Recipe : Rice cakes (pak kor meen, bek ger, wateva lah)

Hey, people, since my last post, I had been sitting patiently waiting for the rice cake to soften. Just when it is softens, I was too busy to cook and luckily, it did not soften any further when I kept it in the fridge.

Aggie, you are such a dear! I got the idea from your recipe provided here:

The traditional Foochow method of cooking (my mom’s!) is as follows:
1. Crack an egg into the prepared container of rice cakes and mix thoroughly*.
2. Saute some garlic in oil until fragrant.
3. Stir fry some ingredients – my mom usually uses leeks, some prepared minced meat, egg(s) and those tiny clams**.
4. Pour the rice cakes in and stir fry.
5. To season, use the ‘juices’ from the can of tiny clams +/- some light*** soy sauce and some oyster sauce.
6. Remove from wok/pan. Don’t throw away the crispy parts – those are the best!

* To make the end product sticky, otherwise omit this step. For me, I’ll always find non-sticky rice cakes to be not the real thing.
** Those really tiny black ones that come in a can.
*** My aunt uses dark soy sauce instead of light soy sauce whereas sometimes I don’t even put soy sauce!

What I used:

  • half a packet of the rice cake, soaked for about 15 hours!
  • big bunch of enoki mushroom
  • Chinese cabbage, pak choy (both enoki and pak choy portion was twice the portion of the rice cake) and some HK choy sum
  • garlic, ginger, lard pieces and dried prawns
  • one can of clams (photo of the clams can be found on my vongole recipe)
  • seasonings like Shao Hsiang Wine, pepper and coriander leaves
  • one egg

Method :

  1. Knock the egg into the soften rice cake (like what aggie said)
  2. Heat oil and add garlic, dried shrimps and lard pieces (my neighbour is a char koay teow hawker so I get these crispy stuffs without the oil, hope it won’t kill me as easy as lard itself)
  3. Add vege/mushroom and rice cake
  4. Add flavour and the juice from the clams
  5. When soften, it softens real fast, btw add the clams and heat through.
  6. Season to taste and add coriander leaves

Yummmm…best with sambal belacan. The flavourful tastes of the dried shrimp and clams are balanced by the bland taste of the rice cakes, enoki and cabbage.

I still have half packet left so probably I will try the Hokkien style like the rest of you suggested. Thanks, peeps for all the tips.

Post Author: lilian

Used to be PenangFaces, now known as Food Haven, for all oink-oink foods

3 thoughts on “Recipe : Rice cakes (pak kor meen, bek ger, wateva lah)

    Jacky

    (May 28, 2006 - 1:21 pm)

    I’m a long time reader, 1st time commenter. My Shanghainese grandma cooks this with minced pork and chinese cabbage. I think some soya sauce and maybe garlic too. She hasn’t made it recently though….

    earl-ku

    (May 30, 2006 - 2:00 pm)

    hmmm, seriously hor, by the looks of the pic – i don think its that nice 🙂 looks a lot like some vegetarian dish …

    haha maybe i need to taste it and see …

    lilian

    (May 30, 2006 - 3:18 pm)

    earl-ku : got lotsa lard pieces ler…and i purpose make it white ‘cos it blends with the enoki mushroom.

    jacky – Will note yr grandma’s recipe and add soya sauce and minced meat next time.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *