Chinese Cuisine at Taylor's.

So my day started out as usual, me dragging myself into the bathroom, housemate wake up while I was in bathroom, but since I was in there, he went back to his room and sleep...so being a good housemate, I woke him up again after I was done.

=)

I'm very happy about that.
Moving on..

Pastry was the first class today, so we tried out hands on making Pandan Cake and Corn Cake, quite funky cakes if you ask me. I don't really fancy the taste. Since we do not have the real pandan, artificial pandan would have to replace it. For the corn cake, we used the cream corn in the can.

Just so you know, ever since we had our pastry classes in Term 2, we have to supply breads for the restaurant during their lunch service. Instead of the usual soft roll, we made baguette, and they turned out really good.

After all the bread making and cake decorating, Alex^2, Erwin and I went out for lunch. *Ahem* Budget lunch. I had charboiled pork chop with potatoes, mushroom soup, bread and a refreshing cup of JAsmine green tea, and it only costs me RM9.80.

>=D

Buahahahahah...BUDGET FOOD RULES!

Anyway, after lunch, we came back and Applied Kitchen Tech starts at 1:30pm.

Our theme was Chinese Cuisine, so on our menu was Chinese Spring Roll, Lemon Chicken, and Pan fried fish with Fermented Bean Sauce.

Jason and I were partners so we started our fairly well.

The Spring Rolls were the easiest.
So, RECIPES for you guys!!

These are all in estimated amount, you can have as little or as much as you want, I'll explain it later at the end.

You'll need:

- Chives

- Carrots

- Shitake mushrooms (soaked)

- Chinese black fungus (soaked)

- Cabbage

- Bamboo shoot

- Garlic

- Shallots

- Prawns

- Cooking oil

- Popiah skin

1. Cut the chives, carrots, shitake mushroom, black fungus, cabbage, bamboo shoot into matchstick size.
2. Crush the garlic and slice shallots.
3. Dice up some prawns.
4. Heat up cooking oil in a pan and pan fry the garlic and shallots.
NOTE: Make sure you don't burn it at this point because nothing is nice when it's burnt!
5. Toss in the other matchstick-sized vegetables you cut before, and pan fry it together.
6. Finally add in the prawn.
7. Season with salt and pepper to your desired taste.
8. When it is done, set aside and prepare your popiah skin.
NOTE: Place the popiah skin in a diamond shape in front of you.
9. Place the filling in the middle of the popiah skin before having the left and right side folded in. Then roll from the bottom to the top, or vice-versa.
10. Fry it in oil, and it's ready when it's golden brown...NOT totally brown. You know you're burning it when the sides of the popiah skin gets black.

Next was the Fish with Fermented Bean Sauce. For this dish, we used Dory fillet.

You'll need:

- Garlic

- Ginger

- Chillies

- Spring onions

- Rice wine

- Sugar

- Soy Sauce

- Vinegar

- Cornflour

- Fermented Beans (those sold in cans/glass bottles)

1. Rub the fish with rice wine and salt, and pan fry it on both side.
2. Dice the garlic, ginger and spring onion into little cubes. Remove the seed from the chillies before you dice it too.
3. Fry the diced items in a little oil that was used to fry the fish. This gives it a little flavour. After a few minutes (based on your instincts, yea?), add in a small amount of fermented bean paste.
NOTE: This is very strong stuff, a whole teaspoon will have you loosing your hair before you even taste it! It's extremely salty!
4. Mix the rice wine, soy sauce, sugar, vinegar and a little water into your cooked items, and let it boil, then reduce the fire and let it simmer. This will be your sauce.

Okay, at this point, there are many ways of doing it, but I'll give you 2 easiest choice.

You can either put the fried fish in the sauce

OR

you can spread the sauce over the fried fish.

I'll be writing on the first option, the 2nd one is just as it is.

5. Mix cornflour and water, then add it in to your sauce. Stir it and let it reduce till you get your desired consistency.
6. When our cornflour goes in, stir it a while before adding in the fish.
7. Continue to let your sauce and fish simmer before plating it.

Lemon Chicken is my favourite. It was done before the spring roll even had a chance to peek out of it's plastic!

You'll need:

- Chicken (cut into strips)

- Flour

- Cornflour

- Egg

- Sugar

- Salt

- Lemon

- Custard powder

1. Make the frying batter by mixing the flour, cornflour, egg, salt, pepper, and water together.

2. Toss the chicken strips with custard powder. Dip it into the batter, and fry, then set aside.

3. For the Lemon Sauce, add lemon, sugar, salt, and a little bit of water together before simmering it.

4. Dissolve custard powder with water before you add it into the lemon sauce to thicken it.

5. Adjust the taste to your liking.

THAT'S ALL!

Everything is done, and it takes you less than 2 hours to have a 3 course meal.

=)

As you can see, I did not mention any measurement for the ingredients, because everyone have their own unique taste. If I said, 80 grams of shitake mushroon, and the individual does not like it, then it's a waste of mushroom. So adjust to your own liking. This way, you get to experiment on your tastebuds. If you want it sweet, add sugar. Like it more salty, add more salt.

********************

Tomorrow we'll continue witl more Chinese Cuisine,

and I'll update AFTER I play Harry Potter board games with Coffee.