Soya Sauce Pork

200g pork belly
400g pork shoulder/pork cheek
Half a stick of cinnamon
4 cloves -- like the spice, see below for the garlic
6 cloves of garlic
100ml of best quality Thai or Chinese light soy
1/4 tsp salt
1 tbsp Chinese rice wine
1/2 tbsp sugar
500ml chicken or pork broth

Cut all meat into 2 inch cubes. Pork cheeks naturally come in the right size.

Bring a pot of water to boil with a spoonful each of salt and rice wine. Put the meat in, and simmer for 15 minutes. Drain. Throw away the water.

Put all the ingredients into a pot. The liquid should at least cover the meat. Cover with foil. Put in oven (no fan) at 130C for 4-6 hours, or even overnight.

Serve with rice.

Notes:

You can skip the pork belly, but I would encourage you to use a cut with a good amount of fat and collagen to break down. It gives the sauce an unctuousness that is out of this world good. If you want to freeze portions, I would definitely encourage you to keep the fat because I find it freezes better that way.

There is a version of this with chicken, but I have never made it. I’m not sure that beef would have the right flavor either.

After the meat is done cooking, you can add potatoes (scrub, skin off, and cut into big chunks) and hard boiled eggs (after shelling of course). My mother often adds tofu puffs too.

You can use less liquid. But I often pour off some of the sauce and freeze. I use it in stir fries in place of soy sauce and chicken stock, other stews (it’s like my secret mother sauce) and it’s also really good if you cook some meat balls or mince in it and serve with rice.

You can also use water instead. This will work best if you pack the meat in really tightly into a small pot and cover it really tightly, so the meat makes it’s ‘own’ broth as you stew.

The best soy sauce I can get to easily is Thai, and is called Healthy Boy.

Do not skip the bit of 1/4 tsp of salt. I have done that and you do actually notice the lack. 

Pressure Cooker Rice Porridge

Ingredients: 
100g rice
1.3 liters water + stock
Spoonful of oil -- not necessary
Salt
Soy sauce

Throw everything in the electric pressure cooker and cook at high pressure for 20 minutes.

Release pressure and open the pot. Stir, then put it back in the pressure cooker for another 10 minutes. At this point, you may also add meat or meatballs.

Notes: 
I've found that leaving it in the pressure cooker for 30 minutes straight causes the rice to clump at the bottom. I'm afraid of burning the porridge, plus the texture seems more silky if I give it a stir part way through.

Pork scotch fillet does wonderful things sitting 10-15 minutes in the pressure cooker.

Spicy Fried Minced Pork with Sichuan Chilli Oil

Ingredients: 

Ingredients A:
300g minced pork -- a little fat is good, otherwise it will be dry
1 tbsp water -- or stock if you have it
1/8 tsp ground white pepper
1 tsp soy sauce
1 tsp sesame oil

2tbsp oil
1 inch ginger -- finely chopped
1 spring onion -- finely chopped

2 tbsp Sichuan Chilli Oil -- with goop / sediment

Put the minced pork in a bowl. Add the remaining items from Ingredients A one at a time, stirring in between.

Heat the oil in a wok. Add the ginger, and stir fry until the fragrance is released. Add the spring onion, and do the same.

Add the minced pork with a large pinch of salt. Break it up into little clumps as it browns.

Serve over hot rice.

Notes: 

I did not have any, but I'd recommend adding some cooking wine -- mirin, sake, Shaoxing -- to the minced pork as part of Ingredients A.

Sticky Chai v.1

Ingredients: 
100g black Ceylon tea
15g cinnamon sticks
5g whole clove
20g vanilla powder
5g turmeric powder
15g dried ginger
5g aniseed
3g licorice root
5g whole green cardamom
10g black peppercorn
5g coriander seed
200g yellow box honey

Break the cinnamon sticks in half, and pull them apart.

Crack open the cardamom pods, and extract the seeds from the pods -- keep the pods.

Break up the slices of dried ginger -- pull apart with your fingers or chop.

Pour all the dry ingredients into a bowl, then pour the honey on top and stir. Everything should be moist with honey, without dry spots. Put into a jar and leave it in a dark and cool cupboard for 2 weeks.

Notes: 
I am making my own Sticky Chai because I find the original one to be too sweet, not spicy enough and lacking in licorice/aniseed flavor that Matthias so loves.

I did not mix this by hand. I recommend using your stand mixer on the lower setting, with a dough hook. It is less work to clean the dough hook and bowl than to do this by hand.

Using the dough hook also minimises the crushing of the spices. While some crushing is ideal (that is why I pull apart the cinnamon sticks), I suspect that crushing or grinding the mixture down may cause some of the spices -- particularly the clove and the star anise -- to taste too bitter in the final product.

I only used yellow box honey because it was cheaper. Any regular honey will be fine. I plan on making a batch with maple syrup at some point, but with less of the aniseed.

Tasting Notes: 

Makes for a very mellow, and mild chai. I have to add some fresh ground pepper and chopped ginger to give it even the slightest kick.

Maple Cake

Ingredients: 

4 egg whites
50g sugar

50g flour
20g sugar
100g milk
1 egg yolk
maple extract
vanilla bean paste -- optional
pinch of salt

50g flour
1/4tsp baking powder

Dissolve sugar in warm milk. Whisk milk into first 50g of flour, followed by egg yolk, extract, and salt.

Beat egg whites until stiff with the sugar. Pour milk mixture in while whisking, then sift into flour.

Divide into 12 cupcake forms and bake at 160C.

Notes: 
The cupcakes did not open up, and were too chewy. I think that was too much milk for 12 cupcakes. I am going to increase the egg yolks and decrease the milk.

Fennel and Potatoes in Cream

Adapted from Food52

Ingredients: 

1 fennel head
5 potatoes

black pepper
2tsp coarse salt
1 bay leaf
200g milk
200g cream

Chunk up the potatoes.

Cut off the fronds and other dark green bits of the fennel for another use. Quarter it, cut off the hard rooty bit, and pull it apart. Slice them into roughly the same dimensions as the potatoes.

Pour the rest of the ingredients into a pan, and warm up on low heat. Stir, then add the potatoes and the fennel.

If the milk does not submerge the vegetables completely, cover the pot. Keep an eye on it because milk has a tendency to bubble up and out of the pan and it is a terrible mess to clean up.

Cook for about twenty minutes, or until tender. Taste for salt.

At this point, you can drain the vegetables, reserving the milk liquid for another use. You can serve the vegetables at this point.

You can also portion them out onto gratin dishes and broil them until crispy. I recommend brushing a bit of oil over the top to help it crisp up faster.

Notes: 

You can swap out the fennel for leeks, if you like, or the potatoes for another root vegetable. Parsnip would probably work well.

For flavor, you can add a clove of garlic, garam masala, chilli flakes, amongst other things, to the milk. But if you use fennel, I actually suggest adding fennel seed instead, because I am afraid the garlic etc will over power the fennel.

Next time, I will probably not use cream. It is not necessary.

You can use the milk after that in a roux-based sauce. I plan to fry up some steak in butter, use that to make a roux and dump in the milk after that.

Green Tea Ice Cream

Ingredients: 

27g matcha powder
180g condensed milk
450g heavy cream -- 40% fat

Dump everything into a mixing bowl, and whip until stiff.

Please keep an eye on the mixture as it whips up pretty quick if your cream is cold.

Scoop into container and freeze for at least 6 hours.

Notes:

I assume that you will not be able to resist having a taste of the mixture before it freezes. The matcha powder, before freezing, will be a touch too much, but it will smooth out after freezing.

You can also put this into an ice cream maker, but I do not have one.

I am going to try this recipe for condensed milk soon, with the coconut sugar.