Thanks to Singapore's circuit breaker, more people are cooking at home nowadays and many are sharing their recipes online! One recipe that was all the rage a month or two ago was the unassuming muah chee.
Even my mom jumped on the bandwagon and i was super impressed with the muah chee she made! It was soft, doesn't stick to the teeth and easily the best i ever had. When i asked her about the recipe; i was dumbfounded as it was darn easy!
Ingredients (6 persons)
Pandan Water - 3 Cups
Glutinous Rice Flour - 3 Cups
Shallot Oil - 3 Teaspoons
Peanut Powder - 1 Cup
Fine Sugar - 1 Cup
Step-By-Step Instructions
For this recipe, we shall be using glutinous rice flour from erawan brand which you can get from most supermarkets. At one point, it was out of stock as everyone was making muah chee!
My mom decided to use pandan water as it would give the muah chee a nicer aroma. You may boil pandan leaves in plain water if you have time; if not, plain water would be fine.
Remember to sift the pandan water.
Three cups of pandan water to a non-stick pan. The recipe is easy to remember as ratio is 1 to 1; so it's like 1 cup of water to one cup of flour to one teaspoon of oil etc.
Switch on the fire (low) and slowly mix in the glutinous rice flour. This is the part i don't quite get as i would have made my job easier by pre-mixing the glutinous rice flour to the water. But hey, mom is the chef here and it's best not to say too much when she's in charge of the kitchen.
To prevent burning, constant stirring as you mix in the flour is necessary. My mom advised that the stir must be in one direction and not all over the place. Again, i reserve my comment as this is the same person who told me i cannot say the kueh is cooking beautifully in the steamer as it would eventually turn out ugly.
When everything is more or less incorporated, put in the oil. While i understand that any vegetable oil is okay, my mom insisted on using shallot oil which usually does a wonderful job in enhancing the flavour.
Continue stirring in one direction (clockwise / anticlockwise); the mixture would get lumpy and if i haven't seen it with my own eyes, the usual me would think the recipe has failed and proceeded to dump the whole thing into the dustbin.
About six minutes later, the muah chee texture had formed but please do not assume that this is the ripe time to remove the sticky dough! You might notice speckles of whiteness in the dough which are telltale signs that the mixture wasn't 100% cooked.
Wait until all the whiteness are gone and you are able to stretch the dough for about one or two feet before it breaks. Switch off the fire and proceed to prepare the essential companion of muah chee.
Peanut powder! Another alternative, for those who have allergy towards peanuts, would be black sesami powder. You can experiment with other nuts but peanut and black sesame would be the most common.
One cup of peanut powder mixed in with one cup of fine sugar. You may cut down accordingly so long you keep to the one to one ratio although those who prefer less sweet may reduce the sugar further.
Oil your scissors so that the cooked dough wouldn't stick to it. Don't want to waste time washing your good pair of scissors? You can use a spoon too!
The way to eating muah chee is to divide the dough into small pieces and then coat them with the peanut-sugar mixture. And unlike them you buy from the stalls, you can decide for yourself how big or small you want the pieces to be!
Max satisfaction!
Hi, I gonna try your recipe tomorrow! But can I ask you, or perhaps your mum, why didn't she use the steaming method to make muah chew like what most would? Thanks :)
ReplyDeleteHello! Hope it turn out well! According to my mom, she said using her method tends to lock in the flavour of the shallot oil and make the texture better.
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