Tonkatsu/Pork Cutlets

Non Halal

Tonkatsu is one of the most beloved “western style” Japanese foods in Japan. It is thinly pound pork chop breaded with flour, egg, and Panko (bread crumbs), then deep fried. Tonkatsu is almost always accompanied by thinly shredded cabbage, curry sauce or with thick brown Worcester-based sauce.

 

I’ve been craving for this cutlet since I came home from my month long vacation in Japan. So I decided to make some for our dinner a few weeks ago. I serve it with rice and broccoli instead of curry sauce or tonkatsu sauce. It’s not the healthiest food but rather comfort food for me.

Stir-fry Glutinous Rice

First I would like to apologize for the long hiatus from blogging. I’ve been busy with my daily life, dealing with moving, home based business and also traveling. I guess after more than 10 years of blogging I slowing losing my momentous doing it. I mostly post my cooking on my Instagram now. You can follow me there if you want to. Anyway, here is a short update on a recipe I did some time ago. I made this dish with some left over steamed glutinous rice.

Stuffed Onion Rings

I came up with this dish on the day that I ran out of idea of what to prepare for our dinner. I have some ground meat in hand and decided to mix it up with a few other ingredients and stuff it in some onion rings. Turn our pretty good to have it with rice.

Ingredients:

2 medium size onions – cut into ½” rings
3 tbsp of flour
2 eggs - beaten

Pork and Shrimp Shumai

Non - halal

Shumai is a type of Chinese dumpling, often associated with Cantonese cuisine. The half wrapped dumpling is filled with pork and shrimp and then steamed. You can find it serve at all dim sum restaurants.

I miss the Shumai from Malaysia which if full flavor and juicy when you bite into it. The shumai here is not very good. They were way too huge and don’t taste very good. I find some of it was too dry which I suspect they were being steam over and over again before serving it to the customers. That is why I hardly order it when I have dim sum. I’ve eaten a very good one though but it was in New York. So the best thing to do is make it myself. It was pretty good and the taste of this will do for me until my next trip home.

Spam Buns

I always have a can or two of Spam in my pantry for emergency. Emergency like I ran out of protein in my freezer but people who knew me know that will never happen ha ha I always have access of protein in my freezer. Anyway, the two cans I have are very near to the expiration date and I decided to use one of it for the filling of these sweet buns. I gave half of the buns away and the rest we just devour it in 2 days. I know is unhealthy but who doesn't like Spam :) It was that good. For the buns, I just used my regular sweet bread dough and this dough is really good as it stays soft even the second days. In fact I used this same dough recipe to make some tuna buns a few days later.

Crispy Tofu with Shrimp Squares

I like this dish a lot. In fact I made a bit more and freeze some of it up so the next time I wanted to eat this all I have to do and take it out of the freezer and fry them up. You must be thinking why I like to freezer most of my food rather than eating them fresh. Well, I don’t cook everyday especially our Asian type of food and when I do I usually cook a bit more and freeze them up so I can have it anytime I want. It is usually dishes that freeze well like rendang, curries, stew, soup, curry puffs and etc. So now you know why I need two fridges when there are just two of us ha ha..

Anyway, back to this dish. My mom used to make this dish for us. When I called her last week on her birthday I asked her how to make this dish and she told me roughly what she put in it. I gather all the ingredients and made this the following day. The squares turn out really well. They were crispy on the outside, nice and moist on the inside.

Chinese Glutinous Rice Rolls/Fan Tuan

This is a Taiwanese breakfast rice rolls. You can find some street vendors selling at near the bus stations or along the busy road side. In Chinese it is called ‘Fan Tuan’ it is compacted roll of glutinous rice that’s filled with eggs, fried dough (Chinese culler) meat and etc… It looks like a Mexican Burrito. The rice roll is roll up in a plastic wrap so you can eat it on the go. The first time I tried this was at a Taiwanese restaurant at Foster City. There were pretty good. This restaurant only serves this kind of breakfast on weekends. It is eaten with warm soy bean milk.

Anyway I am trying to replica it at home. I am doing the version that I’ve eaten before but I understand in Taiwan they do serve different kind of fillings so I guess you can basically put anything you want in it.

Steamed Pan Fried Buns

The first time I tried this type of bun was in New Zealand. My good friend Shereen took me to a tiny Asian restaurant and they serve this type of buns and they were really good. I tried making it at home and they turn out pretty well. The filling of the buns are raw and you have to pan fried and steam cook them at the same time. It is very much like dumplings or gyoza. The dough of these buns is slightly different from the normal steamed buns. It has thinner and chewy dough. I like it a lot as the fried bun has a crispy golden brown bottom and serve with Chinese black vinegar dip but I just like it as it is. I am surprise Carlos like this too as normally he is not very adventurous enough to try out new food. I made some with sesame bottom but you can make it plain if you like.

Fried Stuffed Zucchini Blossoms

I look forward to these delicate each summer. In fact I have two zucchini plants at my backyard and they gave me quite a few flowers every 2 days but mostly male flowers. I wish there gave me more female flowers though as I would like to have some zucchini too. So far I saw only 4 zucchini out of the 2 plants.

Anyway I collected quite a few of it and stuffed some of them up. I am not too keen on stuffing it with cheese as it oozed out while I was frying it and it was a mess. Oil spatters everywhere. This time I stuffed it with some meat and dipped it in light batter and deep fried them. The batter coats the flowers so lightly but it still gives a satisfying crunch when you bite into the savory center. We like this version so much better.

Chinese Style Braised Honey Spare Ribs

This dish is super easy to make. With just a few ingredients it turns out a wonderful dish to have it with rice. All you have to do it let the ribs simmer for some time and the meat will be so tender and literally fall off the bones when you eat it. I actually bought a whole rack of ribs and get the butcher to cut it into smaller pieces.

Homemade Char Siu (with Pork Belly)/Chinese BBQ Pork

non-halal

It has been awhile since I last make some Char Siu. I posted a recipe here before and I used pork loin for it. I bought a piece of pork belly a few weeks ago and it was pretty lean (it has more lean meat than fat) so I decided to use it to make char siu. So which char siu we like better? We like the pork belly one as the meat was sinfully juicy and very tender but most of all we like the charring part. Of course there is a bit of fat there but most of it renders out when I cook it in the oven. So from now on I will be using pork belly for char siu. I gave some to my a friend of mine and she just can’t get enough of it and she wanted me to show her how to make it ;).

 

 

Grilled Pork Tenderloin with Pomegranate Glaze

non-halal

Pork tenderloin is one of my favorite cuts of meat. I love how tender the meat is and I can marinate and glaze it with anything and it will cook in no time. I will usually throw it onto the grill and let it grill on all sides. As for the marinate it can be anything seasonings of your choice and for the glaze I used pomegranate juice with a few other ingredients. It turns out really good and flavorful. It is super easy to prepare and quick cooking…I mean grilling! And the best part…no pots and pans to wash!

 

 

Stir Fry Candied Roast Pork with Garlic

non-halal

I know this is not the best looking dish but oooh it tastes so good. My mom used to make this dish for us with leftover roast pork/siew yoke. She  stir fry it with loads of garlic, thick dark soy sauce and sugar until it is caramelized and sticky. The garlic and pork turns into crunchy sticky bits and it tasted so good with steamed rice or rice porridge

Ingredients:

400 gram roast pork – cut into small pieces
5-6 cloves garlic – roughly chopped
1 ½ tbsp sugar or according to your preference
1 tsp of dark soy sauce
Salt to taste

Pork Jerky/Bak Kua and Shrimp Fried Rice

I’ve been very busy for the past 2 months. Flew to New York twice to take care of Diana and don’t have time to do much especially cooking, baking, blog posting or blog hopping. Meals at home are mostly simple salad, sandwiches or one pot meal. Just before I flew to NY, I wanted to finish up the few pieces of Bak Kua in the fridge. I am too lazy to turn on the big oven just to warm them up I simply cut them up and throw it into the fried rice. Carlos like it a lot and told me to cook our next fried rice meal again with it but I told him he might need to wait till the next CNY before I make another batch of bak kua again. So if you have any leftover of bak kua from CNY why not use it to make fried rice. I am pretty sure you are going to like it.

Fried Dumplings with Honey Mayo Dipping Sauce

This is one of dim sum favorite and it is usually served with mayo dipping sauce. For 4 pieces it cost around US$3.00 which I think it is too expensive. It is not difficult to make it yourself and with a few ingredients and a few bucks you can feed the whole family. It usually made from shrimps but you can be creative with the filling. I added some ground pork to it but it can be any combinations of your liking. I made these for our CNY dinner and we enjoyed it a lot. They are crispy on the outside and flavorful on the inside.

New England Clam and Corn Chowder

This is a traditional cream base chowder with ingredients like onion, potatoes, clams and additional of corn in it. I made it a wee bit on the healthier side by using half and half instead of heavy cream. I always like clam chowder especially the one served at Boudin Bakery in San Francisco. Their clam chowder is the creamy kind serves on sourdough bread bowl while the Manhattan clam chowder is with tomatoes. Both are just as good as it is simply a matter of taste and preference. I used canned clams but you can always use fresh clams to make this. It’s serve piping hot with some crusty bread and just great for cold winter evening.

Chinese Baked BBQ Meat Buns

I made these for Carlos before I left for New York a few months ago. He loves these little BBQ pork buns. When he comes home from work he can just warm it up in the microwave oven and eat it with his salad. These types of buns are very popular at dim sum restaurant or Chinese Bakeries and it is filled with succulent sweet and savory BBQ pork filling. For these buns, I used some leftover BBQ/Char Siew that I made some time ago but you can always buy some BBQ pork from the Asian restaurant here in the US.

For these buns, instead of using my regular Japanese Sweet Bun Dough I used the recipe from Lena’s of Frozen Wings .

Apricot Glazed Grilled Pork Tenderloin

non-halal

We like having BBQ on the weekends. The weather at the bay area during summer it not too warm and we do get a lot of breeze in the evening. So it is a perfect weather to spend some time sitting at the backyard and do some grilling. Normally I will prepare a protein dish either steak, chicken or pork and we usually have it with grill corn and some salad. This is one of the usual ways we like to grill our pork loin.

Ciak Bek/Stir-Fried Pork with Preserved Soy Bean Paste

non-halal

This is another special Nyonya/Peranakan dish shared by my good friend Shereen. According to her this is one dish that all Peranakan families will know as it is one of the mandatory dishes that you must have at the altar during any prayers. Peranakans are superstitious about many things with a lot of do's and don'ts. Even with food, these beliefs holds true. There are certain dishes that can only be served during sad times eg funerals, ancestor prayers etc and are a no-no for joyous occasions eg weddings, birthdays, Chinese New Year etc as they are deemed to be bad luck. This dish however is safe to be served at anytime.

Dan Dan Noodles

Dan dan noodle is a classic dish originated from Chinese Szechuan cuisine. It consist a spicy meat sauce with preserved vegetables in it and it is served over noodles. You can use either pork or beef for the meat sauce and since I like this noodle on the dry side so I just omit the broth part. I never try the original Szechuan noodles before but I understand that they were pretty spicy. I did put some chili in mine but please feel free to adjust the amount of spiciness to your preferences. I find this meat sauce is pretty good to eat with rice too.