If you haven’t already, make sure you sign up for my Thermomix mailing list at www.jackiem.com.au/thermomix to follow my Asian recipe experiments with my newly-purchased Thermomix machine.

Don’t forget to follow me on Periscope at www.periscope.tv/JackieMSydney so you get notified when we go Live; that way you can interact and ask questions while we’re On Air.

INGREDIENTS:

• 1/2 cup onion, quartered
• 6 cloves minced garlic
• 1 inch galangal
• 1 inch turmeric
• 1/2 Tbsp belacan powder
• 4 Tbsp soaked dried shrimp
• 2 inch length of lemongrass
• 1/4 cup chilli paste (from soaked, blended dried chillies, or mild fresh chillies

• 1 1/2 Tbsp sugar
• 2 Tbsp chicken stock granules
• 100 ml vegetable oil

For the soup –

• 1/2 cup laksa paste
• 250 ml coconut cream
• 3 cups water
• 5 tofu puffs, halved
• 500 g noodles, blanched
• 1/2 Lebanese cucumber, cut into thin strips
• 100 g beansprouts
• 2 sprigs laksa leaves, aka Vietnamese mint (optional)
• Poached seafood or chicken slices as desired
• 1 boiled egg, peeled and halved

METHOD:

1. Place onion in Thermomix bowl. Puree 5 seconds / Speed 7. Remove and sieve to extract excess liquid (optional).
2. Combine rest of spice ingredients in bowl. Mill 7 seconds / Speed 10.
3. Add puréed onion and oil.
4. Cook for 30 mins / 100°C / Speed 1.5 / measuring cup off.
5. Add chicken stock granules and sugar and cook a further 3 minutes.
6. Remove and store in fridge or freezer.

To make laksa soup –

1. Combine ½ cup laksa paste with ½ cup coconut cream and 3 cups water in Thermomix bowl. Bring to a boil.
2. Noodles/vegetables and other garnishes (meat/seafood) can be steamed in steamer basket for 8 minutes while soup is being made, or they can be poached separately.
3. Place noodles etc. in bowl, top with soup and serve.

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The post How to Make Laksa (Thermomix) first appeared on Jackie M..

Recipe for the dough and the filling as follows (you can substitute the chicken mince with diced BBQ pork)

 Simple Bun Recipe –

• 400g low gluten flour (or superfine/HK/pao flour)
• 200g water
• 5g instant yeast
• 20g oil
• 30g caster sugar

 METHOD:

1. Mix all the ingredients together 5 sec / speed 6.
2. Knead for 2 mins.
3. Allow dough to rest for 30 mins before rolling into small balls to shape.

Jackie M’s Chicken Filling –

• 500g chicken mince or diced chicken
• 1 Tbsp light soy
• 1 Tbsp thick soy
• 1 Tbsp chicken stock granules
• 1 Tbsp hoi sin sauce
• dash of pepper
• ¼ cup sugar
• ¾ cup fried onion, pref. soaked in 100ml water

METHOD:

1. Combine all ingredients in Thermomix bowl.
2. Cook 15 mins/120°C lid off / reverse blade.

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The post How to Make Steamed Char Siew Pao (Thermomix) first appeared on Jackie M..

I also talk you through a foolproof way of making sure your boiled rice turns out perfectly every time and also give a brief description of how to cook coconut rice (nasi lemak). Full recipe for nasi lemak was shared on an old blog post.

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The post Rice (30 Days 30 Asian Ingredients Series Day 3) first appeared on Jackie M..

There are 3 broad types of soya (aka soy) sauce –

1. 1. sweet soya sauce

1. 1. salty soya sauce – for this exercise I’ll call it “regular soya sauce”

1. thick soya sauce aka caramel sauce

Growing up in Malaysia, the soya sauces we used in my family’s kitchen were – salty soya sauce and dark (aka thick) soya sauce – that’s pretty much it.

We used sweet soya sauce for the chilli relish that was offered with the cut fruit we sold at my dad’s canteen at the Odeon cinema in Seremban. Beyond that I have no recollection of ever seeing my mom use sweet soya sauce for any of her cooking.

I have to mention that sweet soya sauce does get used a bit more in Malay recipes (my family is Chinese, in case there’s any confusion) but it’s still not as ubiquitous as what you’d find in Indonesian cooking. Sweet soya sauce is known as Kicap Manis in Malay and Indonesian.

My live broadcast discussing different types and brands of soya sauce.

I don’t know if growing up in Malaysia I was just too young to get the nuances of salty soya sauce or if the product has evolved into various sub-types over the years, but nowadays you might find “light soya sauce”, “soya sauce”, “salty soya sauce” or “dark soya sauce” on all kinds of different bottles. These all fit into the regular soya sauce category since their primary role is to provide saltiness to a dish.

The label “dark soya sauce” is problematic because I grew up knowing thick soya sauce as dark soya sauce (literal Chinese translation of thick soya sauce is “black soya sauce”). I know it’s not just me because lots of Asian and Malaysian recipes that call for thick soya sauce in fact list the ingredient as “dark soya sauce”.

It seems though that the term “dark soya sauce” has been hijacked and it can now refer to soya sauces that fit into the darker, richer spectrum of your regular soya sauce.

Rather than black and treacly, they’re just a few shades darker than the lighter coloured types, but their flavour is still predominantly salty and the consistency is still very thin i.e. they pour easily out of the bottle.

If I’m looking for thick soya sauce at the shops and see a bottle labelled “dark soya sauce”, I tilt the bottle to see if the content tips easily – and that’s how I know whether it’s in fact thick soy or just a dark version of the regular variety.

I’m almost certain (I’m too lazy to research it fully) that the term “cooking caramel” which is what is on the Cheong Chan thick soya sauce label is a fairly new adoption. I always knew it as dark/thick soya sauce and that’s what the recipes I grew up with referred to it as. I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen a traditional Asian recipe that refers to the ingredient as caramel sauce.

I still instinctively call it thick soya sauce but I do remember to self-correct and explain it’s labelled cooking caramel or caramel sauce (which confuses people who associate caramel sauce with ice cream toppings).

Clear as mud, huh?

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The post Soya Sauces (30 Days 30 Asian Ingredients Series Day 1) first appeared on Jackie M..

This became starkly evident to me when I was working on my Truly Malaysian Street Food at Home cookbook, when my American editor struggled to keep up with half the stuff in my recipes.

“What is thick caramel sauce doing in a savoury dish when it’s something you would put on pancakes?”

“How about we remove belacan from the otak-otak recipe since most people would either not know what it is or know where to buy it?”

etc.

I’d made a couple of half-hearted attempts at covering Asian ingredients in previous blog posts –

The Beginner’s Malaysian Pantry

Malaysian Pantry Ingredients

…but I know I’ve barely scraped the surface of this topic.

So I’ve come up with this genius idea (it is, because I say so) to cover 30 Asian ingredients (one per day) in 30 days through daily Periscope broadcasts –

Periscope (for the uninitiated) is a mobile app that allows you to stream live at the push of a button. If you follow me there – http://periscope.tv/jackiemsydney – you’ll get notified when my broadcasts are about to start, so you can hop on and type questions/comments that I can answer live on air.

I will be saving these broadcasts so you can always catch up later, but of course, you won’t be able to interact with me if you only watch the recordings.

By the way, while I’ve run live broadcasts via Google Hangouts-on-Air for years, Periscope is new to me, so come join me so when I become a star on that platform <ahem> you can brag about how you are one of my first followers

Where – periscope.tv/jackiemsydney

When – daily from 25 January

What – 30 Days, 30 Asian Ingredients with Jackie M.

Finally, if you know any friends who could benefit from learning about Asian ingredients, I’d be honoured if you could share this with them. See you on Periscope starting Monday 25th Jan

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The post 30 Days, 30 Asian Ingredients – Periscope Series first appeared on Jackie M..