What's your comfort food? (and Har Gow Recipe)

Mac and cheese, lasagne, chicken noodle soup, casserole - we all have our comfort foods. Most of them will probably stem from our childhood and our fondest memories - when mum tucked us in with a blanket in front of the TV and served up a piping hot bowl of tomato soup with our fav cartoons.

Being asian, a lot of my comfort food is chinese - although when I was sick, my mum usually gave me a bowl of some sticky black bitter herbal concoction that was supposed to make me better. Much worse than cherry cough syrup. Anyway, my point is that a lot of my "comfort" foods come from comforting routines my family had established. Because my dad worked in a restaurant I didn't get to spend weekends with him when I was in school - but during school holidays we always went out for lunch, usually to some chinese noodle place where I would always order roast pork and wonton noodle soup. Or we would go to yum cha and I always had the har gow. So those are at the top of my list for "comfort food".

What's on yours?

Har gow recipe

Taken from http://www.anyrecipe.net/asian/recipes/hagow.html

Filling

300 g prawns
150 g water chestnuts minced
2 1/2 tbs corn flour
1/2 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp black bean sauce
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp sesame oil
1/4 tsp grated ginger

Wrapper
1 1/4 cup wheaten corn flour
1/2 cup tapioca flour
1 cup boiling chicken broth
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp oil

Peel and devein prawns and cut into 1 cm pieces. Mix with filling ingredients and set aside.

Mix wheaten cornflour and tapioca flour with broth and oil. Knead into dough - if it's too sticky, add more wheaten cornflour.

Break off about 1/4 of the dough and cover the rest to keep moist. Roll into a 1.5 cm thick tube then divide into eight pieces.

Roll each piece out as a flat dumpling wrapper - using a flat bottom of a pan to press down on the dough really works! Your wrapper should be round and no more than a couple of mm in thickness.

Pleat the edges of about 1/2 the circumference of the wrapper so you have a small little 1/2 cup. Traditionally, 8 pleats iis a lucky number in chinese culture. Place filling into the "cup" and fold over to form a half moon shape. Fold the corners in a little and flatten the bottom on a piece of grease paper to form the rest of your dumpling shape. Repeat with the rest of the dough.

Steam in a bamboo steamer lined with grease paper for about 7 minutes. Let sit for 3 minutes before serving.

Crab, ricotta and chive parcels

So we're finally back on track with the cooking/blogging. Over the past month I've done little else except make failed batches of macarons - although I did revisit some of the old favourites including Portuguese coffee tarts and roast pork with my mum visiting for a few weeks. I did finally conquer the macarons - well, sorta. I ended up with some great tasting macarons that stayed up (instead of being flat as a coin) using a recipe from Tartelette. (Shout to to Julie Mak for the heads up - she has an awesome food blog btw that you should all check out - http://idreaminchocolate.wordpress.com)

The only thing was - that my macarons still didn't have the little feet. :(


Anyone with any more suggestions??

Meanwhile, I of course, a long with the many MasterChef fans out there - have been eagerly following the launch of the pint-sized version, Junior MasterChef. I really have to say I am amazed at how mature and inspiring these kids are when it comes to cooking. You can really see the depth of their passion - and how disciplined and process driven one has to be to achieve.

I do hope that these kids remember that every now and then - it's just as important to get into a mud pie!!

One of the little darlings had a great idea for making ravioli in wonton wrappers. "I use the wonton wrappers so the skin gets crispy," she says. (I'm paraphrasing here - sorry). But it is a great idea - and really easy! I served these with some rice noodles, coriander and sprouts with a dressing of fish sauce, lime juice and rice wine vinegar

Crab, ricotta and chive parcels (in wonton wrappers)

Ingredients:

1 cup shredded crab meat (in a pinch I used tinned crab meat)

150 grams ricotta

1/4 cup chives, finely chopped

wonton wrappers

Method:

Preheat over to 180 degrees Celsius. Mix crab meat, ricotta and chives in a bowl. Put about a heaping teaspoon of filling in the centre of a wonton wrapper and gather up the corners, using a bit of water to seal.

Line the parcels up on a greased baking tray. Bake for about 20 minutes or until edges are just about crispy.

Flat Macarons again

Foodies - I'm at a loss. I tried to make the macarons again for the 2nd time. I got a new little egg beater thing to make sure I beat the eggs to peaks. And again everything seemed to be going well - in fact the little macarons were definitely rising in the oven! I have a picture to prove it!!


See? Rising macarons!!



But low and behold - when I took them out of the oven - collapse! They went back to being flat as coins (again I have a picture to prove it!)

See - FLAT macarons. :(


Any help? Advice? Suggestions? Has this happened to you? If you know anything about meringue and how it's supposed to crust over and not collapse - help would really be appreciated.