Entree
Lemongrass Smoked Duck with Avocado & Coconut Fresh Salad
Date: Nov 1st, 2017
Recipe: 96
Ingredients (4 portions):
450g Large free-range duck breast
1 tbsp Soy sauce
1 tbsp Honey
1/4 tsp 5 spice powder
1 tbsp Rice wine
1tsp Rice wine vinegar
1/4 Crushed black pepper
2 Lemongrass, crushed to extract juice
1 tbsp Sesame oil
1 Larger avocado, cut into slices
50g Medium hard coconut fresh, shredded finely and long, garnish
10g Baby cilantro
Salad
200g Mesclun salad
10g Coriander, pick the leaves
20g Parsley, pick the leaves
10g Basils, pick the leaves
50g Walnut, toasted
Dressing
2 tbsp Extra virgin coconut oil
1 tbsp Extra virgin olive oil
1 tbsp Balsamic vinegar
1 tsp Dijon mustard
1 Clove garlic, crushed
1 tsp Celery seeds
TT Salt and pepper
Method:
1. Marinated the duck with the herbs, spices and seasoning
overnight.
2. Score the skin, seal it over the pan until rare,
then smoke it until medium rare
3. Mix the salad dressing, toss the salad with dressing
4. On top of salad, place the sliced duck]next to the avocado
slices, garnish with coconut fresh and baby cilantro
Seafood Wok Side Crepe Soup
This is one of the very traditional Fuzhou-Chinese breakfast dishes, it is usually sold as street food, but you have a choice either you want to consume lots of MSG or you want to prepare the ultimate healthy version at home when there are special guests come visiting you from the distant land.
Date: Nov 2nd, 2017
Recipe: 97
Ingredients (5 portions):
Soup
2.5 liters Chicken and Pork stock (prepare by old organic hen and pork bone
and a smoke fish/Katsuobushi, onion, ginger, daikon, leek, celery, mushroom)
Crepe
200g Rice, soak in water overnight, blend with 800ml water
Flour
Water
TT Salt
Other ingredients
10 Prawns
100g Octopus
300g Clams, blanched in stock until open, get rid of shells
10 Homemade fish balls, deep fried (optional)
25 Fresh Daylily/Golden needle, blanch
10g Scallion, slice finely
10g Baby Cilantro, garnishing
50g Dried shitake mushroom, soak and julienne
20g Garlic chives, cut a half cm long for garnishing
25g Deep fried shallot, garnishing
30ml Red yeast rice wine
1/2 tsp Black vinegar
TT Salt and pepper
Extra virgin black sesame oil
Method:
1. To prepare the crepe batter, after the rice blended with water,
add the flour to thicken it to the tempura batter's consistency.
Season with salt lightly, let it rest.
2. Add the sieved stock to a big wok (if you have small wok, then
you have to portion the ingredients and prepare in batches)
3. When it started to boil, add the seafood and vegetables. Check
the seasoning
4. Immediately start to prepare the wok side crepe by spooning
the crepe batter to the upper side of the wok with a thin layer
cover the whole wok side, when it starts to dry up, use a
spatula to scratch it off into the soup.
5. Mix the crepe well with the soup, serve immediately with
the garnishing herbs and add a few drops of sesame oil,
if you have a large wok, continue on the next crepe batch.
Pickled Calamansi
After I browsed through the google image, I found this my childhood pickled calamansi no where to be found, if I don't drop down here, I am worried this typical Sarawakian's recipe heirloom would be lost forever to the next generation.
Date: Nov 2nd, 2017
Recipe: 98
Ingredients:
20 Calamansi, give 5 even length cuts on the side, squeeze some juice out of it, press it down from the top, it will form a flower-like calamansi.
8 cloves Garlic, cut into thin slices, deep fry until light brown
4 Turmeric roots
100ml White vinegar
200g Sugar
2 Big chilies, julienne, blanch in oil
1 Slice ginger
1 Slice galangal
1/4 Ginger torch bud
2 Shallot
1 tbsp Sesame seeds, toasted
6 tbsp oil
Left-over Calamansi juice
50g Dried prawn, soak and chop finely
TT Salt
Method:
1. Steam the flower-like calamansi
2. Blisk the shallot, turmeric, ginger, ginger torch bud and galangal
2. To prepare the pickled sauce, in a wok heat up the oil, blanch the
chili, and take the chili away, use the oil to sweat the dried prawn,
herbs until caramelized, then add sugar to caramelize, deglaze
with vinegar and calamansi juice, reduce.
3. Add garlic, chili, and calamansi, add salt, check seasoning.
4. Finally add the sesame seeds, mix well. You can preserve it inside a
bottle, store in fridge, can last for a long time.
Main
Chicken Cooked inside Bamboo Tube (Ayam Pansuh)
This recipe probably is one of my most valuable entry recorded in my recipe scrapbook, I learned it from one of my Sarawak Dayak comrades from Sarawak interior region (Ulu Kapit). I wrote this down almost two decades ago, those were the days I got photographic memory over recipes and movie scenes and scripts, but I knew one later day when I got older my memory could deteriorate, thus, I kept a few recipe scrapbooks even with diagrams drawn.
Date: Nov 2nd, 2017
Recipe: 95
Ingredients:
2 Big bamboo tubes (about 2 feet long with at least 4 inches diameter)
500g Freerange chicken, Asian cuts
Bungang leaves (Bay leaves found in Borneo for cooking meat and fish)
8 slices Ginger
Edible wild mushroom (they won't add this traditionally)
1 Ginger torch buds, cut into slices
TT Salt and pepper
Edible cassava laves, for sealing
Lemongrass, for sealing
Method:
1. Marinate chicken with salt and pepper, ginger torch buds,
and ginger.
2. Place the chicken pieces into the bamboo tubes, add bungang
leaves and wild mushroom, then seal the upper part with
lemongrass and cassava leaves tightly.
3. Place the bamboo tubes in the open fire cooked for 45 minutes to
an hour, depend on your fire and how old is your chicken
Note: No water is required to add to the tube, the juice from the
bamboo would release to the chicken, its soup has bamboo
fragrance and tasted sweet, one of the nicest dishes nature blesses
us with.
Durian Ballotine
Durian, the king of all fruits, it only could be thrived in hot equatorial and tropical lands, thus I chose it to conclude this 99 tropical produce's recipes to pair it up with chicken.
Hope this dish can make it to the stage of the tropical lands' fine dining restaurants.
Date: Nov 2nd, 2017
Recipe: 99
Ingredients:
Filling
150g Durian, mashed
100g Chicken mince
50g Bacon, brunoise, grill until crispy, keep the oil
1 tbsp Truffle oil
5g Vietnamese mint leaves, chiffonade
5g Fennel leaves, finely chopped
5g Coriander, chiffonade
1 tsp Vinegar
1 tsp Minced dried Shitake mushroom
1 tsp Minced dried prawn
25g Breadcrumb
1 Garlic Clove, minced
1 Egg white, whisked until firm peak, add a pinch of cream of tartare
Ballotine
2 Large Freerange chicken thigh
Salt and pepper
Oil for pan frying
Durian Sauce
100ml Coconut cream
1/2 Shallot, brunoise
1/2 Garlic, minced
50g Mashed durian
200ml Chicken stock
2 tbsp Coconut oil
1 tsp Roux, thickening
1 pinch of Cayenne
2 cloves Black garlic, mashed
TT Salt, vinegar, and pepper
Method:
1. To prepare the durian sauce, sweat the oil with shallot and garlic,
then add the durian mash, deglaze with chicken stock, reduce,
then add coconut cream and cayenne, thicken with roux, check
seasoning.
2. To prepare durian and chicken mince filling: Sweat the garlic, prawn,
& shallot with sesame oil, then adds mushroom. Stir well. Leave aside.
Mix the mashed durian with chicken mince, breadcrumb, bacon and
bacon oil, combine with the rest of the herbs and spices, finally fold
in egg white, check seasoning.
3. To prepare ballotine: Thinning out the thigh, keep the skin, use a
mallet to bang it out, then place the two thin thigh side by side
lengthwise on a glad wrap. Sprinkle salt and pepper.
4. Spoon the filling to the center lengthwise, roll into a ballotine.
5. Steam the ballotine for 15 minutes.
6. Take out the ballotines, let them cool down, and let it chilled overnight
7. In a frying pan add 2 tablespoons of oil, heat up the pan until smoking,
seal the ballotine evently, baste continuously with jus and oil, season
with pepper and salt, fry until golden brown.
8. Cut into slices diagonally for plating.
Dessert
Bubur Cha Cha
I remember this was one of the Malaysian favorite desserts for the hot afternoon. One significance about tropical backdrop is like a kaleidoscope, thus people live in this environment naturally adapted would learn to speak different dialects and languages, design batik and prepare rojak. Here, I modify another variation out of it “with my memory” while I write this “busy” recipe.
Date: Nov 1st, 2017
Recipe; 94
Ingredients (3 portions):
50g Purple sweet potato/Kumara, macedoine
50g Yellow cassava, macedoine
50g Bilang taro root, macedoine
50ml Hibiscus petal juice
50g Cooked sago seeds, garnish
50g Medium hard coconut fresh, shredded
50g Cooked kidney beans
50g Pandan Konnyaku jelly, shredded
50g Cooked peanut (without skin)
300g Coconut cream
500ml Coconut juice, frozen
¼ tsp Fennel seed power
¼ tsp Star anise powder
3 tbsp Pandan leaves extract (extract mashed pandan leaves)
TT Nipah palm syrup
Method:
1. Steam the Kumara, cassava, taro root
2. Macerated the kumara, cassava, taro root, kidney bean, and peanuts
with a Nipah palm syrup (not too much)
3. Mixed the sago seeds with hibiscus petal juice, sweetened with Nipah
Palm syrup, heat over the stove quick, drain and chill
4. Mix coconut cream with pandan extract, season with
Nipah palm syrup and the two spices, heat over the stove, cool and chill
5. In a serving bowl or glass with a tablespoon of each 50g
Ingredients (except sago seeds) then spoon 100ml sweetened pandan
coconut cream
6. Shave the coconut juice ice on top, garnish with red sago seeds
Epilogue
I first started to write these 99 recipes on September 3rd, 2017, but it’s just impossible to complete them on my birthday a month later, so I decided I should complete it on my chef mentor’s birthday, and I did it! I have to thank his long-distance moral support to stay on with me during my last stage of chef school study and chef journey. I felt that I was really too lonely, severely lacked moral support and deprived of chef industry’s connection here in New Zealand.
I finally decided to resume my old profession as a piano teacher after my British piano tuner told me Auckland really needed a qualified and experienced piano teacher like me. Honestly, I was so surprised to see transferred students came to me who still approached the piano with old 50 or 60s’ techniques and dexterity.
Music is the world that I feel very secure, have existing authority, and confidence, as probably because I learned piano only under some of the most cultivated and most elite world-class concert pianists and piano professors, thus I never ran into liars, perverts, and uncultivated people yet, I could trust anyone of them but never would get into trouble or get hurt by them.
Seemingly nobody wanted to pay me to work in their kitchen here in New Zealand, whereas, I could sit down teaching piano to earn for at least $40/hour despite I did enjoy FOC washing dishes in the kitchen as an apprentice and trial-out kitchen hand jobs, that’s how much I wanted to work as a chef, but from past 2.5 years exposure to the chef scene, from what I observed, seemed, heard and experienced, unfortunately I have not seemed and experienced much brighter side of chef industry yet, only my sister like many others who don’t know about real chefs’ life still thought that a chef’s job is easy and relax, they never learned that a real kitchen is not like the master chef’s or food and wine festival scenes.
Anyway, people could refuse to give me a job or avoid to deal with me or simply ignore me, but I won’t let them stop me from achieving something I could do to depend on none of them but myself only to achieve, e.g. like writing recipes, writing stories, and articles, recently I ended up to become an independent food columnist for a New Zealand largest Chinese newspaper. I approached two Chinese newspapers, I refused to write for another newspaper all because I was told I won’t be paid to write but they will put up my name to indicate that the article is written by me. Well, some people really thought that everyone wants to get famous, I only have a blog which is under my real name, but the rest of my written works including my NZSA membership, are all under different pen names.
Seemingly like if there is a God, he really loves me too much, he doesn’t want my hands to get dirty, neither he enjoyed seeing I was not being treated fairly by most wrong people in a wrong place at this timeline. I found out if I did what was right, I would receive positive feedback and the job proposal immediately, for a long time I have not heard the genuine flatters, the editor said I wrote very well and it got published the next day.
Perhaps our fate is written in the stars; if we happened to be coerced into very wrong paths by crafty people, the heaven would eventually intervene, stop our progress, render and shift us back to our right direction again, I strangely witnessed adversities happened to someone who manipulated me into wrong journeys, I got the hint but I got hurt as well.
Unless there is a miracle happens to my nearer future that I could find a chef who is well respected and cultivated, who is as great as one of my piano professors; who is willing to teach me something new without hesitating, or else I may never return to the chef scene again. Perhaps, as a food columnist or even chef romance author, these would be my only food-related compromising activities due to my love of cooking and "playing with food"!
The List of Title for the 99 Recipes of Tropical Produce
1. Papaya Punch
2. Burmese Style Papaya Salad
3. Soursop Tea
4. Papaya Cheesecake
5, Sparling Lemonade
6. Drunken Lemongrass Chicken Steak
7. Papaya Golden Berries
8. Roselle Jam
9. Roselle Relish
10. Roselle Tropical punch
11. Papaya Jelly
12. Pork Belly, Sweet Rice, and Taro Root Terrine
13. Papaya Pavlova Cake
14. Pineapple Snapper Ceviche
15. Smoked Tuna & Pineapple Tartare
16. Starfruit Salsa
17. Mango Chutney
18. Pink Guava Jam
19. Pink Guava Semifreddo
20. Guava salad
21. Asian Style coq au vin
22. Banana Saffron Fritter
24. Breadfruit sandwich
23. Chicken Curry with Cassava
25: Pineapple Lamb Leg
26. Pineapple Pork Croquette
27. Pineapple Sweet and Sour Pork
28. Headhunter
29. Durian Filo triangle
30. Papaya Prawn Curry
31. Wild Sour Eggplant Prawn
32. Papaya Cake
33. Mixed Fruits Cake
34. Papaya Springroll
35. Pineapple Fish Claypot
36. Pineapple fish papillote
37. Coconut Mochi
38. Pandan cordial
39. Minced Pork Olive Bitter Mustard
40. Durian muffin
41. Stir-fry noni shoots with prawns
42. Noni Mixed Vegetables & Fruits Salad with Rojak Sauce
43. Fragrance Mint Tea
44. Wagyu Steak with Durian Sauce
45. Daikon Cucumber Salad
46 Root Salad with Coconut dressing
47. Coconut palm heart Salad
48. Dauphine Sweet Potato/Kumara on Coconut Cream
49. Coconut Tuiles
50. Baby Corn Chowder with Corn Fritters
51. Murukku with Eggplant Dip
52. Sweet, Sour and Hot Crispy Mango Fish
53. Magenta Dragon Fruit Jelly
54. Sweet potato gnocchi
55. Papaya Tart
56. Chicken Curry Noodle Soup
57. Cempedek beef curry
58. Jackfruit Salsa
59. Braised Taro Stem Pork Belly
60. Moringa Fish Soufle
61. Tropical Style Pickled Okra
62. Coconut Pandan Bario Rice Pudding
63. Rojak Prawn Salad with Krill Oil Sauce
64. Papaya Salad
65. Instant Kimji
66. Korean Style Assorted Grilled Meats
67. Assorted Tropical Fruits
68. Coconut pandan tuile
69. Roselle Sorbet
70. Roselle Champagne Sauce
71. Roselle Milk Foam
72. Grilled Pork Tenderloin with Herbs and Nuts Dusting
73. Deep fried Assorted Tropical Wild Vegetables
74. Champagne Papaya Frangipane
75. Smoked Fresh Water Fish Lotus Leaves Papillote
76. Malay Apple Passion Fruit Yogurt Ice Cream
77. Jackfruit Sweet Rice Ball
78. Black Pepper Crab (Western style)
79 Black pepper crab (Asian style)
80. Crispy Tapioca Seeds Banana Bites
81. Stir-fried Cabbage with Crispy Pork Belly
82. Freshwater Prawn Amaranth Noodle
83. Amaranth pesto
84. Beef Rendang
85. Chicken Rendang
86. Assorted Satay
87. Coconut rice cake
88. Garlic Chive Pork Minced Rectangular Pan-Fried Dumpling
89. Herbal Chili oil sauce
90. Yusheng
91. Savory Yam Cake
92. Sweet turnip salad crepe roll
93. Pumpkin Konnyaku cake.
94. Bubur Cha Cha
95 Bamboo Chicken
96. Lemongrass Smoked Duck with Avocado & Coconut Fresh Salad
97. Seafood Wok Side Crepe Soup
98. Calamansi pickles
99. Durian Ballotine
