My Love For Yam And Sago Delight

It was truly a Yam and Sago Delight over the weekend. I bought a yam on Sunday and decided to make dessert out of it. It is my very first yam purchase in my entire life! And it is all because of this blog. You see, having this blog motivates me to try new recipes now and then so as to keep things going. So, anyway, after discussing some potential ingredients with my wife, we decided to have a dessert consisting yam, sago, pandan leaves (screwpine leaves), gula melaka and evaporated milk.

We used the slow cooker (crockpot) to cook the yam in the afternoon (so that we can have a nap!) and the slow cooker did its job after 2 hours. Later that evening, we cooked the sago, added it into the slow cooker together with gula melaka and pandan leaves and hey presto! We had the most fragrant and delicious dessert to savour after meal. We kept some in the fridge and last night, we had the cold dessert version and was blown away by how great tasting it was. This recipe is now going to be a regular feature in our home!
This is our recipe for Yam and Sago Delight
Ingredients (makes 3 servings)

• 1 rice bowl of yam (yam is cut into cubes of not more than 2cm on each side)
• 3/4 piece of gula melaka
• 2 to 3 tablespoons of sago
• 3 rice bowls of water
• Evaporated milk (use 1 tablespoon per serving)
• 3 pieces of pandan leaves
• Water for boiling sago

Method
Boil yam in 3 bowls of water in a slow cooker at high setting for 2 hours. Alternatively, boil it in a pot at low heat for similar period but you might want to increase it to 3 1/2 bowls of water as evaporation is higher by cooking it in a pot.
After cooking the yam for 1 1/2 hours above, add pandan leaves and gula melaka.
Meanwhile, place sago in a strainer (just like picture above). Bring water to boil in a pot. Get ready another big bowl with cold / iced water. Place strainer into pot and boil the sago whilst stirring the sago with chopsticks or fork. Once sago has turned semi-translucent, bring strainer over the bowl of cold water and stir the sago through the cold water so as to prevent clumping. Bring back sago into the boiling water and boil for another 2 to 3 minutes. By now, at least 50 to 70% of sago should be translucent. Then, add strain the sago and add into the slow cooker.
Continue cooking for another 30 minutes. The dessert can be served hot or cold after adding evaporated milk in the serving bowl.

Do You Interested In Yam Rice?

I am quite fond of Yam though I don’t eat it that regularly. There are many ways of cooking Yam – dessert, dim sum or stir fried but one easy dish to cook it would be Yam Rice. Yam Rice can be considered an all-in-one dish because you don’t really need to cook anything else with it, save perhaps a nice bowl of soup to further whet your appetite. The best part of cooking Yam Rice is that you only need a small portion of yam to cook this dish. Too much and you will be stuffing yourself silly unless you are cooking for a party. Perhaps you might want to consider saving some forYam and Sago Dessert.

My mum advised that the Yam should be cut into small cubes and pre-fried separately from the rice. Overcooked Yam will turn mushy or break up and you might lose the flavour a bit. Just add the fried yam into the rice just as the rice is boiling in the rice cooker and you should have nice fluffy rice with fragrant fried yam cubes. As usual in these kind of rice recipes, you will need dried shrimps and mushrooms for the full flavour.
This is mum’s recipe for Yam Rice
Ingredients

• 1 cup of yam (cut into small cubes and pre-fried till light brown)
• 150 grammes of skinless belly pork
• 5 to 8 pieces Chinese dried mushroom (pre-soaked in 300 ml hot water to soften it, remove stem and cut into thin strips. Retain the water used for soaking)
• 50 grammes dried shrimps (pre-soaked in 100 ml water for about 5 minutes. Remove dried shrimps and retain the water used for soaking)
• Water for boiling
• ¾ rice bowl measure of white rice (rinsed)
• 5 shallots (sliced finely)
• 4 tablespoons palm oil

Seasoning

• 1 ½ tablespoons light soya sauce
• 1 tablespoon dark soya sauce
• 1/4 teaspoon of white pepper powder
• 1 teaspoon salt

Method
Fry shallots in oil till golden brown. Remove fried shallots and set aside. Remove oil separately into a bowl.
Bring a pot of water to boil and add belly pork. As the water starts reboiling, remove scum from surface till no more scum appears. Remove pork and allow to cool. Cut the pork into small pieces (just like the mushroom strips), retaining the fat.
Heat up 2 tablespoons of the shallot oil. Add pre-soaked mushrooms and stir fry for 2 minutes. Add pre-soaked dried prawns. Continue stir-frying for another minute or so till aromatic.
Add belly pork strips and stir well for about a minute. Next, add rice and continue stirring well whilst adding seasoning. Add the water previously used to soak mushrooms and dried prawns. Once rice is evenly coated with seasoning, remove and place into a rice cooker.
Add more water to cover rice mixture completely with about 1 cm above the surface of the rice. Switch on the rice cooker. Once rice starts to boil, add pre-fried yam and cover. Allow it to cook till done.
If you are cooking in the pot / wok, add water to cover the rice mixture, reduce heat to low, cover and allow it to cook slowly, stirring occasionally to prevent burning. Cook till rice is fully cooked.
Serve the Yam Rice with a sprinkle of fried shallots and scallions / spring onions.

How To Cook Cornbread?

This is my first cornbread ever. And I don't just mean the first cornbread I've ever made-- this is the first time I've eaten it, too. Oh, I may have tried a cornbread muffin sometime, but I certainly don't remember it. I guess it's just not a very popular food in southern Ontario.
Not knowing what cornbread is supposed to taste like, I was a bit nervous. I needn't have been- it was dead easy to make, and seems to have turned out fine. And it was so quick-- done it about 30 minutes, from start to finish. How can I have gone on so long without knowing about such a quick and easy bread?
I did a little research first and discovered that cornbread is best made with freshly stone-ground cornmeal, and buttermilk, and is best baked in an cast-iron skillet. These three points presented a bit of a problem: it's hard enough to find regular cornmeal here, and I'm pretty sure stone-ground, fresh or not, is unavailable. Buttermilk is also unavailable. And a cast-iron skillet? Even if I could find one, it wouldn't fit in my little oven. I almost bought a cast-iron sukiyaki pan, which looked like it would just fit, and then I noticed that the care instructions warned not to use it in the oven.

So I improvised: regular cornmeal, milk with a touch of vinegar, and a pyrex baking dish. And it worked-- the crust even turned out crispy, which I expected would be impossible without cast-iron. That might have been thanks to the bacon fat I used, which was heated up in the dish before the batter was poured in. Thank god I can at least buy bacon in Japan.

Here's the cornbread cut open and buttered. It was delicious and I'm totally satisfied with the flavour, but is it supposed to be so, well, dry? I know cornbread is not supposed to be moist, and is mostly meant for supping up juices, but man was it ever dry! Did I screw up? Maybe overcooked it a bit? I'm not sure what the colour on top is supposed to be like, but it looks a bit dark. Otherwise this cornbread is great, and as long as it's well-buttered or served with something soupy, it's going to be a regular on our table.
Here is the recipe. I chose it because it was the simplest one I could find (no sugar or flour), but if anyone else has a recipe they can recommend, please let me know.
Oh, and I did serve it with something soupy, something both Hideaki and I have been craving for ages. Can anyone guess what it was?