Dumpling in Ikan Billis (Anchovies) Soup

I enjoy making dumplings and making your own dumplings has its benefits. For example, you can choose what type of ingredients you would like to have and what not to. For myself, I prefer to have some mushrooms and prawns as part of my ingredients as it enhances the texture and the flavor of my dumplings!! And besides putting water chestnuts to for the crunchy feel, I like to add in carrots as well because carrots are healthy stuff!

carrots, water-chestnuts and mushrooms

Ingredients: (22 dumplings)
Dumpling Skin
1 Skinless Breast Meat / Minced Meat (Pork or Chicken)
12 Prawns (De-shell, de-vein and cut into small pieces)
Half Carrot (Cubed)
4 Water Chestnuts (Cubed)
3 pieces of medium sized Mushrooms

this dumpling skin wasn't really good

Seasoning:
4 tsp Oyster Sauce
Salt & Pepper
1 Egg White
Corn Starch

Ikan Billis (Anchovies) soup:
Fried anchovies
2 stalks of Cai Xin
1 bowls of water (approx. 500ml) 

Garnishing:
Green Onions / Coriander leaves
Fried onions and garlic

Directions:

Making the dumpling:
Mash the chicken breast using the back of your cleaver till the meat turn soft (you can skip this step if you are using minced meat but a friend once told me that minced meat are not healthy as the meat use are not fresh and you have no idea which part of the meat were used to mince it)

Mix all the ingredients into a bowl
Add in seasoning and mix the ingredients evenly
Scoop a small amount (roughly 11/2 tsp) of the mixture on a dumpling skin
Wrap the dumpling by applying a thin layer of egg york on the edge of the dumpling skin in order for the skin to stick against each other
Continue to do so until you either run out of dumpling skin or meat

Boiling of soup:

Bring a pot of water (approx. 500ml) to boil

avoid putting too much filling

Pour in a handful of fried ikan billis
Let it simmer in low heat for 20 minutes
Add a pinch of salt
Add in 5~7 dumplings
Add in Cai Xin
Close the the wok with a lid and let the dumpling cook for 7 minutes
Once you notice that the dumplings are floating, it's a sign that the dumplings are cooked!!
Dish out into a bowl
Garnish the soup with some coriander, fried onions and garlic
Serve!!

The meat of my dumpling was not tender and fragrant enough and that is probably because I didn't a good job pounding the breast meat and marinating it. Even so, I still thoroughly enjoyed the dumplings and wished you are able to share it with me. =)

Fried Ikan Billis (Anchovies)

Ever wonder how you can prepare a good bowl of soup in 25 minutes without using MSG or those ikan billis or chicken stock?? Well, Aaron going to teach you how and you will be surprise that how easy it is to cook!

Anchovies have plenty of health benefits that are valuable to people of all ages. They are rich in calcium, protein, Vitamin D and Vitamin E as well. It is said that three tablespoons of anchovies will give you about 180mg of calcium, which is about one-fifth of an adult's daily calcium requirement. You can read more about the health benefits of anchovies here http://hubpages.com/hub/Health-Benefits-of-Anchovies.

Here are the ingredients: (serves 2)

A handful of anchovies

Oil (4~5 tbsp)

You might need a small air tight container to store the fried ikan billis like the one shown in my picture on the left.

Directions:

Wash and soak the anchovies (as the dried variety has high salt content)

Dry it using a paper towel (If you need it to dry at a faster pace, heat up the wok without putting any oil and dry it using the heat of the wok)
Heat up the wok and pour in the oil

Once the oil is hot, place all anchovies into the wok and fry it

Reduce the heat as you don't want to over fry the anchovies

Once the anchovies turn to golden brown and crispy, remove and drain the oil from it

Cool and store in bottle

Note: Try not to store it for too long (not more than 3 days) as the the oil in the fried anchovies will spoil the taste.

You can use these fried anchovies to boil soup or as a topping on your fried rice, noodle or you can even eat it on its own. If you are planning to use it as a topping up, it is best to use those that are freshly fried rather than those that you stored in container. For me, I used it (half the amount in the container) for my noodle soup by boiling the anchovies for a good 15~20 minutes and putting in all my favorite ingredients. And when the noodle was done, I put some on top my noodles as well.

The soup was really sweet and it has all the natural goodness of the anchovies packed in it. The additional fried anchovies made my noodle more tasty as well! Stay tune for my next post where I will show you how you can prepare a simple noodle soup using these fried anchovies. =)

Nothing left!!

Watercress (Xi Yang Cai) Soup

I believe that making soup is probably one of the easiest and not to mention healthy way to start learning how to cook. I started out my first cooking adventure with a soup dish (herbal chicken soup) and I hope that this can be your first as well!!

I went to the market this morning to get the ingredients that I used for my soup and I've listed the prices of my items cause I thought it will be very useful for my readers to gauge the expenses used for cooking a simple meal. =)

Ingredients: (Serve 2~3)

1 chicken breast ($2.30/piece) (you can request them to remove the skin of the chicken and have it cut into pieces)

1 chicken bone ($0.50/piece)

2 carrots ($0.80) (cut into small chunks)

1 bundle of watercress ($0.80)

A handful of wolf-berries

A pinch of salt

2~3 big bowl of water (around 1000ml)

Directions:

Rinse breast meat and bone with running water and removed any excess fats from the meat

Boil a pot of water and place the meat and bone into the pot once the water starts to boil

Boil for a minute and replace the water with a new pot of water (this is to remove those top layer of the meat and bone which might "dirty" your soup)

Once the new pot of water starts to boil, place breast meat, chicken bone, carrots and wolf-berries into the pot.

Continue to let it boil under medium heat for 20~30 mins

Reduce to low heat, put in the watercress and let it simmer for 60~80 mins
Add a pinch of salt for seasoning (you can skip this step if you wish to cut down on salt intake)
Dish out and serve!! (you can just serve with a bowl of white rice and "chilli-padi" for a meal!)

For those who prefer pork to chicken, you can replace the breast meat with spareribs.

The total damage for this dish is $4.40 only!! And it serves 2!! So, easy, healthy and economical!!  

Update: I've updated this post by adding some red dates 红枣 (4~5 pieces) in my soup. Red dates are said to have medical benefits such as protecting your liver and strengthening your muscles, so add a few into your soup to improve your health!

Chinese Steam Drunken Crab

Today I decided to try my hand on cooking crabs! And I come across a few recipes regarding steam crabs from the internet. After browsing a few, I decided to modify some of the recipe and create one of my own recipe. =)

I bought a crab from a live seafood shop located at Farm Mart (the shop is closed every Thursday). The crab weighted around 0.8kg and it cost me $24. The price of the crab ranges from $20/kg to $35/kg. I find that the prices are comparable to those we find at seafood restaurant but being a guy who loves to cook, I find it more satisfying buying my own crab and cooking it. I chose this poor fellow in my picture and the worker at the seafood helped me out in cutting it to pieces and cleaning it with brush as well! Good service ya...

Ingredients: (Serve 2)
800g to 1kg Crab (preferably live crab)
2 egg whites
4~5 slices of ginger3 thick spring onion stalks
1/4 cup Chinese wine (Hua Diao wine 花雕酒 or Shao-Hsing wine 绍兴酒)

Seasoning:
Shredded Ginger
Chopped Garlic
Chopped Green Onions
4 tbsp Soy Sauce
2 tbsp Chinese wine
1/4 cube of chicken stock
250ml / small bowl of water

Directions:
Rinse crab with water and arrange it on a plate with a bit of depth
Place the gingers and spring onions on top of the crab
Pour the Chinese wine over the crab
Start boiling water using a big wok
Once the water starts to boil, place the plate of crab into the wok and steam for 8 mins

Mix all the seasoning in a small bowl or you can choose to boil the water and add in the chicken stock cube and soy sauce
Once the cube of chicken stock has dissolve, place the remaining ingredients like shredded ginger, chopped green onions and garlic into a small bowl

Pour the seasoning and the egg whites over the crab and steam it again for another 4 mins

Once you check that the crab has turn red and make sure it is completely cook, dish out and it is ready to serve!


For those who like a bit of spiciness in this dish, you can also add in "chilli-padi" in your seasoning. But try not to over do it, as you might spoil the taste of the fresh crab meat.

The crab meat was tender and juicy and I can really taste the freshness of the scrumptious crab meat as the seasoning of this dish was not too heavy.

I hope you guys will enjoy the dish as much as I did!