Air Fried Hawker Style BBQ Chicken Wings

Today marked the 9th year we made Melbourne our home. Can't believe how time flew by. As the saying goes, time flies when you are having fun! Can't agree more!

Bought some really good sized chicken wings to make hawker style BBQ wings the previous week for a new year get together. Kids loved them so much that they requested to have them again. Very lucky to get the same size wings again from the same shop over the weekend so got them prepped and ready to cook for dinner tonight.

These wings were marinated overnight and the flavors of the marinate permeated through the wings and they are extremely flavorful. You can grill them in the oven or even on the BBQ pit... charcoal heat will be even better especially with some charring! Squeeze some calamansi limes over them and you are good to go! If you like your wings spicy... dip with some sambal belacan!

This recipe is modified slightly from here.

Ingredients

2 kg        Chicken wings (12 to 15 pcs)

70g         Shallots

30g         Ginger

8 cloves  Garlic

3tbsp      Sesame seed oil

1tbsp      Cooking oil

2tbsp      Caramelized dark soy sauce

4tbsp      Light soy sauce

2tbsp      Fish sauce

2tbsp      Oyster sauce

2tbsp      Honey/Golden syrup

½tsp       Chili powder

½tsp       White pepper

1tsp        Salt

Satay sticks/Skewers

Methods

1. Wash and pat dry chicken wings with paper towel.
2. In a blender, blend together shallots, ginger, garlic, sesame seed oil and cooking oil into fine paste.
3. In a mixing bowl, mix shallot paste with the rest of the ingredients and pour over chicken wings. Turn them around to coat them well. Cover and let them marinate overnight in the fridge.
4. Push skewer through each wing so they are straighten before arranging them in the air fryer. Only 1 layer at a time as stacking will not achieve even browning.
5. Air fry at 175°C for 5 minutes, brush with the remaining marinate sauce and continue to air fry for 5 mins. Brush with the marinate sauce again and air fry for another 2 mins (adjust cooking time accordingly depending on size of chicken wings).
6. Serve warm with squeeze of calamansi limes or limes and sambal belacan.

* You can grill in the oven at 200°C for 20 mins or over charcoal BBQ pit.

Gula Melaka Banana Cake

When I was younger, I love eating banana cakes. Used to buy the whole loaf from the night market as in those days we hardly do any baking at home. My mom is not too keen to bake then. Also, it was more convenient to just buy as bake goods were not too expensive in those days.

I must say that over the years, the humble banana cake has evolved quite a bit as people are adding more ingredients into it and came out with all sorts of modified banana cakes or even breads which are more western types that has a more compact or denser texture.  

Here is a version where Gula Melaka was added to further enhance the aroma of this all time favorite.

Ingredients

• 180g butter
• 60g castor sugar
• 50g brown sugar
• 280g all purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp soda bicarbonate powder
• 4 eggs (beaten)
• 300g bananas (mashed)
• 90g gula Melaka
• 3 tsp water

Methods

1. Preheat oven to 160°C.
2. Sift all purpose flour, baking powder and soda bicarbonate powder, set aside.
3. Beat butter, brown sugar and castor sugar with a mixer till light and fluffy.
4. Add in beaten eggs in 4 additions.
5. In a small sauce pan heat up water and shaved gula Melaka to melt.
6. Mix mashed bananas and melted gula Melaka and pour into mixture.
7. Fold in flour in 3 additions.
8. Pour batter into greased or lined loaf pan. Sprinkle some shaved Gula Melaka and brown sugar on the surface before sending into oven.
9. Bake for 70 mins on the second lower rack of the oven. Check for doneness with a cake tester before removing from oven.

Choy Keuk/Kiam Chai Boey/Left Over Soup with Mustard Cabbage

My dad came from a rather big family so every time when there's a celebration or festival, we get to eat lots of food as grandma will dish out dishes after dishes of yummy goodness. Sometimes she cooked so much, there tend to be lots of left over. Later on, when grandma retired from cooking duties for these events, we will dine in restaurants and will often have left over too. What do grandma do with these left over? She will dump all of these into a huge pot and boil it with kai-choy (mustard cabbage) and turned it into this soul warming goodness that we called Choy Keuk (Cantonese) or Kiam Chai Boey (Hokkien). You won't believe that a melting pot of mixed flavors can be so good!

Though I love this dish but I did not know how to cook this dish until I moved here! My hubby loved this dish so much that I decided to learn how to cook it! I tried to recollect my memories of how to prepare this dish after watching grandma and my sis-in-law cooking it. Grandma is a Cantonese and sis-in-law is Hokkien so I sort of merged the two together and finding the taste that best suited us. It is so easy and so appetising!

The only thing is, we hardly have much left over! Then I learned from some cooking groups that I can actually cook it from scratch without needing much left over dishes but rather buying left over roasted meat instead! Yes, the flavors from roasted meat (siew yuk or roasted pork, roasted duck and roasted pork bones) is the perfect ingredient. I will usually go to the Chinese restaurants to buy duck heads (you won't believe it but these are the flavor bomb!) and roasted pork bones. These are not very costly and they are the best to create the base for the soup. If you have left over pork maw soup, it is the best as the soup base to add extra flavors.

Why only use mustard cabbage for this dish? Apparently this is the only vegetable that can hold its shape even after long period of boiling. However, the Chinese's belief that these mustard cabbage is on the cooling side so try not to eat too much else it may cause joint pain. In other cases, eating too much of this soup might cause bloating. 

Ingredients

• 5 pcs        Roasted duck heads (together with neck)
• 500g        Roasted pork bones
• 1 pc         Roasted pork knuckle
• 3              Onions - quartered
• 6 stalks    Lemongrass - smashed
• 10            Dried chilies - deseeded
• 10            Dried assam Gelugor slices - washed
• 1 bulb      Garlic - slightly smashed
• 2" knob   Ginger - slightly smashed
• 2              Tomatoes - quartered
• 2 sticks    Carrots - cut chunks
• 2 heads    Mustard cabbage/Kai choy (separate the thick parts from the leafy parts)
• 5L            Water/Soup stock
• 2-3 tbsp   Cooking oil
• Salt to taste
• Whatever left over meat dishes you have (not fish)

Methods

1. Heat oil in a deep soup pot (I used pressure cooker) and fry onions, lemongrass, ginger, garlic, dried chilies and assam slices till slightly brown and aromatic. 
2. Pour in water or soup stock and boil till bubbling, add in the duck heads, roasted bones and pork knuckle. Boil for an hour or half and hour if using pressure cooker. This is to extract the flavors from the roasted meat.
3. Fish out the beak part of the duck heads (if you don't want to eat broken up pieces of them!). Add in carrots and tomatoes and let it continue to boil for 15 mins.
4. Put in the thicker parts of the mustard cabbage and let it boil for 15 minutes before putting the leafy parts in. 
5. Season with salt before serving. Best to leave it over night for the mustard cabbage to soak in the flavors.

 

Pan Fried Pork Patties

I was making some stuffed squids for a project and was left with some of the pork stuffing used so decided to just pan fried them. Turned out they are pretty yummy cooked this way too! Kids loved it so asked if I could cook again? Can't say no since it is such an easy dish to do!

Ingredients

250g         Pork mince
½ tbsp      Minced ginger
½ tbsp      Minced garlic
2 stalks    Spring onions (white parts - chopped)
½             Red chilli (chopped coarsely)
2 tsp        Fish sauce
2 tsp        Light soy sauce
1 tsp        Corn flour
                A dash of pepper

Methods

1. In a mixing bowl, mash up the pork mince with minced garlic, minced ginger, red chilli, fish sauce, light soy sauce and corn flour. Lastly, add in the white part of the chopped spring onions. Mix well.
2. Roll the meat mixture into a huge ball and drop from a height back into the mixing bowl for at least 10 times. This step will help to bind the meat with all the ingredients.
3. Divide into desired portions about 8 to 10 and roll into a ball.
4. Heat up frying pan with some oil and flatten each ball before frying for 4 to 5 minutes on each side till cook.
5. Garnish with chopped green parts of the spring onions.

Lemongrass Chicken Skewers with Special Dipping Sauce

I was working on a project to use chicken as the main protein which is easy to prepare and decided to use one of the recipes found in my book. As I seldom like to copy other bloggers' recipes, I will try to mix and match recipes from books, internet or from cooking shows that I've watch to come out with something. The initial protein used for this recipe was pork but using chicken is just as good.

The recipe from my book does not have any dipping sauce as it was meant for kids' bento. However, I felt that it will be good to add additional flavors to make the dish taste even better. My kids agreed that the dipping sauce did elevate the entire dish to a different level.

Ingredients

500g         Chicken thigh
2 stalks     Lemongrass
4 cloves    Garlic
2 tbsp       Fish sauce
½ tsp        Salt
1½ tbsp    Raw sugar
1 tsp         Cooking oil
1 tbsp       Dark soy sauce
a dash of black pepper
A couple of cilantro with roots (coriander)
Bamboo skewers/ satay sticks

Methods

1. Cut chicken thigh into 1" cubes without skin.
2. Pound lemongrass and garlic with a pestle and mortar into fine paste.
3. Mix the chicken cubes with salt, sugar, fish sauce, dark soy sauce, cilantro (with roots), pepper, pounded paste and cooking oil. Marinate for at least 2 to 4 hours.
4. String marinated chicken cubes with bamboo skewers.
5. Heat grill pan with some oil and grill the chicken skewers till cooked.

Special Dipping Sauce

3 tbsp     Rice vinegar

3 tbsp     Lemon juice

1 tbsp     Fish sauce

3 cloves Garlic (minced)

1             Red chilli (chopped finely)

1             Bird eye chilli (optional for spicier taste)

½ tsp      Salt

1 stalk    Cilantro (chopped finely)

Methods

Mix all ingredients together.

Kuih Bingka Ubi (Baked Cassava/Tapioca Cake)

I am not a huge fan of sweet food but I like cooking or baking them. When we first moved here, its not easy to find a lot of food that we used to eat back home. Over time it gets better but sometimes it can be costly and the taste may not suite our taste buds. Luckily with internet, I get to learn to cook a lot of food that we enjoyed from other people's sharing be it in Facebook or YouTube. 

Kuih bingka ubi is one of my hubby's favorite kuih. Previously it was hard find fresh ubi kayu/cassava, the main ingredient for bingka ubi here in Melbourne. Then a friend told me a couple of years ago that its ok to use frozen grated cassava. That means it so much more convenient! 

Over the past 2 years I have experimented with a few recipes but most uses desiccated coconut. Then stumbled onto this recipe shared by Shiokman Eddie. I like its texture as it is not as hard as those that have desiccated coconut in the mix. 

Ingredients

1kg       Grated cassava/tapioca or 2 packets of frozen cassava (500g each)

180g     Sugar
350g     Coconut milk
¼ tsp    Salt
2           Eggs
20g       Butter at room temperature

Methods

1. In a bowl add sugar to the grated cassava/tapioca and mix them up till combined.
2. Add in coconut milk, salt and the eggs.
3. Mix all the ingredients thoroughly.
4. Add in the soften butter at room temperature and mix well.
5. Line a 10" square tin or a smaller tin (I used 7") if you want a taller kuih with baking paper, line the bottom with a piece of banana leaf and slowly pour in the mixture.
6. Spread the mixture evenly with a spatula.
7. Bake in a preheated oven at 160°C for 1 to 1½  to 2 hours.
8. Do check after 1 hour into baking.Continue to bake till the surface is crispy golden brown and when skewer comes out clean.
9. Remove kueh from baking tin and set aside to cool on a wire rack.
10. Use a plastic knife or oiled knife to cut.

Air Fried Roast Pork Belly on Dry Egg Noodles

Roast pork belly or siew yuk on egg noodles is one of my family's all time favorites! Usually we will savor this dish at one of our favorite Hong Kong restaurants but due to the 5km restrictions which was enforced since mid of August, we are unable to visit. Everyone has been missing their their siew yuk so no choice but to cook our own. 

This version is pretty easy and with the use of my air fryer, there's no dirty oven to clean. Pretty stoked with how it turned out too! The skin crackled beautifully making it really crispy. 

Ingredients

for Roast pork belly

• 1 slab         Pork belly (about 1 to 1.2kg with a bit of fat under the skin)
• 1"               Ginger  
• 1 scallion   Spring onion
• 1 tbsp        Chinese wine
• 1 tsp          Salt
• 1 tsp          Five spice powder
• 1 tsp          White pepper
• 1 tsp          White vinegar
• Coarse salt for covering pork skin 

Methods

1. Wash and clean pork belly by using a knife scrapping away dirt on the skin. Remove hair with a tweezers if there's any.
2. Heat up half a pot of water (big enough to fit the entire piece of pork belly) and once boiling, add in the spring onion, ginger slices and 1tsp of Chinese wine. Slowly slide the pork belly in skin down into the pot making sure water covering the pork belly and let it boil for 20 mins.
3. Remove pork belly and let it cool on a plate. Using a fork, poke the skin all over. Using a kitchen towel, wipe dry any excess liquid on the skin.
4. In a small bowl, mix the five spice powder, salt and pepper. Make a few slits on the meat side and rub the spice mixes all over. Do not rub on the skin. Make sure you dry the skin with a paper towel. Brush the vinegar onto the skin. Keep in the fridge overnight.
5. Lay out a piece of aluminium foil big enough for the the piece of pork belly with at least 5cm to 7cm to spare all around. Lay another piece of baking paper smaller than the aluminium foil inside but enough to cover the side of the pork belly. Fold up all the sides (to protect the meat from drying out) and leave the the skin expose. 
6. Spread enough salt covering the entire skin before putting into air fryer for 20 mins at 200°C.
7. Removed all the salt and air fry a further 15 mins at 200°C.
8. Cool the the pork belly on a wire rack before chopping into desired size.

Dry Egg Noodles (per serve)

• 100g        Egg noodles (loosen)
• 1 tsp        Light soy sauce
• 1 tsp        Dark soy sauce
• 1 tsp        Pork lard
• 1 tsp        Oyster sauce
• ½ tsp       Sesame seed oil
• ½ tsp       Garlic oil
• 2 tbsp      Hot water or chicken broth
• A dash of pepper

1. Heat up a pot of water and prepare a bowl of cold water. Place all the sauces into a plate.
2. Once water is boiling, toss the loosen noodles into pot. Stir so it is not sticking to the pot. Let noodle boil for 30 to 40 secs in medium heat.
3. Take out noodles and toss into the bowl of cold water and stir it around to stop it from cooking further for 30 secs.
4. Return the noodles into pot and cook it for 10 secs and toss into plate with all the sauces. Mix well to coat noodles.
5. Arrange chopped up roasted pork belly onto noodles and garnish with some blanched green choy sum or bok choy.