Chinese Snacks - Part I - Mango Mochis

I’m a huge mango lover! I love anything mango, and these little mango mochis definitely fit the bill! Mango mochis are not easy to find, the first time I had it was at a Chinese restaurant which specialized in their lobster feast, the best way to end the 5-course lobster dinner was with these little mango mochis. They look so complicated to make, so I was pleasantly surprised when I surfed the net and came across this super duper easy recipe. This recipe has been tried and tested, and it’s a real winner!! ENJOY!

Mango Mochi

Makes 18

1 cup glutinous rice flour


180ml mango juice

1/4 cup sugar

3 mangoes cut in tiny cubes

½ bag of unsweetened, finely shredded coconut for dusting/coating

Method:

1. Cut the mangoes into tiny cubes, lay them flat on a plate and freeze for 30 minutes or up. (This will make the slimy mangoes easier to work with)

2. In a microwave-safe bowl, combine the glutinous rice flour, juice and sugar. Stir and mix well, there should be no lumps.

 3. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap, microwave for 2 minutes. Remove and stir. Return to microwave for another 30 seconds. Stir-well (it’s going to be hard to stir, the mixture should be a uniform and very sticky at this point).

4. Put the shredded coconut on a plate, drop a tablespoon of the mixture into the coconut. Flatten the ball into a thin disk, cover it with coconut, drop some mango in the middle of the disk and wrap the “dough” around the mango to form a ball, pinch the top to seal the ball. Add more coconut if it gets too sticky, once the ball is seal, lightly roll it into ball shape, and put onto muffin cups.These can be made ahead and refrigerate in a covered container for up to 2 – 3 days. They are a crowd pleaser and a great compliment to any Chinese dinner.

Chinese home cooking

Surprisingly, I don’t make a lot of Chinese dishes at home. Chinese dishes are generally easy to execute, but require a lot of ingredients and can be time consuming after a long day of work. This recipe only uses a few ingredients that most home cooks already have at home, maybe with the exception of the Chinese five-spice powder. If you don’t’ have this in your pantry, you definitely should, it gives that special savory spice to any Chinese meat dishes! This recipe is for a classic Shanghai-ese dish, five spice pork chop with veggie (bok choy) rice.

Pork Chop is a staple at our household, the second most consumed meat besides chicken! Pork chops are easy to cook and very versatile I always prefer bone-in chops, they are way more moist and flavorful (not to mention fatty! YUM!). Each chop is slight hammered out with a meat tenderizer, and quickly marinated before frying. The rice is super easy, all done in the rice cooker!

Five-spice pork chops (serves 4)
4 pieces of  boned-in pork chops

Marinade

2 tbsp of soy sauce

1 tbsp of cooking wine (optional)

1 tbsp of sugar

1 tsp of Chinese five-spice powder (this spice is magical!)

2 cloves of garlic, chopped

Seasoned Flour

1 ½ cups of all purpose flour

1 tsp of Chinese five –spice powder (more magic!)

Mix all the marinade ingredients in a medium bowl, mix with pork chops and marinate for 15 min or overnight if you have time. Lightly cover each pork chop with the seasoned flour, shallow fry each chop until golden brown. Viola!

Veggie (Bok choy) rice (serves 4)

3 cups long-grain rice

4 cups of Chinese bok choy, chopped into 2 cm lengths (or roughly)

1 tbsp of chicken bouillon powder (or salt)

Wash the rice, mix the chicken bouillon powder into the amount of water you usually use to make 3 cups of rice (I used 3 cups of water for 3 cups of rice). Add the veggie into the rice, and pour the stock into the electric rice cooker. Stir and set it to cook. Stir the cooked rice with veggie well before serving.

This is a very simple recipe and can be done in a very short amount of time, perfect for a weeknight dinner. There can be different variation to this recipe; you can serve the rice with chicken and also Chinese sausages steamed over the rice.

Scallion Pancakes!

Sorry for the mini hiatus from blogging, between being sick and trying to plan a big surprise birthday party (will have to reveal the guest of honor later, just in case she is reading!), I really didn't have much time to cook or blog. But we can't live on frozen pizza forever, so I managed to make a few things.


The super hot days of summer is finally here, I love the heat and love being able to have my little toddler run around with only diapers on. I love spending more time outside, so instead of making a full dinner with rice, meat and veggies, we have been eating alot of noodles and light meals. Our noodles are usually very simple, accompanied by either some steamed dumplings or fish balls, but I was craving something greasy and yummy the other day and decided to make some scallion pancakes instead!

I came across this recipe while reading one of my all time favorite food blog - A Daily Obsession! I love scallion pancakes, it is flaky, warm and crispy! I was really excited to try this recipe, I was pleased to know that it only took 5 simple ingredients to make these pancakes. The recipe seemed easy enough, so with Tyler occupied by his favorite show - Fresh Beat Band, I started to tackle the recipe!

Scallion Pancakes adapted from A Daily Obsession
(Makes 6 pancakes)

3 cups plain flour
1 1/3 cups boiling water
3/4 cup finely sliced scallions
Salt
Shortening (always have this on hand for cake icing!)

1. Sieve the flour into a bowl, pour the boiling water in and use a pair of chopsticks to mix, swirling round and round until all the flour form lumps. Gather into a ball (be careful, it's hot!). Mix in 1 heaped tbsp of  shortening. Knead dough on a lightly floured surface until smooth. Add more flour if too soft, or more water if too hard. Overall, the dough should be soft-firm when you press it with a fingertip.

2. Divide the dough into 5 or 6 pieces. Roll one piece of dough into a cylinder and flatten into 'ox-tongue' shape (oblong) of about 1/2 cm thick. Spread shortening over entire surface. Sprinkle the pastry with a generous pinch of salt (need quite a bit of salt), followed by the scallions (but leave the furthest edge clear so that the scallions will not get squeezed out when rolled) and roll, tucking in snugly. Now coil the roll, the seam inside the coil so that it can't open (this part is really important or all the scallions will fall out).  Press the coil cake with your palm and then roll into a thin pancake with the rolling pin.

 

 

 

3. Heat up some oil (1/4 cup or less) in a frying pan and fry the pancakes one by one until crispy. Turn over once only. The oil must be quite hot so that the layers of pastry'll separate and puff. Cut pancake into wedges and serve hot with a dip of black vinegar and light soy sauce if like.

 

My pancakes turned out a bit more dense than expected, but the flavor is great. I think the key is to roll the pancake thin and make sure the oil is super hot.  Some people might ask why go through all this trouble when frozen scallion pancakes are available everywhere, but for me, I love making things like this from scratch. I really enjoyed making it, the leftover pancakes can be stored in the freezer (pre-cook) for another quick meal.

Comfort food

My hubby is a true CBC (Canadian born chinese), he prefers burgers over fried rice, pizza over stir fries and hockey over ping pong (well, who doesn't?), but when it comes to comfort food, his #1 choice is actually congee. Congee is something all of us chinese kids grew up eating, it's basically a rice porridge, with various things added into it. It's the perfect thing to eat on a winter day, and the best thing to eat when you are sick. Congee is one of those things every chinese moms know how to make, but nobody really have a recipe for it. So when I got married, I decided to try to make it myself.

There is only two ingredients for the congee base, rice + water, all you really need to do is boil the rice in water until it reaches a porridge like consistency. Congee is not hard to make, but it's hard to make it well. And since hubby raves about his mom's congee, I really want to make it well, or at least somewhat comparable to his mom's version. After many failed attempts, I have finally mastered the art of congee, and hopefully Tyler will one day rave about his mommy's congee too!


Mommy Fi's Congee with shredded pork and thousand year old egg

1 cup of rice
1 tbsp of vegetable oil
2 tsp of salt
6 cups of water
1 large piece of pork shank (Chu Chin in chinese)
2 thousand year of egg (Chinese fermented eggs, can be found in asian grocery store, usually by the dry goods area)
1/2 cup green onions, chopped
Shredded preserved pork threads (optional)


1. Stir the rice, oil and salt together in a small bowl

2. Bring 6 cups of water to boil, then add the pork shank to boil for 30 minutes

3. Clean the eggs by removing the wood chips from the outside and cracking the shell, cut the eggs in small chunks, set aside
4. Add the rice/oil/salt mixture into the boiling pork water, simmer for another 30 minutes
5. Remove the pork shank, chop into small pieces
6. Continue to simmer the congee until the right consistency is reached, add water if the congee becomes too thick, should take another 15 - 20 minutes
7. Add the pork pieces, eggs and green onions into the congee and simmer for another 5 - 10 minutes
8. Season with more salt to taste
9. Serve hot with shredded preserved pork threads

The "secret" to making good congee is mixing the rice with oil and salt, it results in the perfect consistency, the rice is all dissolved, but still has a nice texture.  Add more water if the congee becomes too thick. Enjoy!