Christmas Molasses Ginger Cookies

It is the best time of the year to bake ginger cookies. Living in Malaysia, we can get fresh ginger thoughout the year and preserved ginger is easily available as well. I used preserved ginger for the cookies instead of grounded. I love to bite on the ginger pieces when chewing the cookies.
As we are going to have kids around for the Christmas gathering, I make it less ginger... These ginger cookies will disappear quickly, so I make a large batch!
Ingredient:

• 115g Butter


• 125g Brown Sugar (extra brown sugar to sprinkle on top of dough before baking - optional)


• 4 Tbsp Blackstrap Molasses / Treacle


• 1tsp Fresh Lemon Juice


• 275g Plain Flour


• 1tsp Baking Soda


• 50g Preserved Ginger (coarsely chopped)


• 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon


• 1/4 tsp ground cloves


• some dusting sugar (decoration)

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 160 degree C. Lined baking tray with parchment/baking sheets.


2. Sift flour, baking soda and spices together.


3. Cream butter and sugar. Stir in egg, molasses and lemon juice. Add in flour mixture and mix well.


4. Spooned the dough (desired size) on the prepared baking tin. Place about 5cm apart. Sprinkle some brown sugar on top (optional).


5. Bake until cookies are just firm to the touch, abvout 12 minutes. Leave to cool on wire rack.

Point to highlight:

Do not chopped preserved ginger too fine, I love biting on ginger pieces.

Fried Shallot & Oyster Sauce

Coming home with simple food ready on dinner table after a hectic work day is soo wonderful. I always prepared some "magic sauce" and stored in the fridge as an ingredient for quick dishes preparation.

Fried Shallot & Oyster Sauce goes well with simple Teochew porridge and as a topping for steamed fish or tofu.
Ingredient:

• 300g Shallot (thinly sliced)


• 1 cup Oil


• 3 Tbsp Oyster Sauce


• 3 Tbsp Light Soya Sauce


• 1/2tsp salt (optional)

Method:

1. Heat up oil, saute sliced shallot untill fragranced (but not brown).


2. Add Oyster sauce, light soya souce and salt and fried untill well mixed. Store well in the fridge.

Point to highlight:

• I don't add sugar and pepper to the sauce, as oyster sauce has everything that enhance the taste.

Minced Pork with Spicy Tauchu (豆酱) and Onion

Every family has their own home recipe. In our family, we love my mum's home reripe, especially her "Minced Pork with Spicy Tauchu (a paste made from
preserved soyabeans) and Onion". When she cooked, We would normally have a bigger portion of rice to go with it.
This dish is very appertizing. It is fragranced by tauchu, spiced up by chilli paste and with tamarind juice to make it more flavorful.
As a typical Nyonya, my mum love to spice up most of her cooking conveniently. Just like this one, for a normal mince pork with tauchu, she added in chilli paste, tamarind juice and plenty of onion...

Ingredient:

• 1 stalk Lemongrass (large)


• 6 nos Dried Chilli (seed removed)


• 8 nos Shallot


• 2 Tbsp Tauchu (pounded)


• 300g Minced Pork


• 1 no Onion (large) - sliced


• 1 no Tomato (large) - thick sliced


• 50g Tamarind Pulp / Juice


• Sugar (to taste)


• Salt (if required)

Method:

1. Pounced / blended lemongrass, dried chilli, and shallot together.


2. Saute lemongrass, dried chilli, shallot untill fragranced.


3. Add pounded tauchu. Fried until well mixed.


4. Pour in minced pork, mixed evently with other ingredients.


5. Add sliced onion and tomato. Cooked until onion and tomato are soft.


6. Lastly, add seasoning, sugar and salt (if required) and tamarind
   juice.

Point to highlight:

• Must taste before salt is added, as tauchu is saltly.


• Recommend amount of tamarind juice up to own taste.

Chives / Spring Onion Pancake 葱油饼

Its very rewarding to cook with the ingredient that grow in our own garden. My little chives pot progress very well. I took half of it to make pancake which I learnt from Taiwanese friends during my college years. I make extra and store some in the freezer. Like any frozen dough, just remove from the freezer and pan fried in medium heat, just a few minutes, a quick ready homemade breakfast or afternoon tea would be ready! Ingredient:

• 2 cups Plain Flour


• 1 cup Water


• 1/2 tsp Salt


• Salt (to sprinkle on pancake together with chives)


• 5 stalks Chives


• 5 Tbsp Oil (to brush/rub on pancake)


• Oil (frying)

Method:

1. Mixed flour, water, and salt together, knead to form a smooth dough. Cover with wet cloth and rest for ~30 minutes.


2. Clean and cut chives.


3. Devide dough into desire size, depends on the size of frying pan. Roll and flatten the dough, brush/rub a layer of oil and sprinkle some salt and a layer of finely cut chives evenly on the entire dough surface. Roll the dough to long strip and roll the strip from right to left to form a spiral. Flatten the entire spiral and roll into flat pancake.


4. Heat up frying pan with 1 Tbsp of oil and fry the pancake until both side turn golden brown. Serve hot.

Points to highlight:

• For frozen pancake, separate each piece with plastic paper, use a cake board as the base, wrap all pancakes well and store in freezer.


• Dry the "cut chives" and cut as fine as possible。

Pau '包' - Lotus Paste with Spicy Dried Shrimp (Sambal Udang Kering)

Decided to make pau '包' with combination of sweet and spicy filling for Sunday breakfast using few ingredients available in the fridge, such as for pau (beet root, molasses sugar) and filling (lotus paste, sambal udang kering).

Using mixture of lotus paste and sambal udang kering, with fried shallot is something exotic and wild. My parents and husband like it! But not for my daughter...

Ingredient (pau):

• 300g Pau / Hong Kong flour


• 5g Instant Yeast


• 5g Baking Powder


• 35g Molasses Sugar / Castor Sugar


• 25g Olive Oil


• 170ml Beet Root Juice (Filling Lotus Paste Sambal Udang Kering
  (cooked till dried, discard oil)


• Fried Shallot
  

Method:

1. Combine all "filling" ingredients. Weight (~18g each) and shaped into round.


2. Mix all pau ingredients and knead till a smooth dough. Portioned the dough into ~25g each.


3. Rounded each dough and flatten with fingers. Roll with rolling pin, thick at the middle and thin at the side.


4. Wrap in filling and make into round pau shape with opening facing down.


5. Rest for ~30minutes.


6. Steam over high heat for 10 minutes.

Point to consider:

• The proportion of filling ingredients is up to our own taste.


• Spicy Dried Shrimp: The same recipe as posted ealier, but pounded dried shrimp coarsely.


• I sometimes use muffin paper cup to hold pau, just to add some color/fun to the presentation.

An ideal outdoor or traveling food, good for pot-luck as well!

Hello Kitty Cookies

To cheer up my daughter who is resting at home, suffering for bad cough, we made 'Hello Kitty' cookies together. It was a relieved to see her smiling and excited when we were making the cookies. She couldn't contained her excitement and phoned her dad to tell him how she made the
cookies... This is a recipe given by a friend, I reduce the icing sugar to 35g instead of 50g.
Ingredient:
(A) 125g Butter (room tempt); 35g Icing Sugar
(B) 125g Plain Flour; 75g Potato Starch; 50g Honey Star/Cornflake (blend to powder form)
(Decoration) Round shaped Sugar (nose); Star shaped Sugar (hair clip); Black Sesame Seed (eyes)
Method (Very simple - no electric mixer required):
1. Mixed (A) together.
2. Add (B) and mixed completely.
3. Lastly shaped the cookies (by hand) and decorate. Bake at 150 degree C for ~ 30 minutes.
As it is hand-shaped, every piece of cookies has its own "character".