Fried Pork Sausage in Caul Fat

My grandfather died in his late 80s. He lived life to the fullest.

He survived World War II; stayed in the same well-paid job in the same company until he retired; raised a family with five children; and filled his retirement and twilight years with volunteer work. Life was simpler then.

When it came to food grandpa never stinged. We ate well with him around; he would pick the best part of the animal, select the freshest fish and prawn, bought the most seasonal vegetables, and always ensured that food was cooked to perfection. And that meant taste over health.

But -- he counted calories in his own way. He climbed the stairs even when there was an elevator. He walked for hours to visit his friends. He even got down on his hands and knees to clean the house floor with a rag and water. And, keeping an eye on us -- his naughty grand children -- was surely enough to burn off any remaining cholesterol in those arteries! Grandpa never had hypertension, diabetes or whatever: his body simply wore itself out from sheer age.

I guess the lesson grandpa left us was: you need to work hard to get rid of those calories and cholesterol…if you wanna indulge.

Here’s the sausage that grandma would make for grandpa as an appetizer to accompany his daily preprandial glass of brandy. In my family, we used caul fat in several ways. We would fry the caul fat to extract the oil and use it to cook mushroom stew; we would wrap chicken with caul fat before roasting to keep its skin moist; and in the recipe below, caul fat is used as a sausage skin.

Fried Pork Sausage in Caul Fat

Pork                            300 g

Lard                             100 g

Prawn                          200 g

Water chestnut           150 g, mashed and chopped coarsely

Corn flour                    2 tbsp

5-spice powder           1½ tsp

Salt                               1½ tbsp

Oyster sauce                1 tbsp

Pepper                         1 tsp

Spring onion                20 g

Egg                               1

Caul fat                         1, cut into 8 square pieces

Method:

1.    Cut pork and lard into 2-mm squares. Using the cleaver, chop the pork until coarse. Mix lard and minced pork together. Never mince lard or it will melt during frying. To have an easier way out, you could blend the pork using a electric chopper but chill the pork first before doing it.

2.    Clean prawn, rinse under running water for 30 minutes. This rinsing process will render the prawn meat crunchy. Cut into small pieces.

3.    Combine pork, lard, prawn and water chestnuts in a mixing bowl.

4.    Add seasoning, spring onion and egg, and using chopsticks mix the meat thoroughly in a circular motion in one direction. The mixture is ready when the meat turns gluey and paste-like in texture. Let it rest for 15 minutes.

5.    Place the piece of caul fat flat on a table. Spoon the mixture onto the caul fat sheet and roll it like a sausage.

6.    Repeat until the meat is used up.

7.    Steam sausages for 10 minutes. Drain and let it cool thoroughly.

8.    Deep fry until the sausage is crisp. Drain oil and cut into bite-size pieces.

9.    It can eaten on its own or dipped into chilli or tomato sauce.

Note:

Caul fat: to wash caul fat thoroughly, I normally spoon some corn flour and salt on the caul fat  

              and mix well. Rinse and drain it well.

Water chestnut: occasionally I would substitute it with Chinese pear or apple, which are sweeter in 

                            taste.

Salted Fish Trotter Stew

When I was young, we always had a whole salted fish hanging in the kitchen like some dried up artifact from the museum. In fact, the smell of the salted fish and the well-used kitchen always gave me a comfortable feeling of home.

Salted fish was cheap, and it could keep, and was versatile. Needless to say it was a regular fixture on the dining table: steamed by itself or cooked in what seemed like 101 ways with meat and vegetables, or even in soups.

There are many kinds of salted fish in the market. The soft types have more pungent smells and intense flavors; they are great for steaming just on their own or cooked in combination with other meats, vegetables or fish. The hard types of salted fish usually need to be deep-fried before being consumed; they are great with fried bean sprouts or kailan.

Salted fish is no longer cheap; in Singapore and Malaysia, salted mackerel in the soft form are most prized. These particular variant comes from Malaysia and they are expensive.

My family firmly believed in not wasting any food; every part of the salted fish was put to good use, even the head. We’d cook the fish head in sauce or as a stew or soup. Here are two recipes that we usually prepared at home.

Salted Fish Pork Trotter Stew

Pork trotter (fore leg)            800 g, chopped

Garlic                                       ½ kg, whole

Fried salted fish                       3 tbsp.

Stock                                       3 cups

Salted Fish Sauce

Oil                                           6 tbsp.

Shallots                                   10, minced

Sugar                                       2 tbsp.

Garlic                                       5 minced

Salted fish/head                      200 g, bone removed

Water                                      ¼ cup

Method:

1.    Boil pork trotter for ten minutes. Drain and rinse the trotter thoroughly than dry it.

2.    Put trotter, 250 g of garlic, salted fish sauce and stock in a heavy saucepan. Rapid-boil the trotter for 10 minutes and continue to simmer for 1½ hours.

3.     Replace the remaining garlic and continue to simmer for another 30 minutes.

4.     Season it with sugar and salt.

5.     Serve the trotter with the garlic, and sprinkle fried salted fish over it before serving.

Salted Fish Sauce

1.     Sauté shallots and garlic until it turns translucent.

2.     Add sugar and continue to fry until it is caramelized.

3.     Add salted fish and water and simmer until it reduces by 1/3.

4.     Cool and chill for further use.

Fried Rabbitfish Porridge – A Simple Treat

I am Cantonese; my great-grandfather left Guangzhou, a city in southern China, to seek a better life. And now here I am fourth generations down the line. My clan and I have assimilated well in language, lifestyle, and outlook on life, wherever we may live these days. But when it comes to taste buds, I still slant towards Chinese…and, in particular, Cantonese food.

Those who know Cantonese food, know that there are a few staples we Cantonese cannot live without. One of them is soup; any kind of soup – boiled, double-boiled, and even quick-boiled – with ingredients picked and selected according to the season.

The other staples that regular appear on the Cantonese dining table are rice and congee. I have loved congee since childhood. In fact, I was told that my first “solid” food after weaning was fish congee. When it comes to congee, my family seems to have 101 recipes; and this is one of my favorites – rabbitfish congee.

Rabbitfish is a common fish in the market and also very affordable; except during Lunar New Year. Because at that time of year, the fish becomes filled with roe and the Teochew (another Chinese dialect group from Guangzhou) prize it above all other fish, and would willingly pay obscene amounts for it.

The rabbitfish I have encountered in Hong King are about 10cm in length and may be easily caught by weekend anglers from the shore; their counterparts in Singapore tend to be bigger at around 25cm. Rabbitfish could become bitter if the gall is accidentally ruptured during cleaning. Other than that, the meat of this fish is tasty whether steamed or fried.

I have introduced a method of preparing congee in an earlier post (http://gastronautdiary. blogspot.com/2011_12_10_archive.html). However, the method that I’m posting now is more traditional and seldom practiced, even in restaurants; and it produces congee with a texture and taste that is so much better, even when eaten plain.

So what do we look for in a plain bowl of congee? First, it should smell of rice. The Chinese call it “饭气“ or literally “breath of rice”. This smell should be full bodied yet fresh. Next, the congee texture should be gluey without any lumpy grains. The rice and oil should be well emulsified, leaving no trace of oil visible in the congee. Finally, the color of the congee should be pale white and not cream.

 Fried Rabbitfish Congee

Rabbitfish                    1 kg or more
Rice                             100 g
Glutinous rice             12 g
Thai jasmine rice         12 g

Lard                             25 g

Salt                              2 tsp

Water                          2.75 litres

Ginger                         50 g, julienned

Salt                              1 tbsp

Soy sauce                    1 tbsp

Sesame oil                  ½  tbsp.

White pepper              a dash

Spring onion               garnish

Fried shallots               2 tbsp

Method:

1. Mix all rice with lard, salt and water, and let it rest for 30 minutes.
2. Add rice to boiling water, and let it boil vigorously for 1½ hours.
3. Add fish and ginger, continue to boil over medium flame for another 30 minutes.
4. Season it with salt.
5. Add a dash of soy sauce, sesame oil, pepper, spring onion and fried shallots.

Fried RabbitFish

1.   Get the fishmonger to remove the guts, but if you have to do it yourself, try not to tear the gall or the belly meat will turn bitter.

2.   Apply salt to the fish and let it marinate for 15 minutes.

3.   Rinse the fish well and drain.

4.   Fry fish until both sides turn slightly brown.

5.   Remove bones and set the meat aside.

Note:

It is necessary to boil the congee under both high and medium flame as this will ensure that the rice and water emulsify well. Never simmer the congee; and do not add any water to it while it is cooking. However, if there is a need to add water, make sure it is boiling water.

St Pierre Springs into the Limelight

Chef Leandros Stagogiannis may be a bear of a man with a balloon of frizzy hair to match (think Hagrid from Harry Potter!), but he has nimble fingers when it comes to food plating, and the sharpest of taste buds to match.

The Chef is not a newcomer to our shores, but he’s kept a pretty low profile during his three years at Restaurant 53. Now, with his debut as the new Chef de Cuisine at Saint Pierre, he seems ready for the spotlight.

I had the opportunity recently to sample the Spring Menu he developed. Its first entrée, Salmon Roll with Scallop Mousse, was a tad predictable but nevertheless a refreshing teaser for the taste buds. Happily, there was a lot more to come.

Foie gras had always been Saint Pierre’s calling card -- the must-try ingredient that showcases the restaurant’s technique and creativity. In the foie gras dish of the Spring Menu, Chef Stagogiannis used caramelized green apples and old port sauce to develop a tri-layered note for the nose as well as the tongue. The first bite delivered two sensations at once: the sweetness, mellowness, and richness of the old port sauce, and the tartness of the green apple. The rich and creamy taste of foie gras rounded off the symphony; three layers of flavor melding into a titillating orgy on the tongue. Sexy, mature, and exciting!

Next, the colorful heirloom vegetables of the dish, Heritage, delighted the eye and palate as each vegetable entered the mouth. The red and ‘limp’ watermelon was the biggest surprise: frozen, then pressed steamed, each stage of preparation had changed the taste and texture of the watermelon; the end result was a fruit with the texture of liver, yet with intense sweetness. While I reckon you can call it a dessert, to me the watermelon better served as complement to the rest of the vegetables, such as the yam and parsnip fries in hazelnut butter.

I ordered the dish, Le Jardin, on a whim. It was an interesting play of bamboo shoot, lotus root, sweet potato, burdock root, shishito, kabocha, momotaro tomato and banana flower, arranged with an ikebana Zen-ness that reflected its Japanese ingredients. I was surprised to learn that this dish was on the menu since way before Chef Stagogiannis came onboard-- maybe I was too busy looking at other dishes to notice!

I have never liked my salmon cooked, but when Chef added wakame as the “fifth taste” to the vanilla oil-poached meat of the fish, it worked for me. Eating the smooth-textured salmon felt almost like eating sashimi, and the chanteclaire apple reminded me of early spring in Tokyo.

It is really hard to find well-cooked sweet bread in Singapore, but Chef did justice to the dish. Resembling pig brain in texture, the sweet bread was delicious with the garlic dressing and white asparagus. The plating brought me back to Restaurant 53 with its signature hay nest.

The last time I remembered having vegetable as part of a dessert was at Pierre in Hong Kong. Chef Pierre Gagnaire had engineered the lettuce brilliantly and made it the main ingredient of the dessert. It was unforgettable. Here, Chef Stagogiannis used celery as the surprise choice. The tanginess of celery worked surprising well with the strawberries with chocolate crumble and sorbet. It took confidence to pull this one off, and Chef Stagogiannis, who was once the pastry chef at The Fat Duck, as well as pastry consultant with Gordon Ramsay’s Maze and Maze Grill, did it with aplomb.

We rounded up the night with chocolate ganache with a hint of soy sauce and parsnip -- a fitting finale I thought. Although my dinner companion wasn’t bowled over, I thought this dessert represented the Chef’s artistic approach nicely. To me, it seems that Chef Stagogiannis -- as a chef as well as a trendy artisan -- captures the “in” style of cooking as well as food presentation unfailingly, every time. Now, perhaps, the interior of the restaurant has some catching up to do, in order to live up to this revitalized menu.

Saint Pierre

#01-01 Central Mall

3 Magazine Road

Singapore