Black Pork

December 15, 2011 Jit Pork

So, what do you do with the meat of beautiful black pork after the legs are taken out to make jamon ? You cook and eat them too …

It looks almost like Wahyu beef

While I’m shopping for sea salt at Corte Ingres, I drop by the meat section and my mouth was gaping. Then I started hopping around like a child who just found his candy. The meat are so beautiful here it makes travelling 12 hours from Shanghai over there all worth it. With fiery enthusiasm, I bought a few pieces of black pork tenderloin and began thinking how to cook it.

With limited Asian spices and sauces, my choices were to cook something based on European herbs. I bought myself a lot of rosemary, garlic and again, Spanish sea salt. After brining the meat for a bit, I immediately set to make garlic olive oil and pan-fried the tenderloin swiftly with a dash of rosemary. The result ? A heaven concoction true saying, “When the meat is fresh, you don’t need to hide with sauces”.

It looks almost like Wahyu beef

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Spanish Seafood Galore

November 30, 2011 Jit Seafood

Okay, when it comes to seafood, I love Barcelona. The freshest, juiciest, biggest and totally value for money seafood experience. As part of my ABCDE tour (A Buy, Capture, Drink & Eat Tour), I went to a mercata in La Ramblas to get all my ingredients for the evening ahead. There, I was mesmerised by the array of seafood and gotten a heap of white cockles, gambas (large prawns) and a big crab. Since I am in love with padron (Spanish green peppers), I got a bunch of them in the hope of making our own tapas. ;-)

Beautiful spanish green peppers

The first thing was to get the crab boiled. According to the local folks, I should boil the crab in water and then put in the refrigerator to make it into a cold dish. And that’s what I did.

Yummylicious crab densed with roe

Next are the beautiful white cockles – Interestingly, when I bought the cockles, the owner gave me a bunch of parsley which probably recommend me to cook that together with white wine. A simple dish of garlic, parsley, white wine and fresh white cockles do the job. Oh, a dash of Spanish sea salt.

White cockles are excellent with a glass of wine

Lastly, the gambas. I follow the recipe from local tapas – just grill it with sea salt (no oil). The end result is very light and tasty prawns.

Heavenly prawns. Simple and delicious.

Seriously, Barcelona is a heaven for those who love to eat, enjoy food or even making a dish or two on your own.

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Roast Chicken wrapped in Spanish Ham

November 29, 2011 Jit Poultry

Delicious roast chicken leg wrapped in spanish jamon
When I was travelling in Spain, I chose an apartment so that I have a kitchen to cook something nice instead. The market sells an amazing array of ingredients that are totally impossible to miss. You can get the freshest meat, poultry or even seafood (amazing range, I must say) from a lively and clean market.

In entirety, I cook two nights in succession, one focusing on seafood and the other on meat. Today I would like to introduce you my concoction of roast chicken wrapped in delicious spanish jamon. Iberico Bellota is known to be such an exquisite ham having the black pig devour acorns to make the meat so delicious and melts in your mouth when it warms up. I thought if I can induce the flavour of jamon into the chicken leg, it would be a great mix of taste.

First, with all roast meat, you need to brine it so that you have juicy and tender pieces rather than dry blocks of jerky ! In fact, not a lot of people brine their meat before roasting and chances are you will not have such a tasty treat. Now, brining is very simple – mix some water and salt together – then dip your meat in there for a period of time (best is really 6 hours and above but push come to shove, 1 hour with more salt). The idea of brining is a bit scientific – its all about osmosis. While salt water try to equalise with the meat like chicken, the water will seep deep into the meat fiber making them juicy. Of course, this process is also great when you add your herbs or spices in there as the flavour will be absorbed too.

Once that’s done, I added some nice Spanish sea salt to rub all over the chicken leg, sprinkle some black pepper and rosemary all over it. I then wrap pieces of jamon all over the chicken and put it into a pre-heated oven for 30 minutes at 200C. I’ve also added small potatoes rubbed with some salt and rosemary into the plates so it soaks up the jamon oil and juice making it one of the best roast potatoes money can buy.

There you go, an easy recipe of taking natural cured meat flavour into fresh meat. Yummy !

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Salted Fish with Pork Belly Pot

September 8, 2011 Jit Pork

Delicious salted fish with pork belly
I have a craving. I’m a slut when it comes to delicious porky pork and I enjoy making interesting dishes with pork. My favourite part is pork belly as the layers of meat and fat coming together makes the dish sinful but yet irresistible.

Let me introduce you to this yummy dish – its originally a Malaysian fare made by Chinese (??) big fry restaurants. The iron wok, high intense heat normally create an aroma that’s hard to replicate at home. Instead of burning down my home with this kind of intense fire, I used a few small cheats to try getting closer to the real thing. Here’s the approach…

Ingredients
40g Salted fish – I love using MeiXiang salted fish coz they are excellent. Cut into cubes and soak in water for 10 minutes
500g Sliced pork belly with skin – To make nice sliced pork belly, put them in freezer first till they hardened but not frozen stiff
8 dried chillies sliced and soaked in water
500ml chicken stock or bone stock
Dark soy sauce
Light soy sauce
White ground pepper

How-to
The first thing is get a stainless steel pot, heat it up with some oil and fry the pork belly. Sprinkle some white pepper. The steel pot will create a nice aroma around the pork and by frying it, you make it hardened for later braising. Once its a bit brown, scoop it up and leave it aside.

Now throw the dry chillies into the same pot with left over oil and fry till its fragrant. Once done, put the salted fish to fry and you’ll get a nice aroma. Throw the pork back in and continue tossing it for a few minutes.

With the pork and salted fish well mixed, add the stock, some dark soy sauce, a dash of light soy sauce. Turn the heat down to medium and let it braised till the sauce becomes thick and reduced.

Serve on a claypot with rice. Oh yum !

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What’s in my fridge ?

August 7, 2011 Jit Others

I have always envisioned being a producer of a reality cooking show where the challenge is to cook a sumptuous from whatever you can rummage in your refrigerator. This is about creativity together with skills and it brings people out of comfort zone. We tend to be creatures of habit and not explore something new. It takes a lot to change whether its for the better or worse. Nevertheless, I thought cooking has given be renewed lessons on “Make that change” and nowadays I always live by the rule on that.

If you think your refrigerator is overloaded and needs some clearing, tonite is probably a good time you try to create some new dishes – Remember, if you don’t try, whatever you cook will always be good. If you do try, sometimes it can be great. Your choice. I’m definitely opening my fridge later in the evening.

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Fried Vermicelli with Prosciutto

August 7, 2011 Jit Others, Pork

Simple dish for a Sunday brunch. Goes well with curry chicken.

This is truly an East meets West dish. I purposely designed this dish to have the flavour of West clashing with deep soy based aroma of Eastern Oriental.

To bring the best flavour out of both, I used a double-cooking method that ensures all the prosciutto smoky aroma gets absorbed into the vermicelli. Here’s the low-down on how to do it.

Get yourself some prosciutto and sliced them into thin strips. If you want to add some more meat, the best is Spam – cut them into strips as well.

Soak your vermicelli in warm water that’s already added with two tablespoon of Knorr chicken granules. This method adds some taste into an otherwise bland noodles.

Heat up some oil and put one sliced big onion to fry. Once it looks caramelised, add luncheon meat into the pan. Continue frying the luncheon meat until its brown on all sides. Put all the vermicelli into the pan (make sure your pan is big enough) and mix them together. You will probably need a few minutes to get everything blended well. Remove and put all content into a plate.

Heat up the pan with some oil again. This time, put the prosciutto into the pan and fry until is looks crispy. Put back the vermicelli into the pan and continue tossing it. While doing that, add dark soy sauce, light soy sauce (to taste), some ground white pepper and a little bit of sesame oil. After the vermicelli looks coated with dark soy sauce, make a hole in the middle and add two eggs in it. Continue stirring the noodles so it mix well with the eggs.

At this time, you should have crispier vermicelli and little bit of lumps from the frying. This is normal because you want them to bind a bit together to obtain the texture and a little bite.

Try out the noodles and if it isn’t salty enough, add more light soy sauce. Once done, put in plates to serve.

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Onde-Onde

August 5, 2011 Jit Desserts

When I first embark on our journey of great Malaysian food, one of my biggest barrier is sourcing for ingredients. There is simply a lack of South East Asian stores in China that can serve to provide fresh ingredients to make what I wanted as easy as when we’re home. As such, after a lot of searching and also improvisation to help make dishes that’s closes to homely feel.

Onde-Onde was a classic example as I’m searching for fresh grated coconut and pandan leaves. Obviously that’s the challenge and we finally had to buy coconut as per and then grate it ourselves. It was a nightmare and with some help of our every ready friends, we manage to scrap it out of their hush and have ourselves Onde-Onde.

Onde-Onde is a traditional Malay sweet dessert made with primarily glutinous rice flour and also palm sugar (we call it Gula Melaka) and also rolled on fresh dessicated coconut. The taste itself is quite exquisite and it’s best to eat it as a snack.

Ingredients
500g Glutinous rice flour
300g Grated coconut (Do add a pinch of salt)
400g Palm sugar (Gula Melaka)
50g Sugar
400ml Cold Water
1 Tablespoon of Pandan juice
1 Tablespoon of Pandan Essence

How-to
First thing is to make the dough. Combine flour, cold water, sugar, pandan juice and pandan essence together. Knead until it becomes smooth and firm. You can then divide the dough into 10-15g each. Take about 2-3g of palm sugar, wrap the dough around and form a ball.

Separately prepare a pot of boiling water and cook the balls for a few minutes. You can see that its cook when it begins to float to the surface. Strain and pour into a bowl of cold water quickly. Within a minute, remove the Onde-Onde and mix with grated coconut. Serve on its own or wrap it with banana leaves.

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Be Bold.

August 5, 2011 Jit Others

One the my biggest passion in life is cooking. Sometimes good, sometimes bad but never a bore. Though never been into any formal culinary training, I’ve constantly use feel and touch to get my bearings on what’s right and what’s not.

Obviously, this blog doesn’t want to just be any others who tell you about recipes, it needs to be as inventive. After all, a new idea comes from two unrelated idea combined together.

I will not discount old favourites but I am constantly striving to develop new dishes that I hope will be a joy for you as much as it’s for me in conceptualising it. Hope you will enjoy this site as much as I enjoy writing it.

Jit

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