Chinese New Year : Peng Cai 盆菜

Ever since I've got married to the boss almost 11 years ago, we have had reunion dinner with his family at our place ( well, minus the period when we were away in Aussie for 18 months). We always have steamboat for Chinese New Year reunion dinner, until about 2 years ago we started to have peng cai, partly also it has grown in popularity in Singapore. For the 1st time, we ordered from a local restaurant and we were quite disappointed, with the ingredients and the taste. From then on, since last year, I have started to make my own.

As I love to cook and experiment with recipes, I managed managed to improved on the taste and presentation this year.

Many shun away from making own peng cai as its time consuming, but with some cheats, and the happy and satisfied looks on my family members its all worth it.

This year I've adapted my recipe from 2 sources, 1 from the Savour magazine free from Cold Storage and the 1, NoobCook . With the basics, generally you can put in anything you like to eat and remove any which you do not like. The picture above showed the 1 I made for Chinese New Year Eve, we used snow crab legs. I made another 1 on Chinese New Year Day 2 which replaced the snow crab legs with scallops instead. So below is the sample recipe of how we did it for the picture above, I did not specify the quantity of each item as its dependent on the quantity 1 is making for.

Recipe
Layer 1 (A)
Lotus Root
White Radish / Daikon
Chinese Sausage (Lup Cheong)

Layer 2 (B)
Chinese cabbage (Wong Bok)
Fish maw (soften in hot boiling water and remove excess oil)

Layer 3 (C)
Fried beancurd stick (Tau Kee)

Layer 4 (D)
Roast pork
Fried beancurd (Tau Kwa)

Black moss (Fatt Choy) (soak in hot water)

Layer 5 (E)
Baby abalone
Snow crab legs
Prawns
Dried scallops (soak for 15 mins)
Dried mushrooms (soaked overnight)
Steamed / salted chicken
Carrot

chicken stock

Method
Step 1 :

The night before, we cooked the baby abalone in their can, by placing them in boiling water inside a thermal pot overnight. From what I understand some people do the same in a slow cooker or over stove. For over stove, timing will be shorten greatly.

 Step 2 :

Sliced daikon and lotus roots to about 1 - 1.5 cm slices.
Sliced chinese sausage
Place all 3 items into pot (same pot that will be used as final presentation - Pot A) and add in chicken stock just enough to cover the ingredients (Note : I'm using box chicken stock, and we dilute at ratio 1:1 to reduce saltiness)
Cover and allow to boil for 20mins

Step 3 :

In a separate pot (Pot B), heat some chicken stock (same ratio dilution as above). Once boiled, quick blanched of chinese cabbage. (Note : do not fully cook the cabbage, as it will be simmered further later, else it will turn very soggy.)


Once done, transfer to Pot A as 2nd layer, over the daikon, lotus root.

Add in fish maw. Can either mix with vegetable or place them in the middle.

Step 4 :

In pot B, add in some dark sauce.
Place in the soaked dried scallops and mushrooms to simmer for 20-30 minutes.
At the same time also place in the beancurd sticks (Tau kee) remove after 10minutes and it has soften.

After tau kee is soften, transfer to Pot A as layer 3.

Step 5 :

Cut roast pork and tau kwa into cubes and arrange for layer 4.
This year instead of making my own roast pork, I've bought ready-made from the duck rice stall near my place.
I've also air-fried my tau kwa (180C, 5 minutes)
I used black moss to fill the gaps and also the middle

Step 6 :

 

In a new pot (Pot C) boil some water to blanch the following
Prawns
Broccoli florets (soak in ice water to retain the green
Carrots

Layer 5 (Final layer)
Arrange the dried scallops in the middle and mushroom around them.
Using the broccoli florets as dividers, divide the remaining space into 4 parts
Place half a chicken on 1 of the quarter (I've used store bought salted chicken from the market and deboned it, except the chicken leg, to save time. We can also do our own poached chicken instead).
Place prawns in the next quarter
Place baby abalone straight from can into the 3rd quarter (after step 1)
Place snow crab legs in the final quarter (thawed over night in the fridge)
Place sliced carrots
Cover and allow to simmer for 20 -30 mins

Step 7:

In pot B, pour in the water used to soaked the dried mushrooms and scallops and allow to simmer.
Add in cornstarch to thicken the soup. Once it reach desired consistency, then pour thickened sauce over the ingredients, as seen on the 1st picture.

Enjoy! Gong Xi Fa Cai!
:)

Okinawa 2015 Part 1 Transportation

We always try to travel every 6 months, and this habit hasn't change even after we had our lil' missy. So where-ever we go lil' missy goes.

After much contemplation, we finally decided to go Okinawa for our year end trip last year. We love Japan, well who doesn't? We can have japanese food all day long every day. But why Okinawa? While we were making plans for year-end trip many places came up - Osaka and Korea for example. But as we have a lil' missy (she's 3 by the way) we do have to consider the activities that we can do to keep her happy and engaged at the same time. Well its cool to go Osaka .. but she is probably going to be sad that she can't go on many of the rides on Universal Studios, Japan (USJ) as compared to disneyland. At the same time, the air-tickets to Korea happen to be on the high side (for some unknown reasons), with the same price we can actually go Europe! In the end, we decide to go explore new places... places which we hardly hear our friends would go... and where air-tickets are more reasonably priced.. and so Okinawa came to mind!

And so the planning begins, people who know us, will know, due to the nature of the Boss's work, our trip are usually planned like 2-3 weeks in advance, but ever since he was desk-bound last year, we were able to plan early for once (Like in a decade), and we managed to get some relatively good deals which I will share along the way.

As I did my planning, Mr Google became our best mate, and I managed to get quite a few good tips from the blog of Bumble Bee Mum .

Being in Singapore, there are no direct flights to Okinawa, except for the occasional chartered flight that Singapore Airlines have. Hence, that left us with transit flights. We haven't tried doing transit flights with the lil' missy so we were quite worried.

After checking out online, we found out that Okinawa, though part of Japan,  it is actually nearer to Taiwan and Hong Kong, so it doesn't really make any sense for us to transit via other parts of Japan, and its better, since flights to Tokyo are expensive too, given that its the school holidays too! 

So we checked out several airlines, we even considered budget airlines (nothing wrong with traveling budget). As we need to travel from Singapore and given that we have to transit in either Hong Kong or Taipei, we decided to narrow down to 3 airlines, Cathay Pacific (transit in Hong Kong), EVA Air and China Airlines (both transit in Taipei, Taoyuan). 

Finally we decided to go with China Airlines, as its the only 1 out of the 3 that will allow us to be able to reach Okinawa on the same day without having to layover overnight. As the other 2 only operates flight to Okinawa in the early morning. The other reason, is of course the price, we paid about SGD 2,730.20 for 2 adults and 1 child (it was slightly cheaper at about SGD 2,400+ , if I could have confirmed the date slightly earlier, again, due to the nature of Boss work, we were delayed, but its still cheaper than the rest).

The only downside from booking the air tickets from China Airlines, is that the website is not as user friendly like the many other airlines we have used. The multi-city option in the website, at the time of booking, only allowed us to fly to 1 city and return from another city. It doesn't allow us to book non-direct flight. Hence, we had to make our booking over the phone or on-site at their office. However, at this time of writing this blog, I've made another attempt to try booking this multi-city option, and finally China Airlines have updated /  upgraded their system and have allow for multi-city booking.

As things (or rather attractions), were relatively far apart, it is more advisable to drive in Okinawa. As per the regulations in Japan, we are required to have International Driving Permit. In Singapore, you can either get it via online or in person via AA Singapore.

We managed to get a relatively good deal (we paid about JPY 24,000 for 7 days) for our rental car from OTS. They have very good deals if you book at least 40 days in advance. As we only arrived in the evening, and they do not have a branch in the airport, we opt to collect Tsubogawa branch, where the 'office' is located right at the lobby within Mercure Okinawa Naha Hotel, which we had also booked as our base hotel during our stay in Naha (making collection and return of car easy).

Our rental car for our trip

As Naha, has a monorail system in place, its actually quite easy to explore Naha city without the car. It could be lucky that when the Boss was booking the car, he actually miscalculated the days, and we didn't have the car, the following day we arrive, but the day after. So we were left car-less for our day we plan to explore Naha.

As planned, we took the monorail from the airport to the hotel when we arrived, and when we were purchasing our tickets from the machine, by stroke of luck, we realised we could actually purchase a 24h ticket, which means we can have unlimited rides for 24hours, and because we reached past 9pm (due to connecting flight delay), we thought it would a good for us, instead of buying a per trip ticket, also as lil' missy is only 3, she is free.

We love to travel

We love to travel, who doesn't? LOL.

But we enjoy most is going through the process of planning and learning more about the place. With the technology and ease of the internet, we have been planning and doing all the bookings on our own these days and have not joined any tours since we (the boss and I) were together. Well, except the Nepal trip about 4 years ago and the on-off day tour we took sometimes.

With that, I shall start to document our trips and the things we look out for while planning. Hence, slowly working back the trips with have taken over the last few years (all rather as far back as possible).

Good thing that every trip we maintained an excel spreadsheet to track our costs, itinerary, and instructions.

1st trip that I shall start will be on Okinawa and Taipei trip we took last Dec.

Keep a look out! :)

Lazy Leftover Pot Pie

As much as I love to cook yummy food for my loved ones, yesterday was a lazy day for me. I just didn't really feel like cooking much, and also there's not much stuff that I've to cook.

Hence, I decided to do a Lazy Leftovers Pot Pie, and to my surprise, both the boss and lil missy loved it. Boss call this Christmas Leftover Pot Pie.

RECIPE
Ingredients :

1 can of Cream of Chicken Soup
1 small bag of frozen vegetables
1 pack of frozen puffed pastry sheets
left over Turkey & Ham ( you may use chicken )
1 egg (for egg wash)

Method :
pre-heat oven to 200C
thaw puffed pastry sheets at room temperature
cut into quarters
stack about 4 quarters to form this height (can be higher)
egg wash in between the sheets to stick them together
on the top sheet, use a round cutter/mould to create dent, to prevent the portion from rising
egg wash top surface
Place in oven for about 20mins

Heat pan with oil
put in turkey and ham, frozen vegetables (simple stir-fry)
put in cream of chicken soup
stir occasionally,  and add water slowly as you go along till desired consistency
allow it to come to small boil.
And ready to serve

After puffed pastry is done, use a knife to cut the circle out, and create a little well.
Scoop the the turkey and ham mix into the the well and serve.
You can serve with a side salad or mash.