Post #156

when our friend suggested that we have hotpot at her place on the labour day public holiday, my mind for some bizarre reason wondered off to wonton and dumpling land. i never ever really had to make wontons or dumplings from scratch because my mum is literally a wonton/dumpling-machine *no kidding* and our fridge rarely falls short of wonton/dumpling supplies. i would only help mum out on the odd occasions, making a batch or two when mum's mass producing them. anyways, i'll save the wonton/dumplings for another post.

reason why i raised this topic is because i had to make wonton n dumplings, i had to buy some pork mince. and i have never bought any meat in any sort of large scale (and yes, 1kg of pure meat with no bone is considered large scale in my household). my method of "measuring" anything that uses the concept of grams or kilograms has always been descriptions of "numbers" (if the item can be counted, e.g. 8 prawns) or "handful" or "scoop" or "half" or "quarter" (if the item cannot be counted). so after i asked for 1 kg of pork mince and saw the huge pile of meat that got shoved into the plastic bag, i thought i should have stuck with 2 handfuls...

so what i'm trying to get at is that i had too much leftover mince, and hubby asked if i could make this well-known shanghai-nese dish called 獅子頭 (lion head meatballs). hubby for once came up with a sensible food idea!!


-獅子頭 *lion head meatballs*-

this was my first attempt. i found from googling that they come in 2 forms - in soup or braised in thick sauce. hubby prefers the latter. and there's this variation i found on the net that i particularly wanted to try with the mince mix -combining pork mince (i used 80% lean and 20% fatty), finely diced onion, chopped shallot, grated ginger, some tofu, corn flour, n the basic seasoning. then grab a small handful of mixture (about size of an egg) and dab it repeatedly from the palm of your right hand to the left - apparently this gets rid of the air in the meat mixture. pop them in the pan one after another to sear the outside till golden. you can achieve better looking balls with perfect round shape and golden coating by deep frying them. then pour in some water, cover the lid and let them bubble away for a few minutes. then surround the balls with bok choy and let it simmer for a bit more, adding seasoning and a bit of oyster sauce and soy sauce. when the balls are cooked through and the veg are cooked, round it off with some corn starch water to make a thick sauce and its done!!

the tofu adds a good softness to the balls. this helps especially when the there's protionately less fatty mince used. and best to chop the onions really small! great alternative to italian meatballs!! :)