Preserved Vegetables with Duck (梅菜鸭)

This is another comfort dish for me. Coming from a family that was not extremely rich, my mother would think of innovative ways to cook leftovers so that they would not go to waste. During festivities, we would often have a whole duck, either roasted or braised. However, as there was a significant portion of the duck that was bony, there would often be leftovers of pieces of duck with lots of bones and little meat attached to it. One of the favourite dishes that my mum would cook for us the next day would be the preserved vegetable with the leftover duck. Usually, she would do a large enough portion that it can be eaten over three days, as the taste is usually best after the second day.


Now, although I am better to do, I still cook this dish whenever we have roast duck when we eat out. I would request for whatever is left, if there is any, to be packed back for me to make the dish the next day. Though not very nutritious, I found that the preserved vegetables fibrous and would often encourage bowel movements the next day.

The secret to the complexity in taste for the dish which my mother swears by is to use a mixture of both the salted and sweet preserved mixture. This is a great dish with steaming rice and also Teochew porridge, though it is more a Hakka dish.

Recipe:

1 portion of leftovers from 1 roast or braised duck (usually comes up to about ¼ or a duck)

300 g of salted preserved vegetable (咸梅菜)

300 g of sweet preserved vegetable (甜梅菜)

1 whole clove of garlic (about 8 segments)

1 tbsp of (sunflower) cooking oil

2 tbsp of dark soya sauce

1 pinch of sea salt (optional)

1 tbsp of sugar

water

Method:

Wash the preserved vegetables well especially between the stems at the ends close to the roots to remove the excess salt and grime. Soak the bundles of preserved vegetables in water and change the water a few times in a large basin, till the water becomes clear.

Drain the water from the soaked preserved vegetables. Squeeze the excess water with your hands. Cut the vegetables into bite size (approx. 0.5 cm in length).  Discard the ends which are more fibrous and difficult to cut through.  Place the cut vegetables in a strainer to wash over running water. Squeeze the excess water from the cut preserved vegetables and set aside.

Flatten the segments of garlic with the back of a cleaver. Remove excess skin that comes off if necessary.

There is little to prepare for the duck, just pick out the smaller pieces of bone if there are any.

Heat the wok with the oil and stir fry the garlic till fragrant.

Add in the roasted duck into the wok mix well.

Add in the cut preserved vegetables and mix well. Drizzle in the dark soya sauce and sprinkle in a pinch of sea salt. Also add about 1 tbsp of sugar in. Mix well.

Add water into the mixture till it covers about ¾ of depth of the mixture. Mix well and let it boil, then lower the flame.

Cover the wok and let the mixture cook about 30 min over low flame. Alternatively, you can transfer the mixture to a slow cooker to let it cook for at least 4 hours.

Serve on a serving dish when the dish is ready. The dish can be eaten over three days. Just remember to heat the mixture every night and also heat it up before every meal. (The mixture should be heated till it is bubbly hot and maintained at that for at least 3 minutes.)

Note:  You can do the same dish, if you have leftover roast or braised pork.  Or if you simply have craving for the dish, which I occasionally do, I just use belly pork cut to about 1/2 inch thick to substitute the leftover pork or duck.

Onion Omelette

This is one of the simplest dish that everyone in my family loves and it is a great way to get my children to eat more onions.  It is also a dish that can be easily whipped up at anytime in my kitchen as I always have onions and eggs.  Okay so this is how the receipe goes. 

*Serving Size : 3 -4
*Preparation Time (including the cooking): 15 min

Ingredients:

• 4 large eggs
• 1-2 large yellow onions  (Proportion depends on whether you like more eggs or onion.  You may use the red onions, my mother-in-law favours this)
• sea salt, pepper, soya sauce (shoyu)  and fish sauce (optional)
• 2 tbsp sunflower oil (or any other cooking oil)

Procedure:

Peel the onions, wash it and slice it into slivers.

Heat the wok up using medium flame.  When the wok is evenly heated, drizzle in a layer to cooking oil.   While the oil is heating up, peel and slice the onion into slivers.  (See diagram left.)

Add the onion into the wok and lightly fry.  Drizzle in about 1/2 tsp. of light soya sauce at this moment.  This will make the onion more flavourful.  When the onion slivers start to brown at the edge, lower the flame so that it will not char.

At this point break the eggs into the bowl, add in about 1/4 tsp of sea salt, a pinch of pepper, 1/2 tsp. of light soya sauce and a dash of fish sauce.  The fish sauce is optional, but it does enhance the flavour of the eggs, so I always add it when I make omelette as I already have a bottle in my kitchen. (My mother used to swear by it.)

Mix the eggs up with a fork (or chopsticks).

Spread the onion in the wok evenly out on the base of the wok.  Pour the egg mixture over onions. Increase the heat to a medium flame.  Leave the mixture to cook and brown on the undersides.  The omelette is ready for flippling, when the centre of the omelette starts bubbling and the oil starts foaming from the edge of the omelette.

When the lower side has started browing (above) flip the omelette to now brown the top side, I usually split the omelette in half across the diameter using my spatula and flip one-half over with the spatula before flipping the other one in the same manner.  If it is difficult to manage you, you can quarter the omelette and flip each part by itself. 

Comments: 

1. 
   
   This omelette is cooked slightly different from the western way of cooking in which usually the raw onions are just mixed into the whole omelette and cooked.  The light frying in the first part makes the onion more fragrant.
2. 
   
   This is a great dish with Teochew Porridge.  If cooking for Teochew Porridge, you can add in a little more sea salt as the porridge is bland and this enhances the taste of the porridge.
3. 
   
   Again it is a very versatile dish, sometimes I add in shrimp or carrots or both for variations as well.  If putting in carrots and shrimp, you can lightly fry them after the onions start browning before adding in the mix.  When carrots and shrimp are added in, it becomes the common Egg Fu Yong dish which cost about $8 - $12 at a zi-char stall (a small stall selling dishes prepared on the spot either at a hawker centre or coffee shop in Singapore).