Food Experiment #8: Beef Steak

So… beef again. This time my dad bought 2kg worth of steaks. Each one’s easily 2 inches thick and 500 grams heavy.

Massive lah.

Since it’s been sitting in the freezer for 1 week, I thought I’d give the steaks a go and pan fry them into caramel town.

You’ll Need These Ingredients

• Beef Steak (what else!)
• Salt

Instructions and “Did it Work?”

1. Prepping the Steak

Take out of freezer. Thaw. Sprinkle salt. Leave to dry and drain.

2. Making the Steak

I like to sear the outside then turn down the heat to cook the steaks. I do this 2 steaks at a time, because I don’t have all that much space on my wok. For a 2-inch steak, I’d budget 2 mins for each side.

The process goes like:

1. Heat the wok on High heat.
2. Put the steaks fat-side down onto the wok. Do not add oil. The oils will be drawn out onto the wok as the fat cooks. (2 min)
3. Flip the steaks onto 1 side. Let it sizzle (2 min)
   
   
4. Flip it over to the other side. Let it sizzle for another 2 min.
   
   
5. Flip the steaks over again. Turn down the heat to medium. Let it cook for 2 min. Do the same for the other side.

I like my steaks medium rare to rare. As a rule of thumb, I compare the steak against the muscle under my thumb… like so in the infographic below:

Source: Lifehacker

Once cooked to your liking, leave the steaks aside for 3 to 5 min before eating.

Verdict

This works!

Food Experiment #7: Fried Hokkien Prawn Mee

I’m sick of roasting stuff. Hence this Food Experiment. The Hokkien Prawn Mee.

This dish is a staple in Singapore’s Hawker Centres and, if done well, it should taste of prawns infused into the thick yellow and white noodles. So much so that it should be gravy-slurping good.

As with all food experiments, this is my first time making it. It wasn’t too bad, but lacked bite – more in the verdict.

I found the original recipe from My Wok Life

You’ll Need These Ingredients:

For the Stock

• Prawns, lots of prawns
• Ikan Billis  

For the Dish

• 250g of yellow noodles
• 250g of white bee hoon
• Prawns, lots of prawns
• Beansprouts, lots of it ‘cause I love vegetables
• 150g of pork belly
• 2 eggs, beaten

For the Flavouring

• 2 garlic cloves
• 4 tablespoons Thai fish sauce
• Pinch of salt
• 1 tablespoon of sesame oil
• 1 tablespoon of light soy sauce
• 120ml of oil

Instructions and “Did it Work?”

1. Prepping the Foods

Shell and devein the prawns. Keep the shells for making stock.

 

Tip: I usually start working on them once they’re out of the freezer. If you’re not masochistic, thaw them out first before decapitation and shelling.

Cut up the pork belly into thin columns. Firstly, cut the pork belly into slices, then cut them up into small long columns.

My Wok Life (see link above) details how to make Pork Lard. But I gave it a miss.

Wash the beansprouts and Ikan Billis. Pick out the blackheads from the bean sprouts.

 

2. Making the Stock

Heat up the wok with a big fire. Make sure that it’s hot before starting.

Dry  fry the prawns and Ikan Billis until they’re a little charred. Once it releases the smells – and you’ll know it – add water until it covers the mix.

Bring it to a boil and turn down the heat to low. Leave it for 30 min to leech umaminess out of the prawns. Keep an eye on the stock so that it doesn’t dry out. Add more water or reduce the fire.

Strain and transfer to a pot or massive bowl.

3. Cooking the Noodles 

Yellow noodles are incredibly oily and alkaline tasting. Blanch very quickly (10 sec) in hot water and leave aside to make it lighter.  

Heat up the wok on medium heat. Add oil and wait for it to bubble.

Add garlic and stir fry until fragrant. Add pork belly slices. Midway through – just when the pork belly starts to cook – add sesame oil and soy sauce for fragrance and wankfull sizzle.

Stir fry like you’ve “gone madder than a bastard on Father’s Day” (src: Transmetropolitan). 

Add the noodles. Loosen up the noodles, then add the stock.

* Now I’ve added too much stock for this Food Experiment. Instead of covering the noodles with stock, just add until it’s halfway full.

Cover the wok and let it simmer on low fire. Every now and then, uncover and flip the noodles around so that the bottom doesn’t stick.

We want the noodles to soak up as much of the prawn stock as possible. This should take about 5 minutes.

Once done – the stock should be a thick gravy now – turn up the heat to high, add the prawns and bean sprouts. Stir fry until cooked (3 minutes), then add the eggs.

Two schools of thought about eggs:

1. Some say to add and fry immediately
2. Some say to make a space on the wok, fry the eggs and once it’s a little cooked, incorporate it into the noodles.

I used the former approach for this Food Experiment. But hey, it’s your call.

Once done, plate and serve. The Hokkien Mee should be draped in prawn stock gravy. If not, you’ve overcooked it.

Verdict

Making foods over a naked fire is quite different from roasting. It boils down – and not being pun-ny here – to control of the fire itself. The noodles were mushy and full of prawny goodness.

But it’s not like the Hokkien Mee served in Hawker Centres.

The next effort will include:

• Braise the noodles with half of the stock
• Cook the eggs before incorporating it into the noodles

I guess it should work better that way then.

Food Experiment #6: Porchetta (aka Roast Pork Belly)

Zedy and I saw images of Porchetta (like the one below), and we couldn’t get it out of our heads or bellies, for the matter.

Source: Iamafoodblog

As true foodies, we thought: “Let’s make one Porchetta and eat one Porchetta.” Off we went searching for recipes and decided on this really nice step-by-step recipe from Kenji of Serious Eats.

It turned out pretty OK. And we finished it all… At least I think my dinner guests weren’t humouring me.

You’ll Need These Ingredients:

• 2 kg of pork belly (remove the hairs on the skin and wash the entire belly in salt water)

For the Marinade

• 3 tablespoon of peppercorns (it don’t matter if they’re white or black) 
• 5 tablespoon of fennel seeds  
• 7 chillies
• 10 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 handful of thyme
• Lots of sea salt
• 1 tablespoon of baking soda

Instructions and “Did it Work?”

1. Make the Marinade

Toast the peppercorns and fennel seeds. Once it turns brown and smells toasty, chuck the lot into a blender (or mortar and pestle) and grind them up into powder.

Mince up garlic, chilli and thyme.

 

Put the minced garlic, chilli, thyme and peppercorn-fennel seed powder on separate plates.

2. Preparing the Roast

Put the pork belly skin-side up.

Stab into it with a sharp knife or scissors. This helps to make the skin crispy – at least that’s what my dad says and that’s what the roast meats guy says too. It’s not easy and it feels like I’m stabbing into rubber.

Once done, flip the belly so it’s meat-side up.

Now slice into the  meat in diagonal lines, rotate it, then slice it again in diagonal lines so that you get diamond-shaped cuts on the meat. Try as much as possible to cut into the meat until it reaches the fat. 

Now the meat’s prepped.

3. Marinade the Roast

All the chilli, garlic, thyme and peppercorn-fennel mix that was ground up earlier now comes in play. Don’t go lightly on the seasoning, I find that heavily-seasoned meats tend to get better taste results.

Keeping the pork belly meat-side up, we scatter and rub the spices into the meat and the grooves in this order:

1. Lots of salt
2. Garlic
3. Chilli
4. Peppercorn-fennel mix
5. Thyme

The end result looks like a run-over chia pet.

Once happy with chia-ing the meat, roll up the pork belly.

I tie up the belly in the middle, then tie up the sides at regular intervals. I like to keep rolls contained within itself, but slicing the meat means that some of the pork loin will spill out on the ends. To rectify it, I tied up the meat lengthwise too.

Final step before the refrigeration, mix 2 tablespoons of salt with the baking soda and rub it liberally onto the pork roll. Wrap the roll with clingwrap and leave it in the fridge overnight.

4. Roast it! 

Take out the rolled pork belly. Leave it on the table for 1 hour to let it come to room temperature first.

I chucked it into the oven for 160C at 3 hours to slow cook the insides. Watching it spin around and around in the oven is mesmerising. At this point in time, the pork belly looks and feels hard but spongy to touch.

Once the bell goes “DING!”, crank up the heat to 250C for 30 min to cackle the skin and give it a brown all-over colour.

After roasting, take it out and sit it for 10 min under an aluminium foil tent.

Once 10 min has gone by, start carving the roast into thick, stuff-your-face-in slices. The trick here isn’t to cut from the top (aka the skin) as it’ll break off into shards of cackling. What I did was to flip it so that it faces meat-side up and cleave it into slices.

This keeps the skin intact like the picture below.

Verdict

I’m glad that I experimented with the Roast Pork Belly on a smaller scale before this big-ass roll. I shouldn’t have removed the strings before the final roast cackling. That’s why this Porchetta looks flatter than the usual rolled up version.

Otherwise, succcess!

Food Experiment #3: Pumpkin Nog with Cinnamon Rum

Since it’s Christmas, let’s do something noggy for these bleak rainy days. It’s pissing cats and dogs and old gods on us for the entire month.

What to make a nog from?

In the words from the immortal, blankey-wielding Linus, “The great Pumpkin!”

Hence, food experiment #3 (i think!): Pumpkin Nog.

You’ll need:

• 250g small Pumpkin
• 250g milk boiled with some Cinnamon
• 250g Cinnamon-infused rum

 

Pumpkin Nog with Cinnamon Rum Instructions

1. Make the Cinnamon-infused Rum

Add 4 sticks of cinnamon (or whatever amounts that you prefer) to 250g of dark rum. Seal it in a mason jar and leave it in a cool, dark place for 3 days. I chuck my jar in the freezer.

2. Make Pumpkin Puree

Slice the pumpkin in half. Scoop out the insides (pretend they’re your enemy’s intestines and guts). Chop up the pumpkin into inch-long cubes.

Roast the pumpkin for 15 min. Roast again for 15 min with generous heaps of brown sugar on top of them.

Scoop it out and mush them up.

3. Mix it all together!

Like the title says. Add all the ingredients together and stir until combined. Chill and serve. Keep a bottle of run nearby to pow-wow up the drink.

Image source: Cocktail Times

Verdict

My first try failed. Too much rum, too little blending of pumpkin… it was far too thick and too full of stuff for a cocktail drink.

Back to the drawing board. Although I must say that Pumpkin roasted with brown sugar rocks as a possible dessert.