The Menu:
Spring Rolls
King Prawn Cheung Fun
Glistening Orange Duck
Pak Choi with oyster sauce
Spring Rolls
Makes around 8
Ingredients:
1 carrots, in thin batons
Handful thin rice noodles
Handful beansprouts
Handful sliced peppers, thawed
Handful peas, thawed
Small handful frozen prawns
Third of a packet spring roll pastry, thawed
Groundnut oil
Instructions:
1.Place noodles into a heat-proof bowl. Cover with boiling water. Stand for 5 minutes or until tender. Drain. Rinse under cold water. Drain well
2.Combine noodles and vegetables in a bowl. Mix well.
3. Place 1 pastry sheet onto a plate/chopping board with 1 corner facing you so it looks like a diamond.
3. Imagine a line running horizontally across the middle of the sheet. Place a tablespoonful of mixture in a line on the pastry a cm or so below this.
4. Fold the left hand corner in over the filling. Do the same with the right hand one.
5. Fold the closest corner to you over the pastry. Brush opposite corner with cold water and roll up away from you. Press to seal. Repeat with remaining filling and pastry.
6. Pour oil into a saucepan or wok so it is one-third full, or enough to float the rolls. Heat over medium-high heat until a piece of bread dropped into oil sizzles. Deep-fry spring rolls, 3 at a time, for 3 to 4 minutes or until golden. Drain on paper towel.
7. Serve with a dipping sauce, I used sweet chilli.
King Prawn Cheung Fun
Makes 8
Ingredients:
16 Raw king prawns, defrosted if frozen.
One packet cheung fun pastry
Hoi sin sauce
Spring onions, thinly sliced
Sauce-
1 tbsp hoi sin
1 tbsp soy sauce
Sugar
Water
Toasted sesame seeds
Instructions:
1. Carefully unroll a cheung fun wrapper
2. Smear a line on hoi sin sauce ~3 cm from one end
3. Add a few slices spring onion
4. Place king prawns onto hoi sin and roll up
5. Repeat x 7
6. Place rolls in a bamboo steamer or in a metal steamer on a saucer to stop them sticking
7. Set pan of water to boil (with lid on) if you are serving rice, you can cook this in the water
8. Make the dipping sauce while water boils. I used equal parts soy sauce and hoi sin, with a tsp of sugar and watered down to taste as it was too salty.
9. Place steamer on top of pan of boiling water. Steam for 5/6 mins until prawns are pink and pastry moist and slightly transparent.
10. Remove from steamer and slide carefully onto serving plate. Pour on sauce and top with toasted sesame seeds
Glistening Chinese Duck in Orange Sauce
taken from Not Quite Nigella
Serves 4
Ingredients:
Duck
2kg duck
4 star anise
Salt and pepper
Chinese five spice (optional)
Sauce
1 cup orange juice
1/4 cup white sugar
1/8 cup light soy sauce
3 star anise
1 cinnamon stick
3 slices fresh ginger
3 tablespoons shaoxing cooking wine /rice wine vinegar/ white wine vinegar
1 tablespoon honey
Insructions:
1. Wash the duck and remove the extra fatty pieces
2. Put a pot large enough to fit the duck onto boil and add the star anise in it. Simmer the duck for 10 minutes and then remove it from the water. Pat dry with paper towels and season with salt, pepper and Chinese five sice, if using. Place the duck on a rack in a baking dish and refrigerate for at least 24 hours (or hang in cool dry place), turning halfway so that both sides get a waxy coat to them.
3. Preheat oven to 220C/428F. Place the duck in a baking dish with a deep rack - there is a lot of fat in the duck and you want this to drain off. Add about an inch of water to the bottom of the pan to prevent the oil from splashing (but make sure that the duck isn't touching the water).
4. Roast breast side up for 15 minutes. Reduce the heat to 190C/374F and bake for a further 15 minutes. Then turn the duck over and bake for 30 minutes. Then turn it again breast side up and roast for 20 minutes until done.
5. While the duck is roasting make the sauce. Place all of the sauce ingredients in a small saucepan and simmer uncovered for 7-10 minutes until it thickens.
6. When duck is ready, carve the duck and pour the sauce over the pieces and serve
Pak Choi in oyster sauce
Serves 4
Ingredients:
2 heads pak choi
Oyster sauce
Rice wine/white wine vinegar
Instructions:
1. Separate the leaves of the pak choi and wash well. Discard the core.
2. Still wet, place into steamer and steam for 3-4 mins until wilted with translucent stems. Alternatively, place wet into non-metal colander on a plae and microwave 2 mins. Take out and turn and give 1 min more if needed.
3. While steaming, mix 1 tbsp oyster sace with ~2 tsp wine vinegar, to taste.
4. Remove from steamer and dress with sauce on serving plate.
Saturday 8 February 2014
Chinese New Year dinner
My Chinese New Year celebrations took the form of a meal cooked for my housemates. Or rather, two meals :)
I love Chinese food and like cooking Chinesily or rather Chin-easily. It's never anything very complicated, and is more vaguely Oriental than an attempt to authentically recreate a recipe, but I do love dim sum and big bowls of udon noodle soup are one of my go to comfort foods.
However last week saw me up for a challenge, and what should land across my Feedly but this post from the fabulous Not Quite Nigella . I became a big fan of Miss NQN just over two months ago when her recipe for bacon jam had our household practically in orgasms (more on this another time).
When I saw her recipe for Glistening Orange Duck I knew I had to try it, not least as I had a frozen duck sitting in the freezer, having vaguely considered making confit duck for Christmas. Anothre time.
At the same time, I wanted to see if I could fulfill a long held ambition and make my own cheung fun. Cheung fun is very high on my list of all time favourite foods and it's really not that easy to find. The closest place I know that does it is down the road from where my work vehicle gets serviced. I MAY have been known to schedule maintenance work over lunch.
I had looked into making my own cheung fun from scratch in the past, but was rather daunted by the twin challenges of making the pastry and then having to roll it up. One step at a time I thought, and decided to use ready made rolls, for the first few times at least.
I hadn't seen them in the shops, and looking online only pointed me to Lo's noodle factory off Leicester Square (which I still must visit some day). However I called Huong Viet in Feltham, who promised to get them in stock for me. Hurray! I ended up going home with a packet of shrimp and chive cheung fun for the meal and a packet of plain and some ho fun noodles for the freezer (as well as pak choi, beansprouts, hoi sin sauce, chilli sauce, frozen char siu bao, fortune cookies... a bulging backpack for my cycle home!).
As it happened, the larger Asian supermarket in Kingston (Longdan ) also had them, so either I hadn't been looking in the right places or they had got them in just for CNY. Needless to say I stocked up will be keeping an eye out now I know where they are kept. The cheung fun I got turned out not to be rolls at all, but rather rolled up flat sheets of pastry. These I gingerly unrolled to add the prawn filling, but it proved difficult not to split the pastry where it had bent, so I recommend having spares, at least for your first attempt. Possible solutions might be to soak the pastry in water, to make it more supple, but interestingly the packets in Longdan looked to have been formed as rolls rather than sheets (The packets read 'Chinese Cannelloni'), which should make things easier. I also wish I had used the plain rather than shrimp cheung fun, as the pastry did tend to rip around the shrimp a little.
I defrosted the duck in the fridge over 2 days (mostly, plus a few hours sitting in the meat safe/microwave) and I thought I was following NQN's recommendations of drying the duck to get crispy skin by mopping all the juices up with kitchen towel. Then I actually READ the recipe and saw I was meant to boil the duck before leaving it to dry. Oops. Never mind, it still tasted fantastic. I think boiling it makes all the difference, as quite a bit of fat is melted off into the water, so the skin crisps up well.
I also made spring rolls, again from a prepared pastry. The rice noodles I used in the filling were obviously a bit too wet (either that or I left them sitting too long between making and frying) as they pretty much all split in the pan. However the oil was hot enough that they somehow still stayed together and came out lovely and crispy so all was not lost. Lesson learnt- drain the noodles well and work quickly. I would recommend chopping the noodles up a bit and mixing them with the other ingredients rather than layering up on the pastry as this will help you work quickly, and finally sitting the rolls on kitchen towel when waiting to be cooked.
Lastly, a vegetable in the form of pak choi. This I was steaming in a stack with the cheung fun, but ended up slightly overcooked as the cheung fun took a shade longer than expected, and I left the pak choi in the pan while faffing about with the duck so it continued to cook. Next time I'll put in on later, or possibly do it in the microwave to make things easier.
I love Chinese food and like cooking Chinesily or rather Chin-easily. It's never anything very complicated, and is more vaguely Oriental than an attempt to authentically recreate a recipe, but I do love dim sum and big bowls of udon noodle soup are one of my go to comfort foods.
However last week saw me up for a challenge, and what should land across my Feedly but this post from the fabulous Not Quite Nigella . I became a big fan of Miss NQN just over two months ago when her recipe for bacon jam had our household practically in orgasms (more on this another time).
When I saw her recipe for Glistening Orange Duck I knew I had to try it, not least as I had a frozen duck sitting in the freezer, having vaguely considered making confit duck for Christmas. Anothre time.
At the same time, I wanted to see if I could fulfill a long held ambition and make my own cheung fun. Cheung fun is very high on my list of all time favourite foods and it's really not that easy to find. The closest place I know that does it is down the road from where my work vehicle gets serviced. I MAY have been known to schedule maintenance work over lunch.
I had looked into making my own cheung fun from scratch in the past, but was rather daunted by the twin challenges of making the pastry and then having to roll it up. One step at a time I thought, and decided to use ready made rolls, for the first few times at least.
I hadn't seen them in the shops, and looking online only pointed me to Lo's noodle factory off Leicester Square (which I still must visit some day). However I called Huong Viet in Feltham, who promised to get them in stock for me. Hurray! I ended up going home with a packet of shrimp and chive cheung fun for the meal and a packet of plain and some ho fun noodles for the freezer (as well as pak choi, beansprouts, hoi sin sauce, chilli sauce, frozen char siu bao, fortune cookies... a bulging backpack for my cycle home!).
As it happened, the larger Asian supermarket in Kingston (Longdan ) also had them, so either I hadn't been looking in the right places or they had got them in just for CNY. Needless to say I stocked up will be keeping an eye out now I know where they are kept. The cheung fun I got turned out not to be rolls at all, but rather rolled up flat sheets of pastry. These I gingerly unrolled to add the prawn filling, but it proved difficult not to split the pastry where it had bent, so I recommend having spares, at least for your first attempt. Possible solutions might be to soak the pastry in water, to make it more supple, but interestingly the packets in Longdan looked to have been formed as rolls rather than sheets (The packets read 'Chinese Cannelloni'), which should make things easier. I also wish I had used the plain rather than shrimp cheung fun, as the pastry did tend to rip around the shrimp a little.
I defrosted the duck in the fridge over 2 days (mostly, plus a few hours sitting in the meat safe/microwave) and I thought I was following NQN's recommendations of drying the duck to get crispy skin by mopping all the juices up with kitchen towel. Then I actually READ the recipe and saw I was meant to boil the duck before leaving it to dry. Oops. Never mind, it still tasted fantastic. I think boiling it makes all the difference, as quite a bit of fat is melted off into the water, so the skin crisps up well.
I also made spring rolls, again from a prepared pastry. The rice noodles I used in the filling were obviously a bit too wet (either that or I left them sitting too long between making and frying) as they pretty much all split in the pan. However the oil was hot enough that they somehow still stayed together and came out lovely and crispy so all was not lost. Lesson learnt- drain the noodles well and work quickly. I would recommend chopping the noodles up a bit and mixing them with the other ingredients rather than layering up on the pastry as this will help you work quickly, and finally sitting the rolls on kitchen towel when waiting to be cooked.
Lastly, a vegetable in the form of pak choi. This I was steaming in a stack with the cheung fun, but ended up slightly overcooked as the cheung fun took a shade longer than expected, and I left the pak choi in the pan while faffing about with the duck so it continued to cook. Next time I'll put in on later, or possibly do it in the microwave to make things easier.
Wednesday 5 February 2014
Gong xi fa cai!
Starting this blog in 2014 was a resolution of mine, so it it seems somewhat fitting that I am starting it just a few days into the New Year- the Chinese New Year that is :)
Growing up we normally marked Chinese New Year in some way; a meal, or a trip into town to see the lanterns and lion dances and lanterns. I distinctly remember seeing a long, giant lion puppet snake its way round the circular ticket desk of Victoria and Albert museum, lurching into the faces of the staff. My mother had studied in China and CNY was one of the few chances she got to crack out her Mandarin (that and ordering in Chinese in Chinese restaurants, which seemed very impressive). Her connection to the country was I suppose the most significant reason we celebrated CNY, but it seems to me CNY is celebrated in a bigger way other 'foreign' festivals.
On Friday the supermarkets had their Oriental ready meals and stir fry sauces proudly on display. I doubt these were aimed at Chinese customers, whereas from what I from Eid-al-Fitr last year, the 'Eid Mubarak' banners were displayed next to 'ethnic' ingredients, as opposed to the targeting the wider British population.
Do more Brits celebrate Chinese New Year than Eid or Diwali or Hannukah? If so, why? A fascination with the Orient? A better marketing campaign? Or is it due to the fact that CNY is, or is perceived to be, a secular event?
While there are definitely major Buddhist/Confucian/Taoist elements to CNY festivities, I think at least in this country it is seen far more as a cultural celebration as opposed to a religious one. The theist elements are light of touch; stories, spirituality and superstition but not a lot of God. It's safe, it's fun, and one participate without straying into the territory of worshipping false idols. It also brightens up a wet and dark part of the year, when the pleasures of Christmas and our (Gregorian) New Year are fading.
Could these two aspects also contribute to the success of Halloween (American) and St Patricks Day?
Growing up we normally marked Chinese New Year in some way; a meal, or a trip into town to see the lanterns and lion dances and lanterns. I distinctly remember seeing a long, giant lion puppet snake its way round the circular ticket desk of Victoria and Albert museum, lurching into the faces of the staff. My mother had studied in China and CNY was one of the few chances she got to crack out her Mandarin (that and ordering in Chinese in Chinese restaurants, which seemed very impressive). Her connection to the country was I suppose the most significant reason we celebrated CNY, but it seems to me CNY is celebrated in a bigger way other 'foreign' festivals.
On Friday the supermarkets had their Oriental ready meals and stir fry sauces proudly on display. I doubt these were aimed at Chinese customers, whereas from what I from Eid-al-Fitr last year, the 'Eid Mubarak' banners were displayed next to 'ethnic' ingredients, as opposed to the targeting the wider British population.
Do more Brits celebrate Chinese New Year than Eid or Diwali or Hannukah? If so, why? A fascination with the Orient? A better marketing campaign? Or is it due to the fact that CNY is, or is perceived to be, a secular event?
While there are definitely major Buddhist/Confucian/Taoist elements to CNY festivities, I think at least in this country it is seen far more as a cultural celebration as opposed to a religious one. The theist elements are light of touch; stories, spirituality and superstition but not a lot of God. It's safe, it's fun, and one participate without straying into the territory of worshipping false idols. It also brightens up a wet and dark part of the year, when the pleasures of Christmas and our (Gregorian) New Year are fading.
Could these two aspects also contribute to the success of Halloween (American) and St Patricks Day?
Monday 3 February 2014
Hello
Hello world.
Welcome to Carry To The Sea :)
My ambitions with this blog are to share some of the Things (experiences, places, images, words, food, music) that excite, inspire, please and affect me. A list of good Things, a space to reflect, and a general outlet for the meandering brook that is my mind and it's consciousness.
I don't know where I'm going, but hope to enjoy the journey.
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