Jackie M on Channel 9′s Kerri-Anne Show on 3 Oct 2011

OTAK-OTAK – Grilled Spicy Fish Cake in Banana Leaf

I was asked to submit my Otak-otak recipe for publication somewhere so I figured I might as well post it here as well.  For the record I used to use Knorr chicken stock granules instead of Poloku mushroom stock granules but that bothered

1)  people on a meat-free but not-quite-vegetarian diet (I’ve never used it in vegetarian dishes)

2) people against msg, which Knorr’s contains

I do still like Knorr’s product a lot – it’s the pièce de résistance in a lot of my recipes.

Makes about 20-25

INGREDIENTS -

500g redfish fillets

100ml water

2 TBS tapioca flour

½ tsp pepper

1 TBS Poloku mushroom stock granules or Knorr chicken stock granules

1 TBS fish curry powder

2 eggs

200ml coconut cream

¼ TBS chilli powder

1 tsp belacan granules

2 TBS minced kaffir lime leaves

½ cup fried shallots

Banana leaves for wrapping – 5 x 4-inch pieces

Stapler or bamboo skewers to secure the leaves

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Mix tapioca flour and pepper in the water.
2. Put the fish and water/flour/pepper mixture in a food processor and pulse it until the fish turns into a paste.
3. Transfer into a mixing bowl and add all the other ingredients.  Mix well.
4. Put 2 TBS fish mix on a banana leaf, fold in the sides and staple the ends.
5. Brush with a little oil and cook in a frying pan or on a BBQ for about 4 minutes each side, or until cooked through.
6. Serve (remove banana leaf wrapper before eating).

Vegetarian Toor Dhal Recipe

A.k.a. what I serve my roti with.  Also works well with rice or as a dip with any bread.

Awfully long list of ingredients, but super easy to make.  For the record, the pic here was from my first attempt at this dish; it should be and is nowadays a lot mushier in texture and consistency.

Serves 6

Most of the ingredients for this recipe can be obtained at Indian grocery stores.

Ingredients –

400g toor dhal – soaked overnight, then strained

1/3 cup vegetable oil

2 onions, pureed

1 TBS garlic, minced

½ TBS turmeric powder

½ TBS asafoetida powder

100ml tamarind extract

4 whole, green chillies

½ TBS mustard seeds

½ TBS cumin seeds – gently dry-roasted

¼ TBS fenugreek seeds – gently dry-roasted

2 stems curry leaves

1 TBS salt

2 TBS mushroom seasoning (optional)

1.5L water

1 can whole, peeled tomatoes

4 potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks

Instructions –

1. Heat the vegetable oil in a thick-based saucepan and brown the onion and garlic in it.
2. Add everything except the potatoes and tomatoes, and simmer gently for about 30 minutes.
3. Add the remaining ingredients and cook until the potatoes are soft and the lentils are of a mushy consistency – approximately 20 minutes.
4. Taste and adjust seasoning as required.
5. Serve with flaky roti, rice or bread.

Roti Canai Recipe

Roti Canai picture courtesy of Ian Chow

I’d been meaning to post this for awhile but before I had the chance I was asked by SBS Broadcasting last week if they could come round and take pictures of me flipping roti in my kitchen.  This happened in a flash and before I knew it they wanted the recipe to post on their website along with a step-by-step slideshow of the process, so I had to quickly crunch some numbers to make about 8 roti (in hindsight my figures may have been a little off, lol).

Anyhow, here are my (correct) bulk measurements; feel free to convert them yourself in the meantime, unless I get to update this post before you get to attempt making it in your kitchen.  (Sorry, if this post seems rushed, it is – I have a big catering gig first thing in the morning and I’m doing it alone.)  This, for the record, is enough for about 70 pcs of roti.

Also, go ahead and check out the slideshow on SBS’s website; I’ll post my own roti-flipping video hopefully in the near future; in the meantime I managed to drag out some clips done a few weeks back of the roti dough being cut up and worked, then coated with ghee (I’ve stitched 2 clips into one as evidenced by my different hair lengths – yes, scruffy hair but I work alone in my kitchen so, whatever)

Jackie M’s Roti Canai

5kg plain flour

1 cup gluten flour

1/2 cup salt

1 cup sugar

2 cans condensed milk

500ml vegetable oil

500ml egg whites

2.25-2.5L water

(for coating the dough) about 3 cups ghee

1. Throw all the ingredients except the ghee in a dough mixer.

2.  Using a dough-hook attachment, work the dough for about 20mins (less if smaller portion)

3. Cut dough into even pieces.

4. Work each piece so that it’s a smooth round ball (this is important; there should be no folds and as much as possible, no creases in each portion).

5.  Coat with ghee and arrange on grease-lined tray. And yeah, even though they shouldn’t stick together thanks to the ghee, I prefer to set them apart since sometimes, they do, and once you have to pull them apart, they get out of shape, which makes them tricky to work with.

6.  Cover and allow to rest for about 8 hours.

7.  The dough really works best at room temperature.  In colder months, I usually pop the tray into an oven that’s been heated at the lowest setting for a couple of minutes, then turned off.  I’d leave the tray in there for about 2 hours before I flip the dough.

8.  Flatten a piece of dough with the palm of your hand.

9.  Assuming you’re right-handed,position your left hand facing downwards on the flattened dough, and your right hand a few inches apart and under it, facing upwards.

10.  Lift with your right hand and ‘throw’ the dough away from you to your right, creating a figure 8 with your elbows in the air as you do.

11.  Keep flipping until paper thin, then stretch the edges without tearing it.  Dab a little ghee in the middle of the dough sheet.

12.  Fold in the sides envelope-style; if the dough wants to shrink back in, leave it to rest for a couple of minutes before cooking.

13.  Cook on medium heat on a griddle for a minute or so each side.

14.  Serve with vegetarian dhal or any curry.

Jackie M’s Sui Gow (Chicken & Prawn Dumplings)

Great to make ahead of time and freeze for future use; this is one of my more popular dishes at Leichhardt Market Saturday mornings -

Sui Gow photo taken by Andrew of Rosey Photography - http://roseyphotography.blogspot.com/

RECIPE

Filling -

500g chicken mince

250g fresh shelled prawns – minced

½  can water chestnuts – drained & minced in a food processor

1 stalk spring onion – sliced

1 cup crispy fried shallots (commercial variety is fine)

3 TBS chicken stock granules (I use Knorr)

1 ½ TBS sesame oil

1/2 TBS pepper

1 egg

Pastry -

2 pks wonton wrappers

1. Mix the filling ingredients in a large bowl.
2. Separate the wonton wrappers gently, put one level teaspoon of filling in middle of pastry, then fold in half crossways to create a triangular shape.
3. Squeeze the edges around the filling so it doesn’t fall apart when cooked.
4. Line a tray with baking paper and arrange the dumplings so they don’t touch.  If not using straight away, freeze, then store in sealed containers in freezer until ready for use.

To Cook –

-          Bring water to boil in a saucepan, then add dumplings and boil on medium heat until they float to the surface (about 4-5mins).  Serve in a clear broth with noodles or on a bed of blanched Chinese greens drizzled with oyster sauce.

OR –

-          Deep-fry at 180’C for about 4-5mins until crispy.  Serve as a snack on its own or with a fish sauce/vinegar/sugar/sliced chilli dip.

Canned Water Chestnuts

Deep-fried Dumplings

Deep-fried Dumplings photo by Tommy Shonquist Jr.

10 Must-Have Malaysian Pantry Ingredients

‘Must have’ in the sense that they’re what I would personally get if I were limited to only 10 items – again, depending on your own (Malaysian) cultural upbringing, you might have a vastly different list to mine. Will elaborate on these another time along with suitable recipes. As mentioned in a previous post, when hunting down Malaysian ingredients, aim for Malaysian brands where possible, followed by those of its closest neighbours – Singapore/Thailand/Indonesia/Vietnam.

1. garlic
2. onion
3. chicken stock granules
4. oyster sauce
5. coconut cream
6. Malaysian curry powder
7. fish sauce
8. tapioca starch
9. noodles (eg. rice sticks if you want sth that keeps well)
10. jasmine rice

10 Common Misconceptions About Malaysian Food

Based on my own real-world interactions over the course of the last decade of running a Malaysian food business, here’s my list of 10 things people get wrong about Malaysian food -

1. It equates with Malay food – Malaysia is a country of immigrants – our food is influenced by Malay, Chinese, Indian and Eurasian cooking styles and recipes; some of our dishes are a fusion of some or all of these cultures, and others are distinctly Chinese or Malay or Indian etc. I’ve heard people wish there were more Malay-style dishes on a restaurant menu (fair enough) and go on to complain that that particular restaurant was therefore not authentically Malaysian (invalid argument).
2. It’s unhealthy – I’ve come across articles telling people how to ‘enjoy’ Asian food without wrecking their diet, eg. by eating Laksa without drinking the soup; I’ve also had someone justify their purchase of a curry and rice dish with the reasoning that they’d been ‘good all week after all’. There’s a lot of taboo still associated with coconut milk and the like; the fact is, coconut milk (and oil) has been scientifically proven to be good for you and may in fact help with weight maintenance. I’m constantly stunned with this kind of thinking, since frankly, the countries with the biggest obesity problems aren’t the ones you’d find in my part of the world
3. It’s the same as Thai/Indonesian food or we ‘steal’ recipes created in Indonesia and claim them as our own. Are there some crossovers? Sure. Are they distinctly different? Sometimes. As far as I’m concerned, the world is big enough for more than one version of Satay and Rendang – so, to those out there who get upset about us ‘stealing’ your rendang, I’d like to know where you got your satay and laksa recipes etc. etc. from. And if you claim we can’t call it ‘rendang’ because it’s nothing like yours, then you shouldn’t call your martabak what you do since it’s not even remotely martabak/murtabak. Nuff said.
4. It shouldn’t contain pork (again, confusing it with Malay ie. halal food). I don’t eat pork and dislike it with a passion; however, Malaysian food, per pt 1, is made up of influences from a number of different cultures, and a lot of the contributions by other cultures do use pork in their recipes. Eg. Char Kway Teow, and even Har Meen (ie. Prawn Noodle Soup). Are there non-pork variations out there nowadays? Sure – mine for instance. But the traditional versions do contain pork.
5. There’s only one way to do a dish ie. the one you know (laksa/satay/rendang) and the rest must be inauthentic. There’s practically a version of laksa and rendang to represent each State of the country – some are minor variations, others are so different you wouldn’t know it was the same dish. Same deal with lots of other dishes, so next time you eat at a Malaysian restaurant, just because the satay/laksa/rendang/nasi lemak etc. etc. isn’t the same as what you had during your Langkawi honeymoon, it may just be you’re eating a different version of it.
6. Roti canai (flat, flaky Malaysian pancake) terminology – the ‘canai’ in roti canai does not refer to the dhal that may or may not come with it. Roti means bread in Malay (leavened OR unleavened – therefore, sliced bread is also called Roti). Roti canai is a type of roti. So when you ask for roti without the canai it doesn’t make sense. Or when you ask for roti canai instead of roti + kaya, we get confused whether you just want roti canai (ie. plain flat bread, without the kaya jam) or if you want roti (canai) + dhal – 99% of the time it’s the latter.
7. The difference between roti canai and roti prata/paratha. There isn’t any. Roti canai is what we call it in Malaysia, roti prata is what it’s called in Singapore. There are two different ways to fold up the dough after it’s been flipped – either envelope-style, or twirled into a long rope then rolled up like a snail. An American chef once declared that roti when folded envelope-style is called one thing and when twirled is called the other – I forget which is which – that is incorrect. Unfortunately this misconception has taken hold online to the point where other people are correcting others incorrectly about it. In both countries they can be folded OR twirled and they’d still be called their respective (geographically-based) terms.
8. Vegetable/non-meat dishes are vegetarian. A lot of things go into a Malaysian recipe. Just because a curry has only vegetables in it, for example, it does not automatically mean it’s vegetarian. Never assume something is vegetarian unless it’s explicitly stated likewise. We use ingredients in our spice mixes, sauces and stocks like shrimp paste, dried anchovies, chicken or beef stock or flavour boosters, fish sauce etc. etc. in lots of non-meat dishes.
9. Malaysian food = Nyonya food – I’ve seen this term used somewhat too liberally, and interchangeably with Malaysian food by food reviewers; outside of Malaysia, most Malaysian restaurants are NOT Nyonya restaurants even if they have one or two Nyonya-influenced dishes on their menu. Nyonya cuisine is a subset of Malaysian cuisine; it’s a unique cooking style created by the first waves of Chinese immigrants to that part of the world who intermarried with local Malays (as opposed to the Chinese who came centuries later, from whom the current ethnic Chinese are descended); the dishes are distinctly different.  There are 2 Nyonya concentrations in Malaysia, one down south in Melaka, and one up north in Penang – the styles of cooking between these are also quite different. Nyonya culture extends beyond our geographical boundaries – as well as Singapore, there are concentrations of Nyonya in Indonesia; Singaporean Nyonya food is very similar to that of Melaka; I know nothing about Indonesian Nyonya food, unfortunately.
10. Everything must be served piping hot – in fact in Malaysia we eat a lot of our dishes including curries at room temperature. (I know about Australian health codes, so no lecture required here, thanks – just pointing out how it’s done in Malaysia). Ditto with snacks like curry puffs (we don’t eat this with Thai sweet chilli, by the way) And the chicken in Hainanese Chicken Rice is deliberately cooled in an ice bath prior to cutting, so it’s MEANT to be cold.

There you have it, next time you visit a Malaysian restaurant with less well-informed friends or you read a review somewhere, you’ll be all the wiser and/or join me in my rage about all these factual misconceptions

How to Cook Char Kway Teow (CKT)

Photo Courtesy of Ian Chow

I asked a quick question online today and based on the Facebook and Twitter responses, the one Malaysian dish that most people would like to learn to make is Char Kway Teow, ie. stir-fried fresh rice noodles. At least among my customers/followers anyway – so here’s my take on it.

First, a quick rundown of some CKT facts – I feel I need to cover all bases since I’ve come across so much misinformation about what constitutes an ‘authentic’ CKT, both –

-          online – yes, I’m referring to the uber-critical bloggers/self-appointed restaurant reviewers who can’t get their facts straight (I’m actually defending my fellow restaurateurs here, some of whom have been unjustly maligned)

-           as well as off-line (here I’m pointing at the douche who thought spending several years in Bangkok, Thailand – his own claim – presumably hanging out in go-go bars – made him the Malaysian food expert over a native-born-and-raised like me – thanks for walking off after paying and refusing to claim the CKT you ordered, btw, because I used the ‘wrong’ noodles – I was quite happy to re-sell it to the next person)

By the way, the term ‘Char Kway Teow’ is Hokkien for, well, Fried Rice Noodles.  It can be spelled different ways or pronounced differently depending on what dialect of Chinese is used, or how it’s romanised.

There are 2 main versions – the more well-known Penang CKT, and the one I do ie. from Kuala Lumpur southwards.

Penang CKT –

-          uses a thin-cut fresh rice noodle – which looks similar to the rice sticks used in Pad Thai.

-          is much lighter in colour – again, reminiscent of Pad Thai in appearance (but not in flavour).

(Alright, I hate drawing parallels between Thai food and Malaysian, since there’s enough confusion out there as it stands.  I love Thai food, but it gets old when we keep getting asked if we do Pad Thai or what colour curry our rendang is – ‘is it a green curry, or a red curry’ – etc.  To the woman who reeled off a string of Thai dishes to us before asking if we had Pad Thai, to whom my associate wearily said  ‘no, but we have Pad Malaysian’, whereupon you said that sounded interesting and you’d like some Pad Malaysian to take to a lunch party you were attending – I’m sorry if your friends looked confused when you announced you’d brought some Pad Malaysian with you.  We weren’t being mean, we just needed some light relief).  But, I digress.

‘KL’ CKT (for want of a better expression) –

-          uses a broader fresh rice noodle, and sometimes has some hokkien (ie. fresh yellow/egg noodles) thrown in.

-          is quite a lot darker in colour.

Traditionally, CKT contains the following (I omit the porky stuff in my version since I don’t eat pork)

-          fresh rice noodles (obviously)

-          garlic

-          garlic chives

-          beansprouts

-          chilli paste, made primarily from dried chillies that’ve been boiled and blended with a little water

-          eggs

-          chinese sausage (those dried, waxy things you see strung up in Asian grocery stores – aka lup cheong)

-          blood cockles (hard to get hold of in Australia, and even then, it’s usually a variety that’s quite a lot larger and tougher than what we get back in Malaysia, plus it’s only available during the warmer months)

-          sliced fishcake

-          lard

-          pork crisps

Non-standard ingredients/cooking method I observed on my last trip to Penang –

-          prawns

-          fresh crab meat

-          using a charcoal stove

Non-standard ingredients I use – due to customer demand/practicality/the lack of availability of the more traditional stuff like cockles–

-          chicken

-         seafood including prawns, calamari, and, at market events – marinara mixes combined with prawns

-          a ‘plain’ CKT (ie. noodles & vegies only).  This confuses a lot of Malaysians who think ‘plain’ on my menu means it comes with chinese sausage, fishcake etc. etc. – no, sorry, mine doesn’t

-          baby bok choy

-          vegetarian (I use a different sauce for this)

-          sambal belacan (shrimp paste chilli)

-          fried shallots

What I DON’T usually do is cook it with chilli paste – this hails back to my start at markets/festivals, where I have to cook more than one serve at a time and do it quickly – it makes it that much harder if one person wants it spicy and the next can’t tolerate chilli at all and the third only wants a little heat in it – so I just offer sambal belacan on the side if they want it hot.

What gives CKT the ‘je ne sais quoi’ factor?  Many theories abound, including –

1.       using lard – out of the question for me (the pork thing again), but that’s been debunked anyway.  Even some of the most famous CKT stalls nowadays have stopped using lard in theirs.

2.       cooking with charcoal – would only apply if it generated a strong enough heat to achieve that elusive ‘wok breath’ I’ve talked about in a previous post.  Which brings us to -

3.       using high heat – this is where most home cooks fail to nail it, since most households (yes, even Asian ones) aren’t equipped with high pressure gas burners.  So do invest in one if you can – it’ll set you back about $170 – Google ‘Rambo high pressure stove’ – stick it on your balcony or backyard like you would a BBQ.

What goes in the sauce? 

Light Soy and Thick Soy are the base ingredients.  I brew my own mixture, which contains a few other things including Fish Sauce and Chicken Stock Powder (yes, non-std).  No Kicap Manis (Sweet Soy) in mine, for those who’ve been asking, nor Oyster Sauce – though others may have it in their versions.  I’ll get round to posting my full sauce recipe one day, but in the meantime I do sell the sauce, for those who aren’t aware, and I even have a vegetarian version

So, before much further ado, here’s my recipe + cooking video showing how it’s done – and if you have a strong enough heat source, it shouldn’t take you more than 3-4 minutes to cook up a serve.  I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before, but do it in small batches (1-2 serves each time) for optimal flavour.

Also, especially if you don’t have that strong a heat to cook it on, add the sauce (which you shouldn’t need more than a TBS or two of, esp. if using mine) in stages.  And use a thin wok/pan to help with the heat transfer. Good luck, and Selamat Makan (Happy Eating)

CHAR KWAY TEOW RECIPE

60ml vegetable oil (less if you’re not using a high pressure burner)

250g fresh rice noodles (the ones I’ve bought whilst in the US need to be blanched/microwaved to soften them up)

1 TBS garlic

Your choice of meat/seafood

1 ½ TBS CKT sauce

Small clutch of garlic chives, cut into 2-inch lengths

Fistful of beansprouts

One egg

How to Cook Coconut Rice

Growing up with rice as a staple I kind of assumed everyone knew how to cook it.  That was, until I came to Australia.  Most people nowadays know enough to get by, but for those still struggling with it, here’s my two cents’ worth -

Tips -

There are lots of different types of rice – short grain, long grain, sushi rice etc. etc.  For Malaysian cooking, you really only need to know the following -

Jasmine rice is pretty much what we use with our Chinese or Malay-influenced dishes.  Basmati rice is used primarily in Indian-inspired dishes.  Never mind sticky aka glutinuous rice for the moment (usually used for sweets) – we’ll get to it another day.

Different types of rice require different amounts of water to cook.  Basmati rice needs a lot more water than jasmine rice.  Different brands of jasmine rice likewise have different levels of absorbency.  You’ll need to figure it out as you go.

Good rule of thumb for cooking jasmine rice – use 2:1 water:rice ratio.  Add more during cooking if required.

Despite the term ‘steamed rice’ in reality we pretty much only ever boil our rice as opposed to steaming it, since it’s faster.  Having said that, I do nowadays steam my coconut-flavoured rice

Most Asians use automatic electric rice cookers to do their rice.  They come with measuring cups and have marked indicators on the inside of the cooker unit.  Eg. if you use 4 cups of rice, fill it up with water to level ‘4’.

IMPORTANT – the cups that come with these rice cookers are NOT your standard 250ml measuring cups – they hold only 160ml in volume, so they’re not interchangeable.

Here are two different methods of cooking the same rice dish (I’m doing coconut rice since it’s a little trickier to get right than plain rice) – one using the steaming method, aka what I do at the restaurant and the other, by boiling in a saucepan/pot ie. WITHOUT a rice cooker (aka what I do at the markets).

Pros and cons of both –

1)      Steaming

•  takes much longer.
• If you use a muslin cloth, it’s a lot of work to wash it out after use.  I use specially-designed single-use heat resistant tray liners, but they’re an added expense, plus I get them from a food industry supplier; it’s not something you come across at your local supermarket.
• Alternatively, try using a splatter guard – those round things that sit on top of saucepans to contain splatter (a tip I picked up from www.shesimmers.com)

2)      Boiling

• means you can only do small batches as you run the risk of burning the rice.  Especially if it has coconut milk in it, which is why I use less coconut milk when I cook big pots of rice at the markets, which means it’s less flavourful.
• To compensate for the risk of burning, you’d add a bit more water, and then you have rice that’s a bit more soggy than the ideal.
• Cooking with direct heat on the saucepan also means you’ll end up with crusty rice at the bottom that gets thrown out, unless you like that sort of thing.

COCONUT RICE (NASI LEMAK) RECIPE

Steaming method - 

(adapted from Madam Tan’s coconut rice recipe contribution to www.yummystuffgoeshere ‘s blog)

500ml jasmine rice – soaked for an hour or more, then strained

2 tsps salt

1 pandan leaf, bruised (optional)

1 cup coconut cream

200ml water

Equipment required – steamer + muslin cloth OR splatter guard + deep saucepan + lid

Fill the steamer base or saucepan with water.  Bring to a boil.

Mix the salt into the strained rice.

• If using a traditional steamer, line the steam tray with muslin.  Put the bruised pandan leaf in, followed by the rice.
• If using splatter guard, sit it on top of the saucepan of boiling water.  Put the pandan leaf on it, then spread the rice on top.

Cover and steam for 30mins.

Turn off the heat, then mix coconut cream + 200ml water into rice, cover again, and leave for 30mins.

Turn on the heat and steam a further 40mins or until rice is cooked.

Boiling Method - 

500ml jasmine rice

750ml water

2 tsps salt

1 pandan leaf, bruised (optional)

1 cup coconut cream

1. Put all the ingredients EXCEPT the coconut cream into a saucepan.  Cover and bring to a boil on high heat.
2. Reduce heat to the lowest possible setting.  When most of the water has been absorbed, add coconut cream.  Do not stir.
3. Keep covered and cook a further 5-10mins, until the rice is cooked through.  Stir the coconut cream into the rice and mix well.  Cover a further 5mins before use.

Rice with Pandan Leaves ready for steaming

How Your Order is Packed for Shipping

For those who are thinking of ordering from our estore – www.jackiem.com.au/estore – here’s a video showing how we pack your frozen meals/curry pastes for courier delivery.  We currently deliver curry pastes Australia-wide, and frozen meals to QLD, NSW, ACT, VIC and SA.

Re: the video, yes, I do work that fast