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When my mother arrived in Australia in the 60s as a high school student from Hong Kong she didn’t know how to boil water.

It was her German/Australian landlady, Mrs Andersen (pictured below with her husband), who taught her how to cook.

One of our favourite family recipes — Stir-Fried Pork and Beans — is actually a variation of a recipe Mrs Andersen taught my mother. Apparently Mrs Andersen learned about Chinese cooking techniques and recipes from cookbooks. It’s funny to think that my mother was taught how to cook Chinese food by a German/Australian but that’s how it was.

This Braised Pork and Beans recipe, that I developed recently for Bertolli Olive Oil, is a variation on my mother’s recipe, which in turn was a variation of Mrs Andersen’s. I’ve fancied it up a little, added quite a lot of ginger and used dark soy sauce instead of light soy sauce but in essence it is similar. It’s rich and comforting, which makes it perfect for those cooler nights when the sun falls quickly and it’s dark in the late afternoon.

Mrs Andersen died before I was born so I don’t remember her unfortunately.  However, I think she’d be quietly pleased to know that she is remembered so fondly, and that her cooking is now inspiring a new generation of cooks. That’s how powerful a legacy the food that we cook can leave.

INGREDIENTS

• 1 litre water
• 1 kilogram boneless pork ribs or pork belly
• 2 tablespoons Bertolli extra light olive oil
• 2.5 inch piece ginger, peeled and sliced into 0.5cm pieces
• 2 tablespoons Shaoxing wine
• 2 tablespoons dark soy sauce
• 1 star anise
• 1 stick cassia bark (substitute with a cinnamon stick)
• 1 cup water
• 400 grams trimmed green beans, cut into 2 inch pieces
• Salt to taste

METHOD

• Bring water to boil in a medium saucepan and then drop pork in. Cook for about six minutes and then remove from water and rinse in fresh water. Cut pork into one inch pieces
• Heat up a wok until smoking and add two tablespoons Bertolli extra light olive oil. Add one tablespoon white sugar and stir until completely dissolved.
• Add pork and ginger pieces and cook over medium-high flame, stirring regularly, for around 3 minutes until browning nicely.
• Mix in Shaoxing wine, dark soy sauce, star anise, cassia/cinnamon, and one cup water.
• You can then either: 1) Turn heat down to low, cover with a lid and cook for one hour and 45 minutes, stirring occasionally. Then mix in the beans and cook for a further 10 minutes; or 2) Place pork into a pressure cooker and cook for nine minutes. Then unlock the pressure cooker, mix in the beans and then cook pork and beans for ten minutes as a normal pot (not a pressure cooker); or 3) Place pork and beans into a slow cooker and cook for 7-8 hours.
• Taste and add ½-1 teaspoon salt if required before serving.

 Note: I was commissioned by Bertolli to make this recipe but I have not been compensated to write this post. I just really like this recipe and wanted to share it here, too. 

One thing I love about working as a recipe developer is the chance to share my recipes — and my family’s recipes — with a much wider audience. I’m always thrilled when someone emails me or comments on a post to tell me that they tried one of my recipes and enjoyed it.

In the process of having to break a recipe down and re-imagine it to suit a client’s specific needs I usually learn a thing or two, too. This Fried Wontons recipe developed for Bertolli Extra Light olive oil is a great example of this. I tested four different wonton wrappers on three different batches of wontons before I found the ultimate wonton wrapper. Yep, my family ate a lot of wonton that week!

Now I know some people think deep frying at home is taking your MasterChef aspirations a step too far but ignore them. It’s not hard, especially if you follow my tips below. Yes, you’ll end up with a lot of oil but you can do what I did: let it cool, strain it and then decant it into a suitable container to reuse as required. It’s what my paternal grandmother did and what my parents have always done so I’m in good company here.

Some tips for you:

1. Use a deep saucepan when deep-frying to avoid splashing,
2. Let the oil heat up properly before adding wontons. If you don’t have a thermometer or can’t be bothered using one, simply drop in a little piece of wonton skin. It should immediately start bubbling furiously and rise to the surface. If it just sits there looking like a flaccid piece of wonton skin remove it and wait a little longer before trying again.
3. Use a suitable slotted spoon or long-handled pair of wooden chopsticks to remove the wontons. Don’t use a normal pair of chopsticks – they’re nowhere near long enough and you don’t win points for being a hero.
4. Remove the just-fried wonton to a plate lined with 1-2 paper towels to absorb excess oil.
5. You can make the wonton up in advance and store them in the fridge between layers of baking paper to avoid sticking but this dish must be eaten immediately to be enjoyed at its best.
6. It is highly unlikely that you will ever win the lottery so you might as well spend that money on fancy knives and other kitchen accessories.

Get this dish right and you’ll be rewarded with golden bundles of deep-fried goodness and joy. Serve said bundles of joy with a dipping sauce made of Chinkiang vinegar, minced ginger, chilli oil and light soy sauce – the combination is sublime and incredibly more-ish.

On second thoughts, maybe you better double the recipe to be on the safe side. Enjoy!

Recipe: Fried Wontons

 

Author: Christina Soong-Kroeger

Recipe type: Appetizer

Cuisine: Chinese

Print

Fried wontons = golden bundles of joy!

Ingredients

• 300 grams minced pork
• 80 grams raw shelled prawn meat, chopped roughly
• 3-4 finely sliced spring onions (about ½ cup)
• 1 tablespoon Shaoxing wine
• 1.5 tablespoons light soy sauce
• 1.5 tablespoons minced ginger (use a fine grater)
• ¼ teaspoon white pepper
• 1 packet wonton wrappers
• 4 tablespoons water
• 1 - 1.5 litres oil, depending on the size of your saucepan

Instructions

1. Combine pork, prawns, spring onions, Shaoxing wine, light soy sauce, minced ginger and white pepper in a medium bowl.
2. Fill a small bowl with water.
3. Pick up one wonton wrapper and spoon some filling into the centre. Using the water, run a wet finger around the wrapper edges and then press them firmly together, making sure that there is no air trapped inside. Repeat with the rest of the filling.
4. Heat up the oil in a small saucepan – you need the oil to cover the wontons completely so adjust the amount of oil to suit your saucepan.
5. Once oil is bubbling, fry the wontons in two to three batches over a medium heat. Wontons are ready when they float to the surface and are nicely browned (average 4-6 minutes).
6. Drain on kitchen paper and then serve immediately with sweet and sour sauce, and/or Chiangkiang (black) vinegar mixed with minced ginger, chilli oil and light soy sauce.

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In my family, my dad is the Noodle King.

Born in Penang, home to the mighty Asam Laksa, my dad came out to Australia in the 60s as a high school student. Back then, there was only one or two Asian restaurants in Adelaide and both were Chinese. So if dad wanted to eat the hawker dishes of his childhood like Char Kway Teow (fried rice noodles), Asam Laksa (sour fish noodle soup), Curry Laksa, Har Mee (prawn noodle soup), Sar Hor Fun (‘wet’ fried rice noodles) and Sambal Udang (prawn sambal), he had to learn to cook them himself.

And so he did.

Asian street food devotees may argue that you can never truly recreate the taste of a hawker dish in a domestic kitchen: they say that the wok doesn’t get hot enough and the ingredients are not the same. They say too, that it’s about the atmosphere – the sheer satisfaction of eating a bowl of $AUD2 noodles on a plastic stool underneath a furiously spinning fan at your favourite hawker restaurant can never truly be replicated.

That may be true but why should we not try to reach for those moments? After all, a little bit of love is better than none, isn’t it?

When my grandmother was alive she would cook her Asam Laksa paste and her Sambal Hebi (dried shrimp sambal) each time we visited Malaysia. We would freeze them in plastic bags and wrap them in old newspaper to bring home to Australia. Later, when I was working overseas, my parents brought me these precious parcels and whenever I was homesick I would use them as the base to create the dishes from my childhood. It made me feel connected and loved.

I’m working with Bertolli at the moment, developing Asian-style dishes for them using their light olive oil. The first recipe I made for them was a Beef Stir Fry and recently, I made this Lobster Noodle Stir Fry, based on my dad’s recipe. It’s not a dish he ate growing up, rather, it’s a dish that he makes for special occasions that the whole family enjoys. To watch my three year old niece slurp up these noodles is to witness pure joy.

Eat the love.

Tell me, dear reader, what are your most cherished family recipes?

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It’s funny how you always want what you don’t have.

When I was growing up in Australia, I wanted to be Oliva Newton-John in Grease. I practised singing like her in front of the mirror, my t-shirt hoiked down over my shoulders to create an off-the-shoulder top like she wore when she sang ‘You’re the One That I Want.’

It was the same with food, too. I craved the simple, plain food my Aussie friends typically ate for dinner. Tuna Mornay, in particular, sent shivers of ecstasy running down my spine.

But Tuna Mornay was not held in the same regard by my friend Megan.

“We call it Tuna Flop, Drop or Slop at my house,” she said cheerfully. “Because it does one of those when it hits the plate.”

Megan and all my Aussie school friends loved having dinner at my house. To them, it was like eating at a Chinese restaurant – they tried all kinds of dishes their parents would never have cooked at home.

Nowadays, most Aussies can manage a simple stir fry or some noodles at home and know the difference between bok choy and bean sprouts.

Still, I love cooking Asian food for people. I love seeing the expression on their face when they try something new and unfamiliar, and fall in love. Or when they discover for themselves how quick and easy a lot of Chinese dishes are to make at home. Best of all, though, is when I get an approving nod from someone who knows what a dish should taste like.

This recipe, Beef Stir Fry, developed recently for Bertolli Olive Oil, is perfect for a quick after-work dinner. Assuming you steam some rice and marinate the beef in advance, dinner can be on the table in ten minutes.

Even my beloved tuna mornay can’t compete with that kind of speedy deliciousness.

Tell me, dear reader, what did you eat at home when you were growing up and what type of food did you wish you were eating?

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