Siew Yoke - Chinese Roast Pork

1/1/2013  Made Siew Yoke- Chinese Roast Pork for the first dinner of 2013!! A delicious, addictive basic Chinese dish but not easily available food here in the USA. Generally, it requires going to a Chinese restaurant or a specialized Chinese Supermarket to purchase Siew Yoke.

My brother in law makes a mean Siew Yoke and shared his secrets with me. However, I have been unable to obtain the right cut of pork i.e. belly meat with rind/ skin. A visit to the new Seafood City for new year meals cooking supply yielded the required cut of pork.

It is the simplest recipe. Mix equal part kosher salt with equal part of Chinese Five Spice powder - 1 teaspoon of each. Use enough of the mixture to generously season both side of the meat. Wrap the meat and let it sit in the fridge overnight. Next day, take it out and let it come to room temperature.

Preheat broiler to 420F degree. Place seasoned pork, meat side up on broiler pan. Broil until meat is brown. It could take 20-30 minutes, depending on the size of the piece of pork. Turn the meat over to skin side and broil at 390F. Start with 10 minutes, after that rotate the pan every 5 minutes until skin is brown and crackly.

Mee Hoon Kuih in Soup

This is another of my daughter's Must Eat Before College request that I obliged this week. This posting is for you, my darling daughter! Now that you have your  own apartment complete with a kitchen you can cook a little taste of home whenever you want. Of course, 1-800-Mommeeee is always available to you.


This is a traditional Hokkein dish which is essentially fresh handmade pasta in a flavorful broth. It is a favorite of my family here in the US as well as our families in Malaysia. My mother makes a top notch version. She is particular, often making and serving individual bowls. That way, the pasta is truly el dente. Since I am the only one forming the pasta and somehow my family is always already too hungry when I make this dish, I make all the pasta first before calling everyone to the table. I just remove, drain and keep the cooked pasta hot in a big serving bowl. A drizzle of shallot oil keep the pasta separate.


The toughest part of the dish is stretching out the dough thin enough to make Mee Hoon Kuey (pasta), tearing the pieces off and dropping it into hot simmering broth. It is a tedious hot work so you must love your family! Not many families make it at home in Malaysia these days because of the work and skill involved. Lucky for them it is possible to order this dish at food stalls. Some vendors have updated it, rolling out the dough through a pasta machine and making fettucine style pasta. I prefer the old fashioned, rustic torn off pasta.The toppings is everything!! I serve it with fried anchovies, meat topping, chinese bok choy, fried peanuts and fried shallots. Like I said, lots of work but yummy! 

Oh where do I hide my Moon Face?

So sad to report, my Mooncakes experiment was not quite a success. They looked good before baking but when they came out of the oven, the beautiful imprint were so shallow, they were barely visible. I was looking forward to reporting success and giving tips on how to make them. Oh, where do I hide my shameful Moon Face????? I guess it is back to the kitchen.

Before Baking After Baking

I think the pastry dough was not firm enough to hold the imprint while in the oven. Maybe,I did not measure the ingredients accurately- too much Golden Syrup. That does not seem likely as the pastry was just nice, not too sweet.I put in only the half tablespoon of alkali water it called for, seeing how paranoid I was about that ingredient- so that could not be it ( too little? maybe but I think not- I was very focus on getting it right). That leaves the flour- too little? All in all the texture of the pastry/ skin was good.

I had used ready made black bean and red bean filling. It was too sweet for our taste. Next time I will either make my own or add nuts and sunflower seeds to ready made filling to cut down on the sweetness.

I think part of the problem could have been the wrapping of the dough around the filling. Maybe I did not wrap it close enough around the filling, leaving a air gap. This would not have given the pastry the support it needed, allowing it to `spread'.

Whatever it is, it is back to the kitchen for me though the sweet taste of the filling at the back of my throat is not encouraging me. Maybe I can make the Snow Skin Mooncakes instead. No, I will persist and make some beautiful Mooncakes soon and report back.

Now what do I do with these very sweet Mooncakes?

To Mooncake or Not

On my recent trip back to Malaysia I saw beautiful Mooncakes being sold everywhere. No longer contented with the traditional black bean paste, lotus paste with diced ham and fragrant nuts (Kum Thui), we now have chocolate, peanut butter, cappuccino, green tea, durian filled Mooncakes. The array become even more confusing with the Snow Skin version of Mooncakes - filled with strawberry, raspberries, blueberries, longan and every sort of flavor you can imagine. With the Snow Skin Mooncakes also comes the colors; the greens of the pandan and green teas, the pinks of the berries and others hues tinted by the fruits and herbs used. Then the sizes and shapes. Things sure has change from when double yolk Mooncake was the luxury!

Anyway, I was inspired to try to make Mooncake this year. My dear sister in law was kind enough to take me to buy some Mooncake moulds before I left ( and also a Ang Ku mould... hopefully more about that later). Of course, I have the dilemma of the alkali water aka Potassium Carbonate and Sodium Bi- Carbonate solution aka Kan Sui aka Lye water. I always knew that alkali water was involved in Mooncake as in many Chinese dishes.....and also how controversial it is. I guess I knew I would be trying this. Who was I kidding.

Anyway to the blogs I go to find out if there is a substitute for lye water / alkali water. I come across it being banned / pull off the shelves in Australia- highly cautic, strongly akaline. I read about Norwegian dishes that use it. Of European Artisian bakers who use lye and believe that there is no substitute for it.Pretzel makers use it (although I use sodium bicarbonate in pretzel recipes with good success. Will experiment at some point). Somehow the texture of traditional food is different without it. The Chinese use it in making Noodles, giving it the springy texture, the Kan Sui Koh, Kan Sui Chung (Rice Dumpling) to name a few. It boils down to being careful with it, using only a very small amount of it, keeping it out of the hands of children and buying food grade alkali / lye water, none of the drain cleaning grade!

So tonight, I have followed Betty Yew's Traditional Mooncake recipie and prepared my deadly starter for tomorrow's Mooncake skin. More tomorrow on the Mooncake adventure as I (hopefully) live and breath.

As a footnote, my husband bade me goodnight in the kitchen, with snide remarks about the potion I was going to kill him with.......