Making Ramen Noodles from Spaghetti

(serves 3, scalable to however many)
You can change Spaghetti into Ramen noodles. This faux Ramen derived from pasta has got the bouncy texture of and a similar taste / aftertaste to real Ramen noodles. The special ingredient for making Ramen noodles is Kansui, an alkaline mineral water.  What we are going to do here is use Bicarbonate of Soda to duplicate the alkaline effect. Boiling the pasta in alkaline water allows it to absorb more water than usual without getting soggy. Granted the result is not as perfect as fresh Ramen, but it’s close enough if you can’t buy authentic raw ramen near where you live. 

Ingredients

1. Spaghetti (250g)
2. Bicarbonate of Soda
3. Vinegar (white)

Please prepare the soup, meat, toppings etc. ahead of time and have them ready before your begin making your Ramen.

Preparation 

1. Bring 5 cups of water to a boil in a large pot. Separately boil some additional water in a kettle for later use.
2. Add 2 flat t of Bicarbonate of Soda to the pot. This will increase the pH of the water to the necessary alkalinity.
3. Boil the spaghetti in the pot as per normal. After a while you will notice a few things that are different from when you normally cook pasta:
4. Firstly the water will really foam up as the Bicarbonate reacts with the starch in the pasta. I included a photo of the reaction so you won’t be shocked when it happens. Anyway, this is why you need a larger pot than usual.
5. Secondly, the water will become a bit slimy or gooey. This is normal, the same thing happens when you are boiling fresh raw ramen.
6. Finally, as the pasta cooks it will turn into a deeper shade of yellow than usual, to the colour of ramen.
7. When the noodles are done they will be a bit thicker than you’d normally expect of pasta because more water has been absorbed. For your first time it’s better to test the noodles by bite rather than relying on sight. You want the noodles to be just fully cooked, not al dente.
8. When the noodles are cooked, immediately add 6T of a white type of vinegar, like rice or malt vinegar, into the water. Lemon juice should work too. Give the pot a good stir, you will get a second round of foaming as the bicarbonate is neutralized. This will get rid of the bitter taste.
9. Pour the contents of the pot into a strainer and then give the ramen a good rinse with some very hot water from the kettle.
10. Your Ramen is now ready for consumption.

Notes

• I wish I came up with this great idea but the credit belongs elsewhere. I came across it in a Japanese website.
• If you have a choice, buy the smallest guage spaghetti that you can find, i.e. the one with the smaller n number. This will maximize the surface area to volume ratio. In fact Spaghettini might be even better, but I hardly ever see any in supermarkets. I’ve also tried capelli (angel hair), but I found it to be too thin.
• There is no need to add oil to the pot as the bicarbonate reaction stops the pasta from sticking together. Besides, you don’t want oil to coat the pasta and inhibit the alkali from getting into the pasta..
• There is no need to add salt to the pot as sodium bicarbonate when neutralized becomes a type of salt.
• What about the rest of the Ramen? Not to worry, my site now has recipes for all the components of Ramen.
  1. try the Soup Recipe from here
  2. try the Chashu Pork Recipe from here
  3. try the Ajitama Egg Recipe from here

 

Types of Bottled Truffle Produce

I love truffles, they enhance the pleasure of eating for so many different dishes. Unfortunately, it is impractical to keep fresh truffles around at home just so you can shave some onto your food whenever the need arises. That’s not to say truffles can’t be used in home cooking. Bottled or Jarred Truffle Produce can be kept in the fridge for a long time, they capture the aroma and flavor of truffles nicely and there is a variety of such products to choose from, including Truffle Paste, Truffle Sauce, Truffle Cream and Truffle Mustard.     

Rudimentary Naming Conventions for Truffles

1. White Truffle is the more expensive variety, as they can only be found in the wild using specially trained pigs or dogs. The best White Truffles come from Piedmont in Italy. These are also called Summer or Alba Truffles.
2. Black Truffles are less, but still expensive. They cost less as they can be cultivated, albeit with some effort. It’s debatable if they are really inferior to the White Truffle. Maybe they cost less simply because they are more common. The best Black Truffles come from Perigord in France, so Black Truffles are sometimes called Perigord Truffles, and also Winter Truffles.
3. Both Black and White Truffles can be found beyond the borders of Italy and France, but these are generally considered to be inferior cousins to the Alba and Perigord.
4. ‘Tartufo’ is Italian for truffle, ‘Tartufi’ the plural and ‘Tartufata’ is Italian for truffle product. If you see any of these on the bottle, it is a product of Italy. ‘Truffe’ is French for truffles. If you see this on the label, this means the bottle is from France.
5. The truffle percentage content is an indicator of quality, and it varies greatly from product to product. Always determine the country of origin and check the truffle percentage content before buying any bottled truffle produce.

Basic Guidelines for Cooking with Truffles

1. Heat dissipates the aromatics of truffles and since truffles are 80% aroma and 20% taste, cooking truffles is tantamount to not having truffles in the first place. Thus one only adds the truffles after  the cooking is done.
2. Truffles go with savoury foods. Macaroni and cheese for example tastes great with truffles. Pasta in a consommé reduction is another viable pairing with truffles. Sour and sweet foods are the opposite. So truffles don’t work with tomato based sauces, vinegar, red wine reductions or anything with fresh or preserved fruits.
3. Don’t use fragrant ingredients that compete with the truffles for the centre stage. Garlic, raw celery and onions, sardines, smoked meats, blue cheese, BBQ sauce are all foods to avoid with truffles. Mild foods on the other hand serve as the perfect medium for truffles. Some examples are scrambled, steamed or poached eggs, butter, brioche, mushrooms, potatoes and cream soups.

Truffle Paste (Pate)

This is bottled truffle produce of the highest quality and needless to say it is also the most expensive. According to the label at the back of the jar, it is 70% truffles by weight with the remainder being mostly olive oil and truffle juice. Truffle Paste has the most intense aroma, and luxurious taste and texture.

As you might expect something this expensive would be from France and will usually contain the phrase ‘Pâte de Truffe’ on the jar. Actually it is not really a paste, but more a suspension of truffle bits in oil. Do not get misled by the term pâte, pâte does not need to contain foie gras or liver; this is pâte made from truffles.

Use this when the truffle is meant to be a topping, akin to caviar, say like when served on a blini. In other words your intention is to taste the truffle directly in a concentrated dose, as opposed to mixing it into some food. Of course if cost is of no concern to you, then use it all the time by all means.

Truffle Sauce (Salsa)

Truffle Sauce is a less concentrated version of bottled truffle more suitable for every day use and gram for gram it is perhaps only a tenth of the price of Truffle Paste. It is more common in Italy, and the label will usually say “Salsa Tartufata” or “Salsa di Tartufo”, but not always. Sometimes it is also ‘mislabelled’ as a pate (see the top picture, a truffle pate from Italy is actually a sauce). Typically the truffle content of Truffle Sauce is somewhere in the 3-5% region, with most of the rest of the solids in the bottle being minced mushrooms. Don’t look down on Truffle Sauce, it still packs a punch with its truffle aroma.

If you are stirring truffle into your scrambled eggs, pasta or a cream of mushroom soup, this is probably the type of truffle product you’d use. I also use for truffle mayonnaise. Truffle Sauce is also an ideal gift to bring to a casual home dinner, instead of that boring bottle of wine.

Truffle Cream

Truffle Cream is in the same quality category as Truffle Sauce and also tends to be an Italian product. The truffle content will be around the same, that is to say 3-5%, but it is typically (but not always) light coloured and has a more creamy texture. In Italian the label is similar to Truffle Sauce except the word ‘Salsa’ is replaced with ‘Sapor’ or ‘Crema’. ‘Sapor’ means flavour or taste. You are also more likely to see labels in plain English as it is produced in various Commonwealth countries too. Unlike Truffle Paste and Sauce, Truffle Cream contains more than just truffles, mushrooms and oil. If you have a look at the nutrition information you’ll see additional ingredients like vegetable extracts, herbs, spices and emulsifiers.

One of the best ways to use Truffle Cream is to mix it into a cream sauce like hollandaise or béarnaise. Another is mashed potatoes. In general, the time to use Truffle Cream is with light coloured food. This way you get the taste and aroma of truffles but not dark flecks of truffle, and your guests will be pleasantly surprised.

Truffle Mustard

The truffle content of Truffle Mustard is usually not stated but I can’t imagine it to be much given its price. Its even cheaper than Truffle Sauce and Cream. It tends to be French in origin and the label might say something like ‘Moutarde a la Truffe’.

This type of truffle product is best just as a condiment with steak, roast pork and game birds. Not so much with lamb or chicken. Basically it as a really expensive mustard, so use it as such.

Truffle Oil

Truffle Oil is the least desirable kind of truffle product and I really don’t recommend it, which is why I don’t have any on hand to take a photo of. I suppose you could use it for salads. It contains very little truffle and is not value for money. If you insist on buying Truffle Oil look for bottles with a few flakes of truffle in them for many actually contain no truffle at all and are purely artificially flavoured. Alternatively, get a bottle of truffle pate and make your own by combining a few spoons of truffle with sunflower or other similar oil in a bottle.

Whole and Sliced Truffle

The other type of bottled truffle I am not too keen on is whole or sliced truffle in oil. The solids are 100% truffle and this makes it very expensive. When it comes to truffles texture is secondary to aroma and flavour. In my opinion the effect of having large pieces of truffle on your food compared to small bits is really not that much.

Please note I am not endorsing any of the brands featured here. These bottles are just what I happened to have in the fridge at the time.

 

Pressed Tofu (Tau Kwa)

Why you do it
Pressed Tofu is a sturdy form of tofu used in situations where normal tofu would fall apart and disintegrate, such as in salads or in stir-fried dishes. Commercial tofu already comes in different levels of firmness and manufacturers control tofu’s hardness by varying the amount of water they press out of it. What you are simply doing is squeezing more of the water out of your tofu to increase its firmness even more. The hard part is how you can squeeze tofu without smashing it.

Pressed tofu is actually quite common in East Asia outside of Japan. In Southeast Asia it is called Tau Kwa. There is a style of Haka cuisine from China called Yong Tau Foo where minced fish is stuffed into Tofu. Obviously if the tofu is not firmed up beforehand, there would be no way to stuff anything into it.  In Teochew cuisine, also from China, pressed tofu is stewed in soya sauce together with goose. Often pressed tofu is deep fried. Fried pressed tofu is an essential ingredient in Pad Thai, a common type of fried noodles from Thailand found worldwide. It is also used in a dish called Mee Siam, which is a ‘Thai’ style vermicelli dish popular in Singapore and Malaysia (but paradoxically not in Thailand/Siam).

How you do it
Place a block of tofu onto a flat bottomed tray or dish after draining away the water it comes in. I usually use the tray from my toaster oven. It should be of the firm type, sometimes labelled as ‘stone’ tofu. In any case, be very careful not to damage the tofu in anyway as any localized weakness in structural integrity will cause the tofu to crack when it is pressed.

Wrap some cling film tightly around the side of the tofu, twice. Don’t wrap the bottom because that’s where the water escapes from and cut away most of the extra cling film protruding at the top. You are only interested in constraining or reinforcing the side walls so the tofu doesn’t bulge sideways and burst. Some people use towels but I find that cling film is the best way of preventing the tofu block from crumbling under pressure.

Place a stiff cutting board over the tofu, making sure the tofu is exactly at its centre. Place a can of food on the cutting board to start off with and gradually increase this to 6 cans over the course of an hour. When you notice the cutting board tilting to any particular side, adjust the position of the cans to bring it level again. Wait another hour after you reach six cans and you are done. Your tofu should be sitting in a pool of water about half as high as it was when you started, but twice as firm.

One example of a recipe that uses pressed Tofu is my Chinese Pork Rib Curry recipe.

 

 

The Dried Mushrooms Page

Dried Mushrooms are considered to be delicacies around the world. They are one of the few classes of food that actually taste better after preservation. It’s very easy to bring dried mushrooms back to life, you simply have to soak them in water. Originally mushrooms were only dried as a means of preserving them but today dried mushrooms have become a culinary class in their own right. They are indispensable in certain recipes where fresh mushrooms simply can’t do the job. In this post I will cover the gourmet dried mushroom varieties, namely: Morel, Porcini and Shiitake.

There are three reasons why dried mushrooms are prized in the kitchen. Firstly, the dessication process somehow transforms the slightly bitter taste of mushrooms into a nice umami flavour, that fifth taste which tricks the brain into thinking there is meat present. The taste and aroma of the mushrooms is also intensified. This makes dried mushrooms great for vegetarian dishes. Secondly, a by-product of using dried mushrooms is the tasty soaking liquid which can be used to flavour soup, rice, batter, pasta or anything else that requires water. Thirdly, specific taste can also be infused directly into dried mushrooms by adding herbs, sugar, soya sauce, mirin or whatever else you fancy to the water the mushrooms are soaked in. Once the packaging is opened, extend the life of your dried mushrooms almost indefinitely by keeping them in the fridge. While they won’t spoil in the fridge, it is still important to store them in air-tight containers as otherwise they will lose their aroma over time.

Hydrating the dried mushrooms properly is important. Give your mushrooms a quick rinse under the tap before soaking. Always soak your dried mushrooms in cool water to make the rehydration process as gentle as possible. Hot water may work faster, but it makes the mushroom flesh tougher than it needs to be. It goes without saying; never just throw dried mushrooms into a boiling pot. Twenty minutes of soaking time should do for most varieties. Don’t use too much water or the soaking liquid will get too diluted; if your mushrooms go up to the 1/2 cup mark, add water to the 3/4 cup level.  After the mushrooms have become thoroughly soaked and supple, you can use most of the soaking liquid for cooking but discard the last bit at the bottom of the bowl that contains the sediments. 

Dried Morel
Morel mushrooms are the undisputed King of Dried Mushrooms. This fact is reflected in their price; they tend to cost anywhere from 4 to 6 times more than other types of premium dried mushrooms. There is no such thing as cheap morel. Because they are expensive, you should beware of fakes. Some growers appear to offer cheaper produce but only because they purposely leave on too much of the stem to increase the gross weight. The bottom of the stem is leafy and must be trimmed off. Charlatans will even sometimes try to substitute morels with similar shaped mushrooms. The real McCoy has a honeycomb type lattice laced all over a yellowish brown cone shaped cap. The fakes are easily recognized once you see their skin is wrinkled and not honeycombed.

I would describe the taste of rehydrated Morel mushrooms as nutty, meaty and slightly sweet. Darker morels are more valuable as they have a stronger taste and fragrance. Morel mushrooms are a kind of sponge mushrooms and after they are soaked, it is important to squeeze them dry. This spongy quality also allows them to absorb a generous amount of whatever sauce they are cooked in, which is later released with every bite.

Morels go extremely well with butter and one of the best ways to cook them is to sauté them in butter with a pinch of salt. You would normally serve them with roasted or pan-fried chicken, pork or veal dishes, pretty much anything that goes with white wine. Stronger meats may overwhelm its delicate taste. I will sometimes add sautéed morel to my mushroom soup in lieu of truffle. As morels have a crispier meatier texture than most mushrooms, they also go well with certain pureed foods like Cauliflower Puree. Morels are most often used in French cooking and morel sauce is one of the key sauces in any French kitchen. The sauce is made by blending butter sautéed mushrooms with their soaking liquid, white wine and cream followed by simmering.

Dried Porcini
If there is a King of Dried Mushrooms, then there should be a Queen and this would be the Porcini mushroom. Unlike Morels, Porcini are always dried in slices but you can get a pretty good idea of what a whole mushroom is like by looking at the nice cross section of the Porcini on the left side of the photo. One distinct feature of Porcini mushrooms is they have no gills. They also have a long fleshy stem which is as edible as the large brown cap.

I would describe the taste of rehydrated Porcini as slightly salty, smoky and meaty. They exude an intense heavenly aroma like no other mushroom. After your first whiff, you’ll easily recognize its signature smell. One nice thing about Porcini is it remains nice and soft after rehydration.

Porcini is common in Italian cuisine and it is the key ingredient in some Porcini-based risottos. Generally the soaking liquid is used in place of wine when simmering the risotto and its concentration by boiling off most of the water results in a very distinct porcini taste. They are also used to flavour polenta for the same reason. Because of their concentrated flavour, you’d normally serve Porcini with beef, lamb and wild game, anything that goes with red wine. They are often used in ragout, sauces and gravies. Slices of porcini also go well with salads, especially if you add some soaking liquid to the dressing. 

Dried Shiitake
The Shiitake (pronounced She-E-Tah-Kay) is the predominant gourmet dried mushroom in the Far East. It is the most popular mushroom in Japan where its Western name is derived. In China it is called the winter mushroom, a reference to the past when fresh mushrooms were not available in winter. It is always dried whole and if you see any sliced shiitake at the store, these are of an inferior grade.

As Shiitake are bulkier, they will take a longer time (I’d say 45 min) to get thoroughly soaked. You would normally quarter, slice or even dice Shiitake after they have been soaked. The stem of the Shiitake is quite woody and is always removed. As they are very hard, you cannot remove the stem before soaking. But you don’t want to wait til after soaking because then the part of the cap attached to the stem will still be hard. Snip them off completely with scissors when the mushrooms are partially soaked. If don’t like to waste, use the stems when boiling stock.

Shiitake have a less distinctive taste and fragrance than its Western counterparts above. I’d describe its taste and aroma simply as a very interesting earthy mushroom flavour. It is a common practice to put soya sauce, sugar or other similar seasoning items into the soaking liquid, so the shiitake gets additional layers of taste. The rehydrated Shiitake mushrooms have a firmer, I would even describe it as plump consistency compared to their limply fresh cousins and they are prized as much for their texture as their taste. They stay that way even if you cook them for a long time.

While Morel and Porcini are wild mushrooms, Shiitake are cultivated. This means they are readily available in both fresh and dried forms, which introduces the complication of when the fresh ones should be used and when the dried ones are more appropriate. For example, dried Shiitake would be used in rice-meat combination dishes (Chinese Claypot Rice and Japanese Oyakodon) while fresh Shiitake would be battered and deep fried (like Western stuffed mushrooms). It’s too complicated to get into the details here, just apply common sense. In Western style dishes, you can use them when braising meat, in terrines etc.

Dried Chanterelle
Including Chanterelle in this post was an afterthought. I’m not really a big fan of this type of dried mushroom but I just happened to have some in the fridge.

Chanterelle are quite light coloured and are sometimes called Golden or Yellow Chanterelle. They are often associated with French cooking, just as Porcini is Italian while Shiitake is East Asian. You can recognize them by their small size and trumpet shape. They are one of those rare varieties which have a strong flavour. Its taste is quite unique, one that you wouldn’t normally identify with mushroom, . The same goes for its aroma, which I would describe as flowery (though others call it fruity). In fact I tend to think of it as half flower and half mushroom. So don’t use too much of it or it might overpower all your other flavours.

The main reason I don’t use dried Chanterelle often is they tend to be a bit fibrous and they remain so even after being cooked for a while. They are what you might call slightly chewy mushrooms. This however can be a desirable quality, such as when you want your mushrooms to add an additional layer of texture, like in stews of pie fillings.

Notes

• If you really want something convenient, you can try the Porcini stock cubes by Knorr. They contain little flakes of Porcini and are great as the stock cube for cream of mushroom soup or risotto.
• Porcini is also sold in powder form, which is simply dried Porcini ground into powder. Use Porcini powder if you want to enhance flavour (its not a bad substitute for MSG) without imparting a Porcini-specific taste.

 

What is Mirin?

This is the everything you wanted to know about Mirin page. It answers: Where did Mirin come from? How is Mirin made? How does Mirin improve food? When should Mirin be used? What are the types of Mirin? What is the difference between Hon-Mirin and Aji-Mirin? Why is some Mirin light and others dark?  What can I substitute with Mirin?

History of Mirin
Mirin started out as a popular sweet liqueur for women in medieval Japan. During the Edo period, the first sugar cane plantations were still 2 centuries away. Nipponese cooks from the era found Mirin to be an excellet form of sweetness and incorporated it into many of their recipes. With the Meiji Restoration, Mirin as a drink went out of vogue like the samurai, but Mirin as a flavouring agent went from strength to strength. Today Mirin has become an essential part of culinary Japan and at least one bottle of it can be found in every Japanese kitchen. So if you have ever wondered why the miso soup you made at home doesn’t taste as good as the ones from the restaurant – the missing secret ingredient is probably Mirin.

Brewing Mirin
Mirin was, and sometimes still is, made by introducing Sochu to the vat halfway through a quasi-sake brewing process. The Sochu(a vodka-like spirit) kills all the fungus in the fermenting rice (Koji) which would otherwise metabolize all the sugars. This is not dissimilar to the procedure where Brandy is added to half-fermented wine to give us Port. Although Mirin and Sake are made from different types of rice, the similar initial brewing process imparts to Mirin some of the tastes reminiscent of Sake but that is where their similarities end. The alcohol content in Mirin is lower at somewhere between 12-14%. Because Sochu is added, complex sugars and proteins form as Mirin is left to mature, giving it its distinctive sweet taste and golden colour.

Mirin slowly darkens from a golden colour to a deep amber colour as it ages. Amber-coloured Mirin has an additional caramelized flavour from the slow oxidation process so don’t think that its going bad. It looks black in the photo because you are looking through 2 inches of the amber Mirin, if you pour it out onto a spoon you’ll see its true colour. I added a bottle of unopened Hon-Mirin to the top picture just to show you what virgin Mirin looks like. Keep your Mirin refrigerated after it is openned as the cap tends to get moldy after some time in a hot humid climate.

Varieties of Mirin
Mirin comes in three qualities. First there is the good stuff that is brewed in the traditional manner, as described above. No artificial additives or preservatives are added. This type of Mirin can be drunk like Port or Madeira and it takes perhaps 2 years before the Mirin can be bottled. The manufacturer will often state somewhere on the bottle that its product is authentic Mirin. Koji (or malted / fermented rice) is always one of the ingredients on the label on the back, and they often tell you which area the rice was harvested from. Also, when it comes to Mirin there is no better quality assurance than a glass bottle.

Then there is the mediocre factory stuff, a synthetic Mirin, manufactured using enzymes on rice in a high temperature / pressure process. A batch of this type of mirin takes only about 3 months to make and it invariably comes in a plastic bottle. You can always judge Mirin quality by checking the ingredients at the back; some tell tale ingredients of synthetic Mirin are corn syrup, glucose syrup and alcohol (instead of shochu). There is a popular brand of Mirin called Hon-Mirin, which ironically translates as real-mirin, but it is not the real McCoy. There is another sub-type called Aji-Mirin, which means tastes-like-mirin. Many people think that Aji-Mirin is inferior to Hon-Mirin but they are exactly the same thing except a little salt has been added to Aji-Mirin so it is not subject to alcohol tax. The ingredients for both types are practically the same except for the salt. Since you are cooking with it, a little salt won’t matter, so don’t get hung up about whether it is Hon or Aji; both are equally mediocre.

Finally there is the terrible stuff, something called Shin-Mirin which translates as new-Mirin. This is basically a mirin-flavoured sauce with almost no alcohol content, another even cheaper way to get around the alcohol tax. I’m sorry I don’t have a bottle handy to photograph. Do not bother with Shin-Mirin unless you have a phobia thing about alcohol. Once you heat Mirin, any remaining alcohol will evaporate anyway.

Cooking with Mirin
In Japanese cuisine, Mirin is commonly used in simmered (e.g. Oyakodon) and stewed (e.g. Chashu) dishes. It is basically used each time you want to balance out soya sauce or miso based dishes. You can pretty much make teriyaki sauce by mixing Mirin with sugar and soya sauce.  Mirin is also added to vinegared sushi rice and sesame salad dressing.

When do I use my quality Mirin and when do I use factory Mirin? If the Mirin is to be consumed directly, say like in a salad dressing, I will use my good stuff. Likewise if the recipe calls for small amount of Mirin, like a tablespoon that is added to soup. If the recipe calls for Mirin by the cupful, for example when I are stewing pork, then I will use my synthetic Mirin.

What about using Mirin when it is not specifically mentioned in the recipe? Whenever your recipe calls for a teaspoon of sugar, try using a tablespoon of Mirin instead. Sugar does nothing but make your food sweet but Mirin will help to accentuate the milder flavours. The key is to only use it in limited quantities since it has quite a strong distinct flavour. Mirin is known for its glazing characteristics so you can paint it on seafood prior to grilling. Speaking of seafood, Mirin is also prized for its ability to counteract fishy and gamey smells, so you can often add a tablespoon to your marinades. Finally whenever your recipe calls for a dash of Port or Sherry, try substituting Mirin instead. I sometimes add a dash to my tomato or cheese based pasta sauces/risottos.

Substituting Mirin
In an emergency, in place of Mirin you can use a Sake plus honey (or maple syrup) substitute. Mix 5 parts of Sake with 1 part of honey, then heat the mixture until it is reduced in volume by half.

Additional Information
Some sites of Mirin manufacturers with detailed information

•  Shanshu Website
•  Mitoku Website

If you liked this post on Mirin, you may also be interested in my post on its savoury complimentary, Chinese Cooking Wine.

 

What is Kaya?

 

         1. Hainanese Kaya        2. Nonya Kaya(Home)      3. Nonya Kaya(Store)        4. Hybrid Kaya

Kaya is a custard made with coconut milk that is popular in Singapore and Malaysia. Like regular jam, it is most often used as a bread spread (its technically not a jam since it is not made from fruit) at breakfast and afternoon tea. Because of its sweet taste, Kaya is also used as an ingredient is various local desserts in Southeast Asia from Thailand to Indonesian. If you are from outside the region, think of it as something like creme brulee in a bottle.

The recipe for making kaya varies from household to household but typically involves cooking a mixture of 10 eggs, 500g of sugar and 500 ml of coconut milk over a double boiler, stirring frequently. Its pretty much the same as making a sabayon or custard, except you stand there cooking and stirring for a very, very long time.

There are two main types of Kaya. The more original variety is Hainanese Kaya (bottle No.1), Hainan being a large island of China. Many Hainanese ventured into Southeast Asia during the hey day of the British Empire. A lot of them worked as cooks (and tailors) in commonwealth cities and aboard British merchant ships where they encounted a thing called jam on toast. Over time, they invented their own ‘jam’, which became Kaya. That’s the reason you won’t find Kaya (or Hainanese Chicken Rice or Hainanese Pork Chop to name a few more examples) anywhere in Hainan today, they were invented by overseas Hainanese. The term Kaya was probably coined by the Malays, who refer to it as Seri Kaya. Hainanese Kaya is made with brown sugar which results in its distinct orangy colour. Some modern commercial formulations use honey instead.

There is another version of Kaya that is green; this is called Nonya Kaya (bottle No.2). How did this originate? Its another complicated story, also related to the Chinese migrants. When early Chinese migrants inter-married with the locals in Malaysia, they formed a sub-community called the Nonya. The Nonya add pandan leaves to a lot of their cuisine and when they learnt to make Kaya, they also added pandan to that. Their varierty of Kaya uses white sugar, but compensates for the loss of the caramelized taste by adding the juice from pandan leaves. This gives Nonya Kaya its unique flavour and fragrance. Commercially, food dye is added to Nonya Kaya (bottle No.3) to give it a darker green colour. Nowadays you can also get a hybrid Kaya (bottle No.4) that is made with both brown sugar and pandan leaves.

Besides spreading it on toast, how else can Kaya be used? Being very sweet, Kaya goes very well with salted butter and you can use it in place of syrup or icing sugar on pancakes, waffles and french toast. Kaya also works well as a filling in a Danish type pastry (for example you could replace the sesame paste of my Sesame Swirl Puffs with Kaya). Finally you can experiment with Kaya in those savoury dishes that require a touch of sweetness, such as in pan fried foie gras.

 

Homemade Dill Mayonnaise

(makes 2 cups)
There is a world of difference between homemade mayonnaise and store-bought mayonnaise, a difference anyone, even children can taste. Homemade mayonnaise is a bit more yellow because of the egg yolks so that’s how you can tell immediately its not off-the-shelf. But when you taste it, that’s when the quality comes through. Its richer, fluffier and creamier all at the same time. Its really easy to make with simple ingredients. Try it once and there’s no turning back.   

Ingredients

1. Eggs (3)
2. Vegetable Oil (1-1/4 cup)
3. Dijon Mustard (1t)
4. Dill Weed (2T)
5. Lemon (1/2)

Preparation 

1. Take 3 eggs out of the fridge two hours ahead to let them warm to room temperature.
2. Seperate the yolks into the mixing container. You won’t be using the whites. Add 1t of dijon mustard and the strained juice of half a lemon.
3. Beat the mixture till it is well mixed. I use a hand-held electric blender in a tall clear tumbler but you can do it by hand if you want to.
4. Measure 1 and 1/4 cup of vegetable oil into a pitcher. Continue blending and add the oil a little at a time. You must add the oil very very slowly at first. If the oil looks seperated from the mixture, you are adding it too fast. When half the oil has been incorporated into the mixture, you can pour the rest in a bit faster.
5. When the mayonnaise starts to stiffen, add 1t salt and 1t pepper. Beat/Blend at high speed to bring the mayonnaise up to the right consistency. Don’t over do it or the oil will seperate again.
6. Spoon the mayonnaise into your intended storage container. Mix in 2T of dill weed using a spoon. Cover with cling film that is pushed down to evacuate all the air and refrigerate.
7. Dill is good with seafood. If you don’t like dill weed, here are some other choices for flavouring your mayonnaise:
   1. GARLIC crushed (= Aioli, not Rouille)… good on bread with bouillabaisse 
   2. ANCHIOVIES in oil… perfect for schnitzels
   3. HONEY and more mustard… chicken nugget dip
   4. CUMIN… also nice with crab cakes, and boiled eggs
   5. PESTO… a bold flavour for meat sandwiches
   6. SHALLOTS minced and fried… great for poached fish
   7. or refer to my earlier Mayonnaise Glazed Sole recipe

Notes

• The egg yolks are left uncooked, that’s the secret to the natural taste and texture. Fresh eggs would be best but if not, make sure you bought the eggs less than a week ago. If the yolk sac has begun to thicken or turn orange, your egg has expired. 
• Since you are not pasturizing any of your ingredients like the food companies, this will not keep as long as bottled mayo. That’s the one downside of homemade mayonnaise. Make sure all utensils and equipment touching the mayonnaise, and your hands, are spanking clean.
• This is one of those times you should not use olive oil because it has a strong taste. I usually use canola oil for this, but if you have concerns over erucic acid, use alternatives like sunflower seed or soyabean oil.
• If you are using an electrical blending appliance, make sure it is the type that does not need the cover to be on when its operating or you will have to open and close it 100x.

 

Cooking with Rillettes

Rillettes (pronounced Re-Yet with no S) is a French potted meat used mainly as a bread spread. The most common types of meat going into a rillettes are goose (rillettes d’oie), duck (rillettes de canard) and pork (rillettes de porc). Back in the old days, before there was electricity or refrigeration, this was one of the best ways to preserve meat without altering its texture or adding a lot of preservatives. Some people call it the peasant’s pâté since it costs a lot less than pâté de foie.   

To make rillettes, raw meat is salted and simmered with some herbs at low temperatures in lard (from the same animal) for a long time, sometimes as much as a whole day. Some recipes call for braising in stock instead of lard, but those are not the real deal. As the meat falls apart, the bones are removed. When the cooking is done the meat is strained, raked with a fork to shred it,  then allowed to cool in jars or pots. After the strained liquid is cooled, any congealed gelatine is mixed back into the meat with some of the lard. Each jar is then topped off with a thin layer of lard to the brim and sealed by placing a piece of wax paper on the lard. The meat is ready for consumption after aging for a few days in the fridge. The final product is a meat spread which contains very tender meat suspended in a matrix of lard and other natural juices. After you open a jar, you can keep it in the fridge for several weeks before it goes off. 

The purpose of this post is to tell you how to cook with rillettes, not how to cook rillettes. One of the easiest ways to cook with rillettes is to spread it on fingers of brioche (or any other kind of thick soft bread) and then toast them in a toaster oven or grill. The fat melts into the bread infusing it with flavour, and you end up with a nice meaty crust on top. I normally serve these delicious fingers of bread as hos d’oeuvres or as a matching side to duck or chicken dishes.

Rillettes can be used to sautee various types of vegetables. The natural oil and flavour of the rillettes is all you need to for the job although you may wish to add crushed garlic and pepper. For this purpose I usually use the rillettes that comes in a huge tub which you buy in scoops at the meat counter. These are cooked in the traditional farmhouse style and have a higher fat content. Have a look at my Sauteed Mushrooms recipe as a reference.

One other way you can use rillettes is in the making of meaty ragout pasta sauces. You can avoid the tedious task of simmering meat for a long time and still end up with a wholesome sauce of nice tender meat. The pre-shredded meat also sticks readily to pasta because it is of the right size. I usually use the rillettes that come in small jars on the shelf for making sauces, as they tend to have less fat. Have a look at my Duck Ragu Pasta recipe for further details.

 

Dried Shrimp Roe

Dried Shrimp Roe is a Chinese condiment made by salt-curing the eggs of prawns before they hatch. They are considered a semi-delicacy in Southern Chinese Cuisine and they impart a salty umami-rich seafood flavour to whatever food they are sprinkled on, for example bean curd. Good quality Dried Shrimp Roe is a bright vermillion colour and looks a bit like paprika. Lower quality versions are darker in colour, these would be more salty and fishy. All varieties last way beyond the stated expiry date as long as you keep them refrigerated, they are after all cured and completely desiccated.

Where can you buy Dried Shrimp Roe? Anywhere they sell other kinds of Chinese dried seafood. Dried Shrimp Roe is used as a condiment in high-end wonton noodles so some wonton noodle chain stores will also happen to have their own brand of Dried Shrimp Roe which they sell. The Cantonese name of Dried Shrimp Roe is ‘Ha-Tzi’, meaning the offspring or seed of prawns and corresponds to the bottom two Chinese characters of the box shown in the picture.

Have you tasted Pasta Nera, that black pasta made with squid ink to give it a unique taste? Shrimp Roe is used in the same way to flavour dried chinese egg noodles. They are mixed into the dough before the noodles are made and then the noodles are dried into balls (you’ll be able to make out the individual seeds if you enlarge the photo on the right). Such noodles are considered a premium variety.

How would you use Dried Shrimp Roe outside of Chinese cooking? Have you ever tasted Bottarga (a salt-cured fish roe from Sardinia) or Karasumi (the Japanese version of Bottarga) with pasta? There is no need to cook Dried Shrimp Roe and in general you can sprinkle it on a cheese, oil or cream based pasta dish for an extra layer of flavour. I think of them as a poor man’s version of the fresh sushi type caviar I sometimes use with pasta. The taste of this roe is milder than it looks so you can afford a heavier touch. The contrasting colour will be beautiful. Dried Shrimp Roe won’t work so well with tomato and ragout based pasta. Enter Bottarga + Pasta into a search engine to get some ideas for recipes.

How about some other uses? One of my favourites is scrambled eggs topped with this tasty red powder. You can also sprinkle it on seafood soups as a condiment. Rehydrate your shrimp roe in vegetable oil to get a nice crunchy texture and you’ll be able to use shrimp roe to flavour a variety of salads or as a topping on BBQ/baked seafood.

Dried Shrip Roe Hydrated with Oil. This bowl is only 3 inches in diameter, so you can imagine how small each egg is.

 

Bokbunja, a Raspberry Wine

Bokbunja (pronounced bock-boon-jar) is a Korean dessert wine that is served chilled. It is more correctly called bokbunja-joo, ‘joo’ meaning wine, but many people go with the shorter name. While it has been around for centuries in Korea, it is relatively new to the international wine scene. It comes in a deep ruby colour and I would loosely describe its taste as a cross between Port and the Ribena blackcurrant drink. The alcohol content varies by bottler and is typically somewhere between 14-16%, actually quite low by Korean standards. In anycase, if you are using it for cooking, the alcohol will all evaporate anyway. According to tradition this wine is supposed to improve libido but we won’t get into that here. The interesting thing about Bokbunja is that its not fermented from grapes. Its vintners uses thorny black raspberries as the main ingredient. Your eyes may tell you you have a red or fortified wine in front of you, but its aroma and taste will tell you otherwise.

As I always say, experimenting with new tastes for the kitchen is always good. This raspberry wine is relatively sweet; not as sweet as ice wine or a sauterne, but sweeter than say a sherry or madeira. It makes an excellent after-dinner drink if you are serving cheese or dark chocolate. You can also use it as a chaser for dishes that already use it as an ingredient, which brings me to the cooking part…

Another brand, launched to commemorate the 2002 Korea World Cup

As Bokbunja is naturally sweet and relatively inexpensive, you can substitute it for red wine in many dessert recipes. Poached pears in ‘wine’ is a good example, and you can also try marinating raisins or cherries in it.   You don’t have to limit yourself to sweet dishes. If your recipe calls for a red wine reduction sauce, you can try using Bokbunja for a twist. Also, if it is appropriate to add some sherry or port as a final layer of flavouring to a soup, such as in the case of onion soup, or to a sauce, as in the case beef stroganoff, you can experiment with a dash of Bokbunja instead. You will definitely be asked what your ‘secret weapon is. In all cases be mindful that this is a dessert wine and reduce the sugar content a bit from another part of your recipe. More information on Bokbunja

• 1. Ajumma’s Journal
• 2. AgraFood
• 3. Information Network Village