Ipoh Shredded Chicken Rice Noodles (Kai See Hor Fun) 怡保鸡丝河粉 (Version 2)

Why is there a version 2? Is it an improvement from Version 1?

Yes....it is and by judging only from the photo itself, you can tell that there is a lot of different!

The secret of version 2 lays on these two items: Prawn oil and Chicken soup

In my previous attempt, personally I do not find that the color of my noodle is very impressive. There is not enough 'red' color in my soup. I have been scratching my head thinking of which ingredient could give the 'red' color... definitely not chili; how about prawn's head? I tried to cook prawn's head with oil using low heat and to my surprise, red oil is produced!!! It is really amazed me.

Another improvement is the soup itself. In this attempt, I have added sweet turnip in my soup and it makes the soup change to slightly milky. The taste is so 'sweet' and the color is really looked like the one I found in Ipoh. I am really happy to announce that this is a real Ipoh Kai see Hor Fun!!!

Ingredients
(Serving of 4-6 persons)

For the broth
1 medium chicken 
3 liter of water
300 g of prawns, washed and deveined (reserved the prawn shells)
300g sweet turnip
Rock sugar (about 5 pieces or to taste)
Salt to taste
2 tbsp of oil

Shrimp oil
200g prawn's head
125ml oil


Garnishing
Chives
Fried onions (shallots)
Bean sprouts
Shredded chicken


Making the shrimp oil

1. Heat up the oil using low heat. Add in the prawn's head and saute until the oil is separated out.

Making the broth

1. Heat up 3 liter of water. When the water boils, soak the chicken in the water. Lower the heat and let it cook until it is done. It takes around 40-50 minutes. Upon cooked, immediately transfer the chicken to a pot of cold water and let it soak for at least 10 minutes. This step is important to make the meat juicy and tender. Then, remove the flesh from the bone. Put the bones back to the chicken stock. Reserve the chicken meat; shredded before serving the meat.

2. Using the same wok, saute the prawns shells for around a minute or until they turn to golden colour. Then, transfer to the chicken stock (step 1). Normally, I will use some water to raise the pan to make sure that all the prawn's juice that are stick on the pan is being transferred to the chicken stock (with bones). Simmer for an hour or longer until you see a milky chicken broth.

3. Strain the stock. Taste with sugar and salt. You may use chicken stock concentration to enhance the taste (optional).

                                             



Garnishing
4. Shredded the chicken meat and set aside.

5. Blanched the prawn meat in the soup, removed.

6. Cut chives into 1 inch strips. Blanch


Noodles
7. Blanched a serving of hor fun and bean sprouts in a pot of boiling water for around 5-10 seconds. Put into a bowl. Add some prawns, shredded chicken and chives. Then, add in the boiling broth. Before serving, garnish with fried shallots.

Spinach Seafood Spaghetti

To cook any dried pasta, it is important that the pasta should be cooked until it is al dente-that is, soft on the outside but still firm to the bite on the inside. Al dente can be achieved by cooking dried pasta for 1 or 2 minutes less than the suggested time on the packet. While the pasta is cooking, pick out a piece occasionally with a fork and chew on it, to see if it as reached the desired texture. I personally like pasta very al dente, so I cook my spaghetti for only 5 minutes or so.

As soon as the pasta is cooked to your satisfaction, remove it from the heat and drain it, retaining a little of the cooking water, which can then be used to moisten the finished dish if it seems too dry. I usually like to add the drained pasta to the pan containing the sauce, so the pasta absorbs the sauce in the final minutes of cooking.

To cook Spinach Seafood Spaghetti, it is important to have sufficient spinach which has been blended with sufficient olive oil. Unlike Pesto, this spinach sauce is cooked with seafood to enhance the flavor of this sauce. I am really hope that your picky kids love this dish.

Ingredients

400 grams dried spaghetti

200 grams prawns, washed and deveined

2 pieces of squid, cleaned and cut into pieces

250 grams bacon, cut into small pieces

250 grams of spinach, blended with sufficient olive oil

1 small onions, diced

2 tbsp of olive oil
3 slices of Cheddar Cheese
1 tsp of dry basil flakes

salt to taste

pepper to taste

A dash of Parmesan Cheese

1. Prepared all the ingredients and set aside.

2. To prepare the sauce, heat up the pan. Saute the onion until it is soft. Add in bacon and continue to saute until the bacon is brownish. Add in squid and prawns. Saute for around 1 minute before adding the the blended spinach. Continue to saute until spinach is cooked. Do not worry when you see plenty of water. Off heat and set aside.

3. To prepare the spaghetti, cook it with plenty of boiling water until al dente. Drain, reserving a little of the cooking water.

4. Sprinkle the basil into the sauce, put the pan back over low heat and add the spaghetti. Add in the Cheddar Cheese, salt and pepper. Toss well until the Cheddar Cheese melts and incorporates with the spaghetti. Add in a tablespoon or two of the reserved cooking water if the sauce seems too dry. Serve immediately with Parmesan Cheese.

Chicken Broth

Chicken broth is very easy to prepare and it is normally used as a soup base for all kind of noodles, eg. Ban Mian, Ipoh Shredded Chicken Rice Noodles.

The secret of having a good flavor of soup is to make sure that the water is boiling before adding in all the ingredients. In order to avoid any blood residue in the soup, it is important to blanch the chicken carcass in the hot water before transferring it into the soup pot. For the first 30 minutes, it is important to make sure that the water is boiling and then, you can reduce to low heat and continue to simmer for another 2 hours.


Ingredients
2 whole chicken carcass
50g dried split anchovy
150g sweet turnip (peeled, chunked)
10g rock sugar
1/2 tbsp crushed pepper
5 liter water
salt to taste

1. Bring the water to boil. Put all the ingredients in the pot and reduce to low heat.
2. Cook for approximately 2 hour. Add in salt and sugar.
3. Sieve the broth and set aside.

Ban Mian (拌麵)

Guess what, I have bought myself another toy....Pasta Machine!! I have been thinking to own this machine whenever I made dumpling. I wish I could make different dumpling skin color. That is my goal but I am not too sure whether I have the persistent to achieve my goal. 

For the "opening ceremony" of my machine, I am planning to make Spinach Noodle. Besides nutritious, it is also easy to prepare as you just need to mix the blended spinach into the flour before passing through the Pasta Machine.

To be honest, it is really time consuming to prepare the noodle from scratch. One needs to be very patient and in my opinion, it is really worth the time as the noodle texture is really different as compare with the commercial noodle.


Ingredients A
500g plain flour
2 eggs
2 tbsp cooking oil
150-200 ml water
50g of spinach, washed and blended
(NOTE: 100g flour per person)

Ingredient B
300g minced pork
250g dried anchovies
50g black fungus, soaked and shredded
10g mushroom, soaked and shredded
300g green leafy vegetables, blanched
100g shallots, sliced and deep fried

Seasoning
1 tbsp soya sauce
1tsp pepper
1tsp sugar
1tsp sesame oil

3000ml chicken broth

Noodle (Ban Mian)
1. Combine all ingredient A, and knead lightly until it becomes a smooth dough. Cover the dough with cling wrap and let it sit for 20 minutes before roll with the pasta machine

2. The pasta machine takes a lot of the hard work out of the rolling and stretching process. Just remember that you still need to take the time to work the dough through all the settings until you reach the final setting in order to obtain the elasticity and silkiness that gives the best pasta. Different machine may work differently and please read through the machine instruction for the rolling and stretching process.

3. After getting the desired thickness, dry the pasta sheet for around 30 minutes before cutting into the desire width. I am drying the pasta by hanging the sheets over the chopsticks.
(NOTE: You may need to use a lot of flour to dust the final noodle in order to prevent them from sticking)

4. Boil a pot of water and cook the noodle for around 1-2 minutes until reaching your satisfaction.

Meat and mushroom sauce
5. Heat up 2 tbsp oil to stir-fry minced pork until fragrant. Add in shredded mushroom, black fungus and seasoning. Stir-fry until the meat is cooked. Add in some water if the gravy is too dry and continue to stir-fry until the sauce is slightly absorbed. Dish up and set aside.

6. Place a portion of noodle in a serving bowl, pour in hot chicken broth, serve with minced pork, fried anchovies and leafy vegetables. Garnish with some fried shallots on top. Serve top.

Soup base Ban Mian

Dry version of Ban Mian

Soft and Fluffy Black Sesame Chiffon

Once you have master the skill of making chiffon, you can blend in any ingredient to make it into different flavor. Since my son has to attend a Birthday Party later, I am planning to bake a Sesame Chiffon Cake for him to bring over. Why Sesame Chiffon? It is simply because I love sesame and it is the only ingredient that I have.

Since the packet of sesame that I had is already premixed with sugar, I am planning to reduce some sugar quantity in this recipe. To start off my experiment, I will normally try to maintain all the quantity in my original recipe as this will make my life whenever I need to tweak the 'formulation'.

I am lucky enough that this Sesame Chiffon is quite easy to bake and no adjustment on the original recipe is needed. One time succeeded!!!! If I would to improve this cake, I am planning to increase the quantity of my sesame by 10g in my next trial. This will make the sesame flavor denser.

Off I go......start experimenting  :)


Ingredient A
Egg Yolk Batter
80g cake flour
25g sesame powder
1tsp baking powder
30g castor sugar
5 medium egg yolk
1/4 tsp salt
80ml milk
50g oil


Ingredient B
5 medium egg white
1/2 tsp cream of tartar
40g castor sugar

1. Preheat the oven to 165'C and have ready a 22cm ungreased chiffon cake tin.

2. Sieve cake flour, sesame powder and baking powder together. Put aside.

3. To make the egg yolk batter, whisk egg yolks and castor sugar together until the batter is pale yellow. Combine with salt, oil and milk together. Stir in one direction until smooth and well-combined. Fold in flour until forms a smooth batter.

4. You may filter the batter to remove any lump.

5. In the other bowl, put in egg whites and cream of tartar into a clean mixing bowl. Use high speed to whisk until frothy. Add in sugar slowly. Continue to whisk until stiff but not dry. (Please refer to the video "How to whip egg white")

7. Gently fold the stiff egg whites (in three additions) into cake batter just blended (being careful not to deflate the batter). (Please refer to the video "How to fold egg white")

8. Pour the batter into a 22cm ungreased chiffon cake pan and bake at 165'C for about 40-50 minutes.You may test the cake readiness using the toothpick method.

9. Remove from oven, invert (turn upside down) and leave to cool completely before removing cake from the tin.

Opps....there is a small defect at the corner.
Next time will be more careful when trying to remove from the pan  :)

Dry, soft and fluffy Sesame Chiffon!!!

Milky Fish Soup

Fish soup has been regarded as a nutritious food and is considered by the Chinese traditionally to be particularly good for lactating women as part of the postpartum confinement diet. On and off I would crave for this soup due to its strong taste. You may eat this with rice or noodle with some 'yong tau fu' (stuffed tofu)

The secret of resulting the milky soup base is to use boiling water to pour over the fried fish. After that, simmer the soup for another 1.5 hours to get a milky soup base. In order to remove the fishy smell, ginger and blue ginger are the best ingredient. Prior to fried, I will normally marinate the fish bone using some ginger juice to remove all the smell. On top of that, blood clot needs to be discarded prior cooking.

Ingredients
Fish soup 
300g fish bone
140g preserved vegetable
1 piece of tomato
3 inches of ginger, sliced
2 inches of blue ginger, sliced
1/2 tbsp pepper corns, crushed
3 liter of boiling water
3 tbsp oil
salt

1. Clean the fish bone with some salt and ginger juice to remove the fishy smell. Discarded any blood clot. and rinse off properly.

                           

2. Heat up oil in a pot. Fry the fish bone until brownish. You may fry together with ginger and crushed pepper corn to spice up the soup. Once the bones are done, pour in hot boiling water into the pot and simmer for 5 minutes before adding in the tomato, preserved vegetable and blue ginger. Then, reduce to low heat, cook approximately for 1.5-2 hours. 

3. Add in seasoning, stir well, remove from heat, and strain stock. You may add in your favorite vegetables or noodle in the fish soup.

 

Braised E-Fu Noodle (Yi Mein)

The preparation of this noodle is really simple and hassle free to cook. It only takes around 30 minutes to prepare this dish. As compare to other noodle, Yi Mein is much easier to cook as it is less soggy. The most interesting part of this noodle is the chewiness and spongy texture. I normally having this dish with my favourite Belacan Sauce will enhance the appetite!


Ingredients
100 g prawns, washed and deveined 
100 g pork, slice thinly
1 pcs of fish cake, slice
3 stalks of sawi (Chinese Mustard Green)
2 cloves of garlic, minced
3 stacks of noodles, cut into 3" length
3 bowls water (chicken broth)
2 tbsp oil

Seasoning
1 tbsp of soy sauce
1/2 tbsp dark soy sauce
1/2 tsp sesame oil
1/2 tsp sugar
Dash of pepper

1. Marinate pork and prawns with the seasoning for 20 minutes.

2. Heat up oil. Saute the garlic for 30 s and add in the marinated pork and prawns. Stir-fry briskly for a minute before adding in the Chinese Mustard Green and fish cake.

3. Continue to stir-fry for another minute. Pour in the water or chicken broth. Bring to boil and add in the noodle. Cover, braise over medium heat until the flavour has been absorbed and the gravy is slightly thicken.

4. Dish up, serve at once with Belacan Sauce.