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Shanghai Style Sweet and Sour Pork

by | Jul 6, 2016

It’s very likely at some point in your life you’ve eaten something sweet and sour. If you’ve eaten sweet and sour you’ve almost certainly eaten Cantonese style sweet and sour and it had either pork or chicken. But have you ever tried “Shanghai Style Sweet and Sour Pork”?

Shanghai style sweet and sour pork is one of my all time favourite dishes and is a dish my grandfather used to cook for me when I was a child. My grandfather was a great cook and this combined with all of his love made me madly fall in love with this dish.

To be very honest with you I’m not really a fan of sweet and sour pork that is made with ketchup (Cantonese style). I just think ketchup based sweet and sour pork is too strong for me but I love this Shanghai style sweet and sour pork.

This dish uses “black vinegar” instead of rice vinegar and you can use any kind of sugar you want for this dish. I personally prefer to use demerara sugar or rock sugar for this dish because these two types of sugar have much more flavour than caster sugar.

You can use pork ribs cut into small cubes if you want to (I cooked this dish with pork ribs for my upcoming cookbook “Home-Style Chinese Cooking”) or you can use pork belly (my favourite), pork loin or shoulder roast. If you don’t like pork at all you can substitute pork with diced chicken breast.

As of June 2016 I’m finally finished with studying at university and my life over the last five years has been absolutely manic. My illustration business is really busy at the moment and it looks like I’m going to be very busy until next Spring at least. This is making me immensely happy and with my four year old daughter at nursery four whole days a week I’m now making time to update this food blog again. A lot of my illustration work and a lot of my work in general is because of food and I love updating this blog when I can so I’m back.

I also have a third cookbook which I’m going to have published soon. The title of the book is “Home-Style Chinese Cooking” and I have to admit it’s been bloody hard work combining working part time, working and studying as an illustrator as well as raising a four year old energizer bunny but I’m proud of what I’ve created and can’t wait to see the book. Please stay tuned!

 

 

 

Shanghai Style Sweet and Sour Pork

Ingredients

  • 800 g pork belly (skinless and cut into cubes)
  • 1.25 litres water (for cooking the pork belly)
  • 2 slices ginger
  • 750 ml oil (for deep frying the pork)

Ingredients for marinading the pork belly

  • 1 tbsp light soy sauce
  • 1 tbsp rice wine
  • 1 tsp salt

Ingredients for batter

  • 1 egg
  • 1 tbsp water
  • 1 tbsp corn flour
  • 1 tbsp plain flour

Seasonings

  • 3 tbsp water
  • 3 tbsp demerara sugar (you can use caster or rock sugar instead)
  • 2 tbsp light soy sauce
  • 1/2 tbsp dark soy sauce
  • 2 tbsp black vinegar
  1. Marinade pork belly with marinade for couple hours.
  2. Boil 1.25 litres water and 2 slices of ginger in a stock pot and add pork belly. Bring it to a boil first then simmer for 40 minutes. Drain the water.
  3. Mix step 2 pork belly with all the ingredients for batter.
  4. Heat up 750ml oil in a wok or deep saucepan. Deep fry the pork belly until it’s golden colour, take it out from the oil and drain the oil.
  5. Heat up 3 tablespoon water and 3 tablespoon demerara sugar and cook until the water and sugar turn into thick syrup.
  6. Turn the fire to medium temperature. Add pork belly in and keep stirring for a couple minutes until the syrup looks like it has coated the pork belly.
  7. Add light soy sauce and keep stirring for 1-2 minutes.
  8. Add black vinegar and keep stirring for 1 minutes. Ready to serve.

Fen Jen Ro Steamed Pork Belly in Rice Powder with Sweet Potato

by | May 6, 2014

fen jen ro

After finishing off my cook book and breaking up from University for the summer I’ve suddenly had some spare time (shock!) which I’m really happy about. I’ve been running this blog since the end of 2009 and I have so many great memories from this blog. From all the great people I’ve met through my blog and all the great feedback it’s been a great experience sharing my recipes. Of course there are some smart-arses who like to make snide comments but they really are an absolute minority so, with great joy, I’m now back cooking for this blog and my first recipe is one of my husband‘s all time favourite dishes called Fen Jen Ro.

Fen Jen Ro (粉蒸肉 in Chinese) or probably easiest translated as “Steamed Pork Belly in Rice Powder with Sweet Potato” is a commonly served dish in Chinese and Taiwanese households. This is also one of my grandfather’s favourite dishes so I’m very familiar with this dish. In Taiwan, we use rice cookers to steam most dishes and for Taiwanese people or even people who have spent some time in Taiwan will know, rice cookers in Taiwan and possibly Chinese are used for a lot more than just cooking rice. Taiwanese people will use rice cookers to steam cakes, make soups, make Chinese buns, make rice of course(!) and many more uses.

For the first few years I lived in Edinburgh and the UK I just used a really cheap rice cooker solely for cooking rice and even though I have now bought a more expensive one that can steam, make soup etc, I haven’t gotten round to messing around with the functions so I still use a very traditional method of steaming my food. The way I steam food is to place a steam rack in the middle of a wok, pour some water inside (measurements below) and steam.

There are a few different origins and stories about this dish. One of my favourite stories is about a couple who ran a small restaurant that had poor business. The husband also had a terrible gambling habit and when his wife one day gave him some money to buy some plates, bowls and food from the market he squandered it on gambling. Upon returning home his wife was really angry and they had a big fight. After the fight they were both really hungry but they thought they had no food to eat. The husband then suddenly remembered he had some pork so he marinaded the pork with some soy sauce and he picked some lotus leave to hold the food (they were so poor they didn’t even have bowls or plates). The wife steamed the pork and when they unwrapped it they discovered the pork was really tender.

Even though the pork was really tender it lacked some flavour so they combined it with jenrofen powder which is basically a glutinous rice powder, steamed it some more and it was absolutely delicious. They then served this dish in their restaurant and people came from afar to eat this dish which is still immensely popular to this day and the husband also managed to quit his gambling habit. Here is my favourite recipe for Fen Jen Ro.

 

fen jen ro
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Fen Jen Ro

Course Main Dish
Prep Time 45 minutes
Cook Time 3 hours
Total Time 3 hours 45 minutes
Servings 4 people

Ingredients

Ingredients

  • 800 g pork belly
  • 250 g sweet potato peeled and sliced 1cm thick
  • 150 g jenrofen powder only this kind of powder

Seasonings

  • 1 tsp hoisin sauce
  • 1 tsp chili bean sauce
  • 1/4 tsp Chinese five spice powder
  • 2 tsp sugar
  • 70 ml light soy sauce
  • 1/2 tbsp rice wine
  • 1/2 tsp ginger finely chopped
  • 1 tbsp spring onion finely chopped

Instructions

  1. Slice pork belly into 5cm wide and 1cm thick sections. Marinade with all the seasonings for at least 1 hour
  2. Coat the pork belly with jenrofen powder/rice powder and leave it aside
  3. Prepare a 21.5cm wide bamboo steamer or similar size heat proof bowl and line it with baking paper
  4. Place a layer of sweet potato on the bottom of the bamboo steamer then layer the rest of the bamboo steamer with the pork belly. Sprinkle some extra jenrofen powder on top and cover with the bamboo steamer lid
  5. Place a steam rack into the wok and pour 1 litre of water into the wok. Boil the water first then put step 4 on the rack and cover everything with the wok lid. Turn the gas power to medium and steam it for 2 hours. Check occasionally but make sure there’s always water in the bottom of the wok

 

fen jen ro ingredients
fen jen ro ingredients

Zha Jiang Noodles Recipe

by | Jul 29, 2013

Zha Jiang Noodles Recipe

Monday afternoon has officially become my food blogging day. Monday is the one day each week that I definitely don’t have work and Amelia is in the nursery in the afternoon. Right now with the summer holidays she goes to nursery on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday afternoons and while recently I’ve been working on both of those days, I’m not on the Monday.

So on Mondays Chris is always out working the whole day so I play with Amelia, do some houseworks but in the afternoon I cook. If you read my last blog post you’ll see that I’ve started baking, which I’m really enjoying, but I wanted to cook something savoury for my blog. Monday is kind of like my preparation day for the week. I cook for my blog but I also cook many days worth of food for the week. For example I cooked the recipe below today but I also cooked fish pie which will last us at least a couple of days,

It feels really nice to be able to cook for my blog again. I love sharing recipes that I know and once I start university this autumn I really hope I can find time to keep updating this blog.

And yes, I mentioned university. University! One of the dreams I had as a young adult was to study at university and while I studied the equivalent of a diploma in Taiwan in cooking, I’ve always wanted to study something to do with art. Towards the end of my college course most of my class mates, including myself, applied to study illustration at Edinburgh College of Art (part of University of Edinburgh) and I was the only one to get a place on the course. I’m both really excited and nervous about starting the course but this is a real “dream come true” for me and I’m anxious to get started.

I feel nervous about starting a new course and meeting new people but fingers crossed my new classmates are at least as nice as my college classmates (well, most of them!).

Back to this blog post, today’s recipe is for one of my favourite noodle dishes; Zha Jiang Noodles (Zha Jiang Mian, 炸醬麵). My grandfather and my mother used to cook this noodle dish very often when I lived at home and I believe this was for quite a few reasons. First of all it’s really easy dish to prepare, has lots of vegetables and it’s pretty cheap. Essentially you can have a big bowl of hot delicious noodles in the same time it takes to make mash potato.

I altered the recipe a little bit by adding edamame beans as all of my family love these beans. The original recipe had things like finely chopped green beans but for preference I added edamame beans instead.

So that’s Zha Jiang Noodles, hope you like them.

Zha Jiang Noodles Recipe

 

Zhajiang Noodles
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Zha Jiang Noodles Recipe

Course Main Dish
Prep Time 20 minutes
Cook Time 20 minutes
Total Time 40 minutes
Servings 3 people

Ingredients

Ingredients

  • dry noodles no exact amount
  • 200 g pork mince or beef mince
  • 120 g bean sprouts
  • 1 carrot
  • 6 pcs dried bean curd finely chopped, you can find it in Asian supermarkets
  • 1 bowl edamame beans
  • 2 tbsp shallots finely chopped
  • 3 spring onions

Seasonings

  • 1/2 cup water
  • 2 tsp corn flour
  • 2 tbsp soy sauce
  • 3 tbsp sweet bean sauce
  • 1.5 tbsp chili bean sauce
  • 1 tsp sesame oil
  • 1 tsp sugar

Instructions

  1. Boil a big pot of water and blanch the carrot and bean sprouts. Use the same water to cook the noodles. Once the noodles are cooked, refresh in cold water and toss some oil on the noodles to prevent the noodles sticking together.
  2. Heat up two tablespoons of oil in a wok and saute the spring onions and shallots until soft.
  3. Keep the stove at full power and add the pork mince until cooked (the mince should turn white). Add dried bean curd and stir fry for another 3-5 minutes.
  4. Add sweet bean sauce and chilli bean sauce, stir fry for another 3 minutes. Add edamame beans (optional), water, soy sauce, sesame oil and sugar. Mix evenly.
  5. Mix corn flour with a couple tablespoons of cold water and add into step 4 and mix evenly. Cook for another couple minutes and it’s ready to serve.
  6. Serve with noodle, bean sprout and carrot.

 

Zha Jiang Noodles Recipe

Big Breasts Food – Green Papaya with Pork Rib Soup

by | May 30, 2011

Big Breasts Food – Green Papaya with Pork Rib Soup

So recently I haven’t updated my blog and for a really good reason. I broke a finger and more specifically my ring finger. Recently at work we’ve been really busy at work and a few people have called in sick so we’ve been super busy and I was at work one day in a rush and I banged my ring finger on a fridge door. My finger was bleeding a bit but really swelled up so I was worried I damaged the tendons in my finger.

Chris especially but also myself are the kind of people where if it hurts on the day we kind of leave injuries but if it’s still hurting two weeks later we seek medical advice. So the one weekend Chris hired a car and drove me to hospital where they x-rayed it and found I broke my finger. I got seen to fairly quickly but as usual the NHS didn’t want to do anything apart from give me a tiny piece of tape to tape my fingers together for a day or two.

Two weeks later we went back to hospital where we had a really long wait (this is very normal for the NHS) and I was told my the doctor I would have to live with a “wonky” finger (the tip of my ring finger isn’t straight). The doctor then said “you will never be a hand model” and builders have loads of wonky fingers. Hello! I’m a woman! Not a builder! Thanks!

They also didn’t give me any painkillers. In Taiwan you get sympathetic treatment all the time and the doctor will give you painkillers if you need them. Essentially our health care system is more humane. Doctors in Taiwan also aren’t sarcastic. They treat you effectively and compassionately.

broken chef finger
broken chef finger

Anyway, on with a recipe…

Green Papaya with Pork Rib Soup

A long time ago Taiwanese people were crazy about this soup. In Taiwan we believe green papaya will help young women grow larger breasts so as you can imagine loads of young girls ate green papaya thinking it will grow them big breasts so they will have a more beautiful curved body. Boys as you can imagine encouraged girls to eat green papaya so they would have bigger breasts to admire lol.

I tried eating this myself to see if I can enhance my boobs but I think I’ve grown too old for this to work, shame! But no matter if this grow big breasts or not soup is very important for one’s daily diet as it helps our bodies to hydrate and clean it.

green papaya with pork rib soup
green papaya

 

green-papaya-with-pork-rib-soup
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Green Papaya with Pork Rib Soup

Course Main Dish
Prep Time 2 hours
Total Time 2 hours
Servings 4 people

Ingredients

  • 1 small green papaya available in Chinese supermarkets
  • 400 g pork ribs diced
  • 2 small ginger
  • 1 small carrot for garnish
  • water

Instructions

  1. Boil a pot of water and blanch the pork ribs. This will clean the ribs and remove any dirt from the bones. You’ll see the excess dirt, for example blood, float on top of the water. Once you see this wash the ribs under cold water.
  2. Put the ribs back into the pot along with the ginger and around 2 litres of cold water and boil it. Once it reaches the boil reduce heat and simmer for 1.5 hours.
  3. Peel and remove the seeds from the green papaya. Dice the papaya and for the carrots you can use a ring cutter to cut it into a flower shape (if you wish to do so).
  4. Put the papaya into the pot and cook with the ribs until the papaya has softened. Season the soup with salt and white pepper powder. Once the papaya is soft this dish is ready to serve.

 

Cooked Rice with Bak Choy and Gammon

by | Apr 28, 2011

Cooked Rice with Bak Choy and Gammon

When we were in Taipei one of my favourite restaurants is Kao Chi. Kao Chi serves really delicious Shanghai cuisine and one of the dishes we ordered was this really delicious Cooked Rice with Bak Choy, Chinese ham and mushroom.

So for this recipe I decided to make something very similar. The main difference between the dish at Kao Chi and my recipe is I had to use smoked gammon instead of Chinese ham as I can’t find Chinese ham here in the UK. I also used chestnut mushroom instead of the tinned mushroom that they used (I prefer the taste of chestnut mushroom).

Normally Chris really dislikes bak choy, in fact he hates it usually, but he ate all of the bak choy in this dish which was a really big success for me. Finally, I can eat bak choy (one of my favourite vegetables).

Credit: All photos were taken by Chris at: http://www.chrisradleyphotography.com

cooked rice with bak choy and gammon

 

cooked-rice-with-bak-choy-and-gammon
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Cooked Rice with Bak Choy and Gammon

Course Main Dish
Prep Time 30 minutes
Total Time 30 minutes
Servings 4 people

Ingredients

  • 2.5 cups rice
  • 200 g gammon steak
  • 300 g bak choy
  • 100 g chestnut mushrooms
  • 1 clove garlic finely chopped

Instructions

  1. Chop bak choy finely and remove the skin from the gammon steak. Cut the gammon steak into really small dices.
  2. Cut the mushroom into small dices as well.
  3. Heat up a wok with 1 tablespoon of oil. Saute the bak choy with garlic until the bak choy is cooked. Leave aside once it is cooked.
  4. Put the rice into a rice cooker with the gammon steak, mushrooms and 1 tablespoon of oil. Also use the juice that came out of the bak choy. Add a little more than 2 cups of water to cook everything.
  5. After the rice has cooked add the bak choy into the rice and mix evenly. Cover the rice cooker with the lid and leave to stand for 5 minutes.
  6. The dish is now ready to serve.

Recipe Notes

Tip for cooking Eastern food: Buy a rice cooker. Most of my friends and colleagues in the UK assume we boil rice in the East but most people use rice cookers. They can be bought as cheaply as £15, last ages and cook rice perfectly every time. Rice cookers can be used from cooking food, steaming food, making soup, steaming meat and many other things, all for £15 upwards!