Quay Po Cooks: kangkung

Showing posts with label kangkung. Show all posts

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Stir fry belacan kangkung (dried shrimp paste & water spinach)

This is the side dish for our last night dinner. It compliments very well with the vegetarian pineapple fried rice. This dish has a sophisticated name in some Chinese Restaurant called “Ma loi fung kong” in Cantonese. Literally means “Visit Malaysia” . The Chinese are really good at giving auspicious names to their dishes especially those traditional Chinese New Year dishes. There is one dish that has "hoe see" (dried oysters) and fatt choy (Nostoc flagelliforme) and they named it “Hoe see fatt choy” which sounded the same in Cantonese as Good riddance and prosperity. Interesting isn’t it? There are also some funny names given to some dishes like "hut yee kai" (Beggar’s Chicken). Of course, there is always a story behind these names. For the Beggar’s Chicken, it seems a homeless, starving beggar was wandering along the street and saw a chicken. As he was hungry and desperate for food and he had no stove, he covered the chicken in mud, baked it over a fire he made. While he was eating the chicken, an Emperor passed by and he smelled the aroma of the baked chicken. The Emperor stopped and dined with the beggar and asked the beggar what is the name of the dish. Without thinking the beggar told him the name is "Beggar's chicken". So when the Emperor returned to his palace, he ordered his kitchen to add this dish to the list of dishes served at the Imperial court. Oh, I am suppose to give you the recipe for belacan kangkung so why am I talking about Beggar’s chicken? There you go!

Ingredients:

400 grammes of kangkong.

2 ½ tbs vegetable oil

(A)

2 tbs belacan (dried shrimp paste) grilled

3 tbs chilly paste

6 shallots, peeled

4 cloves of garlic, peeled

1 tsp sugar

½ tsp salt (optional according to individual taste)

Method:

Prepare belacan mix as follows. Add (A) in a mortar pound / blend them. Blanch kangkung in boiling water 30 secs and quickly dip into cold bath. Drain all the water and set aside. Heat oil in wok and (A) mixture and stir quickly whilst reducing to medium heat. Once belacan mix is fragrant and slightly brown, increase heat to high and add kangkung. Stir briskly till kangkung is slighjtly limp and you can transfer to the serving plate.

Note: Add a little water if the dish is too dry for your liking. (I like mine dry so I did not add any water).

A LITTLE ABOUT THIS QUAY PO

Before I was married to my "Quay Lo" (Guaylo) husband, I did not know how to bake or cook. Subsequently I learned some baking and cooking Western cuisine from him, and providing his food for him launched an interest in cooking in general. Many of my Chinese friends and family told me that "Quay" is the wrong spelling for devil in Cantonese. The right spelling should be "Kwai" or "Guay". Well, somehow I like the spelling "Quay" better although I have to agree that it does not sound very Cantonese. Try asking a Westerner to pronounce "Kwai" and you will probably hear "Quay" haha. Whether is "Quay" or "Kwai" or "Guay, just know the devil woman is me when you see Quay Po Cooks. My hubby said if people pronounce "Quay" as "Key" is even better because I am the key to his heart. LOL!

Only now, have I started to learn the traditional Cantonese cuisine of my Mum. She cooks fabulously and all her specialties are divine. These two interests, my husband's Western food, and my mother's traditional food, prompted me to document them so they will not be lost.

Here, I wish to share my cooking and baking experience with my readers. I also hope to inspire those who do not know how to cook or bake to do so because, trust me, if I can, you can too.

Something I'd like to mention is that I find that many people are rather unwilling to share their recipes. However, for me, I think differently. I think good recipes should be shared thus allowing as many people to enjoy it as possible. Unless those recipes are for doing business, I don't see why we want to keep them all to ourselves. So if you are generous in sharing your recipes, you are welcome to share on my blog. Send the recipes to me and better still with pictures of the final products and I will be very happy to post them them with credits to you of course.

Our cuisine is a deeply embedded part of our culture. When two cultures come together under the same roof the results in the kitchen can sometimes be comedic, sometimes confrontational, but more often it is a journey full of surprises and discovery. There is joy in our food. If we think upon this, it is intuitively obvious. This blog is a journey of joy and sharing, reflecting what the French like to call "joie de vivre" (joy of living). No one could be more different from one another then my husband and my mother. Yet one thing they share in common is knowing intuitively that food, cooking, and sharing can be avenues of joy in life itself. So herein, help yourself, to a little joy and , if you like it, share it with your own family and friends. Joy is something that should be shared.