$10 Meal - Dish 4 (Home made Yong Tau Foo)

After a few days of "meaty" dishes, I thought that it would be nice to share a dish that has more vegetables. :)

I like Yong Tau Foo. Besides being a healthy dish (if you choose the non deep-fried items), it is also a great way to get your greens. Instead of just fish paste, we usually add meat to it - sometimes minced chicken, sometimes minced pork.

I am not a fan of pork at all (hence 95% of the dishes we cook at home are sans pork) and this is one of the rare fish that I do not really mind it. When mixed with fish paste, it has a nice bite and flavour to it. So here you go!

Yong Tau Foo!

The items:

1. 1 packet of fish paste from wet market (Approx. $2.50)

2. 1 packet of lady’s fingers ($1)

3. 1 bittergourd ($1 – from wet market)

4. 1 eggplant ($0.80 – from wet market)

5. 1 packet of fishballs ($1.80)


6. About 250 – 300 gm of minced pork (you can replace this with chicken) (Approx. $2.80)

7. Optional: Tau Pok / Tou Fu. Depending on your family's preference, you can also choose other vegetables such as capsicums, green chili, etc.

Total Amount: $9.90

Amount left: $0.10



Preparation:

1. Marinate the minced meat with a dash of pepper, corn flour and light soya sauce. Leave to stand in fridge (covered with gladwrap) for an hour

2. Cut bittergourd breadth wise, scoop out the seeds, then continue to cut into circular rings and soak for a while in salt water before adding in filling


3. Slice egg plant into 2cm pieces and make a slit in the middle to stuff the filling (as shown in pic below)

4. Similarly, make slits in lady’s fingers (length wise) and add in "filling"

To cook:

1. Mix the minced meat with the fish paste(You can also add in a bit of salted fish if you choose to make this the Hakka way.)

2. Pan fry the bittergourd and lady’s fingers in step 2 until lightly golden
(You can skip this step if you prefer a healthier version but I prefer it to be lightly seared to get rid of the "raw" taste)

~ At times, we do a "dry version" where we fry this with fermented bean sauce instead. So if that is your preference, go light on the soya sauce when you marinate the pork.

3. Soup – we make ours with soybeans (about half a cup) and ikan bilis (half a cup too but presoaked) with about 1.5 litres of water and we boiled till ikan bilis are soft (usually about 30 – 45 mins but if you have more time, you can boil for a tad longer)

4. Add fishballs, bittergourd, eggplant and lady’s fingers to the soup.

5. We had left over “filling” and also some wanton skin in the fridge hence we managed to make some wantons which Dumpling loves together with fishballs and some other vegetables and toufu we have in the fridge.

6. As we had this for dinner, we served it with rice but you can serve it with noodles too

This is part of a $10 meal series. Click here to view the full range of recipes

Disclaimer: I did not include cost of rice as these are usually staples we have in our household. In the pictures above, we added Furikake to our rice for the extra omph!