Ginger Scallion Dipping Sauce Recipes

Ginger, scallion (green onions) and garlic are one of the most common ingredients in Asian cooking. Many of our dishes use this three herbs combination. With these three ingredients I like to make it into a dipping sauce for my poached chicken/Hainanese Chicken Rice. You can even mix this sauce to your noodles, salad,and potatoes salad or as topping for steamed fish. This is what I called the Asian pesto.

For the recipe of Poached Chicken kindly refer here

Ingredients for the dipping sauce:

1/4 cup finely grated ginger
1/2 cup of finely chopped scallion/green onions
1 cloves garlic – finely chopped
3 tbsp sesame oil
1/2 cup vegetable oil
Salt and pepper to taste

1. Put the ginger, scallion and garlic in the bowl with deep side. Add in the salt, pepper and sesame oil. Stir well and set it aside.
2. In a small saucepan, heat up the oil until smoking hot. Pour the hot oil into the ginger mix. Using a chopstick or wooden spoon mix everything together.
3. Ginger, scallion oil can be stored, covered, in the fridge for about a week

Note: Please be very careful when you pour the oil into the ginger scallion mix as the oil will splatter and bubble over the herbs.

Fried Noodles with Seafood in XO Sauce Recipes

This is one quick noodle I cooked for lunch using homemade XO Sauce . This sauce is really versatile as I like using it in my noodles and also in stir-fried dishes. You can make this sauce at home but for convenience, it is available in most Asian Supermarkets. There are many varieties of Chinese Noodles but for this I used the fresh yellow noodles. If you can’t find this kind of noodles you can just use spaghetti.

Roasted Pepper Aioli Recipes

Aioli (eye-oh-lee) is a garlic mayonnaise sauce that hails from Provence region of France and it is as natural on the dining table as butter or salt and pepper. It is usually pair with crab cakes, crudités, artichoke leaves, potato wedges etc. Diana made this the other day for us to spread on our hamburgers. With the leftovers we just dipped it with our roasted potatoes wedges.


Ingredients:
½ cup of low fat mayonnaise
1 roasted pepper (I used red pepper)
2 cloves roasted garlic or fresh garlic
1 tbsp lemon juice
Salt and pepper to taste

Put all the above ingredients in the food processor and give it a few quick pulses. Blend until smooth. Serve.

Sambal Nasi Lemak/Dried Anchovies Sambal Recipes

Sambal Ikan Bilis is the main condiment for Nasi Lemak. To me a good Nasi Lemak is all about the sambal.. It can either make or break this popular national dish of Malaysia. I usually prepare a huge batch of sambal and keep them in the fridge and I can use it whenever I want it. I am sure most of you already have your favorite version of sambal but I just wanted to post it here for my own record and also one of my blog reader JS asked for it too. I am not a big fan of having the whole ikan bilis in my sambal as I find them rather chewy after cooking it in the sambal paste. So when I came across the recipe from Ju of The Little Teochew I just have to try it out. She got this recipe from The Sunday Times. The different about this sambal is it has ground ikan bilis in it which I like a lot. I added some tamarind pulp to the dish and double up the quantity.


Ingredients:Here is the recipe adapted from The Little Teochew

140 grm of fresh red chili
2 large onions
12 cloves of garlic
½ cup of cooking oil
160 grm of ikan bilis (dried anchovies)
3 tbsp of tamarind pulp + 3/4 cup of water
Salt and sugar to taste

 

1. Blend chili, onions and garlic into fine paste and set it aside. Soak the tamarind pulp in the water for 15 minutes to soften it up. Then squeeze the tamarind constantly to extract the flavor into the water. Drain the pulp and save the tamarind juice
2. Heat up the frying pan, add in the oil and fry the ikan bilis (anchovies) until brown and crispy. Remove and drain the oil. Ground it into fine powder and set it aside.
3. In the same frying pan and oil add in the blended chili paste and stir-fry until fragrant or until you see oil floating to the top. It will take about 10-13 min.
4. Add in the tamarind juice and the ikan bilis powder. Continue to stir-fry until the liquid evaporated. Add in sugar and salt to taste.

XO Sauce Recipes

What is XO sauce? XO sauce is a spicy seafood sauce origin from Hong Kong Cantonese cuisine. It is made from dry scallop; dry shrimps, ham, chilies, shallots and garlic are cooked over medium heat for some time. It’s spicy, salty and sweet and if you’re a chili lover, you’ll find this sauce irresistible. XO sauce is also known as the ‘Caviar of the Orient’ is an essential flavor enhancer and a condiment. Not may people make this sauce as home as it is tedious and time consuming and it is easier to just head out to the Asian supermarket to buy one. I made this because I think it cost too much at the store. A tiny little bottle cost like $6.00. Since I have all the ingredients at home I tried making this at home. This sauce is very versatile. You can use it as dipping sauce or add it into your cooking or just eat it with rice or noodles.

By looking the all the ingredients I am sure you know how this sauce will smell like. I bought an electrical skillet just to cook this outside the deck. I don’t think Carlos can tolerate the pungent smell that will lingers around for days ha ha... I want to cook this sauce for a longer period of time but the smell attracts a huge swarm of flies to the deck and it was freaking me out. So I cut short the cooking time but nevertheless it still taste really good.

I was warming up the XO sauce in the microwave to eat it with my noodles and guess what my husband said. He said it smells so bad that he ran and hides in our computer room and he stays there for hours until the smell disappeared. He said I’ve cooked food that smells funky but this one takes the cake. To me it smells so good just like what his said about his stinky cheese ha ha… Since some of you request for the recipe so here it is. I hope you enjoy cooking and eating this great sauce

Ingredients:

10 fresh red chilies
15 dried chilies – soak in hot water
200g dried scallops – soak overnight until soft
2 head of garlic - peeled
10 shallots - peeled
200g dried shrimp – soak in hot water until soft
150g Chinese ham –I used the normal supermarket ham
3 tbsp oyster sauce
2 tbsp sugar
½ tbsp coarsely ground black pepper
Salt to taste

1. Drain scallops, tear them into find shreds, pat it dry on paper towel and set it aside. Drain .dry shrimps and chopped if finely and set it aside.
2. Put the shallots in food processor and chop it finely. Do the same to the garlic too, remove and set it aside.
3. Remove the steam and seeds of the fresh chilies and dry chilies. Chopped it finely in the food processor and set it aside. Next chopped the ham and set it aside.
4. Heat up about a cup of vegetable oil in a frying pan or wok over medium high heat. Add in scallops and frying it until crispy and lightly brown. Remove and set it aside. In the same oil, add in garlic, shallots and dried prawns. Stir constantly and cook until lightly brown.
5. Add in ham, and chilies. Lower down the heat and continue to fry for another 10 minutes. Add more oil if necessary. Stir constantly as it may burn easily.
6. Add in the oyster sauce, sugar, salt and pepper and lastly add in the fried scallops. Continue stir fry until it is completely dry. Remove from heat and let it cool. Transfer to sterile jar and keep in the refrigerator.