Recipe : Joo hoo char for Chinese New Year

I have written a long post over at the Food Haven on the step-by-step recipe to make joo hoo char. Many people do not cook this dish because they said it is too time consuming and very tedious. However, if you know the few simple steps, it is actually a breeze.

What I like about this dish is how it tastes better after being stored over night or kept frozen in the freezer. The drier it becomes, the tastier it is. You can use it as white bread filling, wrap with lettuce, eat with rice or wrap with spring roll skin.

This is one of the Chinese New Year dishes that my mother has cooked for as long as I can remember. It is cheap as turnip is rather cheap and yet, very tasty.

This is prepared dish I made today. To see the raw ingredients that go into this dish, please refer to Food Haven.

Remember to fry the dried squid strips with the garlic till the strips turn curly and crackling. Otherwise, you will end up with stinking dish of dried squid.

Here is the joo hoo char recipe. Remember to see how to prepare them on my other food blog. Sorry I didn’t add them here because there are lots of pork involved so I don’t normally post photos of pork here.

RECIPE FOR JOO HOO CHAR

1 turnip about 800 grams to 1 kg
2 carrots about 300 grams
4-5 stalks of Chinese celery
300 grams of three layer pork
5 Chinese dried shitake mushroom, soaked till soften
1 tablespoon of taucheo (fermented bean paste)
5 pips of garlic chopped
2 tahils of dried squid (I think about 50 grams)

Preparation is rather tedious so please refer to the photos on Food Haven.

Cooking method

1) Heat oil and stir fry garlic and dried squid till the squids smells good
2) Add the pork, fermented bean paste and mushroom and fry till you can hear crackling sounds.
3) Add the turnip, carrot and Chinese celery and continue stir them till well mixed
4) Add pepper and a wee bit of sugar. Taste and see if it is salty because sometimes, the fermented bean paste and the dried squid will be salty enough.
5) Keep stirring them until dry. Some young turnips will produce a lot of water. Try to scoop out the water because the aim is to make the dish as dry as possible. If your dish is soggy, the dried squid will smell. So, keep cooking and stir until you get an absolutely dry dish.