GETTING TO KNOW YOU: PRECISE PIG PARTS

Last week I came across a recipe, written in Chinese, for Miso Pork that called for 梅花肉。It was rather perplexing not knowing which part of the pig that was!  So I did some research to learn the different cuts of pork.

This evening I asked Mum if she could help me buy 300 grams of 梅花肉 when she goes to the wet market tomorrow.  "There isn't such a thing!" she scoffed.  "You really mean 五花肉, don't you?"  

"No, no!  Certainly not!" I protested.  "五花肉 is the belly.  I don't want the belly."

"Describe it to me," she demanded.  I tried to indicate the part I meant by placing my right hand on my left shoulder, turning my body to show her.

My impersonation of a pig must've been weak because Mum still didn't get it.  (Perhaps it'd help if I had stood on all fours.)  The truth of the matter was, she laughed out loud and cried, "You don't really expect me to perform a charade in front of the butcher do you?"

I then informed her that the pork was to be used in a stir-fry.  She answered, "Oh, you mean 枚肉！" Some light (though dim) at the end of the tunnel at last.

UPDATE August 2020: According to RecipeTinEats:

梅头肉 (Méi tóu ròu) Translation / Meaning: "Plum-head meat" (often shortened to 梅肉 / Méi ròu).Usage: This is the most common term in Cantonese cuisine (including in Singapore and Hong Kong). It refers to the top portion of the pork shoulder (the collar butt). Best for: Barbecuing (Char Siu), slow-braising, and sweet-and-sour pork because its beautiful fat marbling keeps the meat juicy. 

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"I HAVE THE KITCHEN"

What do you do when your mother relinquishes control of the kitchen for a few hours?  I don't know about you, but I thought it would be a good time to finally make Pork and Fennel Sausage Rolls from Bourke Street Bakery: The Ultimate Baking Companion!  

Mum decided that she would take a break from cooking this evening and opted to have durian for dinner.  Yup, you read correctly - durian for dinner.  For Dad and I, who was horrified at the thought of surviving on durians alone, these sausage rolls became substantial snacks before the durian party began.

These sausage rolls tastes fab.  I love the hints of thyme, fennel and garlic.  Though I secretly feel that they'll be even better if spiked with paprika, or dried chill flakes! The recipe says to bake them until "they are a golden brown roll of steaming, oozing goodness".  I think I've managed to do that!

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FAMILY AFFAIR

Chinese Tortellini in the making. As my mother gets on in age, she can no longer manage to cook wonton noodles (云吞面) at home without turning it into a family affair.  Especially today, when she was eager to get through dinner and washing up early enough to enjoy the National Day Parade on TV.

And no wonder she's busy! A lot of prep work goes into this simple dish.  Nothing short of the best ingredients would do.  It begins with my parents going hand in hand to the wet market to source for the right slab of 五花肉(which is the shoulder cut of the pig, otherwise known as picnic shoulder), shrimps, water chestnuts, Chinese dried mushrooms and dried flatfish (左口鱼).  The noodle soup base is superb because of the dried fish, dried scallops and Chinese cured air-dried ham( 金华火腿) in it.

Mum doesn't believe in buying ready-ground meat, preferring to chop it up in her own kitchen.  The shrimps deveined and split length wise, the water chestnuts and dried mushrooms chopped, the dried fish fried and finely grounded.

I was assigned to form the wontons, a task which I enjoy immensely.

Mum removed 13 shrimps from the freezer this morning, cleaned and split lengthwise each into two, and I got exactly 26 wontons from my 100 grams of wrappers! Talk about coincidence.

These are SO good!  Dad proposed that we set up shop.  "But," he jested, "we simply cannot sell them as large as these or it'd take ages for us to breakeven."

We had a great meal.

Happy National Day, Singapore!

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DOMESTICATED

On weekends, I waste an incredible amount of time online researching nerdy stuff like poetry, books, photography and recipes.

My friend, C, is a little concerned when she found out that I spend my weekends blogging and baking. Recently liberated from an unhappy marriage, C is in the process of rediscovering herself. When I met her last week she declared proudly that she attended a concert on her own, something she has never done in her entire life! This year she spent her birthday weekend with friends in a beach resort, enjoying whole-heartedly for the first time in ages. “I fell asleep while listening to the sound of the ocean,” she said beaming, eager to express her new-found freedom.

C thinks that I need to go out more.

What C doesn’t realise is that I’m at the opposite end of her life stage. During the 16+ years that she was busy maintaining a marriage and family, I had been hanging out plenty. Now I feel happy to be in touch with my domestic side.

Today I realised that I've forgotten how to form a wonton!

BAKING WITH STEPH

Steph fell in love with this Matcha Azuki Financier from Japan.  So we made tried a hand at making it today.  To cope with the big turn out over at Steph's home this afternoon, we tripled the recipe.  At first I was secretly doubtful if we would be able to cope but I shouldn't have worried.  Everyone eagerly contibuted in her own way - shopping for ingredients, measuring them out, greasing baking tins, whisking the 12 egg whites, melting and filtering butter, spooning cake mixture into tins ...

In Steph's kitchen, the saying "Too many cooks spoil the soup" doesn't apply.  In fact, the many heads provided more solution to problems. For instance, when the melted butter was taking much too long to cool someone suggested, "Let's put the saucepan in a bowl filled with cold water!"  "Add ice into the water!" chipped in another. (I wish I had thought of that earlier.  Duh.)

I used the Financier recipe from Bea's.  Do check out her blog where she shares the most amazing recipes and photograhy.  Some people call these little cakes Financiers, some call them Friands.  No baking powder is used.  The rising agent is egg white, which we whisked until foamy, but not firm.  We didn't have the proper financier molds so we made used of whatever baking tins we had on hand.

The 1st batch was overdone but I love the colour and the crispy crust.



The next batch has a softer centre.  (At first we debated whether the insides were undercooked.  However, I came home to check Bea's photos and her financier appears to have a soft centre so we did do things right!)

Next up: Mini Cha Siew Buns. I wanted a bread dough that is soft and rich so I chose the recipe from Page 58 of 孟老师的100道面包by 孟兆庆。The ingredients are:

100 grams bread flour

50 grams all-purpose flour

20 grams caster sugar

1/8 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon instant yeast

20 grams egg

80 grams milk

10 grams unsalted butter

The dough was hand-kneaded, mostly by Diane.  When I told everyone, "The bread dough should rise in a warm environment" someone offered "Shall I warm up the microwave oven then push the dough in?" 

How delicate is this dough?  Jamie Oliver will be impressed.  Proof that many cooks in one kitchen can spark off some really great ideas. I'm so going to use the warm microwave method in the future!

The buns were well received.  People were wolfing them down and exclaiming with every bite, "Oooh these are SO good!"  It must be because of the wonderful cha siew filling, handmade by Jane!  It has the right balance of meat, fat and just the right amount of sweetness.  Yums.

Jane is a great cook who has endless cooking tips to share.  All you need to do is ask. She also makes a mean roasted pork (烧肉) - the kind with the crispy crackling.  I hope she will teach me to make it some time.

第一次做包

今天试做蛋黄香菇肉包，非常成功！ 赶紧选几个似摸似样的秀一下。

This is my first attempt at making bao. There's definitely room for improvement but I'm rather pleased with the result. 

I used the same dough recipe as I did for my Chinese Muffin.  The filling is made up of 400 grams of minced pork (that has been marinated a few hours before), 1/3 of a salted egg yolk and a small braised mushroom.  I was able to get 18 bao in all.

The first batch of bao looked too goofy but with time my confidence grew, the pleating got easier and the bao slowly took shape. Much to my own amazement (and relief), one or 2 actually started to look like a proper bao!

蛋黄香菇肉包

I didn't realise that bao can be so easy to make!

THE PIG THAT WON'T FLY

Dear GPs,

This little pig cried wee wee wee today.

So many things went wrong. I had intended to give Piggy wings but was forced to forgo them because I was already having a hard time with Piggy's snout.  It kept sliding off!  I contemplated on using the stapler.  In the end, I used Super Glue.  (Kidding!)

At one point I got distracted by my mother making fishcakes and failed to watch the clock.  As a result, Piggy got badly burnt in the oven.

Since last week's fish-shaped buns were filled with tuna, I felt that it be apt to fill Piggy with a pork filling. My initial thoughts were on Mushroom and Bacon, or Ham and Cheese. Serena suggested luncheon meat whilst Moon felt  bakkwa would give Piggy that Singaporean edge.

During our morning stroll on Tuesday, Mum asked me, "What kind of bread will you be making next?"

"How about Char Siu (BBQ pork) Bun?" she asked while I was still contemplating.  She even gone on to suggest, "I'll take care of the filling, you make the bread." That threw me right off because Mum and I seldom see eye to eye on culinary affairs.  She cooks Chinese dishes, I bake Western-style cakes.  She prefers them savoury, I like sweets.  She doesn't interfere with my baking, I stubbornly stay out of her kitchen when she cooks.

I guess you can say we're both pig-headed. 

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