Category: Recipe

Bubur Cha-Cha


Bubur cha-cha is a popular Nyonya dessert of sweet potato, yam, black-eyed beans, tapioca jelly and sago pearls in thick coconut milk. As a child, whenever it was cooked at home, I would eat bowl after bowl. Those times, the word “cholesterol” was never heard of. Preparing the bubur cha-cha is time consuming as each ingredient has to be steamed or cooked separately. Thus, it was not cooked often which made it a much yearned for delicacy.

I had bubur cha-cha at Cynthia’s house last night, skilfully prepared by Robert, who is an accomplished cook in his own right. He added water chestnut, too, in addition to all the usual ingredients. Incidentally, I have already bought the stuff for making the same dessert when I went grocery shopping earlier and had planned to cook it today which I did. I threw caution to the wind and indulged again today with an extra large bowl. Now, the pangs of guilt are slowly settling in. It will be a very long time again when I commit another dietary sin like this. It was fun while it lasted though.

Bubur Cha-Cha
(This recipe is adapted from The Star’s Nyonya Flavours cookbook.)

Ingredients:
300g yam, diced
300g sweet potato, diced

80g black-eyed beans, soaked in hot water for 2 hours

100g sago pearls

100g tapioca starch
boiling water

3 cups thick coconut milk
100g sugar, or to taste
3 pandan leaves, knotted

Steam yam and sweet potato separately until soft (about 20 minutes) and set aside.

Remove the beans from the water it had been soaking in and cook in boiling water until soft. Remove and set aside.

Cook sago pearls in a pot of boiling until they become translucent (about one half hour). Remove and set aside.

Using a spatula, add boiling water to the tapioca starch in a mixing bowl, bit by bit until it becomes doughy. Mix well. When it can be handled with bare hands, roll into 1cm thickness and cut into strips. Cook in boiling water until they become translucent (about one half hour). Remove and soak in iced water until needed.

Put coconut milk, sugar and knotted pandan leaves into a pot and bring to a gentle boil, stirring continuously. Add yam, sweet potato, black-eyed beans, tapioca jelly and sago pearls and mix well. Serve hot or cold.

This is for Rosalynn


Looking to eat something other than plain rice that I have been eating for most of my meals, I trawled cyberspace for some aromatic rice recipes. Risotto was my first choice but it specifically called for the Italian Arborio rice to be used. That rice is as foreign to me as the Italian language. Remembering that Rosalynn had given me two boxes of Spanish Saffron, I settled on cooking Saffron Rice. I did not have two of the ingredients which were Basmati rice and ghee. In place, I used the rice that I eat everyday and butter and olive oil. The aroma was nice and buttery but it was a little lumpy. I could have added too much fish stock. As much as I liked it, I have to restrain myself from cooking such rich food every week. I could see my LDL levels rising with each spoonful of rice that I took. It is a pity that the nice things in life are always those that we need to avoid. Here is the modified recipe:


Saffron Rice
1 cup rice

4 tbsp butter
2 tbsp olive oil

1 inch piece of cinnamon stick
3 cloves

1 large onion, chopped
1 medium carrot, julienned
2 cups fish stock

1/2 tsp ground coriander
6 cardamom seeds

1/2 tsp saffron, steeped in 2 tbsp boiling water
1/2 cup sultanas

1 tsp salt
1/2 tbsp sugar

Wash the rice thoroughly. Soak it in clean water for fifteen minutes. Heat butter and olive oil in pot. Add cinnamon stick and cloves and saute until the spices’ aroma are released. Add onions and saute until fragrant. Stir in rice until it is thoroughly coated. Add fish stock, carrots, coriander, cardamom, sultanas, salt and sugar. Bring to boil while stirring constantly. When it is boiling, lower heat to simmer. Add saffron with the water it was steeped in. Transfer the broth to cook in an electric rice cooker. When it is cooked, fluff the rice with a pair of chopsticks. Serve warm. It tastes best when eaten with curry.

Jiu Hoo Char


Today I had jiu hoo char and the leftover sambal petai prawns for lunch. It was one of the best jiu hoo char I have had in a long time. And it came from my kitchen! I have this to confess. All the times when I said that I cooked this and baked that, I was only instructing the maid. She did most of the peeling, cutting and frying. I would occasionally show her how to cut the ingredients and help with the stir-frying. She had looked after Mum for one week before Mum passed away. Seeing her dedication in caring for Mum, Peter and I decided to employ her. She is not adept at cooking but is a fast learner.

Cooking jiu hoo char involves tedious cutting of the ingredients and then another one half hour patiently stir-frying it. This is a Hokkien dish which means fried cuttlefish. It is usually cooked only during major festivals such as the Chinese New Year and for praying to the deceased on the Chinese seventh month and death anniversaries. It also used to be one of the main dishes for wedding eve dinners and wedding day lunch which is now mostly being replaced with buffet for aesthetic purposes and convenience.

I am glad that I had picked up bits and pieces of cooking tips from Mum. She had always shared with me the ingredients that she used and how best to cook a particular dish. I have never really cooked a full meal before except soups for Mum every day when she was ill. That also was easy because all I had to do was wash the ingredients, put it all into the slow cooker, add hot water, turn the cooker on, and it would be ready a few hours later. Mum had a wide repertoire of dishes but I cannot remember them all. I can only recall some of those that she cooked often or some that left an indelible impression because they tasted real good. Jiu hoo char is one of them.

First and foremost, a good jiu hoo char must have its sengkuang, carrots, mushrooms and pork sliced into thin layers and then finely shredded, preferably cut by hand with a knife. Those that are processed with a metal shredder would be mushy and not taste as good. It is also important to stir fry the garlic, cuttlefish and onions until fragrant before adding the other ingredients.


Jiu Hoo Char

Ingredients:
600g sengkuang
2 medium sized carrots
3 onions
4 cloves garlic, chopped
6 shiitake mushrooms

50g shredded dried cuttlefish
200g belly pork, skin removed

3 tablespoons cooking oil
1 teaspoon salt

Soak mushrooms in 1 cup of hot water for about 30 minutes. Keep the water that mushrooms had been soaking in. Rinse shredded cuttlefish and leave to dry. Cook meat in boiling water and remove. Finely shred sengkuang, carrots, mushrooms and pork. Cut onions into halves and then slice thinly.

Heat oil in wok. Add garlic and stir-fry until fragrant. Add cuttlefish and stir-fry until fragrant. Add onions and pork and stir-fry until fragrant and onions are soft. Add the rest of the shredded ingredients and stir-fry until they become soft and turn a few shades darker. Add salt. Add mushroom water bit by bit, stirring all the time to prevent the vegetables from burning and sticking to the bottom of the wok. Continue stirring until fragrant, the volume of the ingredients reduced by half, which should be approximately one half hour.

This is not the definitive jiu hoo char recipe. The ingredients and cooking methods were as much as I could recall. I am sure there are some ingredients and steps that I had missed. I think Mum also used scallions and coriander. I did not have those as I only decided to cook this dish when I saw that I had most of the main ingredients. Still, I am satisfied with the outcome. It tasted just sweet enough without sugar being added. Usually sugar is not needed as the sengkuang would sweeten the dish when sufficiently cooked.

I like my jiu hoo char with rice. Some prefer to wrap it in Chinese lettuce or popiah skin. Jiu hoo char keeps well. In fact, it tastes even better if kept overnight and then heated again. It is usually cooked enough for a few meals. Mum used to cook more than we could eat. The leftovers were used to cook chai boay. Chai boay means leftovers in Hokkien. This is usually a hodgepodge of leftovers from a major feast cooked in a big pot together with roasted pork trotters, salted vegetables, onions, sengkuang, mushrooms and dried chillies among others. Adding jiu hoo char to chai boay greatly enhances its taste and flavour.