Saturday 27 October 2012

Malaysian cooking part 3



My final cooking tutorial was again led by my friend Wade, a local chef, we decided to prepare a few dishes and then have some friends round to enjoy the finished product, we wanted to add a new dimension to our cooking so we studied some online websites such as fried-dumplings we played with some of the flavours we read about in on the online websites. This enabled us to balance flavours to suit our individual tastes. We have found that in many of the recipes the amount of chilli that people put in is rather mild for our flavours and we experimented with adding some curry powder which brought a new dimension. For this session we made spring rolls and some more dumplings.

For the dumplings we used
Pork mince 500g
Coriander
Chinese spring onion
Onion 1 big one
Carrot 1 decent sized one(grated)
Sesame oil
Soy sauce
Ginger
Garlic
Oyster sauce
Fish sauce
Birds eye chillies
Wonton Pasterys
chicken stock
Method
Add mince to a bowl, chop and add coriander, spring onion, garlic, onion,carrot, ginger, chillies. I found the best result for adding the chilli, ginger and garlic is to think what you normally cook with when preparing other dishes. Next add the sauces be brave with the oyster and fish sauces really adds depth to the results. Fold all ingredients together using your hands(Wade suggested using one so you have a clean one). Next is the fun part making the dumplings place meat mix into centre of pastry.  We used two cooking methods first we baked some and then we boiled some in a soup we made from the chicken stock, some garlic, lots of ginger, and some chillies.

For the spring rolls we used
spring roll mix  (Source Janine Emmott 2012)
Pork mince 500g
Coriander
Garlic
Ginger
Grated carrot
Bean thread noodles
Onion Oyster sauce
Fish sauce
Soy sauce
Chillies
Curry powder
Spring roll pastrys
Sweet chilli sauce to serve
Method
Soak bean noodles in warm water, place dry ingredients in a bowl and mix together add around a table spoon of curry powder, add the wet ingredients be brave to get good results, don’t put too much soy in other wide the mix becomes quite salty. Place mix in middle of the spring roll pastries and fold.  We baked the rolls and tried shallow frying we were divided on which tasted better. Serve with sweet chilli sauce
More social interaction(Source Janine Emmott 2012)

Then we ate them and they were some of the nicest dumpling and spring rolls, I have ever eaten, I feel with all the guidance I have developed a new skill and have become a better cook. I have enjoyed the social aspect of the meals as well I had no idea that Malaysian style cooking would be so popular amongst my friends, it proved popular in taste and in preparation with everyone lending a hand. It has being a great learning curve for me and an introduction into a new culture. Gaining new friends and building stronger bonds with old ones.

Monday 1 October 2012

Malaysian cooking part 2



normally when I cook the kithcen resembles a bomb site      



Since my first experience of Malaysian cooking went so well, I have decided to experiment with the flavours and skills I learnt. I held another gathering at our house and enlisted the help of a friend who is a chef to guide me and keep me from giving my guests food poisoning. We made the same dumplings as we did in the first session but used chicken mince as well as pork mince, we also decided to try make a cheese and chilli dumpling. We adjusted some of the flavours in the meat dumplings by adding some chilli to the mix but not too much that masked the other flavours or set fire to the our mouths. For the cheese dumplings (which I’m sure doesn’t belong to Malay style dumplings, but tastes good) we made a cheese sauce from: 

2 tbsp butter or margarine
2 tbsp plain flour
1 cup of milk
¼ tsp salt
½ cup grated cheese
 Melt the butter or margarine in a saucepan.
Add the flour and salt and stir until it is bubbly.
Add one-third of the milk and stir all the time until the sauce boils and thickens, repeat this twice until all the milk is added.
If you keep stirring the sauce constantly until it boils, you should get a smooth creamy sauce, add the ½ cup of grated cheddar cheese after you have taken the saucepan off the heat, or the sauce will become stringy. Add the chilli’s till you get the flavour you want. At this stage I added some corn flour to get the right thickness for the dumplings the thicker the better as it will be easier to work with when making the dumplings.

I again found that everybody wanted to be around the food and be involved in its preparation. It was quite sociable and we all had involvement in stuffing the dumplings bringing a sense of belonging to the people involved.
everyone helping out (source: Janine Emmott 2012

 The thing I have found with this experience is that cooking is fun. Whilst shopping for the ingredients, which is from local Asian supermarket, I am chatting and getting more knowledge from experienced shoppers, one of these shoppers told me to try making spring rolls I will write about this in my next blog. I feel that my culinary skills are growing and I am becoming a more rounded (in both senses of the word) cook.