KY cooks – Chinese Corn & Spare Ribs Soup

It’s been a while since I posted the last recipe, so here’s another simple to make soup dish that anyone can make at home – Chinese corn and spare ribs soup. If you want it without pork, feel free to substitute spare ribs with chicken wings or bones.

I use a pressure cooker for this, but a normal pot would work too if you just increase the cooking time a factor of 2-3. Preparation time for this dish is less than 10 minutes.

corn, red dates, dried cuttle fish

The ingredients are fairly simple to source, and they aren’t expensive either. This is good for 4 small bowls of soup

• 2 x sweet corns (best if you get those from Cameron Highland, they are extra juicy)
• 600 grams of spare ribs
• half a dozen dried red dates
• 1 x dried cuttle fish or some dried scallops

boil the spare ribs for a while to remove impurities

Now the cooking instructions:

• boil the spare ribs separately for 1-2 minutes to remove impurities
• cut the corn in 2 and put all ingredients with 4 bowls of water in pressure cooker (6 bowls if you are using normal pot to account for evaporation)
• bring to boil and cook in pressure for 45 mins to an hour
• add salt to taste (about 1.5 teaspoon for me)
• add pepper to taste
• additionally, sprinkle some chopped spring onion before serving

just boil everything in pressure cooker for at least 45 minutes

The result is a clear soup that has the taste of sweet corn and spare ribs infused in it. It goes well with steamed rice or even just on its own.

Easy, healthy, and delicious, try it!

add a sprinkle of spring onion and you’re done – corn & spare ribs soup

KY cooks – Soya Sauce Chicken

It’s been too long since the last recipe was posted on this blog, so here goes.

This soya sauce chicken dish was first made by Haze off a recipe she obtained online, it turned out pretty good but I thought there were something lacking, so after giving it a bit of thought I came up with this version that took a cue from the tau eu bak recipe.

cloves, star anise, cinnamon stick, ginger, garlic

The ingredients are pretty similar to the tau eu bak – your usual suspects of Chinese/Nyonya cooking. I use chicken wings as the meat, but you can substitute this with any part of chicken, and I have reasonable confidence that it’ll work well with duck too.

• 1-2 star anise
• 3-4 cloves
• 1 cinnamon stick
• half a bulb of garlic
• 2 slices of ginger (more if you’re cooking duck)
• half a cup of soya sauce
• 1 tablespoon of dark soya sauce
• sugar to taste (1-2 teaspoon)
• 1.5 cups of water
• 4 chicken wings

1 part soya sauce, 3 part water

The cooking instruction is about as simple as you can get:

• bring water and soya sauce to boil (1 part soya sauce, 3 part water)
• add chicken, star anise, garlic, cinnamon, ginger, and cloves
• let simmer for 30 minutes
• add sugar and dark soya sauce
• simmer for another 5 minutes or till sauce thickens
• serve while hot

simmer for 30 mins, add sugar and a dash of dark soya sauce

The difference between this and the “original” recipe was the addition of dark soya sauce, this thickens the sauce quite a bit and adds a bit of complexity that sugar can’t bring out.

This is a very easy dish to cook and best enjoy with steamed rice. Happy cooking!

soya sauce chicken wings, le slurps

For more recipes from yours truly, check out  ”KY Cooks” section.

KY cooks – Drunken Lala

Drunken lala is a dish that I sorta invented by taking the ideas from drunken prawns and a clam with white wine dish that I had from The Apartment (first introduced by Suan).

I use a small pot to in order to have a steaming effect by closing the lid, as well as be able to retain the Chinese wine as the juice to go with rice. The “sauce” turned out pretty good, it has strong rice wine and seafood flavor as well as a hint of spiciness from chili padi.

The key to this dish is the freshness of lala, I would recommend that you get them from morning market and cook them the very same night. Overnight lala isn’t generally a good thing to consume.

ingredients for drunken lala

Anyway, here are the ingredients:

• at least half a kilo of lala, preferably large size
• ginger – slices
• half a bulb of garlic – peeled
• spring onion – cut into 1.5 inches
• 6-8 chili padi – whole
• a cup of Chinese cooking wine
• pepper and salt to taste
• 2 table spoon of cooking oil

use a small pot to retain more moisture

The instructions are very simple and straight forward, the key is to use a small pot and never a nonstick frying pan lest you want to lose the layer of nonstick teflon.

• heat up cooking oil, and fry ginger and garlic till fragrant
• add lala and fry it till most of them are opened
• add cooking wine and bring to boil
• add chili padi and spring onion, then close lid for 5 minutes
• add salt and pepper to taste
• serve while hot

drunken lala with chili padi & spring onion

And there you go, I paid some RM 15 for these fresh lala at the morning market, but prices are seasonal so your mileage may vary.

Do check out my other recipes, happy cooking!

KY cooks – Home Made Stew Duck Recipe

Of the various type of meat that is popular in Asian kitchen, duck is often considered a bit of an after thought in this country. While you can find pork, beef, chicken, and mutton in almost every supermarket, duck is usually a bit harder to obtain.

The fact is, duck is just not a very popular meat here, and my best guess is the “duck smell” that many dislike, and that it is also less versatile and at the same time, more expensive than chicken.

ingredients for stew duck

That being said, stew duck is one of my favorite poultry dishes. My mom used to make this a couple times a year during festive seasons, and most of the time we’d finish the whole duck rather quickly.

As it turned out, while the process takes quite some time, stew duck isn’t a particularly difficult dish to cook.

This recipe is one that I find pretty simple to follow, and yet yield a pretty good result.

first, boil the ingredients in a frying pan

The ingredients are simple enough to obtain, and this is for half a duck that should sufficiently feed up to 3 person.

• half a duck
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 2 star anise
• half a dozen cloves
• 3-4 slices of ginger
• 1 bulb of garlic
• 1 lemongrass
• 3 tablespoon of dark soya suace
• 2 tablespoon of sugar
• salt to taste
• 1 cup of water
• pepper

stew the duck for about one hour, cut before serving

Cooking instructions:

• rub salt all over the duck and let sit for at least 15-20 minutes
• in a frying pan large enough for the duck, heat up water & dark soya sauce
• add cinnamon, star anise, cloves, sugar, ginger, pepper, and lemongrass, bring to boil
• reduce fire to simmer, and add duck, garlic
• use a soup ladle, pour sauce over duck to cook the exposed portion
• turn the duck over every 15 minutes and cook for about an hour
• add water if it gets too dry
• cut and serve!

and here’s half a duck, cut and served

The duck will shrink a bit after cooking. I prefer to cut them into bite size before serving, but that can get a little tricky when it’s piping hot.

The stew duck goes well with white rice, and for those who loves garlic, you’ll also enjoy that bulb of garlic that is now soft and soaked with rich ducky flavor!

Haze, KY, and Vinn who is obviously enjoying herself!

Happy cooking! For those who doesn’t care about cooking, you can have some good stew duck at Fatty stew duck at restaurant Okay, or the stew duck stall at PJ State.

KY cooks – How to Make a Perfect Poached Egg

Out of the many ways in egg preparation, the most challenging method must be the all elusive poached egg, and it is probably also the reason why they aren’t very popularly served.

A perfect poached egg has the yolk still runny with a hardened crust but no raw egg white at all. It is almost a boiled version of telur mata kerbau, expect much healthier and I reckon, tastier.

my first crack resulted this poached egg above

Over at Blogger MasterChef competition where I was invited as one of the judges (more on that in future post, I promise), the skills challenge for the contestants was preparing poached eggs.

Chef Ryan Khang did a demo on a simple way to prepare perfect poached egg, I tried and it worked perfectly. I am sharing this recipe.

1. create vortex then pour egg in, 2. cook for 2 mins, 3. flip, 4. done

The “recipe” is very simple. Fresh eggs are preferred as the egg whites will be less susceptible to become separated from the yolk. Also, bigger does not mean better when it comes to egg. Eggs in room temperature is assumed in this method, otherwise you might have to let it cooked longer than described.

• bring water to boil in a saucepan or pot with water tall enough to cover an egg’s height
• add a couple tablespoon of vinegar, this is to prevent dispersion of the egg white
• crack egg into a cup first
• when the water is boiling, stir saucepan/pot to create a vortex
• add another tablespoon of vinegar to the cup with egg then gently pour the egg into middle of the vortex
• switch off the fire and let cook for 2 minutes
• slowly flip the egg over, covering the egg yolk and let it cook for another 2 minutes
• (alternate extra step) dunk the poached egg in water to remove vinegar taste
• ready to serve!

flipping the egg very gently

There you go, poached egg in less than 5 minutes. It is actually easier than it sounds, try this at home to get a hang of it, then impress your boyfriend/husband with a prefect breakfast (of course with bacon and toast together!)

interesting side note: my first experience tasting poached egg was at Kin Kin pan mee