My husband is fond of buying me recipe books or any books about food. One such book is The Adobo Book (Traditional & Jazzed Up Recipes) by Reynaldo Gamboa Alejandro and Nancy Reyes-Lumen. Not only do you get recipes of various authors but trivia and essays on adobo. The Personal Styles reflect the cook’s preferences. You should read the more than 100 adobo recipe variations ranging from Pork Adobo in Buco Juice, Adobong Tsino, Microwave Adobo, Fresh Oysters Adobo, Adobo sa beer and so much more.
What I’d like to show from the “Adobo Book” are tips for cooking adobo which is entitled the “10+ Commandments in Cooking Adobo”. I am sure you will learn a tip or two even if you have been cooking adobo for years.
It was honor to observe a cooking demo from Violet Oon, dubbed as Singapore Food Ambassador. She is one of Singapore’s leading food gurus and is known as much for her cooking as for her opinions on food. She is considered one of the leading authorities on Asian cuisine with a particular emphasis on Peranakan Food. Violet is also a respected cookbook author and food researcher. Her appointment as consultant to the Singapore Food Festival 2009 is particularly meaningful to her as the theme is Peranakan, the culture she belongs to.
Watch the 35 minute video as she demonstrates two recipes: Nonya Bak Chang and Babi Asam. She interspersed her cooking tips as she demonstrated the recipe. The recipe is a bit complicated to cook but you will learn some asian cooking tips just by watching the video. Now if you want to experiment, go ahead. The sweet potato dumplings taste so good.
Cooking Tips
1. Saute with a nice gentle sizzle not too loud sizzle . Chinese stir fry cooking involves high sizzle but not Peranakan.
2. Cook by smell.
3. Most peranakan dishes boil pork, slice it for that even look, then stir fry it
4. When boiling sweet potato, keep water for soup stock
5. Metal masher is better to use for mashing sweet potatoes
6. Don’t put less in a traditional dish. If rich foods are cooked in its right richness, you tend not to eat a lot.
7. This food should not be eaten every day. In the old days, it was eaten once a year.
8, Enjoy food three times a month. Rest of the month, eat plain like steamed fish or plain rice. When you cook for guests, the point is how to impress them. Cook really yummy for guests.
9. Coriander powder is important in Peranakan cooking. Never buy powder form. Toast the coriander in the over oon14for 10 to 15 minutes but stir every 5 minutes. It has to smell cooked but not burned.
10. To prevent spillage on the floor, use a mixing bowl three times the size that that you would need.
11. the smaller the pot the better. Deep fry is about how high the oil is.
12. When eating in a restaurant, feast with your eyes, your smell and lastly, the taste
13. Drain/dry the meat before cooking so that there is no water layer that prevents spices from reaching the meat.
Here are the recipes demonstrated by Violet Oon.
Held to commemorate a hero of ancient China, the Dragon Boat Festival is celebrated in Singapore with thousands of pyramid-shaped glutinous rice dumplings and a Dragon Boat Race. The poet Ch’u Yuan drowned himself in protest against injustice and corruption. It is said that rice dumplings were cast into the water to lure fishes away from the body of the martyr. This act is remembered by the eating of “chung”, glutinous rice dumplings. Dried lotus and pandan leaves flood the markets a few days before the festival on the fifth month of the lunar calendar as the dumplings are wrapped up tightly in these leaves. The steamed glutinous rice encloses a variety of fillings from pork to mushrooms, red beans, chicken, and mung beans. The Peranakan version isa delicious variation. In the past, lotus leaves were not as a vailable so Peranakans used the gigantic fragrant pandan leaves to wrap their bak chang. In addition to the traditional ingredients of diced pork, Chinese mushrooms and preserved melon was added to the local recipe by the Baba Chinese. The new recipe also includes pounded coriander seeds and lots of sugar.
Galapong Bigas is one of the basic ingredients in rice cake or Kakanin. Galapong is sold from regular rice (bigas) or sticky , glutinous rice (malagkit) and soaked overnight then ground. There is trapped wild yeast that cause the mixture to ferment and cause the rising of the rice cakes.
In the olden days, most homes had a stone grinder made of granite. Markets still sell stone grinders but for those that don’t have stone grinders, the food processor will do. Here is how to prepare Galapong Bigas using a food processor or blender.
1. For every cup of rice, add two cups of water. Soak rice in water overnight or a minimum of four hours.
2. Mill in the food processor or blender. Start with a small quantity, adding soaked rice little by little till you get the consistency of light dough.
3. Make sure the blender is filled to 1/3 of the capacity so machine won’t overheat.
