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| The elusive vegetable - Mustard Green - only found in the fresh markets (in Singapore), rarely in the supermarkets. |
There are quite a few write-ups about this post-Chinese-New-Year brilliant recipe to use up leftover meats. Leftover as in roast meats and pig trotter stewed meats that no one wants to eat anymore after over-indulging on rich dishes for several days. So, a genius person of olden days made a stew of these meats with assam (tamarind), dried chillies and mustard green vegetable to absord all the flavour.
https://www.malaysianchinesekitchen.com/chai-boey-mustard-greens-stew/
https://www.rotinrice.com/chop-suey-soup-chai-boey/
https://beyondnorm.com/2017/03/19/choy-keok-recipe/
http://www.msyummylicious.asia/2016/02/hot-and-sour-chinese-mustard-vegetable.html
I wanted to make this dish but had no 'leftover meats'. So, I started to collect my meats from the supermarket best buys' section for roast spring chicken and pork. I ate a little of the fresh roast meat and cut up the rest for the freezer. But this amount is not quite enough to make a robust soup stock. So, I bought half a front hock (pig trotters). As this is fresh meat with quite a bit of fat and skin, I blanched the meat in hot boiing water, then stir-fried it with salt and pepper to rid it of its strong meaty smell and taste.
To start the soup base, add all the meats into a big pot and stir fry with garlic and ginger.
I started with 1 litre of water to get the soup base.
The proportions for this dish is really "taste as you go along". Basically, there was about 1.5 kg of meat to 1 kg of mustard green. In the end, I think, almost 2 litres of water.
I started with 5 slices of assam, about 2 tbsp of assam paste mixed with water and 5 dried chillies. After simmering on medium heat for about 1 hour, I adjusted the flavour with assam slices and dried chillies. Be careful of the dried chillies as its spicies permeates into the soup stock subtly and you need a few seconds for the heat to hit you at the back of your throat. That was why I fished out the last two chillies before I gave up for the night.
I had started this dish about 8:00pm and by 9:30pm, a good meat-stock base flavour was there. I fished out the chicken pieces as they were disintegrating fast. The roast pork pieces were still keeping together and the (fresh) pig trotters were getting nicely softtened. The mustard green pieces should be cut rather large as they soften and flatten out as they stew. This vegetable went into the pot for a few minutes of simmer, then I covered the pot, turned off the fire and left the pot on the stove overnight.
By morning, the mustard green had softened - it was stewed!
Final adjustments on the next day. Can you believe it? The soup base needed more assam paste water - it didn't taste sour enough in the morning. I think the two mixes most likely used up another 2 tbsp of assam paste. I added some slices of kiam chai after soaking it for half an hour. I think this item is optional - can just add some salt if the taste is still bland. Quite unlikely as roast meats are quite salty. I added three fresh red chillies (de-seeded) for colour and also a pack (220g) of local mustard (the leafy kind) to the stew. By this time, the whole dish had been moved into a bigger pot and the chicken pieces had been added back into the stew. By now, the pig trotters were really tender and nice to eat. It was a very big pot of 'tua chai' stew. One rare Chinese dish where the vegetable is the star, and not the meat or sea food.
Choy keok for the Cantonese. Chai boey for the Teochew?
Ingredients:
Assam keping (also known as assam gelugur or tamarind slices)
Assam paste (mix with water and sieve the assam water into the stew as the original paste contains the seeds, pulp, assam skin, etc)
Dried chillies
2 inch of ginger (sliced)
2 cloves of garlic (crushed)
Leftover meats - avoid fish, duck neck, Chinese sausage
Mustard green
Kiam chai (pickled mustard greens) - optional
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| Roast spring chicken and pork. |
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| Starting on the soup stock. |
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| Getting the soup stock base right with asam (tamarind) and chillies. |
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| The overnight dish. |
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