3 Plus 1 (Series 4) - Crispy Chinese Yam 3菜1汤 (系列4) - 香酥淮山

I'm a big fan of Singapore's MediaCorp edutainment programme 3 Plus 1, 3菜1汤, hosted by Taiwanese show host 曾国城. After a long hiatus, the programme now into its fourth series is back again since a month ago!

In the past three series, the format was such that each week, there were two pairs of artistes (whether local or overseas) in each team who competed in cooking 3 dishes and 1 soup within 30 mins; the main ingredient for one of the dish was determined by the producer and the meal must be within budget of $20. The dishes cooked by all the teams were even compiled into three recipe books and I've bought all three :p 我可是这个节目的忠实粉丝哦! The reason why I like this programme is because most of the dishes are easy to prepare using practical ingredients and nothing too fanciful.

In this new series, there's a slight revision, budget has been increased to $25 and instead of two artistes in a team, one of the participant is a chef which makes the dishes made even more attractive! So for the past few Fridays, I'm been following the programme fervently unless I had to go out. For the dishes which caught my interest, I would even re-watch the segments on XINMSN catch-up TV to note the important points. LOL! Anyway, the recipes are currently featured on the i-weekly supplement so yes I've been buying the i-weekly magazine because of the recipes too!

So far, I've attempted a few of the recipes already and most of them were quite palatable lah. Will be sharing some of my attempts over a few posts. This is one of my favourite dish to-date, Crispy Chinese Yam with salted egg yolk and pork floss 香酥淮山, featured in Episode 4.

When the team introduced this dish, I immediately took an interest because Chinese Yam (淮山/山药) is a very nutritious root vegetable that has several health benefits. Other than cooking it in soup and blending it into egg mixture for steamed egg, I have no idea how else to cook it. This dish really offered a very good alternative to make my family eat more Chinese Yam since it's deep fried.

There are a few components to the dish, mixing the batter, deep frying the chinese yam, quick stir frying the battered chinese yam with salted egg yolk and finally topping with some pork floss.

Crispy Chinese Yam with Salted Egg Yolk and Pork Floss

Ingredients

• 250g Chinese Yam
• 2 Salted Egg Yolks
• 30g Chicken or Pork Floss

 Batter

• 100g Plain Flour
• 10g Glutinous Rice Flour *1
• 7g Corn Starch
• 8g Baking Powder
• 120-125g Water *2
• 20g Cooking Oil (any type, I use Canola) *3
• 5g Salt

 Steps

1. Prepare crispy batter: Mix all the ingredients for the batter until well blended. Set aside. Cut the chinese yam into 1cm slices and put them into the batter. Make sure each piece is well coated with the batter.
2. Steam the salted egg yolk for 7 minutes, mash and set aside.
3. Heat the cooking oil till hot, turn off the heat and drop the batter-coated chinese yam into the hot oil. Turn on heat again and deep fry at low heat till golden brown. Once golden brown, remove from oil and drain excess oil on kitchen towel.
4. Heat wok, add some oil and fry salted egg yolk till bubbles appear. Put all the battered chinese yam into the wok, stir fry quickly to ensure the pieces are coated with the salted egg yolk evenly. Place the chinese yam onto a serving plate and garnish with chicken/pork floss and parsley/coriander.

Note

1. Adding glutinous rice flour to the batter will allow deep fried food to stay crispy longer.
2. The original amount of water given in the recipe was 70ml (equivalent to 70g) but I found the batter to be too thick and in fact doughy, so I added water bit by bit till a smoother consistency, similar to thick cream.
3. Adding cooking oil to the batter will enhance the crispiness of deep fried food.

香酥淮山

材料

• 淮山 (250克)
• 咸蛋黄 (2个)
• 鸡/猪肉松 (30克)

脆浆粉

• 面粉 (100克)
• 糯米粉 (10克)
• 太白粉 (7克)
• 发粉 (8克)
• 水 (120克)
• 油 (20克)
• 盐 (5克)

 做法

1. 在大碗中混合脆浆粉材料调匀; 淮山切片 (约1公分厚), 放入脆浆粉中.
2. 将咸蛋蒸熟, 再压碎.
3. 先烧热油后熄火, 把沾满脆浆粉的淮山逐个放入油中, 再开小火继续油炸熟, 捞起沥干.
4. 热镬, 以少许油炒咸蛋至起泡, 倒入炸淮山,拌匀后盛盘, 再撒上鸡/猪肉松,以葱花点缀.

 贴士

• 在脆浆粉中加入糯米粉, 食材炸后能保持酥脆.

I love the overall texture and taste of this dish very much. The battered chinese yam is very crispy, with a tinge of saltiness from the salted egg yolk and a tad of sweetness from the pork floss. The texture of the chinese yam is a cross between potato and white radish and taste bland.

Hubby liked the dish, but the picky little one didn't seem to like it although it's deep fried food. Anyways, this recipe is a keeper for me but I think will only cook it occasionally as I don't really like to do deep frying at home.