You may have come across a number of different iterations of crispy noodles depending on the type of Asian restaurant you frequent; in this Lockdown Malaysian Cook-Along (yes, I’ll explain in a bit) I made 2 different versions – one using vermicelli (aka rice sticks, depending on the brand), and one using fresh thin egg noodles (aka wonton noodles). I also made them with slightly different sauces – one using egg and the other without.

Here’s the recording of the live broadcast, which I’ve now uploaded to YouTube >>

So back to the cook-along thing, if you’ve only now stumbled upon my website, the deal is that in response to the Covid-19 lockdown environment, a number of people reached out to me about doing live cook-along broadcasts to cater to those stuck at home and wanting to learn some new Malaysian recipes. So I basically came out of what was essentially a 3-year sabbatical from mainstream live video platforms (I had been streaming on Twitch) and came back to Facebook and, by extension, YouTube.

This particular broadcast was actually the fourth in the series, though if I can clean up random tech issues with some of the earlier ones, I’ll upload them onto YouTube and share them here as well, when I find the time. (Pro tip: not generally a good idea to upload anything onto YouTube that has poor audio quality, unless you want to deal with trolls and downvotes.)

Facebook is a bit flaky in terms of showing my broadcasts or notifying people who have RSVP’d, so to make sure you catch them all, your best bet is to join my free Facebook group

Download the recipe for Crispy Noodles here >> Jackie M’s Lockdown Cook-Along Crispy Noodles Recipe

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The post How To Cook Crispy Noodles With Sauce first appeared on Jackie M..

These sweet potato dumplings are pretty easy to make; you can used ready-to-use red bean paste (in cans or packs at your local Asian grocery store), though in this Live Asian Kitchen, I used the homemade red bean paste I’d made a couple of weeks earlier. Other popular filling options include lotus seed paste or mung bean paste.

The recipe for this is from the Chopsticks Recipes Dim Sum cookbook by Cecilia Au-Yang that I’ve owned for decades; as usual, I’ve made some tweaks to it, albeit very minor ones.

Sweet Potato Dumplings with Red Bean Paste Filling

INGREDIENTS:

Pastry –

220g sweet potatoes, cubed and steamed until soft (about 15 minutes)

30g lard or butter

120g glutinous rice flour

Filling –

220g sweet red bean paste

Coating –

½ cup sesame seeds, rinse and strained

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Oil for deep-frying

METHOD:

1. Divide sweet red bean paste into 24 portions and roll into olive-shaped balls.
2. Mash sweet potatoes, add lard and mix well.
3. Add glutinous rice flour to mix to a soft dough. Divide into 24 equal portions.
4. Flatten one portion into an oval shape, then place a piece of red bean paste in the middle. Wrap and shape into a cylindrical shape.
5. Coat with sesame seeds; press them gently into the dumplings.
6. Heat oil to 170’C, then deep-fry the dumplings until golden brown, turning to make sure they’re evenly cooked.
7. Remove and drain on paper towels.
8. Allow to cool until they’re just warm before serving.

The post How to Make Sweet Potato Dumplings with Red Bean Paste Filling first appeared on Jackie M..

I’m not going to claim this stir-fried Xinjiang Cumin Lamb dish is the real deal (hence why it’s titled Xinjiang-STYLE) since I’ve yet to even visit China, plus I’ve adapted it to accommodate what I had on hand ingredients-wise along with my own flavour preferences.

I discovered that half a leg of lamb (my recent purchase – see previous post) yields a lot of meat, so I had to figure out ways to use it up, and stumbled upon a recipe for stir-fried Xinjiang Cumin Lamb at omnivorescookbook.com.

I’d always assumed that lamb required slow-cooking but this quick stir-fry dish (along with the cumin lamb skewers I wrote about a couple of weeks back) has put paid to that notion; it doesn’t even need the Chinese restaurant soda bicarbonate treatment you would expect for red meat.

Stir-fried Xinjiang-Style Cumin Lamb

INGREDIENTS:

400g lamb fillets, diced into 2cm cubes

Marinade –

1 TBSP Shaoxing rice wine (optional)

1 tsp soya sauce

2 tsps oyster sauce

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3 TBSP tapioca starch (or cornstarch)

Seasoning –

1½ TBSP cumin powder

2 tsps chilli flakes

⅔ tsp sugar

1 tsp chicken powder (or ½ tsp salt)

¼ tsp pounded Szechuan peppercorns (optional)

Stir-fry –

⅓ cup oil

6 large dried chillies, halved

½ onion, sliced

1 TBSP ginger, minced

1 TBSP garlic, minced

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½ TBSP toasted sesame seeds (optional)

METHOD:

1. Combine lamb with marinade ingredients, set aside for 10 minutes.
2. Heat oil, drench lamb with tapioca starch, then fry for about one minute, until lightly browned.
3. Remove lamb.
4. Reheat oil, add garlic, ginger and sliced onion, and fry until aromatic.
5. Add dried chillies, lamb and seasoning ingredients.
6. Toss well, cook until lamb is done (shouldn’t take more than a minute).
7. Remove from heat, sprinkle with sesame seeds, and serve.

The post How to Cook Stir-Fried Xinjiang-Style Cumin Lamb first appeared on Jackie M..

I rarely bake because I’m not much of a cake eater, but I have on occasion had to use up some leftover carrots, in which case my go-to option is to bake it into a carrot cake.  This recipe was originally sourced from the Thermomix recipe community, but I’ve made so many adjustments that it bears no resemblance to the original.

I find Western cake recipes to be way, way too sweet for my palate, so I halve the sugar or more as a matter of course, and it was no exception here.

Also, since I love cream cheese, I ramped up the topping 5-fold – the icing portion has less than one fifth the sugar called for in the original recipe, and more than 5x the cream cheese. You’ll probably end up with extra cream cheese topping; I do 500g because it’s nicely equal to two x 250g blocks of cream cheese and as an Asian cook, I never have any other use for it.

Finally, I never have walnuts in my pantry (again, Asian cook), so I make it nut-free and it actually works out well for when I take this to church for morning tea etc. because it conveniently avoids any allergy issues.

By the way, I’m a very unsophisticated baker; I throw everything together and mix it; no sifting/adding stuff in stages, blitzing at different speeds for x number of seconds etc. for me.

Carrot Cake

INGREDIENTS:

400 grams carrots, cut into chunks
2 eggs
100 grams sugar
160 grams cooking oil
1/4 tsp salt
200 grams plain flour
1 tsp baking powder

Icing –
150g sugar
500g cream cheese
45g butter
1/2 tsp lemon juice

METHOD:

1. Pre-heat oven to 180’C. Line an 8-inch cake tin with baking paper.
2. Grate carrots, or if using a Thermomix, process for a few seconds until crumbly.
3. Add all other ingredients (except the icing stuff) and blend until well combined.
4. Transfer into baking tin and bake for 50 minutes. Check for doneness, remove and cool.
5. Combine icing ingredients in Thermomix or food processor, blend until well-mixed. Spread on cake; cut and serve.

The post How to Make An Easy Nut-Free Carrot Cake first appeared on Jackie M..

Yee Chai Peng (Cantonese for “ear biscuits”) were these intriguing spiral-patterned, curved fried pastries from my childhood in Malaysia, which were crunchy, slightly sweet and yet savoury. The only ones I ever ate were factory-made; this wasn’t one of those things that you would find people making fresh at home or at their street stall – certainly not in my hometown of Seremban anyway.

Since I’ve yet to see these biscuits here in Australia, I decided to research how to make them myself; I came across Guai Shu Shu’s blog and ended up using his recipe as a guide (with minor tweaks) during one of my Live Asian Kitchen broadcasts.

As you can see from the results, they look accidentally rustic; I’d been meaning to have another go at this so I could produce a prettier result before posting the recipe, but I’ve already waited too long, plus they tasted great anyway, so here it is.

Ear Biscuits

INGREDIENTS:

White dough

⅔ cup plain flour
40mls of water
⅛ teaspoon of baking soda

Brown dough

¾ cup plain flour
30mls of water
2 Tbsps brown sugar
2 Tbsps oil
1 ½ tsps fermented bean curd
1 tsp five spice powder
⅛ teaspoon of baking soda
Pinch of salt

Oil for deep-frying

METHOD:

1. Combine white dough ingredients and knead to a soft, pliable texture. Roll into a rectangular shape, approximately 1-2mm in thickness.
2. Combine brown dough ingredients and do the same.
3. Brush brown dough surface with a little water, then place white dough on top and press down gently.
4. Brush white dough with water, then roll the dough sheets into a tight sushi-style cylinder.
5. Wrap with cling wrap and freeze for 20-30 minutes.
6. Remove cling wrap and cut into thin slices about 1mm in thickness.
7. Deep-fry at about 160-180’C until golden brown; remove and drain.
8. Cool completely, then store in an airtight container.

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The post How to Make Yee Chai Peng (Ear Biscuits) first appeared on Jackie M..

Now, I know I’m going to get blowback on this but if you were to ask me, an expensive ingredient like dried scallops is wasted on what is essentially a glorified chilli sambal; I can’t really taste any scallop flavour in it and its primary function, from what I can determine, is to give it the condiment a slightly stringy texture.

Anyhow I was rummaging through my pantry right before last Friday evening’s Live Asian Kitchen (my thrice-weekly FREE live online cooking classes), when I came across some dried cuttlefish in shredded stringy form, which I’d picked up in Penang during my Wok Around Asia trip. In a rare flash of brilliance, I decided it’d make a good substitute for dried scallops.

I further decided I could replace another key ingredient – ham (I don’t eat pork) – with the minced preserved radish that was similarly sitting in my pantry.

(The minced preserved radish I buy is available in grocery stores that stock ingredients used in Southeast Asian cooking – the Thais use it in Pad Thai, and I use it in my Chai Tow Kway aka Char Kway Kak, ie. fried radish cake. Alternatively get the more widely-known salted preserved radish used in Chinese cooking, but rinse it very well, then mince it in a blender.)

I have to say, it tastes so delicious I’ve decided to give it a name – the Jackie M XXO Sauce. It took under an hour compared to what would have been an all-day affair had you used actual dried scallops (granted, I took other shortcuts aside from having to soak the scallops for 6 hours, then steaming and shredding them by hand etc.)

I’m going to assume you may not be so lucky as to find pre-shredded dried cuttlefish at your local Asian store, hence why I’ve tweaked the recipe below to use whole dried cuttlefish, cut into pieces.

My final caveat is that I’ve increased the amount of oil in this recipe, if for no other reason than to replicate the oily visual of your standard XO sauce; my effort produced a much less oily version; your call whether you want to use all two cups of oil.

Jackie M’s XXO Sauce

INGREDIENTS:

5 onions, peeled
8 garlic cloves, peeled
½ cup dried shrimp, soaked in hot water and strained
¼ cup dried cuttlefish
¼ cup minced preserved radish (chai poh), rinsed and strained
1 cup chilli paste or ¼ cup chilli powder (adjust according to heat level)
2 Tbsps chicken powder
1 Tbsp thick soya sauce aka cooking caramel
1 Tbsp sugar
½ Tbsp fish sauce (optional)
2 cups oil

METHOD:

1. Simmer dried cuttlefish with 2 cups of water for 3 minutes. Strain, then pulse in a blender to a soft, flossy texture. Remove and set aside.
2. Finely mince dried shrimp in a blender. Remove.
3. Mince garlic and onion.
4. Transfer garlic & onion into a heavy-based wok and fry until most of the moisture has evaporated.
5. Add oil and fry until onion is caramelised.
6. Add dried shrimp, cuttlefish, minced preserved radish & chilli and fry until oil separates.
7. Add chicken powder, thick soya sauce, sugar and fish sauce.
8. Mix well, fry a further couple of minutes, adjust seasoning, then remove from heat.

Store in jars and refrigerate. This will keep well in the fridge for at least 4 weeks, and should freeze well.

The post How to Make Jackie M’s XXO Sauce first appeared on Jackie M..