spoon thingy. And you can multi-task while you eat (house rule allowing). Imagine this, laze around the couch, 1 hand holding the plate and the other alternating between the spoon and turning the pages of the newspapers or switching between TV channels with the remote control. Ha, the simple pleasures of life, lest we forget...

With veggies providing fiber and vitamins, protein from the meat and carbs from the rice, all nicely topped with a bright sunny side up egg. Pretty complete, right? The dish is a common chinese stir fried veggie dish, french beans stir fried with minced meat and preserved soy beans.

Honestly, this All in One actually tastes quite good, especially when you served it piping hot. When you cut into the egg, the runny yolk will coat the rice like gravy, you then eat it together with the veggies in big mouthfuls (yes, you heard me correctly, table manners aside bigger mouthfuls give more pleasure). Simple indulgence, a luxury at times :)

Here's the recipe (more or less, it won't hurt)

Ingredients

• 300 g french beans
• 3 cloves of garlic (chopped)
• 200g of minced meat
• 1 teaspoon of minced fermented soybeans
• 1/2 teaspoon of fermented black beans (chopped)
• 1/2 teaspoon sugar
• 150ml water
• 1 tablespoon chinese cooking wine
  

1. Bring a saucepan of salted water added with 2 drops of oil to a boil, then add french beans. Cook for 2-3 minutes until tender. Drain and soak the beans in ice-cold water for a while. Drain and set aside.
   
2. Heat up about 2 tbsp oil, saute garlic until fragrant.
3. Add in fermented black beans and soybeans, continue to fry until fragrant.
4. Add in minced pork and stir fry until meat is cooked.
5. Add in French beans, then sprinkle sugar and mix
6. Add water. Once water boils, dish is ready.
7. Add a little chinese cooking wine from the side of the wok (optional).
8. Scoop on to rice and serve immediately.
   

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