Rice with Chinese Five Spice Pork Belly - Video

Update: Thank you everyone who watched, liked and shared the video.  I truly appreciate it.  But unfortunately the video did not make it to the next stage :(  Not to worry though, I'm sure there will be other opportunity.  I also have a new video which will be uploaded very soon, so be sure to check it out.  Again, thank you and have a delicious day! x

Rice is a staple ingredient in my family... We eat it almost everyday and we buy it by the sackful... It makes sense because rice is indeed a great neutral carbohydrate to which you can cook and eat with many dishes... both savoury and sweet... Vanilla rice pudding with cinnamon-y stewed apples, anyone? :)

This time I want to share with you a lovely one pot (or wok, in my case) meal, that is, rice with Chinese five spice pork belly.  It's super quick to make, affordable and utterly delicious...

I adore Chinese five spice... It's a wonderful blend of spices including fennel seeds, star anise, cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg.  And it is brilliant with pork belly.  Try rubbing the five spice on the pork belly rind with some salt and oil for your next Sunday roast... and you'll have amazing crackling, I promise.  My mouth waters just thinking about it...

Moving on... I cook the rice with homemade pork stock... and please do not panic!  It takes hardly any work to make...  If you get your pork belly from the butcher, do ask for some of the pig bones.  They are fantastic and they give wonderful sweetness to the stock.  Simply cover the bones with water in a pot and cook with a few couple of cloves of garlic, salt and black peppercorns (by all means add some carrots, onions, bay leaves and thyme if you want to go the whole shebang)... Let it comes to a boil and then simmer... carefully skim off any foam that comes to the top and voila... you have a pork stock.

Veg-wise I use pak choi, and you can use others... But I would suggest you use greens that can stand to the cooking and won't wilt to a mush... soft lettuces will not work here, but cabbage, kale or Swiss chard will be lovely.

This video is also my entry for Jamie Oliver's search for a food tube star competition.  I must say, filming a video for the internet is scary, and submitting it for a competition is just scary at a whole new level... but exciting at the same time :) I want to say a huge thank you to my friends Oflavia and Vincent for lending their cameras and talents... You guys are awesome.

I hope you will enjoy watching the video and I'd appreciate it if you can support me by hitting the 'thumbs-up' button on the channel.  Thank you so much in advance... Have a delicious day!

Rice with Chinese Five Spice Pork Belly
Recipe by Me

1 onion
4 red chillies
A small bunch of fresh coriander stalks
8 dried shiitake mushrooms, soaked in 100 ml of hot water
200 grams pork belly, diced
2 tablespoons Chinese five spice powder
300 grams rice, rinse under cold running water until the water underneath runs clear
100 ml Shaoxing rice wine
700 ml pork stock or chicken stock
Baby pak choi
Fresh coriander leaves
Olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Lime and Rosewater Drizzle Cake

One of the things I miss most about England and working in an office is that ritual in the afternoon, around 3 o'clock, when my colleagues and I make ourselves a cup of tea or coffee.  And with our hot drinks we usually have something sweet, be it scones, rocky road, biscuits and on Fridays, we often have a slice of cake or two.

This past week, I really fancy a cake to go with my afternoon tea.  In this currently very hot weather, chocolate cake I think would just be too rich (you read that right and obviously I didn't mean it).  I wanted something fresh, so I decided to bake a lemon and rosewater drizzle cake.

I went to the market and I was shocked that I couldn't find any lemons... not a single one.  I went to another market and same thing happened.  I was disgusted (totally a first world problem).  But this didn't stop me from baking... I just have to improvise and use the next closest citrus... lime.

And it worked brilliantly! The cake is just what I wanted... light and fresh.  And the sharpness from the lime syrup with the perfume-y rosewater is beautiful.  I happen to absolutely love rosewater... The recipe below states two teaspoons of rosewater and I may have actually used a bit more, but start with one teaspoon because rosewater is a strong ingredient.  A little bit goes a long way.  A touch in the background is nice, but too much feels like eating a bowl of potpourri.  Anyone else a fan of rosewater?

In case if you're wondering, I did not take any of these pictures.  My friend Vincent who has been helping me with the video blog, is a keen photographer and asked if he could take some photos for the blog... an offer obviously I simply can not refuse.  But please don't get too used to this fancy treatments.... very soon, sometime this week in fact, Vincent is leaving for university :( So, I want to wish him the best of luck and thanking him for all the help these past weeks.

Lime and Rosewater Drizzle Cake
Recipe by Me

200 gr soft, unsalted butter
200 gr caster sugar
zest of 3 limes (save the juice for the syrup)
3 large eggs
125 gr plain flour
25 gr corn flour
1 tsp baking powder
a pinch of salt
1 tsp vanilla paste, or the seeds from 1 vanilla pod

For the lime and rosewater syrup
Juice of 3 limes
100 grams icing sugar
2 teaspoons rosewater

Preheat your oven to 180 C and line the base of your 20 cm cake tin with greaseproof paper and grease its sides lightly with butter.  In a bowl, add the butter, sugar and the lime zest. 

Cream the butter, sugar and zest.  But don't just mix it; really whip it until the butter is pale and fluffy.  This will result in a really soft and light crumbs.

I use a free standing mixer which makes it so effortless.  But a hand mixer or even by hand with a wooden spoon is possible.  You just need a little (a lot of) elbow grease. 

In a bowl measure out the flours, baking powder and a pinch of salt.  Then what I like to do is to add in the egg one at a time to the butter mixture, alternating with the dry ingredients.

Though in this occasion I accidentally cracked two eggs, followed by two thirds of the dry ingredients... mixing well... and then the last egg and the rest of the dry ingredients.  Then mix in the vanilla paste.

Pour the batter into your prepared tin and bake for about 35 minutes.

In the meantime, in a saucepan, make the syrup by boiling the lime juice and icing sugar.  When the icing sugar is dissolved, take the syrup off the heat and let it cool a little bit.  Then add the rosewater and give it a stir. 

You'll notice the cake is done when the edges of the cake have begun to shrink away from the sides of the tin.  Remove it from the oven to a cooling rack, but keep it in its tin.  Prick the top of the cake with cake tester or I actually used a thin spaghetti for minimal damage.... using a regular wooden skewer will cause too big holes.  Remove the cake from the tin and pour the warm lime and rosewater syrup all over the cake. 

Make yourself a cup of tea and you know what to do...

White Chocolate and Coconut Brownies - Video

Don't worry, you have arrived at the right blog!  So, how are you liking the new layout?  I've been using the same template since I started this blog and I think it's time to give the blog an update.  I am still playing around with the design, so please bear with me...

I want to thank you to my talented friend Oflavia who created the blog header.  And a big thank you to everyone for your support on my previous video, Indonesian beef rendang.  It really gives us the encouragements and confidence to create more videos in the future.  And guess what, here's another one!

I was looking through my recipe journal and I came across this white chocolate and coconut brownie recipe which I have not made in years.  The last time I baked this I believe was second year at uni, so it's definitely going back a few years.  I had some friends over for a fajita dinner, and I served these brownies at the end of our meal.   They're so delicious, one of the guests gave me a kiss (oh you know who you are).

Whether if you're aiming for a kiss or not, you should give this a go.  They're not too sweet which I love, but that's a personal preference.  You can add the sugar quantity if you want to...  I love with every bite you get little nuggets of white chocolate and the combination with the coconut is gorgeous.

Before you watch the video, I want to talk you through some of the behind the scenes photos... and all the fun we had in the process.  Starting with the opening sequence as pictured below.  This two second clip was the longest to shoot.  We cut out a paper, and use this as a trace for the flour to create all the letters.  The using a small pastry brush we sharpen the edges, tidy them up and make it all... pretty.   I'm not very crafty and this was a true test of my patience... because not only we had to make this once, but twice... because the first shoot did not work (you'll see later in the video outtakes).

Here's the team hard at work :)

Next was the ingredients list photo shoot which involved me laying on the kitchen floor, under a chair.... We've all been there right?  Well, you've got to do what you've got to do.

Am I starting a new trend here? baking on the floor? No?

And here's the finished picture.  Please ignore my ridiculously veiny hand....

Without further a due, here's the new video!  I hope you enjoy watching it as much as we enjoy creating it for you.  Please give it a thumbs up if you have YouTube account or subscribe for more videos in the future.  Thank you and enjoy the rest of your Sunday... x

Piri-Piri Chicken

Technology had not been on my side the past couple of weeks. First with the sudden death of my laptop... It was working fine one morning and few hours later it just died... Then the next day the home internet decided to stop working too. Great! So apologies, if I haven't been in touch the past few days...

Anyway, the internet is up and running again, or at least for now... But I still have no laptop... so I'm posting this from the blogger app for the iPhone. I hope this will look alright.

OK, enough with my first world problems... And I want to share with you this piri-piri (or is it peri-peri?) chicken. 

I was first introduced to piri-piri chicken at Nando's (I think they call it peri-peri chicken there) several years ago. And I've been meaning to create a homemade version and so here it is... And I am very happy with the result... I'll be cooking this often I can tell you.

I don't think giving exact quantities for the ingredients is absolutely necessary here to be honest. It all depends how hot and spicy you want the chicken to be. I like mine spicy but still pleasurable.

I make the marinade by blending half an onion, a couple of cloves of garlic, about ten fresh red chillies (seeds and all), smoked paprika, a small bunch of fresh coriander (not just the leaves but also the stalks which will add to the flavour), zest and juice of one lime for freshness, a bit more tang courtesy of rice wine vinegar, a teaspoon of dried oregano, few dashes of Worcestershire sauce, a pinch of sugar to balance all the flavours, regular vegetable oil, salt and freshly ground black pepper. Blend until smooth.

As per usual I use chicken thighs and drumsticks only because I prefer the dark meat. I think they have more flavours and are cheaper than the white meat. And to really get the flavours of the marinade to penetrate into the chicken, I make few slits to the legs using a sharp knife. Then pour over the spicy marinade, reserving some for basting. Cover with cling film and keep in the fridge for few hours or overnight.

Take the chicken out about half an hour before cooking so that it's not fridge cold. I cook the chicken on the stove and finish them off in the oven grill to get the 'charred' look, basting a couple of times using the reserved marinade. But if the weather is nice, of course you can grill them outside on the bbq. I serve the chicken with brown rice and grilled corn on the cob. Utterly delicious.

(Indonesian) Beef Rendang - Video

Beef rendang is no doubt one of the quintessential cuisine of Indonesia.  And it is also one of my all time favourite food.  But, just in case if you never heard of rendang, it is a form of dry curry from West Sumatra, traditionally made with beef.  The beef is slowly stewed in a mixture of spices and coconut milk until it's meltingly tender.  It does take a little bit of time to cook, though saying that it's not too terrible time-consuming, and it's easy!

I make no claim whatsoever that this recipe of mine is authentically Indonesian.  This is my version of beef rendang and it is delicious... and that what matters to me.

If you don't want to use beef, chicken is great too (I recommend using chicken thighs or drumsticks, not breasts as they might go stringy) or even venison or lamb will be lovely too.

Beef Rendang - Photo by Vincent Wilfred

...and yes!! It's another video blog (vlog). The past few weeks, a couple of friends and I have been working on some ideas to make this vlog a regular feature here.  I am so grateful to be surrounded by many talented people and I thank my friends, Oflavia and Vincent for putting this video together.  I hope you enjoy watching the video, and if you do I would appreciate if you give it a 'thumbs up/like' at the channel or subscribe for more contents.  Thank you! :)

Beef Rendang

Recipe by Me

2 medium onions
6 cloves of garlic
1 thumb size piece of ginger
6 red chillies
2 sticks of lemongrass
2 teaspoons dried chilli flakes
1 tablespoon ground coriander
1 tablespoon ground cumin
2 cinnamon sticks
2 bay leaves
6 cloves
400 ml coconut milk
200 ml water, plus more
Fresh tamarind or tamarind paste or lemon juice
Sweetened soy sauce
1 kg beef tenderloin or braising beef

And here's how I make it...