Speechless

Red Prawn on Olive Fettuccini

w cherry tomato garlic sauce

serves 2

Simply irresistibly darling kinda pasta with an after taste that would stick onto your palate n heart for the rest of your day, if not the week!

2-4 large Red Prawns, unshelled with head and tail left intact

2 handfuls of cherry tomatoes

2 cloves of garlic, finely smashed

50g of demi-sel butter

100ml dry white wine

handful of basils, chopped

1 tsp of tomato purée

sea salt n pepper to season

olive oil

truffle oil

250g of dried fettuccini / spaghetti (olive taste would be nice)

• Briefly wash the Red Prawns and pat dry.
• In a hot non-stick pan with olive oil and a cube of demi-sel butter, add in the garlic and sauté the cherry tomatoes over medium heat. Set aside.
• Cook pasta in a large pan of boiling salted water with olive oil until “half way cooked”. If your packet instruction marked 8 minutes for being al denta, cook it for half of the time, 4 minutes, this time.
• While the pasta is cooking, sauté the Red Prawns in the prepared tomatoes for about 1-2 minutes on each side, season with pepper. Followed by the white wine and continue to cook for about 3 minutes untill the wine has evaporated in half. Once the prawns are ready, place them on a warm place to preserve and they will generate more juice.
• Meanwhile, well blend the pasta in the tomato sauce and add in tomato purée with a touch of maple syrup, simmer and stir for another 3-4 minutes until the pasta well absorbed the intense of the prawn juice.  Season to taste.
• Once the pasta is ready, incorporate the red prawns with their juice into the pasta. Drizzle with a few drops of truffle oil and handfuls of basils as wished. Serve immediately!

Chinese New Year

Nai Nai (Mother-in-Law) Taro Cake

奶奶竽頭糕

1 large taro (~2&1/2 catty)

4 large Chinese mushrooms

3 Chinese sausages (lap cheong)

1 handful of dried shrimps

2 cups of rice flour 水磨粘米粉

1 cup of cornstarch

8 cups of water

1 tsp 5 spices powder

1& ½ tsp chicken powder

1& ½ tsp salt

2 medium sized stainless steel containers or foil trays

Preparation

• Slightly paint containers with oil.
• Well dissolve the rice flour and cornstarch with 2 cups of water, set aside.
• Discard stems of mushrooms. Soak mushrooms with cornstarch and wash thoroughly. Steam mushrooms for about 20 minutes, then dice and set aside.
• Soak dried shrimps overnight. Chopped small roughly.
• Steam Chinese sausages for about 5 minutes, then dice and set aside.

Cooking

• Sauté the diced mushrooms for 3 minutes, then continue by adding the diced sausages and dried shrimps and sauté for another 3 minutes, set aside.
• Peel and cut taro in chucky dices. Stir-fry taro with drizzle of oil for about 3 minutes.
• Pour in 6 cups of water along the 5 spices and the chicken powder into the taro and continue to cook in high fire.
• Once the taro is boiled, slowly incorporate the taro (with the cooking water) into rice flour mixture while constantly stirring the mixture. Failing which, your mixture might be cooked half way through and ruin its consistency for steaming.
• Well blend in the rest of the sauté ingredients into the taro and season to taste, if needed.
• Distribute the taro mixture into the 2 containers and steam for 1 hour. 
• Leave the taro cake to cool down in room temperature followed by refrigeration for a few hours or overnight before cutting it.

Serving

• Slice the taro cake into ½ cm thickness square as wished and pan-fry them until crispy brown on both sides.

Voila!