Braised Pork Belly with Mushrooms and Eggs

There were some pre-cut pork belly laying in my mum's freezer, so I suggested to braise it with some eggs since we haven't ate braised pork dishes for a while. I like to cook the meat a bit longer so as to make sure its tender, thou it doesn't look nice but the taste was...

Ingredients:

1 kg pork belly - sliced

a few chinese mushrooms (soaked)

a few hard boiled eggs

1 star anise

1-2 cloves of galic (smashed slightly)

800ml water

Seasoning:

1 tbsp oyster sauce

1 tbsp light soy sauce

1/2 tbsp sugar

1 tbsp chinese cooking wine

1 tsp dark soy sauce

Method:

1. Rinse pork belly and place in pot. Place in mushroom. Pour in water, add in star anise, seasoning and stir well. Bring to boil, lower the heat and braise for 30 min, add in hard boiled eggs, boil for another 15 min then off fire.

2. Half and hour before dinner, turn on the heat and let it braise till gravy thickens. Dish and serve.

Valarie's Chocolate Macademia Cheesecake

Made this cake over the weekend for Kenny...Happy Birthday! Dear...

Mexican Bun

This bread was very popular in S'pore sometime ago, saw this recipe in the recent issue Famous magazine, so made a batch for last weekend's breakfast, except for Trenyce all like this bread although the topping was a little bitter, Kenny said that the filling can be optional...

Dough ingredients:

400g high protein flour or bread flour
40g caster sugar
10g salt
1/8 tsp bread improver (I omit this)
8g instant yeast
190ml cold milk
1 egg
30g butter

Topping
120g butter(melted), 120g icing sugar
1tbsp coffee essence
1tbsp instant coffee powder
2 eggs, 120g plain flour


Butter filling
250g butter, 200g sugar


Method:

1. To make bun, combine high protein flour, sugar, salt, improver and yeast in a mixer. Add in cold milk and egg, beat until form dough. Lastly add in butter, continue beat until smooth and elastic dough is formed.

2. Keep dough into warm place. Cover and leave aside for 50min. Divide dough into 50g each portion. Wrap in a cubed of butter with coated sugar. Place onto greased baking tray.

3. Leave the dough to rise for 40min or until double in size.

4. To make topping, mix melted butter, icing sugar, coffee essence, instant coffee powder and eggs. Add in flour, mix until well combined. Keep aside.

5. Pipe topping mixture onto rised bun and bake in preheated oven at 190degC for 20 min.