Red Velvet cake with cream cheese icing

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News in 120 seconds

Fuck this shit.

Yet another engineer has resigned. Guess who will be doing all the work now.


***

Moving on to a less miserable topic...

Chocolates!



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At 28 RMB for a box of 8 pieces, it is not a trivial matter. That it consists of a smallish biscuit entombed in a chunk of milk chocolate is a redeeming factor.

The beautiful Super-Takumar 50mm/1.4 is there as a reference for scale, seeing that it is a familiar object and most people would have an intuitive grasp of its size.


***

And now, some updates from the fashion capital of China, Shanghai.

Three-quarter length stockings have become quite popular here, the owners proudly assaulting the eyesight of the general public with their frightful aesthetics.





Designs vary, ranging from plain translucent material throughout, to more complex patterns such as opaque nylon above the knee, translucent nylon below the knee, and finished with a bold lace trim at mid-calf height.

Now to wait for the rest of the world’s sense of fashion to catch up, and we’ll see an explosion of these things from Milan to New York. Delightful.

I stumbled out of the study heading for the washroom, my eyes fuzzy from a night of sleep. I see my aunt and cousin in the living room, so I greet them with an artificially crisp ‘good morning’ before turning into the loo.

Freshened up by the quick wash and my dragon breath banished, I join them in the living room. The night before, my aunt had just arrived back from the United States after some MBA-related classes.

She asked me how I found my work in Shanghai to be like.
“It’s ok, I suppose,” I reply vaguely.

She tells me that as I am starting out my career in China, I have to be particularly cautious as most standards of best-practice are not adhered-to. It’s important for me to develop a methodical, thorough approach and avoid picking up the bad habits.


She’s right. I have noticed a general approach that the Chinese workers seem to take: as long as it works, it’s ok. Never mind that the standards are not adhered to, as long as the equipment works (on the most basic level).


***

On my return from Hong Kong, I was faced with a shit-storm of sorts. It turns out that one of the projects I’m working on is a mess. The electrical engineer did not adhere to much of the basics of the electrical code, including using wrongly colour coded cables, lack of separation between cables of different voltage categories, insufficient documentation…

And he did try to wriggle out of the mess by saying we should try to talk to the end user to see if they will turn a blind eye to these violations. As long as the equipment works.

Gah.


***

After talking for a bit, I slipped away to get ready while my aunt fed her daughter breakfast. I, on the other hand, was going with Jean for some much-needed dim sum.

On the recommendation of my granduncle, we visited Dou Hiong. It was supposed to be a good balance between reasonable price¹ and excellent food², and we were not disappointed.




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Top: prawn dumplings
bottom: steamed lotus seed paste buns; chee cheong fun with char siew




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Top: ham sui kok
bottom: siew mai; char siew pau

Total damage: 156 HKD for the above and servings of prawn dumplings and siew mai.

Footnotes:
1. By Hong Kong standards. Doesn't help that cost of living in HK is a bit on the high side
2. Again, by Hong Kong standards. This is a good thing, as HK food standards are already high

Dinner

I headed to Carrefour after work, intending to get mayonnaise, potatoes, lemon, potato peeler, toothpaste, lamb and some vegetables. Not that I was desperately short of food at home – there’s still minced pork, mussels and prawns in the freezer, and in the fridge, eggs, tofu and various vegetables.

However, I got distracted and also purchased a Nestum-like mix, potato crisps, strawberries, rosemary, oregano, mixed herbs, mushrooms, hot English mustard, ice cream, bacon, salmon, sharpening stone and pickles. The total damage came up to a frightful 233 RMB.

And for dinner, pan fried salmon steak and potato salad with bacon bits.


Surely not the best in the world, but remarkably satisfying. Especially the salmon – slightly charred skin on the outside, yet rare and flaky inside. If only salmon was not so pricey.

Meat rolls wrapped in tofu sheets

The Impermeability of Tofu Sheets
and its Role as a Wrap for Steamed Meat Rolls
Tan Yee Wei, March 2009

Abstract

Tofu sheets (fu pei) was used as a wrap for steaming minced meat, and its role as a moisture barrier is discussed.


Keywords

Tofu, soy, steam, impermeability, porosity, soup, gravy, wrap, roll, moisture


Introduction

Yesterday, I saw some thin, large sheets of tofu-like product at the market’s tofu and soy products seller. I bought some to experiment – the immediate idea was to use it to wrap minced meat like a spring roll, and steam. Preliminary research suggests that this tofu sheet is called fu pei in Cantonese, literally translated as tofu skin.


The filling consists of minced meat, scallops, garlic, chilli, coriander, black fungus and mushrooms.



Procedure

Using a knife and chopping board, alter the ingredients’ (scallops, garlic, chilli, coriander, black fungus and mushrooms) topology such that they are no longer continuous and simply-connected. In other words, chop finely.


Mix chopped ingredients and minced meat with seasoning.


Cut tofu sheet into reasonably sized pieces, and fill with erm… filling. At this point, I realised the tofu sheet is too thick to fold in at the ends, and thus they will remain open-ended.


Arrange in a plate, drizzle with a little soy sauce and sesame oil. Ensure plate is sufficiently deep as the filling will expel some gravy as it cooks.


Steam for ~20 mintues



Observations

The tofu sheet is a non-porous material, and therefore helped retain moisture within the meat. As the ends were not sealed, the filling at the end cooked first and formed a barrier. When the filling in the middle cooked, it emits a soupy juice, part of which was retained within the roll. The result was a particularly moist filling.


Conclusion

The tofu sheet serves as a moisture-retaining barrier.


Discussion

While the end result looks interesting, the advantages conferred by using tofu sheets is questionable. It is conceivable that an alternative method can be used to ensure minced meat does not dry out during the course of cooking, such as using a covered small deep bowl.

Therefore, the author's opinion on the practical use of the tofu sheet lies in the areas of aesthetics, flavour and texture.


Further work

An alternate application would be small squares of tofu sheets with filling in the middle and the corners brought together as to bound the filling inside the package (similar to a wonton). As the tofu sheet is not inherently sticky, a means of fastening the structure would have to be developed. Using lengths of dried preserved vegetable to tie the package together is suggested but not yet tested.

It is envisioned that the above approach will retain all of the filling's gravy within the package, resulting in a wet and nasty surprise for unsuspecting consumers who bites into the package. Further work is required in this area to verify the practicality of such an approach.

Vanilla ice cream with strawberries

In a previous post, I described vanilla ice cream with “gratuitous amounts of sliced strawberries” as absolutely lovely.

Sabrina, on the other hand, was of the opinion that “it all seems a little gay.”

This is my counter argument:



Super-Takumar 135mm f/3.5 with extension tube

The brownies were good

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A delicate crust, and a fudgy interior moist from the molten chocolate...

The Cold Stone experience in Shanghai

So on Saturday I fulfilled my quest to sample the much anticipated Cold Stone ice cream.

It was fantastic: I picked the Founder’s Favourite- sweet cream flavoured ice cream with pecans, brownies, fudge and caramel mashed in on the spot, and served in a thick wafer bowl.

The ice cream was smooth and rich, and the best part was that the ingredients were added in there and then, thus ensuring the nuts remained crunchy and the cake not soggy.

Unfortunately, the matter of price is enough to cause a severe cringe (or two). The medium sized serving of 170g cost me a painful 39 RMB.

Below is a cost comparison between Cold Stone in the US and China:

Medium size serving: 8 oz (US); 6 oz (China)
Price: ~ 4.50 USD; 39 RMB (5.70 USD)
Price per ounce: ~0.56 USD/oz; 6.5 RMB/oz (0.96 USD/oz)

Unlike in the US where Cold Stone stores are common, ice cream parlours are not a very common sight in China. In addition, the live action of mixing ingredients into the ice cream adds a novelty to the entire process, allowing the chain to position itself as a premium brand.

With a booming upper-middle class in Chinese cities, Cold Stone can afford to charge astronomical prices and (probably) turn a profit from those willing to splurge on something out of the ordinary.

WTF. An ice cream commentary just turned into a company analysis…

Anyway, the ice cream was pretty good. It’s quite a different experience from a purist like Mövenpick, concentrating more on giving a mix of flavours and textures in each bite. However, the astronomical price greatly detracts from the overall enjoyment.

Orgasms

In the form of ice cream and tiramisu.

Honey, I’m home! Hence the long spell of silence.



Yet another photo of the Beijing Airport

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***

I dropped by at Singapore for visit over the weekend, and one of the highlights of the weekend was sampling some Movenpick ice cream. Yes I hear it’s available in Malaysia; I’m sorry if I sound like I come from a kampung – I just returned from China.

It’s mind blowingly awesome. The strawberry ice cream was absurdly smooth, and the flavour was light and refreshingly sour. Fruity. And there were generous blobs of frozen strawberry chunks in the ice cream.

If you were to let the crystal-free ice cream melt in your mouth, the fruity sourness melts away leaving an occasional frozen bit of fruit. Let that thaw and it regains its strawberry-ness.

The cappuccino ice cream was another case study in orgasm-inducing food. It consists of mostly of coffee ice cream with some swirls of vanilla. And dispersed everywhere are fine chocolate chips. The coffee and vanilla ice cream melts first, leaving a residue of chocolate sediment in the mouth. This then quickly dissolves into a happy, chocolaty nothingness.

I suppose the appropriate thing to say now would be “I <3 Movenpick ice cream.”


***

We made tiramisu some days ago. It came out a little short of a whole tiramisu due to a minor misjudgement, but was still fantastic. The gratuitously generous quantity of strong coffee and Tia Maria helped save the day.

With a naked cake in the fridge, I scribbled something on a sheet of paper and cut it out into a stencil for sprinkling cocoa on the cake.

It’s one of THE most remarkable equation in complex mathematics, e^iπ=-1

The first was a mess because I hand-held the stencil; the last one was incomplete because I had to try the tiramisu.




e^iπ=-1

Tianjin style zha jiang mian (dry noodles)

Because I am not very inclined to study financial statement analysis at the moment, and because I have a minor fixation with food, I will write about food.

The office in Tianjin is based in an apartment, therefore there's a kitchen and dining area in the office. The cleaning lady also cooks for us, so there's ample supply of 'home' cooked food with sufficient vegetables etc.

There's a particular style of noodles that she makes that is greatly welcomed by the office staff. If i'm not mistaken, its the Tianjin style of making zha zhiang mian (cantonese, zha zheong mien).

The noodles are thick-ish rice flour noodles, boiled then strained dry. The noodles are a bit soft but not mushy; the texture resembles that of laksa noodles (lai fun).

Condiments to go with the noodles (some cooked, some raw; some dry, some with a bit of sauce) were spread on the table, and we added whatever we liked to the noodles.

There were a LOT of condiments:

• Thinly cut pork strips cooked with fermented yellow beans, made with enough gravy
• Eggs and tomatoes, with wood fungus and other things (this is a rather watery mixture; beaten eggs were poured into the hot liquid to from fragmented bits of egg)
• Finely grated cucumber, raw
• Chopped coriander, raw (do not skimp on this)
• Garlic cloves, raw
• Boiled choy sum (or equivalent), cut into very short lengths ( ~2cm), lightly seasoned with salt/soy sauce
• Stir fried long beans
• Finely grated/cut potato and capsicum strips, stir fried and lightly seasoned
• Boiled peanuts, seasoned with 5 spices

I strongly suspect part of the reason this thing is so good is due the vast spread of textures and flavours. Precisely the same things that make asam laksa worth a drive to Penang for*.


* i'm referring to that dirty stall by the market in Ayer Itam, the one below the Kek Lok Si hill and located next to a foul looking drain. Yeah, that one. To d(r)i(v)e for.

7 Apples

One of the advantages of working in St Kilda (Melbourne) is the proximity to 7 Apples, a gelateria.

It is so good that I end up getting a cone every 2 working days or so (which is equivalent to 3 or 4 times every fortnight). This habit might not be very good on the calorific front, but I am not can't be bothered counting. It is not cheap too ($3.90), but the tips from each shift are usually more than enough to pay for my ice cream hits.





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Click here for Deviant Art entry




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Notice I only started taking photos after the gelato was gone.

7 Apples is located 75, Ackland Street. Take the 96 tram towards St Kilda Beach and get off one stop after Luna Park. The green coloured shop is located on the right just before the tram stops. Beware of the queue on hot weekends.


***

On a completely different note, here is a sky shot. A 24mm lens would be nice.

I think these photos have a non-zero commercial value (part 1)

Appended 4th Nov:

In response to feedback from小李飞刀,



Many thanks!

Photographs

How hot is the curry?

Diagonal Slash

Click here for large size image
Read more about the real diagonal slash method here

As a part-time waiter (I spend the other part of my time taking photos and erm… never mind), this is one question I find amusingly annoying.

“How hot/spicy is [some dish or other]?”

For the first few weeks, I had to resist the temptation to blurt something daft (from a business and customer service point of view) but mercilessly logical. Something like, “depends on how much spiciness you can tolerate, doesn’t it?”

Now I just say “moderately spicy, but we can make it mild” and let the customers figure out what my moderately spicy means to their sensory system. And anyway, those who spring this question usually end up asking for it to be mild. Wusses. The heroic ones will usually ask for the food to be made spicy. No probing question, just straight to the point.

To be pedantic, the question ‘how hot is the curry?’ is fundamentally flawed. The adjective ‘hot’ lies in the taster, not in the curry. The curry contains capsaicin (the active ingredient of chilli), but that is all. In no way is the ‘hot’ property imbued in the curry. It is how the taster reacts to capsaicin that results in the ‘hot’ sensation.

Sliced Chilli

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The good thing about ‘moderately spicy’ is the phrase’s vast coverage. No one will ever complain about the food being too mild or too hot (except for the tossers, or if the cook had been wanking. But that’s another story altogether).

Marzipan Cuboids Drizzled in Molten Chocolate

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Photographs

Interesting reads

Warning: very long, multi-section entry

Table of contents:

An eye-opener of a lunch
不礼貌之客 (no English translation)
Ss. Peter and Paul Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral (photographs)
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson


An eye-opener of a lunch

Lunch today was actually preset to Tai Ping Yang (太平洋) in Richmond. It is a popular Chinese restaurant, and apparently it is good. Upon arriving at the venue, its popularity was confirmed- there was a queue at the counter, and the floor was packed. It looked like a scene straight out of Hong Kong, complete with strips of juicy char siew (叉烧), hunks of crispy siew yuk (烧肉) and roasted birds hanging at the front window, and strangers sharing tables in a crowded eatery.

Precisely because the restaurant’s popularity was confirmed in such a resounding manner, I could not investigate claims that the food is good.

There was another interesting restaurant in the vicinity, with an extremely attractive name too: Chilli Paradise (辣翻天). The most interesting (read: shocking) dish we ordered was the 水煮鱼 (literally, fish cooked in water).

It came served inelegantly in a huge, thin-walled stainless-steel bowl basin. But that’s not the point, it’s the edible bits that is the point.



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Slices of fish and bean sprouts come immersed in the basin-full of liquid. A large quantity of little red dried chillies float on the surface of the fluid. The fluid itself is not soup but…

*drum roll*

chilli oil.

The chilli is remarkable. Unlike the chillies we are accustomed to, this is a completely different animal plant. It is numbing- bite into a seed or whatever chilli fragment and the tongue takes on a tingling, numbed sensation. For a first timer, it feels extremely weird. However, it is not hot in the usual sense. There is no perspiration nor runny nose, avoiding the unpleasant scene of a wet scalp and dripping nasal fluids.

But that numbing spiciness is a real eye opener. It will rearrange your perception of the universe, assuming the sight of that pot of chillies hasn’t already done so.



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The dish itself was wonderful. The fish was liberally rubbed with pepper before being immersed in the chilli oil. The bean sprouts gave a nice crunchy contrast to the smooth fish slices. The chilli oil had sesame oil and what feels like some (spring) onions. And it is not as frightening as it looks, so stop whining.

There was quite a lot of fish and bean sprouts hidden between all that chilli and oil, and at $12, it is worth every cent.

Very, very highly recommended, but only if you dig chillies. Otherwise, stay away.






不礼貌之客

今晚，有四个客人到餐馆用餐。

同事Gregory给他们点了菜、送了饮品后，跟我说他们很不礼貌。当时，我还没跟他们接触，就把Gregory的埋怨当为耳边风。

他们差不多吃完了，我去把他们的水杯装满。正倒着时，他们四人一点反应都没有。到完后，没有一个抬起头来，没有一声谢谢，没有一个人把手招一招。果然不礼貌。

我把空水瓶拿回bar去，见老板和Gregory在讨论着这四个客人。老板横着看了他们一眼，问起：“不知他们是什么地方来的？”

Gregory说：“应该是马来西亚吧。”
老板问道：“你又懂？”
“他们讲广东话的。”
“可能是香港嘞？”
我答：“一定不是，香港人的口音不是这样的。”
“新加坡呢？”

这继续了好几分钟，老板似乎希望着这几个人不是来自自己的母国。论了一会，发现他们都很像马来西亚人。这时，老板就开始才他们来自哪个州。

老板笑着说：“一定是马六甲啦！”他指着Gregory，仿佛他罚了严重的罪。
来自马六甲的Gregory反驳：“喂，又关我什么事？”


另一桌吃完了，我把他们的碗碟收回到厨房。手里拿着许许多多的盘，走过这四个客人。只听一声“卖单”，没有招手，没有抬头，没有“excuse me”。我转了身，向他们点头表示明白，便走向厨房去。走过bar时，我跟他们说声“3号要bill。”

搞好了那座得空碗碟后，我说：“真的过分。走过他们就‘卖单’的一声叫单。”
Gregory答：“我们知道。你走了进去他们还喊着卖单卖单。”
我的双眼自动得睁开了一些，半信半疑地“哈。。。？”了一声。

他们终于付了钱（没有小费）而离开（老板向他们说谢谢，他们没反应）。

老板：这些人，真的事。。。
一维：是啦。你刚才跟他们将在煎他们都不回答。
老板：最好是出去跌进水沟里。

老板：都是不要那么衰。踏倒狗粪就好了。大块的狗粪。
一维：又软又臭的。
老板：然后没有发现到，进了车弄得整车都是狗粪。
一维：不然回到家里，印到地毯上。
老板：而且是白色的地毯！



Ss. Peter and Paul Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral (photographs)

From a particular entrance to my block of flats I get a clear view of the white dome of the Ss. Peter and Paul Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral, a Ukrainian Catholic cathedral in North Melbourne. When the sun is just behind the dome, it shines through it’s stained glass, and becomes a dramatic beacon.

Yesterday, I took a walk to the cathedral to have a closer look. It’s quite a magnificent structure.




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It even has a lightning rod!



Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

Some time ago, Michelle Chong recommended Cryptonomicon. It is a brilliant book. Below is a 2-page excerpt:



“Let me just demonstrate,” Waterhouse blurts, and strides out of the room and doesn’t bother looking back. Back in the church, he goes to the console, blows the dandruff off the keys, hits the main power switch. The electric motors come on, somewhere back behind the screen, and the instrument begins to complain and whine. No matter – it can all be drowned out. He scans the rows of stops – he already knows what this organ’s got, because he’s listened and deconstructed. He starts yanking out knobs.

Now Waterhouse is going to demonstrate that Bach can sound good even played on Mr Drkh’s organ, if you choose the right key. Just as Father John and Mr. Drkh are about halfway up the aisle, Waterhouse slams into that old chestnut, Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, except that he’s transposing it into C-sharp minor as he goes along, because (according to a very elegant calculation that just came into his head as he was running up the aisle of the church) it ought to sound good that way when played in Mr Drkh’s mangled tuning system.

The transposition is an awkward business at first and he hits a few wrong notes, but then it comes naturally and he transitions from the toccata into the fugue with tremendous verve and confidence. Gouts of dust and salvos of mouse droppings explode from the pipes as Waterhouse invokes whole ranks that have not been used in decades. Many of these involve big bad loud reed stops that are difficult to tune. Waterhouse senses the pumping machinery straining to keep up with this unprecedented demand for power. The choir loft is suffused with a brilliant glow as the dust flung out of the choked pipes fills the air and catches the light coming through the rose window. Waterhouse muffs a pedal line, spitefully kicks off his terrible shoes and begins to tread the pedals the way he used to in Virginia, with his bare feet, the trajectory of the bass line traced out across the wooden pedals in lines of blood from his exploded blisters. This baby has some nasty thirty-two-foot reed stops in the pedals, real earthshakers, probably put there specifically to irritate the Outer Qwghlmians across the street. None of the people who go to this church have ever heard these stops called into action, but Waterhouse puts them to good use now, firing off power chords like salvos from the mighty guns from the battleship Iowa.

All during the service, during the sermon and the scripture readings and the prayers, when he wasn’t thinking of fucking Mary, he was thinking of how he was going to fix the organ. He was thinking back to the organ he worked on in Virginia, how the stops enabled the flow of air to the different ranks of pipes and how the keys on the keyboard activated all the pipes that were enabled. He has this whole organ visualised in his head now, while he is pounding through to the end of the figure, the top of his skull comes off, the filtered red light pours in, he sees the entire machine in his mind, as if in an exploded draftman’s view. Then it transforms itself into a slightly different machine- an organ that runs on electricity, with ranks of vacuum tubes here, and a grid of relays there. He has the answer, now, to Turning’s question, the question of how to make a pattern of binary data and bury it into the circuitry of a thinking machine so that it can be later disterred.

Waterhouse knows how to make electric memory. He must go write a letter to Alan immediately!

“Excuse me,” he says, and runs from the church. On his way out, he brushes past a small woman who had been standing there gaping at his performance. When he is several blocks away, he realises two things: that he is walking down the street barefoot, and that the young woman was Mary cCmndhd. He will have to circle back later and get his shoes and maybe fuck her. But first things first!




中文文章

Photographs

Interesting reads

Chocolate truffles; absurd food photography; preposterous macro photography

Note: a more apt title should read 'fugly food photography'.


Today’s post would be an agglomeration of three slightly different topics.

The most important bit first- chocolate truffles. Chocolate truffles are those delightfully delicious spheres of soft chocolate that sell at heart-breakingly expensive prices. Inspired by Evelyn, I Googled for some chocolate truffle recipes, and the simple ones are really easy to make.

To summarise:
Melt dark cooking chocolate into hot mixture of whipping cream, flavouring and butter, stir until smooth, chill until firm, shape into balls and dredge through cocoa powder.

See, only one sentence.

Anyway, the finished product was FANTASTIC.

The engineer in me is already contemplating a dual-compound variant in the future, with a preposterously soft centre in a shell of acceptably soft chocolate. Not surprisingly, it involves various cooling procedures during manufacture.

My cousin May demanded that I show her some images of the finished product. I agreed, only because she is my cousin and I like her.



Which brings us to the second part- absurd food photography. Chocolate truffles are not easy to photograph; they are mere fuzzy brown balls with no distinguishing features. A bit of colour was needed to perk things up.

In the end, circumstances forced me to use the following:

Pink flowers (no other colours nearby)
Pink flower petals (from the same flowers)
Lemon rind from wedges
Narrow strips of lemon rind
Narrow strips cut from celery leaves

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The instant I scattered the petals I realised that the colours were gay. Not trying to be homophobic, but even May said, "so gay man!" Followed by, "gosh, this is totally gay!" Well, at least it matches my current colour scheme.


Shut up about the colours already, I know.
Note that lemon rind on white is very yellow.


And now, to show off my knife’s sharpness, my ability to use a sharp knife, and the camera’s optics.

The following images are successive crops of the same image of a thinly pared lemon skin.


This is the original image, resized to fit.
Thats a metric ruler with cm and mm units.



This is a closer view of the centre of the original image.



This is the full sized view, with edges chopped to fit this space.
On my monitor (1024 x 768 pixels, 15 inch diagonal), this image is a 43 times magnification of the subject. Not exactly a microscope, but too far away either.


The following images are of a thinly sliced cross section from the narrow tip of a stalk of celery.








Like I said, thin.



Photographs

Interesting reads

Lao Chen's Chilli Oil recipe, version 1.0

Flavour similar to the garlic & chilli sauce served with Hainanese chicken rice, but packaged as chilli oil with a slight aroma of fried onions.



Note the evil looking bit of red-orange oil

Ingredients:

150g small chillies
1 onion
1.5 bulbs (not cloves) of garlic, sliced
A fragment of ginger, equal to the volume of half a bulb of garlic
Cooking oil
3 tbsp of sesame oil
2 tbsp of salt

Makes about 300ml, equal to one mid-sized (300g) jam bottle full.


150g of chillies

Procedures:

Ideally, chilli oil should contain as little water as possible. Thus, it’s a good idea to toss the chillies in a colander or basket after washing to remove as much water as possible.

Roughly cut the onion into small pieces and heat in a dry, non-stick pan over low heat for 5 minutes. Stir or toss frequently. The purpose of this step is to quickly remove as much water content from the onion as possible.

Put ginger, chillies, garlic and semi-dried onions into food processor and pulverise to a puree.

Pour puree, salt and sesame oil into a cooking pot, preferably one with a thick bottom. Add enough cooking oil to wet the mixture. Heat over low to moderate heat for 20 to 30 minutes, stirring often to prevent charring. Ensure cooking area is well ventilated; if you find yourself choking of capsaicin (chilli’s active ingredient) vapour, lower the heat a little and open the windows wider.


Untested alternatives:

Use more onions to dilute the spiciness.

Instead of dry heating the onions in a pan, stir fry with a little oil over high heat. It should smell better; who doesn’t like heat-treated onions. But putting that oily mess into the blender ensures a troublesome washing chore ahead.

Roughly chop chilli, garlic, onion. Spread over baking tray together with sliced ginger. Heat on in oven low heat with convection fan turned on. This should dry them out, allowing the final cooking phase to be less time consuming. But if final cooking time is reduced then the product must be bottled and stored for a period of time for the flavours to diffuse properly into the oil.


Interesting reads