Mee Sua Soup with Pork and Ginger Broth

Ingredients (serves 2)

1/4 lb minced pork (marinated with soy sauce, sesame oil and ground white pepper)

3 slices of ginger (cut into strips)

2 eggs

10 pieces of snow peas (or choice of vegetables)

4 pieces of fresh shitake mushrooms

Enough Mee Sua for 2 people

Method

Bring 2 cups of water to a boil.

Add ginger pieces and minced pork. Make sure the minced pork do not clump together.

Boil for 10 minutes – add shitake mushrooms.

After 3 minutes – add snow peas.

After 1 minute, add mee sua. 

When mee sua is almost cooked, crack the eggs.

Scoop and serve (careful not to break the eggs)

Ridiculously easy to make but oh so comforting for a pregnant woman. 🙂

Stewed Pork Belly

I had a strip of pork belly left and somehow the Teochew in me was really craving for stewed pork belly and the Cantonese in me was craving for mee pok tah. So I thought I would combine both and make stewed pork belly and serve it Cantonese noodle style.

Stewed Pork Belly Recipe
Ingredients:

1) Blanched pork belly, cut into 1-2 cm pieces
2) a cinnamon stick
3)some pieces of clove
4) one star anise
5) a few peppercorns
6) 2 tablespoons of brown sugar
7) dark soy sauce, light soy sauce, some Chinese cooking wine
8) water
9) 10 cloves of garlic, peeled

Put just a tiny bit of oil into a pot and throw in the spices and garlic and brown till there’s a nice aroma. Add the pork belly pieces and brown them on all sides. Add dark soy sauce, light soy sauce and Chinese cooking wine. Add brown sugar and make sure all melts well. Add water to cover the pork. And simmer covered for about an hour or until pork is fork tender. When you are almost serving, simmer at higher heat uncovered until the sauce becomes thick and to the consistency desired.

I also added dried shitake mushrooms, boiled eggs and tofu so that I can have some food for lunch tomorrow.

The stewed pork belly is served with meepok (egg flat noodles) mixed with sesame oil, tomato sauce and soy sauce and blanched baby kai lan.

YUMZ.

Bak Kut Teh

I was craving for Bak Kut Teh but my stash of herbal BKT mix from Singapore had run out and reinforcements from the homeland will not arrive until the husband goes back in two weeks time. Desperate, I decided to make my own BKT from scratch. I attacked my task with my research skills, trial and error and adaptation from the Vietnamese Pho adventure I had with some friends a few months ago. So my taster (the husband) finally gave the thumbs-up (Yes! It tastes like Bak Kut Teh!) on the third taste and I’m sharing it with you. This might not be the ACTUAL method used by our great Singaporean BKT hawkers, but this is as close as I could get from a home that’s quite far away from Home.

Ingredients:
1 onion (brown skin on)
1 bulb of garlic
3 cinnamon sticks
5 star anise
a tsp of whole black peppercorns
a tablespoon of white peppercorns
1 tsp of cardamon
1 tablespoon of whole cloves
2 pounds pork ribs – blanched in hot water (I used country-style cuz they are meaty and my man likes meat)
3 dried red dates – deseeded and blanched in hot water
1 tablespoon of dark soy sauce
salt to taste

Method:
1. Char the onion and garlic (I broiled them for 10 minutes, you can use a toaster or a grill, or just hold it over the stove like my friend Yvonne does)

2. Toast the spices on a frying pan under medium heat until you can smell them. Place spices in cheese cloth bag. (I actually omitted this step and had my spices floating all around, I don’t mind that, if you don’t, good for you too)

3. Bring a pot of water to a boil, add the charred onion, garlic, bag of spices, red dates and pork ribs in and bring to a rolling boil. Bring to a simmer and scoop out the scum from the top.

4. Simmer for 4 hours or until meat is tender.

5. Add a tablespoon of dark soy sauce.

7. Serve hot and enjoy!

Curry noodles

  

Fry diced shallots with sambal chilli, then add in pork ribs marinated with salt and curry powder. Fry it for a while till you see the oil released from the pork ribs. Add in potato chunks which have been fried with some salt. Mix it all together. Add water and simmer till the pork is cooked. Pour in some coconut milk and season. Serve with noodles and lettuce.

My mom’s curry recipe. Normally, no one uses pork in curry for I guess religious reasons. My grandmother just threw in pork ribs one day while cooking curry, probably because she wanted to use whatever’s in the fridge and realised that it goes really well as a meat for curry. So this tradition of using pork ribs in curry passed on to my mom and now to me.