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Yee Sang is one of my very favourite Chinese New Year foods, together with bah kwa and pineapple tarts that I had previously blogged. In my first few years in the UK, I sorely missed yee sang. I even got boxes of prepacked dried yee sang sent over; but it was never quite the same. Not only does this craving happen in the UK; when I was in the US a bunch of us ordered yee sang at a chinese restaurant one Chinese New Year; only to be served sashimi! It only served to compound my yearning for this obscure dish – and in the end, it was just easier to make it myself. Which also means I can put in more smoked salmon. WIN!

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Yee Sang is a traditional dish only eaten by the ethnic Chinese population of Singapore & Malaysia. It does not originate from China and very few Chinese people out of Singapore & Malaysia know it. It is also only available during Chinese New Year; as it is a popular ‘prosperity’ dish served during the festive period only. Yee Sang really means raw fish (thus the sashimi adventure we had) , and usually it is served with jellyfish, raw hamachi or raw salmon. Here in the UK, I always use smoked salmon when a recipe calls for raw fish; it is pretty obscure to find sashimi-grade fish here. I can get jellyfish though; which bacon actually prefers so it’s smoked salmon for me and jellyfish for him.

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My recipe is not totally authentic; but the textures and colors are spot on; and most importantly, it TASTES the same. This dish is traditionally eaten with a tableful of friends and family; and making it myself allows me to have it in smaller portions, but have it at any time I like. It would be pretty hard to find 10 people to eat this with me every day as tradition calls for . I came up with quite a number of replacement items (missed out certain things like sweet preserved melon ect) ; you can change and tweak the recipe below as per availability of ingredients to you.

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Yee Sang

thinly shaved cucumber
thinly shaved carrot
thinly shaved daikon
thinly sliced pickled sweet onions
thinly sliced spring onions
fried wonton skins, crumbled
smoked salmon or jellyfish
cilantro
julienned gari (pink sushi ginger)
flaked pomelo (chinese grapefruit)
toasted & chopped peanuts
toasted sesame seeds

sauce:
plum sauce
white pepper
5 spice powder
sesame oil
honey

Arrange all the ingredients together on a plate/platter in a nice circular style. Pour sauce over. Toss with 10 other people. That’s it! Oh, and shout ”Lo Hei” when you are tossing.

It’s crunchy, fresh, crispy and soggy all the same time. The flavours of sesame oil,pepper, 5 spice powder and plum sauce flavour packs this dish and makes it awesome. And with a dish rhyming with prosperity, what is there not to like??

Gong Xi Fa Cai everyone!

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Chinese New Year is fast coming up again – and after so many years celebrating it away from home, I am getting pretty adept in recreating Chinese New Year here. And one of the very favourite snacks for the festive season are pineapple tarts. I could never be bothered to make them myself before, but seriously, I am not going to let my laziness stop me from enjoying pineapple tarts this year.

So after scouring around for a good sweet shortcrust pastry, I’ve pretty much nailed it – ish.

Shortcrust pastry
120g butter, diced into small cubes
1 egg yolks (+ 1 yolk for glazing)
1 1/3 cups sieved all-purpose flour
1 tbs corn flour
3 tbs icing sugar
1/8 tsp salt

Jam
400g pineapple (if canned, use two tins, drained)
100g sugar ( less if using canned)

1) Blitz the pineapples in a food processor for a minute to make it easier to cook down. Not using a food processor will make the process longer, but it’s workable. Cook over low-medium heat until it gets mushy – stirring very often. The resulting texture should look something like the below. Cool & keep overnight in the fridge before using.

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2) Sieve all the dry inggredients together. With the cubed butter at room temperature, add the egg yolks and work the dry ingreddients in with your hands and fingers. You want to do this fairly quickly and in a cool room – hot hands melt butter = not workable. Leave to rest wrapped in a cling film in the fridge for at least 30 minutes. I have left it overnight before and it works fine.

3) Roll out your dough (you might want to only do 1/2 and keep the rest in the fridge first) on a well-floured clean worktop. You want to aim for a thickness of about 1/2cm. With a small flower cookie cutter (you want to keep this bite-sized), cut out the shapes and place them on a baking tray, no greasing needed.

I find it easier to glaze the pastry now (I have a rubbish pastry brush). Then drop a ball of pineapple jam on it. Compact the jam into a ball and place it right on the centre of the flower pastry.

If you have left it overnight in the fridge, you will find that it may have harden up enough to slice. This makes your life easier and you don’t really have to roll your pastry out before cutting out with cookie cutter. It works as well and tastes the same – but I would probably not keep it for more than a few days in the fridge.

4) Preheat the oven to 180c. Start scooping the jam into the middle of the flower – using your fingers to press it down to compress the jam if needed. If you did not glaze the pastry earlier, this would be a good time to do it.

5) It should take 15-25 minutes for the pastry to turn golden brown – and try to avoid popping it in your mouth when it is still hot!

My only problem with these tarts are the fact that it don’t keep long – I finish it within a week and find that I need to stop myself from making more!!!

Enjoy!

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Where we were staying in New Jersey, there were blocks and blocks of bog standard strip malls, like anywhere across North America. I have an affinity for these strip malls, they tend to contain nail salons, the usual big names like Walmart and Target to smaller establishments like Trader’s Joe (I love Trader’s Joe!) and other independent stores and restaurants; from clothing stores to a pizzaria and locksmiths. You just never know what will you find next. It is most definately preferable to the high streets in so many towns across the UK which are usually full of just big name shops.

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I would love to say that I found Jimmy Buff’s in one of my drive-throughs; but the fact was I first found out about Jimmy Buff’s on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives – my latest favourite TV show. The host, Guy Fieri, goes around the US visiting great independent diners and ‘dives’ – this range from large pancake diners to chinese restaurants to a food truck.

However the beauty of strip malls was that I did not even need to hunt it down; we spotted it as we were driving out of the car park from clothes shopping and I had to stop. It was about 11am in the morning, but we had not have any breakfast, so we ordered the trio of pushcart hotdogs. I would’ve loved to get a selection of their giant hotdogs, but I thought that it would be too heavy for us as we were planning for lunch as well.

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The seating area

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The simple counter

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Our hotdogs were cooked fresh – deep fried, not flat top cooked, boiled or grilled.

The chilli dog. Very delicious indeed – this is probably the best chilli dog I tasted up until then. The skinny hot dog is deep fried, which preserves the juiciness contained within the dog casing. The chilli was bolognase-like…but it went very well with the dog.

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The cheese dog. Yeah, we could’ve probably gone for chilli cheese, but the generous amount of all the toppings would probably not be able to contain more than one topping. As it were, the bun was falling apart before we finish eating it.

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The beauty of Jimmy Buff’s? Bacon recognised the person that cooked our hotdogs from tv – it was the owner’s son . A family business through and through; and not just for TV. How great is that?

Jimmy Buff’s
CASTLE RIDGE PLAZA
354 Rt 10 west bound & River Rd.
Tel: (877) 9HOTDOG

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Hello it’s me! I’ve been away for quite some time – spent about two weeks travelling in New York, New Jersey, D.C and Philly. It was seriously the most ‘adventurous’ trip – I made it to Newark but my suitcase didn’t until a few days ago. Bacon being the nice person he is said that he was glad it was me and not him. Yup. Then on the day we were supposed to be coming back, our flight got cancelled due to airport closure in Paris. Then a whole load of that white stuff dumped it down in the Northeast, and JFK closed for business, which meant we were effectively stuck. It wasn’t until three days later that we eventually manage to get on the plane….whew!

Upon returning home I was struck by the ugh flu bug that have been doing its rounds…bleark. It was so bad I took three days off work – the longest sickie I’ve had in ages. Anyway – thought it was time I continue my Awesome America series or I may start forgetting…so let’s see….maybe we can start with the war of the Korean Fried Chicken.

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I love fried chicken of all types, and have been hearing about this marvel that is Korean-styled fried chicken. Apparently the fried chicken is dipped into some sort of cramazing sauce – sweet & spicy. Hmm. Sounds yum. Obviously with the UK being a general all-round desert for Korean food, it’s not available here. I had noticed a few restaurants specialising in Korean Fried Chicken during my previous trip to the Big Apple – so I couldn’t wait to go back and actually try some.

I did some research prior, and it seems that the most popular chain is Bon Chon. Established in Korea, it is expanding speedily in the US at the moment. The inside of Bon Chon looked more like a sports bar than a chicken restaurant – hm. Not quite sure I like that; I have an idea in my head of what a chicken restaurant should look like, but thats just me.

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We ordered the spicy chicken drums – when I ordered drums I thought it was the drummet of the chicken wing, not the actual drumSTICKS. That really sucks, because bacon hates drumsticks! Anyway, we ordered 10 wings, which apparently translated into 5 drumsticks. It would really had helped if the waitress had explained this before – all she asked me was drum or wing.

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The skin – as you can see, is super duper paper thin crispy and separated from the meat.

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This was served with a side of pickled mooli, which was supposed to temper the heat slightly. However, we found that the marinade, although we asked for the hot version, was very, VERY mild. I can taste the sweet soy and ginger flavour, but the spiciness was very tame. Hm. Not entirely convinced. Amazing skin, so-so marinade and flavour. It could probably do with a dip as well?

We were there mid-afternoon, and the place was pretty quiet. The wait staff kept coming over to ask if we were ok and if we wanted anything else…like every FIVE minutes. That gets very annoying and grating after the second time. Ugh. It was not cheap, but affordable.

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Earlier that day (yeah, we hit two Korean Fried Chicken place in ONE day!) we were also at Kyo Chon, another Korean Fried Chicken place in NYC. This at one end of K-town, just around the corner from the largest Macy’s ever. This place resembles a McDonalds rather than a sports bar – complete with paper boxes to eat out from and a separate counter to pay and collect.

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When we ordered, the cashier actually told us that the hot was going to be VERY hot. We obviously paid that no heed and told her that it was ok. Boy oh boy….

We ordered 10 of the signature (non-grilled) wings. In HOT.

As with most Korean Fried Chicken, this wa cooked fresh, and we were given a buzzer to alert us when it is cooked. I sent bacon to get us a selection of sauces. It wasn’t too bad a wait, but then again it was 11am, no lunch crowd in sight yet.

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The last time I saw wings as beautiful as this was when I visited the home (literally) of the buffalo wings. These were absolutely great to look at – lovely crisp crust, completely covered by sauce. And when I bit into it, I nearly died. Boy was it spicy OR WHAT?! In three bites, we were flushed red, fanning our tongues…the whole nine yards. The piping hot fresh-out-of-hot-oil did not help in tempering the heat. However, I soon found out that dipping it in one of the sauce (my favourite is the honey dijon) helped tremendously. The slight sweetness of the sauce complemented really well with the spicy chicken – not to mention that the creamy texture did justice to the crunchy chicken skin. To die for.

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It was all very delicious – I give it my two thumbs up! Compared to Bon Chon, Kyo Chon was more like what I expected it to be, buffalo wings on steriods. Super spicy, super tasty, and super yummy. I love buffalo wings, and these babies feel/taste like the buffalo wings that I know, just edgier. Things might have gone better at bon chon if I ate there before trying Kyo Chon. Don’t get me wrong, Bon Chon was delicious, with that amazingly crispy skin; but Kyo Chon blew my mind. Top fried chicken. I get what the hype is now. I totally get it.

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Kyo Chon
319 5th Avenue (at 32nd Street)
New York City, NY 100
Tel: 1-212-725-9292

Bon Chon Chicken
314 5th Ave 2nd Floor, (between 31st St & 32nd St),
New York City, NY 100

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Psst. Are you still reading? Seeing that we’re on a fried chicken post…some bonus material for you then.

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The American KFC! Some people may not like it; but it’s still miles and miles better than the English KFC. It has hot & spicy, it is CRISPY (unlike the mostly soggy KFC in the UK), serves mashed potatoes and whip up a pretty good coleslaw. And serves Southern biscuits. Delicious; but nothing compared to the other KFC .

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