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Sunday, March 10, 2013

Malaysian Pan Mee 板麵 Pan Mien


Pan Mee, a type of flat noodles served in soup or dry (kon lou) is originated from Malaysia.  It is a Malaysian Chinese cuisine.

The dough is made of flour, water and salt, sometimes with egg added can be torn or pinch into small flat pieces, rolled with a rolling pin and cut with a knife or cut with a machine into flat stripe noodles. I am making the pinch pan mee for this recipe.

Pan mee is typically served with with fried anchovies, mushroom, minced pork and a green vegetable called sayur manis or sauropus androgynus.

Making the noodles and preparing the garnishes require quite a period of time.  I had to spend about two hours or more.  Especially when I would normally mince the pork myself instead of buying it from the store to reduce fat intake.  But in the end, the result of a hot, yummy bowl of pan mee just like one from a kopitiam worth it all!



Ingredients:  Serves 4

For the noodles:
2 cups AP flour
1 large egg
1/2 to 3/4 cup water
pinch of salt

For the minced pork:
(A)
100g minced pork
1 tsp Shao Hsing wine
1 tsp oyster sauce
1 tsp soy sauce
1/2 tsp sugar
pinch of salt
pinch of white pepper
(B)
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 shallots, minced
oil for frying
water if necessary

Soup:
3L of pork broth
3 pieces of dry small fish (as shown on pic),
a big hand's full of ikan bilis (anchovies)
salt to taste
white pepper to taste
some soy sauce (optional)
3 big hand's full of sayur manis leaves
12 fish balls, halved
12 pork meat balls, halved

Garnish:
60g ikan bilis
8 pieces of cloud ear, soaked in water to soften
oil to fry the ikan bilis


Dried fish and anchovies for the soup.

Ingredients

Garnishes

Pinch pan mee

Method:
1.  Prepare the soup.  In a large pot, boil the dried fish and dried anchovies.  Let it cook while we prepare the rest of ingredients.
2.  Make the noodles.  Add in flour and salt in a mixing bowl, make a well in the middle and add in the egg.  Start mixing it using the hand.  Add in water slowly and mixing it constantly with the hand until it form a dough.  Knead the dough for a good few minutes then shape it into a ball and place it in the same mixing bowl cover with a wet kitchen cloth to rest for 20 minutes.
3.  Mix all the A ingredients for minced meat together.  Set aside.
4.  Fry the anchovies.  In a small pot, pour enough oil to deep fry the anchovies for about 1 to 2 minutes or when they turned brown and crispy.  Dish out and set aside.
5.  Add the cloud ear into the soup and let it cook for about 3 minutes.  Dish out and let it cool.  Cut them into thin stripes and set aside.
6.  Prepare the minced pork.  In a pan with high heat, add in oil.  Add the minced garlic and shallot and stir fry until aromatic and light brown.  Add in the minced pork mixture and stir fry for 1 1/2 minutes or until cooked.  Add water if it's too dry.  Dish out and set aside.
7 .  In another large pot, add in enough water to cook the noodles.  Boil the water.  You will notice the noodle dough is softer after the 20 minutes rest.  Give it a little knead and the dough is ready to cook when the water is boiling.  To make pinch pan mee, simply just pinch about 1 1/2 inches of a flat dough (as flat as possible) and just dump it into the boiling water.  Repeating pinching the dough until it's all used up.
8.  While the noodles is cooking, its time to finish up cooking the soup.  Turn the heat to high and add in fish balls, pork meat balls.  When the fish balls expand, add in the sayur manis.  Season the soup with salt, white pepper and soy sauce.  Cover and turn the heat off.
9.  Dish out the desire portion of the pan mee into serving bowls.  Add some soup, fish balls and pork meat balls into each bowl.  Garnish with the minced pork, cloud ear stripes and ikan bilis.  Serve immidiately with your favourite chili sambal or sliced chili padi with soy sauce!



Sunday, March 3, 2013

銅鑼燒 Dorayaki - Japanese Red Bean Pancake


The other day my niece tagged me something from Youtube on Facebook.  It was a game that we used to play many years ago.  A Doraemon game!  When I saw the Dorayaki on the screen, I said to myself "I must make this"!  This Japanese red bean pancake was my son's favourite at Dream Food Japanese Restaurant, Centre Point Shopping Mall.

This pancake is Doraemon's (a robot cat) favourite food.  Dora in Japanese means "gong" and perhaps that's how the name Dorayaki originated as the shape is smilar to a gong.


There's a legend saying that there was a samurai named Benkei hiding in a farmer's home and he forgot to bring along his dora "gong" when he left.  The farmer then used the gong to cook the pancake, thus came the name Dorayaki.



Here are the ingredients:
1 cup (160g) AP flour
3 large eggs
120g castor sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 tbsp honey
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp milk
300g red bean paste, or more

makes 8 yummilicious Dorayaki

Method:
1. In a large bowl, whisk together eggs, sugar, vanilla extract, milk and honey until well combine.
2. Sift in flour, baking powder and baking soda and mix well.  Cover and rest for about 20 minutes. 
3. Heat a medium non-stick pan on medium heat. You can wipe the pan with paper towel that is dipped in oil, but I made mine without brushing or wiping oil on the pan.
4. Using a ladle, drop the batter carefully to create a round pancake.  When the surface started to bubble, flip the pancake over and cook the other side.

5. Cover the cooked pancakes with towel to prevent them from drying.  Sandwich two pancakes with the red bean paste.