did a 5-course lunch for my OPS primary school friends on 8.7.2016. ^^

we had 6-course lunch for 6pax –

1. fish head curry (using CH’s curry mix)
2. spicy black bean sauce song fish head
3. salted egg prawns (the sauce WM & J provided)
4. salted egg sotong (the sauce WM & J provided)
5. kueh chap from tampines 844 (WM brought)
6. fried kai lan

quite excited about the salted egg prawns & sotongs.

first time doing a real salted egg dish (using for the first time a sauce given to me by WM & J), having done only once a failed one using actual salted eggs.

just gotten the curry sauce from a friend CH few days back.

we had very nice fish head curry at CH’s place on 6.6.2016.

the curry sauce mix was made for him by his friend & he gave me a tub.

i made a good fish head curry myself. usually i used Mak’s instant fish curry sauce.

in fact, fish head curry was the main item in a recent RI FGS (For Goodness Sake) Charity Dinner at an architect friend’s on 20.5.2016 that raised S$16,948 for HCA Hospice.

for today’s lunch i have not used the mix before so needed to figure out the quantity to use but otherwise it’s the same recipe.

with tasting& some adjustments, the curry was very good actually.

another friend WT tasted before serving & taste was good. i thought so too. 🙂

but there was a “miss” which CH pointed out – not enough sauce.

basically i should have used just 1/2 a head instead of both halves & lots of vegetables which absorbed & crowded out the sauce.

recently i had a really enjoyable small RM22 fish head curry (shared by 2…there were 11 of us so we ordered 6 fish head curry) at “kam long” in JB.

the curry was NOT better than what we had today & the fish head was inferior in freshness & sweetness. however the experience was much better for me as there were a lot of curries (i drink it, very shiok la!)

so this something for me to adjust the next time i cook fish head curry.

spicy black bean sauce song fish head松鱼头 was good.

i made the sauce myself mixing lemon juice, olive oil, mirin, light soy sauce, corn flour & lee kum kee spicy black bean sauce. i like the sauce myself.

for me its better than the fish head we had at sik bao sin recently.

that may not say much as i din think sik bao sin’s fish head was too good.

currently my fish head though still some way off, cannot match the very good ones at hk street chun kee etc.

another adjustment to make is that there is too much condensation in the steam oven so the sauce became a bit diluted. & there is no time for me to reduce the sauce in a pan to make it right.

one logistic challenge with cooking several dishes for a bigger group is that it is NOT quite possible to do “stove to table” service. this means there’s planning for pre-cooking & reheat.

i didn’t have this issue when i served an excellent steamed soon hock recently as the condiments were just right even with the condensation. so it simply means i have to make this spicy black bean sauce thicker to cater for the condensation.

it was fun for me making the prawns, even though i generally hate to do deep-frying – a lot of wastage of oil & additional cooking steps.

this time, i shortcut the process by mixing the prawns in a mixing bowl with fish sauce, white pepper, 1 tbsp corn flour, 1 tbsp plain flour, 1 egg yolk & just mix.

this way cut out the inconvenience & messiness of dipping the prawns in cornflour, flour & egg yolk before frying.

it worked well, as can be seen in above photo! ^^

and then it’s just to fry cut chilli padi + curry leaves in the salted egg mayo sauce mix, then add the prawns to coat.

& voila!

same with the sotong.

i used sea salt instead of fish sauce.

sotong just that little bit more tricky as it becomes rubbery when overcooked, and you don’t want to eat undercooked sotong.

so it’s try & error.

in this case though, luckily one try not much error. i think the texture was just right! 🙂

a friend brought nice kueh chap from tampines 844.

i enjoyed the kueh chap, it is not better than other places though.

like say happy dick at bukit merak view food centre

nor better than my own very good  kueh chap, me think!

the fried kai lan was a rescue job.

i tried to do a dry version, high heat, fish sauce, drizzle some stock…was trying to manufacture the wok hae. didn’t work out that way…when i tried it, the veg was a little bit “siap”.

so back to the wok, actually i first mixed cornflour with some stock in the wok to disolve, then heat up wok to reduce. at the end i added the kailan, off fire & coat the veg.

the final product was not bad la…passable, quite tasty & texture alright not overcooked.

another friend FM brought nice kueh kaya.

i don’t particularly like nonya kueh…the one that i always like is the kueh lapis sagu 九层糕.

this one though i like, not too sweet, not so much glutinous rice. one friend WM said the glutinous rice a bit dry & hard, quite true..overall nice! was eating it the next day also. ^^

i made a banoffee (banana toffee) cake.

ok cake, nothing special la…

WM thought the caramel layer not enough, can be sweeter. usually i like it less sweet, but in this case quite agree also.

it was a very fun lunch & i got to test out the new curry mix & the salted egg mayo sauce. pretty fun!

after that some left. 3 of us went & had some coffee & drinks.

c.h.e.f andy