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.

Stir-fried Beansprouts with Beancurd

  I think almost every Chinese family in Singapore will have their own version for this dish. This used to be a dish we would eat almost every week (and sometimes more than once) when I was much younger as it was a cheap, nutritious and yet simple and quick dish to prepare. (My mother would get about 50 cents worth of beansprouts and a large piece of beancurd which cost about another 40 cents then, and that was sufficient to feed about 5-6 mouths)

My mother would also tell me stories of the times (before I was born) when my father was retrenched from his job, and how they would go to the wet market to ask for the left over beansprouts casings and pick out the remaining beansprouts to cook the dish. Eating this dish therefore not only brings back childhood memories but also reminds me to appreciate what I have in life and to be thankful for what I am given.

[Click on Read More to get the full pictorial recipe.]

Ingredients:

Time to Prepare including cooking time: 15 min
Serving Size : 3 - 4 people

• 2 small cubes of beancurd or one large cube of bean curd. They are the harder variety ones, not the silken toufu. I usually try to get them from the wet markets, however, they are also sold at the local supermarkets. You may need to try out different brands, but if buying from the local supermarket (NTUC Fairprice), I prefer to use the ones by "Sheen" - the taste is closer to the ones I had when I was younger.

• 300g of beansprouts. You don't need to be exact. Remove the shells that you can see. If you are lazy, you can buy from the supermarkets those that have both the heads and the tails removed, it costs more though about $1.00+ per pack of about 150g. I prefer to have both the heads and tails, but for today, I used the ones with the heads and tails removed as these were the fresher ones at the supermarket.)

• 1-2 segments garlic (chopped finely)

• Oil for Frying the beancurd. (I use sunflower oil, as the oil is light and does not impart additional smell to the beancurd.)

• SeaSalt and Light Soya Sauce to taste.

Procedure:

Step 1:  Heat the wok over high flame.  Add in some sunflower oil.  The oil should cover the base of the work about 1/2 inch thick and then lower the flame to medium heat.  Don't really worry about the amount of oil used here, this is used for frying the beancurd and we will drain the oil and use a lot less on the final dish. 

Step 2:  While the oil is heating up, take the time to cut the beancurd into bite size.  (Approx. 1/2 inch wide and 1 inch long...again you don't need to be exact.)  To prevent the beancurd from sticking to the wok during frying, you may want to dry the sides with a kitchen towel first.

Step 3:  You need to wait for the oil to be sufficiently hot before you add in the beancurd.  It is hot enough when the oil looks as if it is is about to smoke, there is small streams of what looks like steam but not really smoking yet.  Lift the wok and swirl the oil around to coat the side.  This not only prevents the oil from smoking but the coating at the sides prevents the beancurd from sticking to the sides of the wok.

Do not throw in the beancurd, cause the oil will splatter!.  If the sides of the wok is coated with oil, you will find it relatively easy to slide the beancurd in piece by piece from the side of the wok.  Alternatively, you can release the beancurd piece by piece into the oil using tongs or chopsticks, remember, the closer you release to the oil, the less splattering there will be.

Note :  Do not turn over the beancurd at this point of time, wait for the bottom to crisp up.  You will be able see when it does from the side of the beancurd when it starts turning slight golden in colour.

 Step 4:  While waiting for the beancurd to crisp on one side, you may want to wash your beansprouts.  I put mine in a strainer and run it over running water, while tossing the beansprout and sloshing it around. 

 

Step 5: Turn the the beancurd over when the bottom is slightly golden brown and fry till the beancurd is evenly golden.  You can use a spatula or a chopstick to do the turning.  The ready beancurd should be crisp on the outside and still soft on the inside.

Once ready, remove them, using the spatula from the oil and place them on tempura paper or on a sieve to absorb the excess oil. Set aside for later use.

Step 6: Remove the oil from the wok till only a little is left, sufficient for stir frying of the garlic. (It should really be only sufficient to just coat the garlic.) Lightly fry the chopped garlic till fragrant and the sides of the pieces starts to brown.

Step 7: Add in the washed beansprouts and with the spatula, mix garlic into the beansprout.  Sprinkle in the seasalt (approx. 1/2 tsp) and drizzle a little light soya sauce (approx. 1/2 tsp).  Mix well.

Please do not add in too much light soya, else the beansprouts will brown too much. 

Step 8: Add in beancurd and mix well. You may want to add

Please do not overfry, just mix in the beancurd. The beansprouts taste best when it retains its crisp without tasting too raw. (Btw, beansprouts can be eaten raw.)

Step 9: The dish is now ready, so just remove it from the wok and set it on a plate for serving.

Comments:

• Variations:  There are many variations to this dish.  Some people like to add in shredded chicken, or small pieces of salted fish that has be prefried.  My mother-in-law adds in chilli slices and sliced shitake mushroom.  I have a friend who tells me his favourite dish is when the beansprouts are stir-fried with strips of pickled vegetables (mustard greens).  I guess everyone has our own experiences with this dish and hence has their own personal preferences.
• This dish goes particularly well with rice and Teochew porridge.
• Using a wok for deep frying at home:  The wok is a very versatile too, and can be used for frying fish, beancurd etc.  The trick is to prevent sticking, is to ensure the wok is well heated through, add in the oil for heating only when the wok is well heated (so that the oil does not overheat and smoking when the whole wok is heating up).  Swirl the heated oil to coat the side before adding in the wok and ensure that you have remove any excess moisture from whatever you are adding into the work.
• "What if I don't own a wok?"  Don't worry so much....you can still deep-fry the beancurd in a frying pan, or deep-fryer, and stir fry the rest of the recipe in a frying pan.  I tend to favour the wok as it is very versatile and can do the whole dish up using just the wok....I don't like to wash too many utensils at the end.

How to Cook Traditional Sweet Potato Teochew Porridge

  My son is down with flu.  At times like these, he has very little appetite and would only want something simple and not too oily for him to stomach.  So he decided he wanted to have some Teochew porridge.

  Teochew porridge is a simple dish which you can have a variety of side dishes to accompany.  This is a relatively simple dish to cook and is one of my staples for lunch when I was younger.  It is such a staple for many in the older generation that my father-in-law still has it for breakfast every morning with a lightly steamed fish or some pickled vegetables.

  Teochew porridge is different from the Cantonese congee, as the grain are still suppose to be very distinctive when cooked. When I was younger, I would simply have it with a little bit of light soya sauce (shoyu), a small piece of fermented beancurd or when times allowed a small piece of fried salted fish...and that to me is bliss....it always warms my heart after having a bowl of the porridge. 
 
This porridge can be found at most stalls at the hawkers or coffee shops in Singapore selling economical rice, though theirs do not come with sweet potatoes.  For shops that specialise in Teochew porridge, the price is always quite expensive, coming up to about $10++ for a meal for two with only about 3 side dishes, so I usually do not patronise those stalls as I find that I can easily whip up a meal on my own.

Traditional Sweet Potato Teochew Porridge

Serving : 2 - 3 people
Preparation time : 20 min (for brown rice it may take an additional 10 min)

Ingredients :

• 1 cup of long-grained jasmine white rice ( you can use brown rice here as well, the cooking time is only a little longer)
• water
• 1 -2 sweet potato (depending on how much you can finish)

Procedure:

 Step 1  

Put the rice into a pot of sufficient size.  The pot should be sufficient large so that that uncooked rice only takes up about 1/3 the size of the pot.  I like to use claypot here,  as I find the flavour of the sweet potatoes can infuse into the porridge better.  But you can use any pot of sufficient size.

Step 2  

Wash the rice about 2 to 3 times, to remove any impurities from the rice.  The water should still be murky (like milk diluted many times) when the rice is washed.

 Step 3                                                                                       Add water till the pot is approximately 2/3 full.  Do not fill to the brim else the water will bubble over when boiled.

Step 4
Put the pot over a stove over a large flame.  Cover with a lid leaving a small gap and let it boil, you will need to stir once or twice during the boiling to losen any grains that may get stucked at the bottom, else those grains will char.




Step 5
Peel the sweet potato(es) with a potato peeler and but into bite size.  Note that the size will get smaller the sides will break off and infuse in the porridge when cooked.  You can use any variety of sweet potato here.  My favourites are the orange-fleshed ones (usually from Australia) and the Japanese sweet potatoes.  If you can get organic ones, You can just scrub the sweet potatoes and cook it with the skin on and eat it.  It is suppose to be more nutritious.

Step 6

I soak the sweet potatoes in water while waiting for the porridge to boil so that they do not discolour.

Step 7

When the porridge boils, you will need to remove the lid.

Step 8

Add in the sweet potato at this junction.  And wait for the mixture to boil again.  When it boils, lower the flame till the mixture just boils but not over the pot.







Step 9

Continue cooking till the grains are cooked through, (that happens when the grain is of uniform colouration) and the grains start to fluff and split.  (In Chinese, we say that the grains just "opened").   Off the flame at this junction.

 Step 10

Put back the lid, and let the grains cotinue to cook in its own heat while you prepare the side dishes.

When you are ready, you can serve the porridge with its side dishes.

Dishes that can goes well with Teochew Porridge:

• 
  
  Fried Luncheon Meat Cubes (my kids favourite, though not entirely healthy, but I occasionally indulge them.
• 
  
  Sliced Steamed Squid with Orange Sauce Dip
• 
  
  Pickled Vegetables
• 
  
  Stir Fried Beansprouts with Beancurd
• 
  
  Onion Omelette