Bak Kua (Chinese Pork Jerky)

Bak Kua, my all time favorite when I was a kid and now too.  Love to sandwich it in bread and have it as breakfast.  This is also one favorite for Chinese New Year, people give this as gift in Malaysia.  They also served this for people who visits their houses.  When I moved here, bak kua was non-existence.  All I found that was similar to this is American beef jerky which I couldn't stomach.  Then, four years ago, I found a very easy bak kua recipe shared by a fellow blogging friend.  I tried it and loved it and have been making it all these years.

 

This recipe is so easy to make and trust me it is really good.  The above has about 1lb. of ground pork, I thought I might be able to share with my friends until my hubby spotted it.  He never dared to try the bak kua I made all these years (he thinks it was yucky so more for us) and suddenly he came and grabbed a piece to try and kept coming back for more and more.  Needless to say, any food that he set his eyes on, will be gone in no time.  He only left few pieces for my girls and I.

Gong Xi Fa Cai & Xin Nian Kuai Le!!!

I want to wish all my readers a Happy Chinese New Year and may this new year brings you prosperity, health, happiness and things that you wished for.  I am off to celebrate Chinese New Year eve reunion dinner at auntie Lily's house.  Yeah I know I am lucky because I get to eat her Yu Sang and all the cookies she made for Chinese New Year. 


Go home and have a reunion dinner with your parents, family and relatives.  Nothing spread joy more than having your loved and closed ones close by and have a feast together.  Sharing food, laughter, stories and fun together.  Have a good one you all and enjoy all the 15 days of Lunar New Year.

Valentine's Day Cookies

Chinese New Year falls on Valentine's Day this year so we see some of the Chinese New Year cookies this year were made into heart shape.  I didn't plan on making this cookies actually but I was left with some pineapple dough from making the Nastar.  So, I rolled out the dough, cut it with a lovely heart shape cookie press and put the middle with raspberry preserved.  Valentine's Day needs some red color right?  So, raspberry or strawberry preserved was the best choice for me.  Lovely isn't it?

Be careful not to put too much preserved in the middle as it would spilled out during baking.  But it was still okay, just scrape off the spill preserved when cool.  I baked them in preheated 350'F oven for 12 minutes.  I didn't apply egg wash on them because I didn't want to ruin the look of the raspberry preserved.

Here wishing all my readers a Sweet and Happy Valentine's Day and a Prosperous and Healthy Lunar New Year!!! 

Pineapple Tarts 2010

These pineapple rolls were also called nastar.  This was the first time I made a successful nastar actually because previously I just couldn't roll the pastry out from the nastar molds that I bought.  It was so hard that I just gave up.  When I went back to Malaysia in 2008, I saw another plastic nastar mold with a push stick to push the dough out, I quickly grabbed one.  And it worked!  It made my life so much easier with this new tool.

I spent the whole afternoon and only managed to produce 59 nastars, like shown above!  Like I said before, this was one cookie that took time to make and could be finished in on time.  My pineapple pastry and short-cut jam recipes can be found here. 

This pastry is soft and melt-in-the-mouth type. Some were not as pretty because after a while I just wouldn't be bother anymore.  :P  Great thing is it is just for home consumption.

Below is the picture of the mold I used to make this pineapple rolls.

Stir Fried Roasted Pork Belly with Dark Soy Sauce

My mom used to cook this for us with the leftover roasted pork (siew york) when we were little. This is definitely a childhood memory dish for me. I love love roasted pork belly when I was young, I remember whenever we go to the chicken rice stall, I would request for siew york. And then when I was in my teenage years, I started to be more health conscious and hardly ever touch any pork fat and chicken skin anymore. And when I moved to the States, in a small town with hardly any Asian population, there was no roasted pork belly in sight. It was something that you couldn't buy with money. Luckily now I live an hour away from Denver, so roasted pork belly is selling in most authentic Chinese restaurants and easy to come by. We still eat it sparingly as frankly it is not a healthy food choice at all. But it is a childhood dish so once in a very long time is acceptable for me. Recently my hubby bought a big slab of roasted pork from Denver and we had some leftover, so I slice it thinly and made this delicious dish.

Note:
Yeah I don't know why the people don't know how to slice the roasted pork like in M'sia/S'pore. We sliced it so nicely thin and arrange it so nicely for the customer (we can see the roasted skin, layers of fat and meat). But here, they just simply chop it however they want and in disorganized big pieces that I couldn't see all the layers and meat. Now I know, we have to cut it ourselves when order it again.

Kuih Bangkit 2010

My kuih bangkit for 2010.  Same old recipe but using a new cookie cutter.  Too lazy to pinch pattern also.  I wonder how people got energy to make tons to sell?

Recipe can be found here.

Step by step pictures guide here.