Chinese Style Pork with Prawn Dumpling Soup

Had a go at making shrimp dumpling for the first time tonight. The wrapping of 60 dumplings took me about an hour to finish. Good thing for home video to entertain me while my hands were hard at work:)

For the soup based, instead of chicken stock, I went with pork bones and with carrots instead. Turned out relatively well in my humble opinion...except I got to rem to add black fungus and add more pepper next time round. 

Dumpling Ingredients

1. 100g minced pork

2. 250g of prawns

3. 4 stalk spring onion

4. diced 4 water chestnuts

5. 3 cloves minced garlic

6. 1tsp Sesame oil, 1tsp pepper, 1tsp salt, dash of sugar

7. 3 Tbsp light soy sauce 

8. 1tsp of ginger juice

9. (Black fungus/ bamboo shoots) optional

10. dumpling wraps

Soup

1. 400grams Pork bones and meat

2. 1-2 carrots

3. 2-3 whole water chestnuts

4. 4 stalk Spring onion (bottom white half) - upper green half for garnishing

5. coriander garnishing

Cooking Steps:

1. Marinate the minced pork with soy sauce, pepper, saly, sesame oil, ginger juice.

2. Cut the prawns into corse chucks if they are large prawns and wouldnt fit into the dumpling sheet. Add to the minced pork

3. Chopped the spring onions, minced and add to pork prawn mix.

4. Add the chopped chestnuts and black fungus into the meat mix.

5. Marinate for at least 2 hours. 

6. Boil 2L water and add rinse soup pork bones and cook at high heat for 30mins. Lower heat to low, add chestnuts, bottom half of spring onion and simmer for about 2 hours. Watch the flame. Add salt to taste as necessary. Add carrots and turn to medium heat, boil for another 20mins with lid closed.

7. Take the marinated meat and wrap one with the wanton skin.

8. In a separate boiled water, cook the wanton for couple of minutes and taste when cooked. (rem the time required to cook because it varies depending on the amount of meat you wrap with) Adjust the seasoning to add more soy or pepper or salt at this point to the meat lot. 

9. Wrap your meat and seal the sides of the skin with water. I am lazy, so I did it the rectangular wrap as u can see in the photo.

10. Cook the dumplings for the necessary time (at least 5 mins) and served with soup.

Garnish with corridander.

Steamed Large Prawns with fried Chilli Garlic & Soysauce

Saw the freshest lovely live prawns in the wet market tonite and couldnt resist them at all! So bought some back for steam prawns. A quick and super easy meal to prepare tonight! Looking at all the live produce, I really think this is the BEST thing about living in HK. 

Anycase, back to my dinner ingredients for tonight! I dont like fried food, but really like most of my dishes steamed if I can. I dont like to stir fry prawns either, esp not when they are this fresh! Just the colors alone are mouth watering. My hubby and I were laughing at the prawns with its motor fast wriggling legs (backstrokes paddling on its back) in the water. Then I was laughing at my partner for taunting the prawns that they will soon be eaten. What a grown up big kid! That aside, here's my simple steps for 15-20 mins cooking.

Serving: 2 pax.

Ingredients


1. Rinsed Prawns (about 10-11 medium size)
2. Finely Chopped garlic (not minced, so dont use those garlic crusher). - 4 cloves. For Frying
3. Finely sliced ginger strips, quantity up to your personal preference. This is for frying
3. Roughly sliced Ginger pieces, about 6 pieces. For Steaming with prawns
4. Chopped rinsed scallions or Spring onion - 1 stalk.
5. Clear Chinese Rice wine. I suppose u can use shaoxing wine but I didnt.
6. 1/2 of a big chilli, deseeded and minced. NOT chilli padi
7. 1 stalk of spring onion, halved vertically. Only need the bottom of the stalk, meaning, the half with the bulb minus the roots. Dont really need the green bits. For steaming

Sauce Ingredient

1. 1- 1.5 Tsp of Fish sauce
2. 1/2 Tsp of Sugar
3. 1-2 Tablespoon of soya sauce


Cooking Steps

1. Just 10mins before cooking, mix 5 tablespoon of chinese rice wine into the rinsed prawns to season. If your prawns are still alive like mine, they wont like it and will jump, so cover with a lid or plate.
2. Line prawns into a steaming metal plate. Try not to pile them to ensure evenly cooked.
3. Throw in the sliced ginger and halved spring onion into the prawn lot to steam with.
*4. Cover the plate with foil and poke holes randomly all over to allow steam to get in. The foil is only required if u have live prawns to prevent the suicidal prawns jumping into the boiling water. So this is optional.
5. Steam prawns for about 8-10mins depending on your prawn thickness, mine was cooked for 10-11mins for the prawns were 1.5-2 fingers width big and I had covered the plate with foil.
you should know its cook when it turned bright red throughout from head to tail.
6. Put the chopped spring onion onto the prawns

Sauce Steps
1. In a sauce pot, heat 2 tablespoon extra light olive oil.
2. Fry chopped garlic and finely sliced ginger strips. When browned, remove from oil.
3. Next, fry the minced unseeded chilli for a min or less and remove from oil.
4. When prawns are ready, pour the excess liquid from the steamed dish and mixed with sauce ingredients above. This helps to dissolve the sugar.
5. Heat up the previous frying oil, and when warm, pour the sauce mixture into the warm oil and quickly remove from heat and pour the bubbled up sauce into the steamed prawn. Pour all over the prawns.
6. Add the fried garlic, ginger mixed with the chilli over the prawns.

Voila. Done.

Singapore Laksa with Prawns, Beansprouts and Eggs.

I miss Laksa when I left Singapore. 

This is a lazy but still authentic version of homemade laksa I have discovered while living in Sydney in 2007 and deprived of a really good Laksa. Yes, even the famous Hunter Street@Martin Place "Malay Chinese Take Away" Laksa doesnt cut it with me because the gravy tastes more like our Chicken Curry and NOT Laksa. So the pleasant find I had was this prepacked Laksa Mix from Prima Taste.  A box of laksa premix cost about A$4.75 here.

I like to balance my dishes so you might see more ingredients here than necessary. I dont like dried beancurd so I dont include it.

Serving: 2 Pax
Time to Cook:  20mins.

Ingredients

- Box of Laksa Premix
- Pack of Rice Noodles or sphagetti
- A dozen of Fresh Prawns
- Bean sprouts
- 2 Eggs
- Button Mushrooms (optional)
- Some Boy Choy Leafy Vege (optional)
- 8 crab sticks (make sure they are not the overly sweeten type)

Cooking Steps

1. Follow the Laksa Premix Instructions to prepare the sauce. I tend to add extra half cup of water to the mixture.

2. Either boil or steam fresh large prawns and when cooked, rinse with tap water and peel the shell and devein. You may choose to retain the prawn head or remove. if your prawn is not fresh and firmly stuck to the prawn body before cooking, I would remove the head.

3. Throw water, and with fresh pot of boiling water, cook vege for 2 mins and remove from pot. Set aside.

4. In the same hot pot of boiling water, cook mushrooms for 5 mins. Remove from water, set aside.

5. In the same hot pot of boiling water, cook crab stick with plastic for 3 mins, Remove from water, set aside and remove the plastic.

6. In the same hot pot of boiling water, add 2 rinsed eggs and cook them until they are hardboiled eggs. Remove from pot. 

7. Throw water, and with a fresh pot of boiling water, cook noodles. When cooked, portion into the serving bowl. (New water so that your noodles do not absorb all the "flavor from prev ingredients) 

8. In the same pot of used hot water, dip to cook  beansprouts for only a min and remove. Portion on top of noodles.

9. You are ready to place the previously cooked ingredients on top of the noodles.

10. Pour the laksa gravy over the noodle in the serving bowl

This is my bowl of goodness:)