Simple to prepare, but full of flavour...and quite affordable dish to impress your guests! This slow cooked pork will warm your cold winter night...

The ingredients:

1.  A nice piece of pork shank 
2. A bottle of good quality red wine. 
3. Few cloves of garlic
4. one onion (whole)
5. large piece of ginger (crashed). 
6. 500ml chicken stock
7. Small pinch of cloves
8. 2 star anise

Pre-heat the oven to 150'C. Heat a oven-proofed casserole pan. Fry lightly a few cloves of garlic, a chunk of ginger (sliced) and one large onion in some olive oil until soften and lightly brown. Add the pork shank and brown the meat all around. Add 500ml chicken stock and a whole bottle of red wine, few cloves and 2 star anise. Bring the liquid to the boil.

Remove the pan from the stove and place it in the pre-heated oven and let it slowly cook for few hours until the meat is falling off the bone. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Garnish with chopped spring onion.

Serves it with mashed potatoes...Yum!

Today's menu is French classic - Poulet En Bourride. I have been reading The Cook's Book to learn some basic classic cooking techniques. I think I can cook - experimentally, most of the time. But for classic cooking techniques wise, I think know very little. So my challenge for this coming weeks will all be about classic western cooking techniques!

The weather has been grey and wet in Brighton these days, very depressing...I need some comforting and satisfying food to make myself feel good. In The Cook's Book, there is a chicken bourride recipe. It looks rather nice for this damp days. Rich and thick yellowish aioli flavoured "soup" with juicy chicken pieces. I have made some modifications (well, I shouldn't have done it as my aim is to learn classic cooking skills ....but I think the additional orange juice would lighten the "soup" and give a more refreshing flavour and the orange pepper would add more vibrancy to the colour of the "soup")

For this modified chicken bourride, I used the following ingredients:

1. 1 Whole chicken (cut into quarters)
2. 1 tbsp Saffron threads
3. A pinch of ground cumin
4. Zest of 1 orange
5. 1 Orange pepper (cut to large chunks)
6. 1 Juice of orange
7. 1 Red chilli (de-seeded and cut into half)
8. 500ml Chicken stock
9. 10 Small potatoes (peeled and leave them whole)
10. 1/2 of lemon juice
11. 1 Leek (sliced into strips)
12. Olive oil for frying
13. Salt and pepper to marinate the chicken pieces (to taste)

First marinate the chicken with salt and pepper. In a deep stewing pot, heat the olive oil and gently seal the meal until lightly brown. Add saffron, cumin, orange zest, pepper and chilli in the chicken. Stir well. 

Pre-heat the oven to 190'C

Add the stock and potatoes to the chicken. Cover and bring the stock to the boil and lower the heat to simmer the chicken for 5 minutes. Then transfer the pot to the oven and cook for about 25 minutes. 

Meanwhile, prepare the aioli with the following ingredients:

1. 2 Egg yolks
2. 1 tbsp Wholegrain dijon mustard
3. 1tbsp Apple cider vinegar
4. 50ml vegetable oil
5. 50ml Olive oil
6. 4 Cloves of garlic (minced)

In a large bowl, add the egg yolks, mustard and vinegar, whisk to mix everything together. Mix the vegetable and olive oil together in a jar. Slowly whisk in the oil to the egg mixture. Finally, add the garlic, salt and pepper to taste. Set aside for later.

Once the chicken is cooked, remove the chicken and potatoes from the pot (careful with the pipping hot cover! I was careless enough to pick the hot handle up with my bare hand!! I am still in pain!) and set aside to let them cool down slightly. 

De-bone the chicken drumsticks and set aside separately. Separate the meat from the rest of the bird and set aside.

Cook the leek in some salted water until soften. Drain and set aside.

In the blender, add the stock (with pepper, chilli, and 4 potatoes) and meat from the drumstick. Blend then into a smooth texture. While blending, add the orange and lemon juice then slowly add the aioli (one tablespoonful at a time) to the mixture until the texture and taste that suit you.

Pour the smooth "soup" back to the chicken and potatoes in the pot. Fold in the leek strips. It is all ready to serve!

I shared this chicken bourride with my friend, Chris, while watching the movie Prometheus! A truly comfort food at these autumnal evening! 

I spent the last weekend watching all three series of Masterchef USA. Almost non-stop of full two days of Masterchef, I was exhausted but rather inspired. Masterchef USA is very different from the UK version. So much drama, and many full-of-themselves characters in the USA version. Contestants in the UK version seemed all too nicey and reserved! But I do like the UK version because It is more about the food on the plate rather than some out-spoken dramatic characters. 

The problem of watching so many hours of Masterchef in a weekend is that I am so wanted to do the "mystery box" challenge! I keep thinking what would I do if I was given those mystery boxes. (Do they really just bake something without a recipe? For the first time? One of the contestant, Monti Carlo said she didn't know what is fish sauce, but she made Tom Kha Gai! How can someone just know what is Tom Kha Gai if she doesn't even know about fish sauce?? Surely they have some kind of references behind the scene!)

Anyway, I was quite inspired after watching so many hours Masterchef, I just want to cook and experiment with food!
I bought a whole chicken to perfect my butchering skills. Quartered the chicken, de-boned the chicken legs and separating the breasts from the bone. I was going to throw away the nice large piece of the skin covering the breast, but then I thought it can used to make some chicken sausages with crispy skin. It will taste delicious with some freshly made tomato sauce.

To make the chicken sausage, I use the following ingredients: (make 1)

1. Large piece of unbroken chicken skin
2. 1 boneless chicken leg
3. 2 cloves of garlic
4. 1 fresh chilli
5. 1 small onion
6. 1 tbsp curry powder
7. 1 tsp coriander seeds
8. Salt and pepper to taste
9. Oil for frying the sausage

Preheat the oven to 180'C. Mince the chicken leg with all the ingredients (except the skin!) and carefully wrap the minced meat inside the chicken skin. Place the sausage shape meat on a piece of kitchen foil, and tightly wrap the sausage with the foil. Place it in the hot oven for 10 minutes to mould the final shape of the sausage.

To make the tomato sauce, roast three large tomatoes in the oven. when they are soften, remove the skin and place the whole tomatoes in the pan and cook slowly over the medium heat until they break down into juicy sauce. Season it with 1tbsp of sugar, one zest of lemon, juice of 1/2 a lemon, salt and pepper to taste. Continue cooking the tomato sauce until the juice is concentrated. Remove the pan from the heat and add 1-2 tbsp of olive oil. Set aside to cool.

Remove the sausage from the oven and unwrap it from the kitchen foil. Heat some oil in the pan and cook the sausage until the chicken skin is crisp and nicely caramelised.

Slice the sausage and serves it with some pea shoots and the concentrated tomato sauce. Delicious! It would make a nice starter to wake your appetite with the slightly tangy sauce or the light garlic lemony aioli sauce.

Finally found an alternative way to upload images on Weebly. I don't know what is going on with it, kept having problem to upload images direct from my computer. 

I have cooked/ learned quite a few dishes since April 2012. These Chinese Pork Jerky, (Bak Kwa) 肉干, were inspired by   the Biltong (South African beef jerky) my friend gave me to try. She mentioned about the kind of Chinese jerky she had when she was a child. After some research online, I found out that, the process of making the Chinese Pork Jerky is quite similar to Biltong (except the pork is marinated in some Chinese sauces and the end of the BBQ stage)

These Chinese pork jerky is a must-have-snack for Chinese New Year in Southeast Asia. You will find many pop-up stalls along the roadside, in front of the shops selling this snack. Each brand will have their own celebrity's endorsement. You will smell the sweet BBQ fragrance all over the street. It is the kind of snack always reminded me of Chinese New Year.

I have not been back to Malaysia to celebrate Chinese New Year with my family for few years. I have almost forgotten about the taste of these pork jerky. From my earlier jerky research, I came across some really easy recipes to make the Chinese pork jerky at home. It is so easy, I am starting to question why is it during Chinese New Year, these special snack is particularly expensive! I am sure a homemade version will be free of any preservatives and artificial food colourings!

To make this jerky at home, you will need the following ingredients:

1. 1kg Minced pork
2. 2 tbsp Soy sauce
3. 1 tbsp Dark soy sauce
   
4. 2 Large tbsp honey
5. 1/4 cup sugar (Ideally unrefined cane sugar)
6. 1 tbsp Chinese BBQ sauce (this can be found in Chinese Supermarket)
7. 1 tbsp Sesame seed oil

Put everything in a large bowl and mix well. Set aside to let it marinate for overnight.

When it is ready,  arrange some of the marinated minced pork in between two sheets of baking paper. Use a rolling pin, flatten them to about the thickness of 3-5mm. Carefully peel off the top sheet of the baking paper and set aside (with the bottom sheet of baking paper attached ) the flatten minced pork. Repeat the same process with new baking paper until you have used up all the minced pork.

Pre-heat the oven to 130'C. Bake each flatten minced pork sheet separately in a different tray for about 5-8 mins. The colour of the pork will be darken. Remove it from the oven, and set aside to cool down. Repeat the process until all minced pork sheets are baked. This is the first drying process.

Once the pork are cooled. Carefully remove it from the baking paper. Then cut the semi-dried pork sheet into squares (or rectangular shapes). You can keep the squares in a air-tight container for later use. Or you can turn the oven to 150'C to finalise the cooking process. Arrange the pork squares in the baking tray, return the tray to the oven and bake for about 5 mins or until the pork is fully cooked. These Chinese pork jerky should be moist and tender. Over cooked it, you will get a tough and hard jerky!

Now who want to place their order for this Chinese pork jerky for the coming Chinese New Year!??