GREAT Fried Chicken Wings

Chez Tessa along Hawken Drive in St. Lucia (across Coles supermarket) serves the best Fried Chicken in Brisbane. Well, actually, they just do fried chicken wings, but that’s still chicken! The dish is served with a hefty portion of hot rice and a small bed of fresh salad, along with a dish of nuoc nam. The wings are unbelievably light and crisp on the outside, and tasty and juicy on the inside.

The fried chicken pieces bear more resemblance to the Korean variety (think Kyo Chon and Bon Chon) rather than the American South kind. Having a plate in front of you is a real treat when you’re craving for comfort food and it’s much better than KFC, in my opinion. At just AUD7.50 (or is it 6.50?), it is an astounding bargain, too.

Chez Tessa is a small and rather rudimentary student eatery run by a friendly Vietnamese couple and the fare is the typical Australian version of Chinese-Vietnamese cuisine. What I truly appreciate about this place, other than the fact that it is quite cheap, is that although not authentically Vietnamese, the food is prepared with greater care and better ingredients than other similar establishments’. The pho hardly has msg, if it has any at all, and is full of nourishing real beef goodness.

If you do decide to try the place out, you will also find that there is a wide selection of inexpensive packaged beverage, ice cream, a range of condiments, and a lot of other things on the menu that might become your personal favorites.

Warm Potato Salad

A fantastic salad for dinner, this potato salad is warm, satisfying, and light at the same time. It is smooth and rich with sour cream; wonderfully infused with the fragrance and tang of lemon and herbs and the textural contrast of crunchy celery and the velvety mouthful of potato chunks. Suffer from less guilt for indulging in sour cream by leaving the potato skins on. Aside from adding a lot of fiber to your diet, it does add a wonderful earthy, potato-ey flavor to the dish.



Warm Potato Salad

4 pcs. Large potatoes, cooked through and cut into 1.5 inch cubes
1 stalk Celery, minced
½ c. Fennel stalks and fronds, sliced into thin medallions
½ pc. Onion minced
1 T. Garlic, minced
½ pc. Lemon, juiced
2 t. Lemon zest
1 c. Sour cream
1 T. Whole grain mustard
2 t. Black pepper
2 t. Salt
1 t. Oregano
1 t. Parsley
1 t. Olive oil

Sauté the onion and the garlic in olive oil. Add the sour cream, lemon juice, lemon zest, mustard, black pepper, and oregano. Heat through. Add the fennel stalks and fronds and the potato cubes. Warm through. Take the pot off the heat and add the celery pieces. Season the salad with salt, to taste. Serve.

Fennel-Coriander Salad with Orange Dressing

Spring is here! When the weather gets warmer, my flesh and bones don’t feel as vulnerable and consequently, I do not have the need to constantly feed on rich stews and massive portions of hot food. Less time is spent in front of the stove and more time is spent lying in the sun enjoying the breeze. Since I still need to eat, salads are the perfect quick fixes for these gloriously lazy first days of spring.

Fennel salads are perfect to break into the season with. Fennel is filling, delicious, low calorie, low GI, nutritious, rich in fiber and great for detoxing. It is cheap at this time ~ only $0.99 for a fresh bulb that makes 4 substantial servings. It has a wonderful crisp texture and a very refreshing flavor. You can cook it, too; but to celebrate the end of winter, I will keep it cool and raw in a salad.


Fennel-Coriander Salad with Orange Dressing

1 bulb Fennel, sliced crosswise thinly
½ c. Coriander leaves, roughly chopped
1 T. Orange marmalade
3 T. Olive oil
1 t. Salt
1 t. Black pepper

Mix the last four ingredients thoroughly in a big container. Toss in the fennel and coriander. Ready!

Sticky Rice Cake (Bibingkang Malagkit)

Manang Jacinta, our cook, used to bring out trays of bibingkang malagkit or biko every other week for merienda back when I was but a wee toddler. This rice cake was a particular favorite of mine, so much so that a substantial portion of my long-term memory has been reserved for this sweet. I remember my excitement whenever it was ‘The Week’ that they were being served. How its rich scent filled the air! And how very like jewels the shiny, immaculate squares carefully dusted with latik at the very center. Today (many years after my fortunate acquaintance with pot and stove), I am able to enjoy this snack miles and miles away from home, thanks to bibingkang malagkit’s widely available and inexpensive ingredients. As a bonus, it’s pretty quick and easy to make, too.



Bibingkang Malagkit

2 c. Glutinous rice, soaked overnight
3 c. Coconut milk
½ c. Sugar
½ t. Salt
1 pc. Pandan leaf, washed and tied into a tidy bundle (optional)

Coco Jam Topping:
1 c. Coconut Cream
1 c. Sugar

Drain the soaked rice and place in a pot with the coconut milk, sugar, salt, and pandan leaf. Mix everything together until the sugar has dissolved. Cover the pot and simmer over very low heat. Stir every once in a while to prevent the bottom from toasting into a crust. After all the coconut milk has been absorbed after approximately 25 minutes, take the pot off the heat and let it sit, covered, for a further 10 minutes. Transfer the cooked rice into a pan big enough for the rice to spread out to about 1.5 inches thick. Leave it to cool at room temperature, preferably overnight, to set it properly, before cutting into squares.

This can be served as is, with mango slices, latik, or coco jam.

To make the coco jam, heat half of the coconut cream until it turns to oil. Add the sugar into the oil and allow it to caramelize. When the sugar is nicely brown and melted, add the rest of the coconut cream. Stir well until smooth and thick like toffee. Pour the jam on the rice cake. Let the topping cool and set before cutting the rice cake into serving portions.

* Latik is the solid left after heating coconut milk into oil. The product is best described as fragrant brown bits that can be both crunchy and chewy. The bits have a toasted coconut-y tatse.

Pain Viennois

Ah! Mon Dieu! Mon pain viennois etait brule! (Oh! My God! My Viennese Bread burned!)

Except for the thicker than desired crust, the bread turned out quite well. I used Richard Bertinet’s recipe for Sweet Dough in Gourmet Magazine and came up with dough that was, as promised, ‘full of life’. I left it to rise overnight in the fridge and was hoping for a fresh selection of perfect ham and cheese rolls and almond-crusted bread in the morning; but alas! The journey to a basket of hot rolls has been fraught with unforeseen obstacles; number one of which being my surly landlord, who lives two floors below me, came knocking at 10:30 in the evening demanding that I cease slapping my dough. Secondly, my utter lack of timidity pushed the limits on the rolls’ stay in the oven! Boo hoo! Anyway, learn from this and don’t leave your rolls in the oven for more than 35 minutes.

You can find how to manipulate the sticky mess into strong, bouncy dough on this video, Le Technique


Sweet Dough
• 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons whole milk
• 1/2 oz fresh (cake) yeast or 1 (1/4-oz) package active dry yeast (preferably Red Star or Saf; not rapid-rise)
• 1 lb 2 oz bread flour (about 3 3/4 cups)
• 1/2 stick unsalted butter, softened
• 3 tablespoons superfine granulated sugar
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 2 large eggs
• If using fresh yeast, heat milk until just warm. If using dry yeast, heat milk to 120 to 130°F.
• Rub yeast into flour in a large bowl, then rub in butter. Stir in sugar and salt. Fold in milk and eggs with bowl scraper, rotating bowl, until liquid is absorbed and a wet, sticky dough forms. (Dough will be wetter than most you’ve encountered.) Scrape dough out onto an unfloured surface. (Dough will be a sticky mess. Don’t be tempted to add more flour. By working the dough through a process of repeatedly stretching and folding it over onto itself, trapping air, dough will become cohesive and supple.).
• Slide your fingers underneath both sides of dough with your thumbs on top. Lift dough up (to about chest level) with your thumbs toward you, letting dough hang slightly. In a continuous motion, swing dough down, slapping bottom of dough onto surface, then stretch dough up and back over itself in an arc to trap in air. Repeat lifting, slapping, and stretching, scraping surface with flat side of bowl scraper as needed, until dough is supple, cohesive, and starts to bounce slightly off of surface without sticking, about 8 minutes.
• Transfer dough to a lightly floured clean surface. Form into a ball by folding each edge, in turn, into center of dough and pressing down well with your thumb, rotating ball as you go. Turn ball over and transfer to a lightly floured bowl and cover with a kitchen towel (not terry cloth). Let rise in a draft-free place at warm room temperature until doubled, about 1 hour.



Gently flatten the risen dough and roll up into a log (like a jelly roll). Cut portions large enough for your rolls. I was able to make 3 medium-sized and 1 large loaves of bread. Some of them I filled with ham and cheese and there’s this one I left unfilled. Let them rise, covered, in a draft-free place until double in size, about 1 hour. Brush the filled rolls with an egg wash made of a beaten egg + 1 T. water.

At this point, you may wish to top the unfilled loaf with an almond crust, as I did. The recipe:





Almond Crust

½ Egg white, beaten until very frothy
1 c. Almond flakes, lightly toasted
1 c. Sugar

Fold almonds into the frothy egg whites. Roll the coated almonds in sugar.

Bake the risen rolls in a preheated oven at 200C for 30 minutes. Test for doneness. They can be left 5 minutes longer, if they have not achieved the desired golden color.

Radish Cake (Trip to Chinatown 1, the sequel)

Not wanting to waste the ingredients left over from cooking the dish from my last entry, I decided to whip up some radish cake, also known as low bok gow and turnip cake (or oddly, some people call it CARROT?!? cake), one of the dimsum cart's staples. This is one of few dishes I could think of that share similar taste and textural elements with Kiam Peng and yet, is quite distinct in form.

Radish Cake was something I never liked. I remember it as having the vaguely pasty and greasy quality of candles. My mother used to get it from a specialty store when I was little and no one could quite explain where the radish is in the cake. After a little research, I unraveled the mystery (there is radish in the cake!) and produced a 6x8x2 inch pan of very tasty radish cake (,indeed).

Because I am too cheap to pay $20 or so for a slab of preserved pork belly, I used streaky bacon instead. No harm done, really. It was heartily stamped with the voracious approval of my casual-Chinese-cuisine critic, JCarlos, whose mother built a small fortune selling Chinese delicacies in Ecuador.


Radish Cake

Main elements:
100 g. Streaky bacon, chopped finely
3 pcs. Chinese sausage, chopped finely
½ c. Dried shrimp
½ c. Dried mushrooms
3 c. Daikon (White Icicle), coarsely grated
2 c. Rice flour (not glutinous, but the kind used for making shortbread)
1 T. Sesame seeds, toasted
4 c. Water

Flavoring:
1/3 cup Fried shallots
1 T. Garlic, minced
1 t. Ginger, finely grated
1 T. Sugar
1 t. White pepper
1 t. Five spice powder
1 T. Cooking wine
2 t. Sesame oil

Soak the shrimps and mushrooms in 2 cups of water until they have been hydrated. Set aside. In a pot, render the fat from the bacon and sausage pieces over low heat. Add the grated daikon and stir-fry until the daikon is wilted. Add the shrimp, mushrooms, and water into the pot. Stir the rice flour into the remaining 2 cups of water until smooth. Add the rice flour mix into the pot. Cook over low heat until the mixture thickens into the consistency of condensed cream soup (from a can). Stir the flavoring in. Pour the mixture into a greased heatproof pan and sprinkle the sesame seeds on top of it. Steam over high heat for about one hour. Remove from the heat. Cool until room temperature has been achieved, then chill overnight.




I think some people eat it steamed through (see picture on right), but I served it the only way I know how --- sliced into approximately 1x2x0.5 (WxLxH/Thickness)inch rectangles and pan-fried until crisp (see picture on the very top of this post).

Trip to Chinatown 1

Look at what I found at Yuen’s Market in Brisbane --- Gulong brand Pork Leg with Mushrooms! This nifty, nitrate-laden little package has yummy chunks of real pork hock (with bits of bone, too), along with chewy skin, mushrooms, and stewed chestnuts!

What I failed to appreciate about it when I was little was the fact that I’d have to cook for myself one day. And this day comes. Gulong Pork Leg makes an incredibly easy and fast Kiam Peng. ( I think it translates to ‘Salty Rice’ in my fookien dialect.) This dish brings to mind images of suffering women toiling slavishly over steaming pots and never fails to impress kids who grew up in their mothers’ Chinese kitchens.

If you do not have access to canned pork leg, you can use the real thing for this dish… just that the entire process would take longer.



Kiam Peng

Aromatics:
½ pc. Onion, roughly chopped
1 Tablespoon Garlic, minced
2 teaspoons Ginger, grated finely
1 T Oil

Condiments:
2 T Soy Sauce
1 t Chinese Five Spice Powder
2 T Cooking Wine

Components:
¼ cup Dried Shrimp
1 ½ pcs. Chinese Sausage (Lup Chung), cut into 1/8 inch diagonal slices
1/3 cup Dried Sliced Black Mushrooms
1 can Gulong Pork Leg with Mushrooms
1 ½ cups Sticky / Glutinous / Sweet Rice, soaked overnight in cool water and drained

Accompaniments:
Coriander, roughly chopped
Fried shallots
Hot sauce (I prefer the Sriracha brand; the original version of which has a green cap)

In a pot, saute the aromatics in the hot oil. Add the drained rice and the condiments. Stir fry over medium heat until all the rice grains have been coated in oil. Add all the other ingredients and 2 more cups of water. Stir well. Cover and simmer over a very low fire until rice is cooked through. This would take about 20 minutes. Stir the rice once in a while, just so it doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pot. After all the water has been absorbed, take the pot off the heat and let it sit, covered, for 10 minutes. Garnish with coriander and fried shallots and serve with hot sauce on the side.