Malaysia-style Bak Kut Teh

I cooked this Bak Kut Teh for the first time. I had bought this Bak Kut Teh spice in satchets from Malaysia sometime back. The brand was Success 9. I like Bak Kut Teh from Malaysia as they were different from Singapore's style Bak Kut Teh. Malaysia style was darker and more herby and strong in taste, compared to Singapore's peppery flavour. Malaysia Bak Kut Teh also has more ingredients like pork ribs, mushrooms, taupok, beancurd skin and other innards. Singapore's Bak Kut Teh normally only come with just pork ribs.

I marinated about 1kg of big pork ribs. I saw we have got some fried beancurd skin at home so I cut them up as well, and also soaked a few chinese mushrooms. Then I got ready few cloves of garlic without removing the skin. After boiling the pork ribs once and sieved them, I prepared the big pot of water. I used 2 satchets of the Bak Kut Teh spice. And mixed all the ingredients into the pot to boil. Then I added some light soya sauce, dark soya sauce, oyster sauce and pepper. The kitchen began to be filled with a nice aroma of Bak Kut Teh. I tasted the perfumed concoction and it was very flavourful and the taste was strong. Perhaps I added too much sauce and because of the marinated pork ribs, so it was a little too salty. But overall, I like the taste which I could improve on the next time.

I also tried another simple dish - Mapo Tofu. I just needed tofu and minced pork. I chose egg tofu which was supposedly sweeter and firmer. I just needed to stir fry the minced pork till almost cooked and added the tofu as well as the mapo sauce. And in about 5 minutes, Mapo Tofu was ready.