脆皮炸鲜奶 (Fried Coconut Milk)

Happy Chinese New Year, everyone! <3 We gathered together to make a whole ton of food to celebrate, so the first recipe I’m sharing is…脆皮炸鲜奶 (Fried Coconut Milk)!

I actually forgot that it was this weekend (well, today) until my mom called me and told me a couple days beforehand. (I know, bad Asian.) My neighbor also mentioned it, which makes me doubly terrible because he ain’t anything close to Chinese (other than his mannerisms and the fact that he’s an egg). He asked me if I’d be giving him any red envelopes and I explained to him that only married couples had to give them out. But later, my friend suggested that I try to swindle him out of some monies since he’s always giving me crap, so I attempted that.

F: Actually, I was wrong. If you’re older, you have to give me a red envelope. :D I expect some monies on Sunday!
A: It’s worth it just to hear you say that you’re wrong.
He will only consent to giving me monopoly money though.

This was basically the first time I really had anyone other than my neighbor over, so Andrea was ripping on me for not having “real sugar” (I only have brown sugar) or oil (I only have EVOO and sesame oil).

Some early morning during Renal, I happened upon a jackpot of Chinese recipes (mostly for dim sum <3!) and ended up staying up past 3 a.m. collecting all the ones that I thought sounded pretty awesome. The original recipe called for 1/4 a cup of sugar, but since we used coconut milk (well, the can says “cream of coconut”), it was plenty sweet without the added sugar. It also called for German flour, which we did not have (not even sure what the difference is, to be honest), so we subbed that with regular all-purpose flour.

Please ignore the 炸馒头 (fried mantou) in the back for the moment. I’ll get to a recipe on that later. :O

脆皮炸鲜奶 (Fried Coconut Milk)

Ingredients:
(Milk Custard)

• 1/4 cup cornstarch
• 1 can cream of coconut
• 1 cup skim milk

(Coating)

• 1/3 cup water
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1/5 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking powder

Instructions:

1. Mix cornstarch and milk in a saucepan and stir until combined. Set it on a slow fire and bring it to a boil, stirring constantly until thick. Turn off the heat and pour the mixture in an ungreased square dish. Spread the surface evenly. Allow it to cool a bit and chill until firm. (We stuck it in the freezer for a while just to speed up the process. Don’t forget about it like we did though. :x )
2. For the coating, mix water, flour and salt first, then add baking powder at the time you start frying the milk. Add more water if necessary to make a thick paste for coating.
3. Heat some oil to 350. Cut the milk custard into smaller slices, using a wet knife. Coat the custard with the prepared mixture and fry until light brown and crunchy. Drain on paper towels.

You could sprinkle them with powdered sugar if you want, but ours came out plenty sweet without it!

We also made Egg Tarts, Boiled Cabbage in Oyster Sauce, matzo balls in broth, 炸馒头 (Fried Mantou), Chinese Rice Noodles with Snow Peas, another vegetable dish (I don’t know what it’s called in English), and Walmart dumplings (har har; we may attempt to make these from scratch-scratch sometime [by that, I mean making even the wrappers from scratch since we can’t buy them here]).