Pan fried Duck Breast

Duck meat is one of my favourite meats due to its richness in taste. It takes very little effort to make it tastes good. A well cooked duck should have crispy skin, moist within the meat. The best way of archiving that within a short span of time will be pan frying it.

The duck breast is lightly seasoned with salt, pepper and little bit of olive oil. It is then fried it in a pan the skin side down:


The heat should be not to high, as we want the fat between the skin and meat to be dissolved into oil. As you can see the picture above, the pan is full of oil from the dissolved duck fat.

While the duck is cooking, boils some water in a pot and add some new potatoes into it.


Once the duck breast is cooked, put it into grill with the skin side up. Grill it for a while. In the mean time, cut the cooked potatoes and fry them in the duck fat:


The potatoes will absorb all the flavour of the duck fat, and make them very crispy. Oh ya, while you are frying your potatoes, make sure to take a look at the duck breast in the grill too. The skin gets burned quickly in the grill.

Here is how it looks like in the end:

Simplified Fa Teow Kai

It has been a while since the last post. Apart from being lazy to write, I have not been experimenting much lately, just the usual pan fried steak with salads. So, there have not been any interesting stuffs to blog about.

Anyway, I learnt this recipe from Shawn when I was at his place (many many months ago). The dish is very simple to make and tastes quite good. Anyway, here are the the ingredients:


Left to right: spring onion, caramelized soya sauce (this is important), light soya sauce, Shao Hsing Wine, chicken thighs.
middle part: dried chillies, peppercorns, bunga cengkeh, garlic, ginger and mushroom.

I took the liberty of modifying Shawn's recipe by adding some mushrooms, and bunga cengkeh. Why I did that? well, I couldn't remember it too.. probably because I had those ingredients in my cupboard kuar...

Next, heat up a pot with some oil. Saute the dried chillies, peppercorns, bunga cengkeh, garlic, and ginger for a while. Add the chicken thighs in, stir fry for a minute. Cover the chicken with enough caramelized soya sauce, light soya sauce and Shao Hsing wine. Add the chopped spring onion on top, and cover the top with a lid.


This dish has to be cooked in a very low heat for a long period of time ( ~2 hours). Oh ya, stir it occasionally . Don't try to switch to high heat to speed thing up, you will burnt it. Here is mine look like after I waited for two hours:


For those in Malaysia, you can avoid this by taking 2 hours drive to Seri Kembangan to have it there... you lucky fellas :)

Flambé

Last week, while I was cooking my lovely steak, I decided to do a flambé for a change.

Instead of the usual chinese rice wine, I decided to go with my Monkey Shoulder whiskey for extra kick.. and this is the end result:



morale of the story.. never flambé with one shot of 40% proof whiskey or you will end up with 30cm high fire, a traumatized housemate and tons of fun (given that you don't burn down the house)...

kids do not try this at home >:)

Trip to Italy

Went to Genoa, Italy with Shawn and Jay. The food and drink were great. I am truly amazed with how simple the food is being prepared, but tastes so good!

Stumbled upon this rather "interesting" restaurant during our quest for good food over there:


I hope "Le" is not "water" in Italian :)

Honey Grilled Rabbit

A while ago, I bought a wild rabbit meat from my colleague (his neighbor was selling it). It was a bargain - 2.50 pounds for a headless, skinless and gutless rabbit.

First thing popped into my mind was Guinness rabbit, so I marinated the cute little rabbit with Guinness, garlic and rosemary:


Put the marinated rabbit on the grill:


Just minute before the rabbit is done, glaze it with some honey:


The meat tastes quite nice, too bad it is too little.

Thick Soya Sauce Pork Hock

Apparently, I started drafting this entry in July 2007 and only got as far as typing "For lack of a better name, I think...". I honestly can't remember what I was going to ramble about but let's see whether I can remember how I prepared this dish. Keep your fingers crossed that I get to finish the entry this time round.


You'll want to start off with the ingredients seen above. The most important ingredient for this dish is the black vinegar. My first attempt was sorely lacking of something and it didn't occur to me that I forgot the vinegar. For added kick, you could add some dishwashing liquid (Lemon) in case the dish isn't sour enough.


First, marinade the pork (preferably pork belly and pork feet) with salt, pepper, soya sauce, thick soya sauce (for colouring) and a little vinegar. Leave that aside for about 30 minutes.


Chop up a few garlic cloves (not too fine) and chuck that into a pan of hot oil to get the nice garlicky fragrance. Put in the marinaded pork and stir fry every inch of the pork. It doesn't have to be cooked. You just want to seal the flavour in.


Put the stir-fried pork into a electric slow cooker. Add a generous amount of water (enough to cover everything), the black vinegar (a must) and a whole garlic. Set it to cook for about 3 hours. You could use an ordinary pot with a lid instead. The lid ensures that the dish remains soupy (for lack of a better word).


For a healthy compliment to the meat, I whipped up a quick and simple stir-fried vegetable dish.

I also boiled some eggs to be put into the slow cooker an hour before the meat was done. Remove the shell first. At this point, you could add more salt and vinegar to your taste. For me, I like it sour.


After waiting patiently for 3 hours, this is the result of my labour. It doesn't look like much (blame the photographer) but it sure did taste good. I had some

Mussels With Pasta

Unlike Malaysia, UK is not blessed with abundance king prawns or meaty crabs. Luckily, mussels thrive in the UK water and they are affordable for me to do some food experiments.

Here they are, fresh Scottish mussels with shells all scrubbed clean for cooking:


Ready a big pot, dizzles a bit of olive oil (butter will be better) and saute some chopped garlics (5 cloves) , diced onion ( one small one) and few sticks of celery:


Once they are a little bit brown, add some water into it. Add a pinch of salt, and let it boils for 20 mins. After that, you should a good vegetable stock to cook the mussels with.

Add the mussels, chopped parsley, and fresh grounded pepper:


Mix it with pasta:


Garnish with more parsley and it is ready to serve: