Seafood Dinner At Patong, Phuket

 

How can we not feasting ourselves in a seafood heaven?Yes, we did it..seafood dinner for 2 conservative nights. Well..it is not easy to resist the temptations though it may be a prelude for a gout attack. Patong Beach is one of the most happening place in Phuket island-it's unsurprised for its bawdy night life. In fact one of the major attractions of this place is that it has the highest concentration of seafood restaurants ranging from budget friendly, mid-ranged to world-class-fine-dining standard. Wide varieties of fish, shellfish and crustaceans are normally displayed in colourful patterns on a giant tray of crushed ice at the front of the restaurant entrance. Basically you just have to select your dinner from all the seafood displayed. Once you have picked out your seafood, you pay for it at the cash register and then the boss will ask you how you would like each dish prepared and then the cooked seafood is back to the table . The price for each gram paid is already inclusive of preparation cost.

Sweet and Sour Pork Rib

This dinner dish is prepared by my favourite chef-mom in law. This meat dish is very appetizing for it is tossed with sweet and sour salads.

First she marinated the pork ribs with some of my home-made enzymes to tenderize the meat. i saw her marinating the ribs with soy sauce, wine, pepper and corn flour for few hours. Next she prepared the salad by tossing the cucumbers and carrots slices with some salt. Squeeze out juice and marinade in vinegar and sugar mixture and keep in the fridge.

To prepare the sweet and sour pork rib, she first deep fried the ribs. Next she tossed the fried pork ribs in the tomato sauce mixture, seasoned with some salt and sugar. Simmered for awhile and finally mixed the ribs with the salads.

This is one of the olden tasty dishes which most of our grandma and mother likes to prepare. When I was young, I only remember having it during the festival days only. When my mom prepared deep fried pork rib, her other variation is to cook it with baked beans. This variation is also one of my old time favourites..

Steamboat Dinner

All members in my family love steamboat except for my hubby. Simple, steamboat is not meant for the impatient sort. So, my solace when my hubby is away from home is often an arrangement of a steamboat family dinner in his absence!

The base soup was my mom-in-law's production. I rather called it as the ' superior stock" as she would insist to put in many ingredients such as chicken carcass, turnips, carrots and celery, slow boiled for at least 2 hours. Sometimes the dried scallops were not spared either. When dried scallops are added, I can't but to rename the soup as "imperial stock" instead. In actual fact, you really need not put in too many ingredients for the soup base since it will be sweetened by the steamboat ingredients anyway.
There are many ready ingredients available for steamboat. The must-have list is as follows:-

Vegetables : Lettuce, Chinese spinach, water cress (kangkong), coriander leaves (cilantro), white cabbage and etc. In fact any green leafy vegetables are suitable for steamboat. Mushrooms are fantastic too. You can put any types of mushrooms as they will enhance the taste of the soup further. Lastly don't forget another very important vegetable: Cameron Highland Pearly corn which is my favorite.

Seafood: Floral crabs, prawns, lala(clams), fresh scallops and not forgetting abalone if cost is not a major issue. Anyway, the cheap replacement is "abalone mushrooms". Varieties of fish balls and fish meats produce are also available in any frozen food store. My mom in law will normally make her own "yong tau fu"

Meat: I don't normally like to add meat. Basically you can have some meat balls, organic chicken slices/lean pork slices or sausages.

This is really marvelous!

Chinese New Year Ten Courses Reunion Dinner Menu

Reunion dinner is the most important dinner for the Chinese during the CNY. Traditionally, this is held during the eve of CNY when all the members of the family get home together to have their dinner.

Some families prefer to dine out for this occassion but this is really not a good idea as you would be "slaughtered" with cut-throat prices, on top of a long waiting Q. We had a bad experience few years ago to have a reunion dinner at a popular Chinese restaurant and were made waited from 6.30 till 9pm for the first course to be served. It was almost 11pm when we finished our last course. The food was damn lousy obviously a result of preparation in a haste. Ever since then, my mom-in-law(mil) sworn to cook the reunion dinner herself at home for future new years. Excellent! Think about it, if she doesn't mind the effort, I'd rather pay her more angpow money than paying to the restaurant (hehehe..)

Every year, the history repeat itself. We children have to pursuade my mil not to cook too many dishes but each and every year she has never failed to ignore our advice. Ended up we have plenty of left-over food. But then the Chinese always believe it is okay to have leftovers than not as this symbolises abundance of food for the remaining year. Below are the 10 courses menu for our 2009 reunion dinner. It is not an extravagant banquet, no abalone or lobsters but I think it is considered a deluxe meal as compared to other unfortunate families. At least we still have a wholesome get-together by all our family members.

Yee Sang- a must-have 1st course in our reunion dinner menu as all of us love to "lou sang". This tradition is only pracitised in Malaysia. Yee Sang is an auspicious dish. We simply need to toss over the assorted salads in multi-colours and crispy crackers with toasted peanut, sesame and sweet-sour plum sauce dressing. It symbolises ushering in a year of good health, good luck wealth and longetivity. "Yee" means abundance and "Sang" means vitality.













The sashimi lovers has bought extra salmon slices and jelly fish to value add on the yee sang. For me, I prefer the vegetarian style.













Pork trotters with sea cucumber. This is a typical dish from the Hokkien clan. Another must-have in our family's CNY menu.













Fish symbolises abundance. It is also a dish not to be missed for every Chinese family.













Fish maw in sweet and sour pineapple sauce. My mil has experimented on us this new dish. The result is not very good as it gets rather watery. But the sweet and sour taste make it rather appetising. I like it though..













Stuffed shitake mushrooms with oyster and fish paste. This is also an auspicious CNY dish. Oyster sounds like "Good Market". All of us hope that the market will ever be bullish.













Fried prawn in batter. It is easier to serve prawns in this manner for kids although the adults prefers the chilly prawns more.













Lo Hon Cai - This is an all-vegetable dish. Assorted vegetables fried with home-made "meen kan" (glutten puff). Lotus roots is a must as it sounds like "the year is good"













Fried chicken wings marinated in "nam yee"(fermented beancurd paste)- a dish ordered by the grandchildrens.













"Wu-tow cow yoke" This is braised pork belly with yam. My mil's specialty. She has pre-cooked this dish a few weeks ago as it is a time consuming dish. But the taste enhances when it is kept frozen for slightly longer period in the fridge.













Bamboo shoots in roasted pork belly. My favourite dish. Normally we eat only the bamboo shoots as the roasted pork is only used to enhance the taste.













A showcase of our reunion dinner menu at 7.00pm (after lou-sang)













When everyone held back their chopsticks at 8.30pm to toast for the moo-moo year, we still have 2/3 leftover. Moo-uuah!

Hong Kong Style Curry Chicken

This is my mother-in-law's specialty. She learned up this recipe from one of her buddies. This recipe is popularly known amongst all the aunties as "Hong Kong Curry Chicken". But after tasting it, I notice the taste is similar to the Macao's famous Portugal Curry Chicken except that it doesn't have too much gravy. By virtue of it's name, you will not find any tropical ingredients such as coconut milk, galangal or even lemon grass which are commonly found in the local curry dishes. The ingredients used are easily available in most of the supermarket all over the world. Of course it is perhaps made popular by the Hongkie as such the name was given. It is more like a curry cooked in Chinese style as the taste is "amplified" by the "tau chu"(Chinese fermented soya bean paste)

Anyway, this is an easy to prepare recipe and it is suitable for anyone who can't tolerate the fieriness of chillies since you can''t find any chilies in this recipe. I will recommend this recipe for any confinement lady as it helps to rid the wind in the body as well as providing the warming effect which is vital for the new mother.

Ingredients:

1 chicken, cut into small pieces
20 shallots
5 pips of garlics
4 pieces of ginger (about 3 inches per stem-if you like it to be spicier, use the old ginger)
1 tbs of tau chu(fermented bean paste)
1 tsp of turmeric powder

Methods:

1. Blend shallots and garlic together, put aside
2. Blend ginger with 1 cup of water, sift it or press it with a piece of cloth to extract the juice only
3. Heat up 1 tbsp of oil in the pan, fry the blended ingredients, turmeric powder and tauchu together till fragrant.
4. Add in chicken pieces to mix well with the spices.
5. Pour in ginger juice.
   
6. Simmer till the gravy thicken.
7. Serve with plain rice.

Bryani Rice With Baked Chicken

Last Christmas I cooked this dish for my family members. This is a 2-in-1 dish as the marinated ingredients used for one dish can be used for another dish. This is also one of my signature dishes.

Baked Chicken Recipe:

Ingredients:

• 6 pieces of chicken thighs
• 10 cloves of garlic (use more if the chicken thigh is big)
• 10 cloves of shallots (use more if the chicken thigh is big)
• 3 sprigs of lemon grass
• 1 stem of (2 inches) ginger
• 1 stem of (3 inches) turmeric(kunyit)
• 1 sprigs of coriander leaves (chopped)
• 2 tbsp fennel seeds powder (jintan putih)
• 1 tbsp cumin seeds poweder (jintan manis)
• 1 tbsp paprika
• Juice from 1 lemon
• Salt to taste
  

(Note: The last 3 ingredients can be replaced with babas curry powder or any masala powder if you find it trouble some to get these ingredients. Or, as an alternative, you may use the pre-packed satay spices from Carrefour)

Preparation Methods:

• Blend shallots, garlic, lemon grass, ginger and turmeric together. Mix in all the spices, lemon juice and salt into a paste.
• Clean chicken, trim off excess fat. Leave the skin on.
• Make 3 slit on the fresh to enable easy penetration of the marinating ingredients into the meat.
• Massage the chicken thigh with the paste and the chopped coriander leaves.
  
• Leave to marinate inside the fridge for at least 3 hours.
• Preheat oven to 220 degree celcius.
• Bake the chicken for 30 mins
• Then turn the grill mode (or switch to upper heat) if you are using a traditional convection oven. Grill for another 5-10 min.
• Remember to brush the chicken with some oil mix with water in between baking to prevent drying.

Bryani Rice Recipe

Ingredients:

2 cups basmathi rice, wash and rinsed
Leftover chicken marinate paste
1 cup milk/evaporated milk + water enough to cook 2 cups of rice
Pandan leaves tie into knots
2tbsp olive butter
1 cinnamon stick
1 clove
1 tbsp raisins
Some cashew nuts

Preparation Methods :

1. Fry the leftover marinates, cinnamon stick, cloves with some olive butter in a non-stick pan.
2. Pour the rice in and fry for 2 min. Do NOT add any water.
3. Pour the rice into the rice cooker, add in the pandan leaves, milk and water.
4. When the rice is half cooked, pour the raisin and cashew nut in
5. Serve the cooked rice with the chicken thigh or eat it on its own.

Bon Appetit!