Recipes: Steamed Minced Pork with Cuttlefish

Today has been a good day, experimenting with home cooking. Last weekend I tried out grilled chilli-stuffed selar, and although the sambal was pretty good for the stuffing, I unfortunately overbaked the fish. For lunch today, I tried it again but this time using ikan kuning and the result was pretty good. Just need to try it one more time before it deserves a blog post :)

Anyway for tonight's dinner, I kept 2 pieces of ikan kuning from lunch experiment for Hubs to try it out, and at the same time, I made steamed minced pork with cuttlefish. This is a favourite traditional dish of every Chinese household, and there's a lot of variation to it. Basically it's a marriage of the plain minced pork with a heavier-taste (read: saltier) ingredient such as tong chai (i.e. preserved chinese cabbage), mei xiang salted fish (usually of kurau fish which has been cured to produce a soft fermented texture and a unique fragrance and taste) or sometimes it can be seasoned well enough with soy sauce and salt to be steamed on its own. A light-bulb moment last night just before bedtime made me decide to try this with cuttle fish. Why cuttlefish? Well simply because this is all I have and in the words of Masterchef, this is an invention test. Hahaha!

Steamed Minced Pork with Cuttlefish (serves 2)

200gm of minced pork,
3cm x 6cm portion of dried cuttlefish
1 tsp salt
1 tsp soya sauce
1 tsp fish sauce
1 tsp corn starch powder
1-2 drops of sesame oil
Pepper to taste

- Clean and soak cuttlefish in a small bowl of water till soft. Cut cuttlefish into fine strips. Do not discard water used to soak cuttlefish.
- In a saucepan, heat 2 tbsp of oil and fry cuttlefish strips till crispy. Set aside to cool down. Grind half portion into powder with a mortar and pestle. Retain the other half as garnish.
- To season minced pork, add in salt, soya sauce, fish sauce, corn starch powder, sesame  oil, pepper and cuttlefish grind and mix well. Place in a steaming bowl.
- To prepare sauce, combine 3-4 tbsp of cuttlefish liquid with 1 tbsp of soya sauce. Add this to the steaming bowl.
- Garnish with fine strips of ginger, chopped chilli padi and remainder of cuttlefish strips.
- Place in a steamer and steam for about 10-15 minutes.