Cereal Prawns

Cereal prawns (artificial light gives bad food photos doesn't it), a tasty dish of crispy cereal, prawns, butter, curry leaves and chilies.

This is a simple recipe from a Singaporean TV cooking show that I found on YouTube. I adjusted some of the ingredients to my taste and also peeled half the prawns and left the balance unpeeled just to see which ones taste better. Usually the prawns for this dish are not shelled and yes, my conclusion is that the unshelled prawns taste better. Instead of large prawns, I suggest using medium-sized prawns for their thinner shells because they crisp thoroughly so that the shells can be eaten too, along with the cereal sticking to the shells. Prawn shells are made of chitin which has been found to have health benefits (glucosamine is made from prawn shells and chitin speeds up healing of wounds and skin) so no harm there. This is a delicious but rather rich dish so proceed with caution.

Cereal Prawns
500 gm (10 to 12) medium large prawns, shells and heads on & butterflied
1/2 beaten egg
2 to 3 T cornflour (plain flour in original recipe)
2 sprigs of curry leaves
1 to 2 t chopped bird's eyes chilies (or milder red chili)
1 cup cereal
3 T milk powder
2 T icing sugar
optional: a few shakes of msg
3 T butter

veg oil for frying

1. Mix the milk powder, cereal, icing sugar and msg in a bowl. Marinade the prawns with some salt, white pepper, the 1/2 egg and cornstarch.

2. Deep-fry the prawns in hot oil until very crispy and cooked but do not overcook or prawns'll get tough and dry. Drain well. In restaurants, such prawns can be deep-fried until half-cooked and re-fried upon orders. The second frying makes very crispy prawns that stay crisp longer. If shelling the prawns (remove the shell from the body only, leave the heads and tails on), just shallow-fry both sides in a pan with a smear of oil.

3. In a clean frying pan or the same wok used for frying the prawns earlier, add the butter and the leaves (so that the leaves have more time to crisp) under medium-low heat. When leaves are crispy, reduce heat to very low, add the cereal mixture and stir, until the cereal turns golden and crispy. Be careful not to burn the cereal; they burn easily. Add the fried prawns to mix and dish up. Serve immediately.

Fish Pieces In Soy Sauce

The ludoon (known as jewfish in the USA) is the largest of the groupers. Found in deep waters, this giant brown fish can grow bigger than an adult human.  The best parts of this giant fish are the head and the belly because those parts have lots of thick gelatinous collagen membranes which are smooth and tasty, with a slight bite. As I've said before, Chinese food isn't only about taste but also about 'mouth feel', how the food feels in your mouth, whether it's pleasurable or not.

Decades ago I had the best ludoon head stew in Sandakan, a town on the east coast of Sabah. That must've been the grandma of all ludoon because the skin was about 2 cm thick. I've never eaten a better ludoon since. The thing about the ludoon is that the bigger the fish, the more prized it is because the gelatinous stuff gets better and more. The flesh, if you bother to eat it (connoisseurs go for the head and stomach) is surprisingly tender and moist. Ludoon are hard to come by since restaurants get the first right of refusal, as they do with all seafood. I was lucky to stumble upon a seafood stall in Kepayan that had a medium-sized ludoon (about 1 meter long) for sale probably because it was too small for restaurants.

I bought two pieces of lutoon steaks for RM40 (RM35/USD12 per kg) but the price at restaurants is many times higher. One piece of the steak was more than enough for our family of four because it was mostly meat. I wasn't sure about cooking the head but next time I will because it's more fun--and tasty--to eat the head than the flesh.

This recipe was cloned after the popular 'stewed fish head & belly' dish in Dong Fung Restaurant, Inanam. Other than the great flavor and taste, Dong Fung's stewed fish pieces have a thick coating of potato flour (you can use tapioca/cassava flour too) that bulks up the fish (cunning) and also gives a slippery, gelatinous bite. I am pleased to say that my son Wey, who is very selective about his seafood, pronounced my attempt 'the same' in taste to the restaurant's. That fella can charm me to death sometimes.

Fish Pieces In Soy Sauce
500 gm steak* of a large fish
1 to 2 cups of potato flour/tapioca flour for coating
1 egg white
2 T cornflour
5 slices of fresh ginger
2 T dark soy sauce
1 T light soy sauce
1/2 T shaoxin wine (not too much so that it wouldn't overpower the other flavors)
1 T Chinese rice wine (to give a sweet taste)
a dash of Thai fish sauce
1 t of chicken stock powder
1 T brown soy bean paste or Korean miso paste
1 t sugar
2 T sesame oil
salt and white pepper
spring onions to garnish

*the bones are usually left on but you can use fillets too. For this recipe, the fish must not be too soft and fine and should not fall apart upon cooking

1. Chop the fish into large bite-sized pieces. 'Massage' the cornflour, egg white, a large pinch of salt and white pepper into the pieces of fish and leave for 1/2 hour.

2. Coat each piece of fish with the potato starch, pressing on as much flour as possible. Deep fry the coated fish until just cooked and leave until ready to cook.



3. Put about 2 T oil into a heated wok and add the ginger. Stir until fragrant, add the fried fish and the shao xin wine and stir well. Now add the rest of the ingredients except the sesame oil, wok at medium heat, and stir well without breaking the fish pieces up. Sprinkle about 1/4 cup of water over the fish and cover with a lid for a few seconds. When water dries up, add another 1/4 cup. This dish takes only a minute to cook.

4. Turn off the fire. It's hard to give the exact amount of seasoning so you need to taste and season according to your liking. Sprinkle the sesame oil over. If the liquid had dried out, add a spoonful of hot water or stock. This is a saucy but not soupy dish. The potato flour on the fish will thicken the sauce. Sprinkle the spring onions over and serve immediately. Goes with plain rice.

Note: I celebrate the 1 millionth click on this blog today! I am encouraged by you the readers who tell me that the recipes on this blog have enriched your palate and family meals. Now why don't you tell two people about A Daily Obsession and make my day:)

Clay Pot Crabs With Glass Noodles

This is a dish that we always order whenever we eat Thai food anywhere but KK. That's because there are hardly any Thai restaurants in KK and the few that claim to be never have this dish on their menu. Wey, who doesn't like seafood, loves this dish after tasting it in Bangkok but that's because he only wants the fatty pork strips at the bottom of the pot.

I've made this dish several times but the flavor and taste somehow just didn't measure up to what I've tasted in Awana Hotel Singapore. Recently Wey asked for the dish again and I spent an hour searching for the recipe on the net, weeding out the ones that didn't read tasty enough. I finally settled on the recipe from here. I'm glad I did because the whole family gave two thumbs up for the dish. I've made some changes to the ingredients (used Maggi sauce as recommended by Appon, pounded the coriander stems into a paste for stronger flavor) but the biggest change is in the cooking of the crabs. Instead of frying the crabs in the clay pot, I stir-fried them separately in a wok because I find that unless you get your clay pot heated very well, the crabs don't get that stir-fried flavor. I think that's why many restaurants in Thailand use thin metal pans rather than clay pots for this dish. Frying the crabs also shrinks them so that they fit better into my clay pot.

This dish, btw, is called poo ob woon sen. Poo (that's right, poo, not phoo) is crabs in Thai, ob is to simmer and fry (sort of) and woon sen is glass noodles, so-called because they are clear as glass. Russell Peters was right. Asian languages are hilarious.

Teamed with a soup, poo ob woon sen can make a substantial meal.  Squeeze some lime juice and sprinkle on some bird's eyes chilies on the noodles and tackle the crabs with your fingers. Yum.








Clay Pot Crabs With Glass Noodles
1 kg live crabs (or lobster or prawns)
1 T butter
7 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced in half lengthwise
4 slices bacon
5 to 6 fresh whole coriander/cilantro plants, roots intact
3 slices ginger
1 t (1/2 t if you don't like the heat) white peppercorns, pounded coarsely
250 g glass noodles* (mung bean noodles), soaked in cold water at least 15 minutes
1 T light soy sauce
2 T fish sauce

Stock:
2 1/2 cups chicken stock
3 T oyster sauce
1 T Maggi soy sauce
1 T fish sauce
2 t sesame oil
1 (or 2) t brandy or whiskey
1 1/2 t caster sugar

garnish: coriander leaves, spring onions and lime wedges

*get the type that doesn't break easily upon cooking. In KK, myXo Green Bean Vermicelli from wet markets is the best.

1. Mix all the stock ingredients in a bowl. Set aside. Separate the coriander into 3: the roots hairs, the main root and stems, and the leaves. Using a pestle and mortar, pound the main roots and stems into a paste. Scrub the crabs well, cut into big pieces, drain very well and toss with 1 T of the fish sauce.

2. Put the bacon into the unheated clay pot and then turn the heat on, medium low.

3. Meantime, heat up a wok or frying pan. Add the butter and fry the garlic until golden. Add the coriander root hairs, coriander stem-root paste, ginger and peppercorns and fry a couple of seconds before adding the crabs. Add 1/4 cup of water, 1 T light soy sauce and the remaining 1 T of fish sauce. Cover the wok and simmer a couple of minutes until crabs are cooked & the liquid has dried up. Transfer the crabs into the pot.

Alternatively, you can do step 3 in the clay pot. This is how it's normally done but I prefer to give the crabs a good fry to get a better flavor.

4. Add the glass noodles to the pot and pour the sauce over, stirring well to mix. Do not disturb the bacon though; leave them in the bottom of the pot. Cover and let simmer about 5 minutes. Taste and season. Switch off the heat. I find that this lets the noodles soak up the liquid and flavor better.

If you add the uncooked crabs to the clay pot, let it cook until it's almost done before adding the noodles.

5. When ready to serve, heat up the pot and add a little bit more stock or water if necessary. Garnish with coriander leaves and spring onions.