Christine's Recipes Printable Version: Tips and Tricks

Showing posts with label Tips and Tricks. Show all posts

Mung Bean Filling (For Mooncakes)

Prep time: 10 mins （plus soaking time）
Cook time: 60 mins
Yield: about 600 grams

Ingredients:

200 gm peeled split mung beans
100 gm caster sugar
80 ml coconut milk
70 ml vegetable oil
1/8 tsp salt
1½ Tbsp wheat flour

Method:

Rinse mung beans. Soak over night or at least 4 hours.
Transfer the mung beans into a large shallow pan. Cover the mung beans with boiling water with 1cm depth. (Note: The beans will continue to absorb as much as water along the way of cooking.) Steam in a wok over medium high heat, about 25 to 30 minutes, or until it’s easily smashed with your finger tips.
Drain beans out and discard excess water. Use a large spoon to press through a fine sieve. You’ll get very smooth mung bean puree.
Transfer the puree into a non-stick frypan. Add sugar, coconut milk, oil and salt. Combine well. Cook over medium high heat until moisture is reduced by two-thirds. Sift in wheat flour in batches and stir to combine well between each addition. Reduce heat to low and simmer until thickened, stirring constantly, about 30 to 35 minutes. Transfer into a large bowl and let it cool down completely. Follow instructions of mooncake recipe to divide into portions, then shape into ball shapes. You can make mung bean filling one or two days ahead. Wrap it in plastic film and store in fridge.

How To Peel Garlic

Whatever dish we make, western or Asian, we need garlic cloves quite often. Garlic can enhance dishes with great aroma and nutrition. Way back thousand years ago, garlic was widely used as a medicine. Unfortunately, peeling garlic is not a pleasant job. Many of the traditional Chinese dishes, like braised tofu with roast pork, have to use whole garlic cloves, not minced garlic. Is there any easy way to get the troublesome peeling job done?

How To Peel Garlic
Christine's Recipes

If you need crushed or minced garlic, smashing with a knife might be the quickest way to get the garlic skin off as you don’t need a whole, unbruised garlic clove intact. Just place the flat side of your chef’s knife on top of a garlic clove, then smash it with your free hand. There you go. The garlic skin will come off easily. If you trim off the woody end before smashing, the peel will come off from the flesh without any troubles at all. Then you can proceed with mincing.

A friend of mine told me she would like to give me a present, that’s a silicone garlic peeler. What a lovely idea. I placed a garlic clove inside the tube, rolling it back and forth with a light pressure by hand. Immediately I heard crinkle sound. Viola! Got a clean, peeled garlic in a few seconds, leaving no garlic odour on my hands.

While I was playing with this new kitchen gadget, hubby was quite curious to find out what I was actually doing. Then came his remark, “That works by friction. Your silicone mat should work too.” “Really? Let me try and see.” Bravo! All four garlic cloves rubbed with the two ends of my silicone mat came out totally peeled and clean. My silicone mat made the magic within 10 seconds.

What if without a silicone mat? Will a pair of plastic gloves work? So, my experiment went like this. Placed a glove on table, then put a garlic clove on top. Wore another glove and rubbed the garlic like I did with the silicone mat before. The garlic skin came off as well. Comparatively, plastic gloves produce less friction with less working area than a silicone mat, as a result I felt a bit troublesome.

My peeling garlic experiment didn’t stop there, still went on. I placed 3 garlic cloves in a glass jar, tightly screwed lid on. Then shook vigorously for a few seconds. There came out clean, peeled garlic, yet with a few bruises on.

The verdict: I like the silicone garlic peeler and silicone mat the most, that I could fully control how hard I press without bruising any garlic, and got totally clean, peeled garlic cloves with ease.

Notes:

Some Chinese fans/readers asked me where to get the silicon garlic peeler. My friend told me she got it from eCosway Australia. There is a store at Sunnybank. As far as I know, they have stores around the world. And you might find one near your place.
Just a moment ago, I found a similar product on Amazon. Hope this info helps.

How To Make Caramel (Tips and Video)

Both this post and video were requested by my fans after I posted the crème caramel recipe for Valentine’s Day. Some fans found it’s quite tricky to make the caramel. But for making the custard, it’s quite straightforward and they could successfully made silky smooth custard. If only the caramel was not crystallized or burnt, they would’ve enjoyed a perfect dessert. I was asked if there are any tips and tricks when making caramel. Hope this short post on tips and video might be a help for you who are after some tips and making caramel video.

Recipe (Printable recipe)
By Christine's Recipes
Prep time: 5 mins
Cook time: 15 mins

Ingredients:

100 gm caster sugar
50 ml water

Method:

Prepare a clean, heavy based pot or saucepan. (Heavy bottomed pan performs the best as it provides even heat along the way of cooking.)
Pour the water and sugar. Swirl the pan to combine the sugar and water. If any sugar granules pile up in the middle, use a clean spoon to stir them lightly, and get all the sugar completely and evenly moistened.
Turn on the stove and cook the sugar and water mixture over medium-low heat. Once it boils, without any stirring, continue to cook about 15 minutes, until golden brown. Quickly pour the boiling caramel into ramekins, and follow the remaining procedures of the recipe.

Tips:

The pot or saucepan used to cook caramel should be very clean. I used stainless steel pot. Some fans asked me if they can use non-stick pots. The answer is NO. A stainless steel pot is far better and safer than a non-stick one. The temperature of cooking sugar is very high, as a result the non-stick coatings might be damaged by the high heat, then disintegrated in the caramel.
For cleaning the pot, you can soak it in warm water. Any bits of sugar stuck at the bottom will be dissolved and could be cleaned away easily. No worries.
Make sure no sugar clings to the side of the pot, as the sugar tends to become crystals. In the video, you’ll see the sugar is put in the middle of the water without letting any sugar touched the side of the pot. But don’t worry if you find any on the side. You can wash away the sugar crystals with a brush damped with some water.
Don’t let the cooking left unattended, especially for the final few minutes. The caramel will quickly burnt and become bitter in an instance. If you like caramel with a touch of bitterness, it’s fine.
If the size of your pot is much bigger than the heat source, keep on eye on the edge. Frequently swirl the pan to help the caramel evenly heated, as well as prevent from having a few burnt spot to ruin the whole pot of caramel.
You can easily pour the boiling caramel into ramekins. Move quickly. Otherwise, the caramel will turn darker, hardened or even burnt as the cooking continues.

How To Juice a Pomegranate (Easy and Quick) + Bookdeal News

This draft of this post has been sitting way too long in my folder. Finally, I managed to edit and hit the publish button and get it alive on my blog. It’s been quite an exciting and busy fortnight since I officially got a bookdeal from a large, prestige publisher. The theme of my first cookbook will be simple recipes for home cooks, with many of them are classic Hong Kong dishes that I grew up with. Please bear with me for my posting backlogs.

Back to my favourite fruit, pomegranate. Pomegranate juice is a very healthy and refreshing drink in summer. Although it’s still cold down under here, I love making desserts with its lovely juice. After I made the pomegranate soufflé, immediately a fan posted a question about how to juice pomegranate on my fan page.

The arils, wrapped inside the white pulp membranes, compose of edible red-diamond-like flesh and white hard seeds inside. Trying to get the lovely juice from the edible flesh sounds quite troublesome, yet it’s worth the work. Here’s a hack around that I experimented, much easier than I thought.

How To Juice a Pomegranate (Printable version)
By Christine's Recipes
Time: 25 mins
Yield: 150 ml (depends on how big your fruit is)

What you need:

1 pomegranate
1 sharp knife
1 large bowl
1 food processor
1 tablespoon
1 fine sieve

Method:

Cut the pomegranate in half.
Hold the half pomegranate in your palm with cut side down as picture shown. Place a large bowl underneath. Use another hand to smack the rind with a large spoon. The seeds should eject from the pomegranate directly into the bowl, leaving only a few deeply embedded arils to remove. Repeat this step with another half until you get all the seeds out.
Transfer the seeds into a food processor, briefly grind the seeds. Don’t blend too long, because the juice becomes bitter if too many hard seeds inside are broken.
Strain the juice through a fine sieve with the help of a tablespoon and lightly press. You’ll get clear and fresh pomegranate juice.

How To Remove a Pear Core

After posting the classic dessert, Poached Pear in Red Wine, some readers sent me emails asking how to remove the pear core without doing much damages to the pulp? If you have a little kitchen gadget like mine, removing the pear core is pretty easy.

This core remover online also does the good job as mine.

I can’t remember where to get the gadget. It’s my husband’s favourite tool to peel the skin of apples. The tip of the little peeler has got a very sharp point. The design of the peeler is nice, with a lightly curved body. You’ll see how easy I can remove the core of a pear. In the way, I can use it to remove the core of an apple.

First, trim off the bottom of the pear a bit. By doing so, I found it’s easier to manage the job of removing the core. Better still, the pear will sit on its bottom nicely after the “makeover operation”. Haha…

Insert the sharp tip of the peeler and run around the core. Scrape out the core inside.

Lastly, peel the pear.

Oh, how nice the hollow pear looks!

Do you have any other methods to remove the core of a pear or an apple? Feel free to drop a line in the comment.

Converting Grams to Cups (Problem & Solution)

Since I posted the recipes of tangzhong bread, I started receiving emails from readers asking the same question like this, “Could you convert (the recipe of xxx) from grams into cup measurement for me because I don’t have a kitchen scale?” I lost count of how many emails of such I received so far. I think it’s time to write a post to respond to all who might have the similar question.

I pretty understand that it is quite confusing when spotting a recipe with different measurements. It might be disappointing too if you really like to give it a go, but don’t know how to convert to the measurement you used to. As a food blogger, seeing my readers succeed in trying my recipes will definitely motivate me and make me happy.

Unfortunately, there’s no one formula to help convert different ingredients from one kind of measurement to another. The only way is to weight the ingredient one by one, then measure it by a cup/tablespoon, or vice versa.

I don’t mind taking some time to go back all the requested recipes and convert them into cup measurement. The problem is that I found measuring in cups/teaspoons is not quite reliable.

Every time I measured out a cup of plain flour, leveled it with a knife, then place on my electric kitchen scale, it gave me a different answer: 141 grams (1st time); 143 grams (2nd time); 150 grams (3rd time); 142 grams (4th time); 140 grams (5th time); 136 grams (6th time)……

So, which one is correct? How much plain flour is in a cup actually? How come the differences?

Cup is a tool for measuring volume. The problem occurs when measuring a dry ingredient, like flour or sugar, by volume, it results in a variety of different weights. Even though I used the same method, by spooning and leveling with a knife very carefully, the different weights I found were quite significant.

Actually, if a cup of flour is scooped out from a container or packet, you’d probably get a weight from 142 grams to 113 grams, by tapping or without tapping. That’s a huge difference!

As for making delicate cakes or soft, fluffy breads, like this one and this one, that I posted on this blog, a slight difference of flour weight would make a big impact on the texture of the end result. By the same token, the difference of sugar has great impact on taste.

The most accurate way of measuring is to use a kitchen scale. If you can afford, an electric kitchen scale will do the best. It’s worth saving you from unexpected cooking disasters or spending time on converting. (As you might’ve known that there are heaps of conversion tables out there when you google it.) With a kitchen scale, you can be sure that you have quality control of your desserts or breads. My kitchen scale was bought at about 14 dollars many years ago, still in a good condition.

Having said that, I understand many of you come from a country that commonly uses the cup measurement. If you desperately need to try out a recipe after a long search, unfortunately without a kitchen scale at hand, below is a conversion table for you, that I created by measuring each ingredient over ten times with my electric kitchen scale.

Happy cooking to everyone!

**********

Converting “grams” to “cups”:
Please note that all recipes on this blog use metric measurement (Australian).

1 metric cup = 250 ml (cc)
1 tablespoon = 20 ml (cc)
1 teaspoon = 5 ml (cc)

bread flour:

1 cup = 155 grams
1 tablespoon =12 grams
1 teaspoon = 3 grams

plain flour/all-purpose flour

1 cup = 140 grams
1 tablespoon =12 grams
1 teaspoon =3 grams

cake flour

1 cup=130 grams
1 tablespoon =10 grams
1 teaspoon =2.5 grams

self-raising flour

1 cup = 150 grams
1 tablespoon = 12 grams
1 teaspoon = 3 grams

corn flour

1 tablespoon = 12 grams
1 teaspoon = 3 grams

white sugar

1 cup = 220 grams
1 tablespoon = 16 grams
1 teaspoon = 4 grams

caster sugar

1 cup = 224 grams
1 tablespoon = 18 grams
1 teaspoon = 4 grams

How To Wrap a Chinese Bun (Video)

My family can’t live a day without bread. Except I have been addicted to making tangzhong breads for my family, recently I make more Chinese steamed buns as they can be kept in freezer for two weeks or so. Whenever I need them, just grab a few of them straight from the freezer and pop them in the wok to steam or pan fry, then enjoy fresh and hot buns after ten minutes or so.

After posting the pork bun recipe, I was asked by my fans on how to pleat Chinese buns. Last week, when I made some buns again, I took a short video when I pinched a Chinese bun. No tricks at all. It’s very simple, just needs some practice and you’d find great satisfaction in the process of pleating buns. Practice makes things perfect. A side note, I’m just an amateur and start learning how to take videos for blogging. Please pardon me that the video looks a bit dark. Yet, the whole process of how to go about pinching a bun is shown clearly. Hope you all find it helpful and like it.

Method:

Place a spoonful of fillings in the middle of dough wrapper. Use one hand (I accustom to use my left hand.) to secure it with your thumb pressing the filling lightly.
Use another hand, with your thumb and first index finger to pull up a little portion of the side of the dough. Fold and pleat evenly all the way as you go anticlockwise until you reach the end, enclose the bun. You’ll get a nice swirl pattern. It might be a bit difficult to pleat perfect buns at the first attempt. After a few tries, you’ll find the pleating is not that difficult as you thought, and you'd get nice looking buns.

How to Fold-in Egg Whites (with video)

By using the fold-in method, you can incorporate the beaten, stiffed egg whites into other ingredients, like batter, without loosing the air in the egg whites. The air is what we love to have, that makes a soufflé or chiffon cake, Swiss roll, soft and fluffy. Some readers asked me what “fold-in” is, and how exactly it should be taken into action. Yes, it's different from stirring. As I baked a banana chiffon the other day, I took a video clip of how I went about folding-in the egg whites into the batter. Hope it helps.

Method:

Use a spatula, either scrape down from the sides of your bowl or just vertically cut down in the middle. Bring up the batter from the bottom over the top and fold it in, until the egg whites completely mixed in. The mixture should be smooth, and you can't see any egg whites in it.
While you do this folding action along the way, continuously turn the bowl in order to help the egg whites mix evenly and quickly into other ingredients.
Add in a portion of egg whites at a time. After the portion is completely folded in, you can add another portion.
Don’t stir it vigorously, but fold lightly with care. The little air bubbles would be deflated otherwise.