Tag Archives: pork

Sweet and Sour Pork Meatballs

Chinese, Malaysian, Recipes 15/04/2015 Leave a comment

Oh no, I have been missing in action again! No, I have not forgotten about PonPeKo at all. I am still experimenting in my kitchen and trying out new cafes and restaurants. I just could not find time to write about them. Or… is it just an excuse for my lack of discipline?

I just did two gym classes and got back home hungry. I have a pack of pork mince and some baby capsicums in the fridge and sweet and sour meatballs suddenly came into my mind. It is easy to whip up and Mr. D will love it as it is a meat dish and it is deep fried too. This dish is sort of a simplified version of Ku Lo Yuk dish.

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Ku Lo Yuk (Sweet and Sour Pork)

Chinese, Malaysian, Recipes 25/04/2013 1 Comment

I have not been updating PonPeKo ever since I started work in February. I truly wanted to keep PonPeKo alive but my tiredness and laziness got best of me. Truth be told, we still haven’t finish unpacking the boxes in our kitchen. Most of my baking utensils are still sitting in the boxes and hence I do not have any dessert materials to post lately. Moreover, since moving up here, it’s really easy to find places with excellent food and desserts which leads to more procrastination from my side. Hmm, I really need to stop procrastinating and get everything unpacked as soon as possible. Be more disciplined, Yang!

Today, I would like to share my favorite economy rice dish with you. If you’re not familiar with the term “economy rice”, it’s basically a food stall that sells a selection of dishes ranging from various meat, vegetables, fish, and curries. You can pick any dish and as many dishes as you like to have them as accompaniment to rice. Economy rice is very popular in Malaysia as it’s cheap and good. Ku Lo Yuk is one of the popular dish and it is sold in every economy rice stall. It’s not too difficult to make, just make sure that you don’t add in too much cornflour to avoid the coating of the pork becoming too floury. Try to avoid using canned pineapples in syrup as they are overly sweet. Canned pineapples in natural juices are better as they have the slight tanginess which complements the sauce in this dish.

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Guotie (Pot sticker)

Chinese, Recipes 28/01/2013 Leave a comment

Jiaozi is a Chinese dumpling and it is a hot favorite among Chinese households. Jiaozi can be steamed, boiled, or pan fried. The pan fried version is known as guotie (pot stickers) or gyoza in Japan. As the name implies, the dumpling stuck slightly to the wok at the end of cooking but it could be easily removed by nudging it using a spatula.

While jiaozi filling commonly consists of meat and/or vegetables, there’s no limit to what you can add in it. You can make the filling with the ingredients you like/have on hand. Both taste and textures are very important in dumpling making. For me, I love to add shitake mushrooms, carrots, and wombok leaves together with the mince pork to produce different textures (bitey and crunchy). The filling smells and taste wonderful with the addition of seasonings such as sesame oil, shaoxing wine, good quality soy sauce, grated ginger, and garlic. The wrapper and wrapping style for guotie is different from deep fried wontons. Guotie wrappers are white in color, round-shaped, and thicker compared to wonton wrappers. My first jiaozi attempt which was 3 years ago was unsuccessful and I ended up with disintegrated dumplings as I did not seal the dumpling properly. Make sure you pinch the edges of the dumpling firmly so that they won’t break apart when cooking.

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Crispy skin on the bottom and tenderly soft skin on the top.

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Deep Fried Wontons

Malaysian, Recipes 05/01/2013 1 Comment

Who doesn’t love crunchy deep fried wontons? They are great as party food, snacks or as accompaniment to rice. In Malaysia deep fried wontons are also served with egg noodles, char siu (barbequed pork) and choy sum (asian green) dressed with dark and light soy sauce (a.k.a dry wonton noodle). With ready-made wonton wrappers easily available in the supermarket, making wonton is a breeze. Wonton filling mainly consists of mince pork, prawn, water chestnuts, spring onions, and seasonings. Cornflour and egg white are used to bind the ingredients together. To obtain a good wonton filling texture, do not add in too much mince meat and do not compact the meat like you do in making meatballs. You do not want a filling that’s too dense in this case. I like to put in a lot of roughly chopped water chestnuts and prawns to give the filling a crunchier texture. There are various wonton wrapping methods or techniques available on the internet depending on the wonton shapes. The wonton shape that I usually make resembles a hobo’s bindle which is simple, quick to make, and suitable for beginners.

Wonton filling ingredientsIngredients for wonton filling.

FillingMix well using a fork.

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Boxing Day

Reviews 28/12/2012 Leave a comment

Address: 125 Flinders Lane, Melbourne VIC 3000, Australia.

Opening hours: 7 days a week (11 am – late)

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Mr. D and I spent our Boxing Day shopping with our friends (Goon, KS and HY) in Melbourne CBD. The first thing we do when we reached the city is to fuel up our tummies at Chin Chin, a restaurant that serves South-East Asian cuisine. This place is usually very busy and crowded with long queues, a common sight at the restaurant. However, this time we managed to walk in and obtained a table almost immediately. Thanks to the shopaholics and bargain hunters who were more than willing to forgo their lunch so that they could grab the items they want before they ran out. We, on the other hand, needed to charge up first. I couldn’t sacrifice my tummy as it is equally and possibly even more important than my shopping. 😛

After studying the menu, we decided to order the kingfish sashimi for entree. We absolutely adored this dish as not only the fish was super fresh, the combination of the sweetness of the fish, the sourness from the lime with the fragrance from the coconut and thai basil were just perfect!

2012-12-26-503Kingfish sashimi with lime, chilli, coconut and thai basil.

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