Sardine Puffs / Epok-Epok Sardin
To tell you the truth, I have never bought or tasted Sardine Puffs back in Malaysia. So it was always with curious interest when I read about articles regarding Sardine Puffs on the net.
The only recipe I could find is on The Star Online's Kuali page. That recipe uses the Chinese puff pastry to make the puffs. Having done quite a lot of Chinese puff pastry stuffs the last few weeks, I was not too keen about making another snack using this pastry. Seeing the big tin of ghee on the counter in my kitchen - went crazy a few weeks ago in preparation for making mooncakes, I bought a 1.8kg tin of ghee - I thought I might as well use that to make the puffs. So what about trying the Malay-style epok-epok with shortcrust pastry using ghee instead.
As for the filling, I thought with just sardines in the filling is a bit plain, so I decided to add canned prawn sambal to the filling to make it more of a Malaysian flavour. I must say I was very pleased with the result, the prawn sambal definitely gave the filling a lift with just a hint of mild chilli taste. For those of you who prefer a hotter flavour, you could probably add some chilli paste or chilli sauce to the filling as well. Even though I have a little problem with my trial-and-error shortcrust pastry - it was too crumbly in the beginning and I had to salvage it by adding water two more times before it could be rolled out successfully - thankfully it finally ended up triumph with a very short-textured like the curry puff pastry I used to eat back home.
Makes approx. 38 puffs (using 8.5cm round cutter).
[Ingredients]
Rich Shortcrust Pastry:
600g (4 cups) plain flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 - 2 tablespoon(s) caster sugar
250g ghee
2 eggs, lightly beaten
2 teaspoons lemon juice
80-100ml cold water, or adjust as necessary
Sardine Sambal Filling:
215g canned Sardines in Tomato Sauce (Ayam brand)
160g canned Prawn Sambal (Yeo's brand)
1 medium onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tablespoon cooking oil
2 tablespoons plain flour
http://cafeoftheeast.blogspot.com/
[Preparation]
Sardine Sambal Filling:
1. Remove bones from sardines, mash and combine back into the tomato sauce. Add prawn sambal.
2. Heat oil in a wok and saute chopped onion and garlic. Add the combined sardine and prawn sambal mixture and cook until the sauce dries up a bit. Cool.
3. Once cold, stir in flour and mix in well - this is to prevent the puffs from getting soggy due to too wet a filling.
Rich Shortcrust Pastry:
1. Mix plain flour, salt and sugar together. Add in ghee at room temperature (soft but make sure not melting - this is for cold and mild weather situation, in extreme hot weather you may need to use chilled ghee) and rub in until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Mix in lightly beaten eggs and lemon juice. Slowly add water and knead lightly until the dough comes together and is pliable, you may need more or less water depending on your flour absorption capability. Wrap the dough in cling film and put into the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes.
2. Roll the chilled dough out to about 3mm thickness. Use an 8.5cm cutter to cut out round pastry (of course you can use cutter up to 10cm if you wish to make bigger puffs). Put about 2 teaspoons filling in the middle of each pastry, fold the pastry over into half-moon shape. Seal and pleat into rope edges.
3. Heat frying oil to about 175°C and deep-fry the puffs until golden brown.
[Variation]
Sardine Toast
With the leftover filling, I made this Sardine Toast, hmmm, yummy. Just spread a thick layer of the Sardine Filling on a piece of bread, sandwich with another piece of bread, then shallow-fry in a pan with some cooking oil until golden brown - voila, my spicy Sardine Toast!
[Note]
1. Please note this recipe uses 1 standard cup of 250ml, 1 tablespoon of 20ml and 1 teaspoon of 5ml.
2. The size of egg used is about 60g (includes shell) unless otherwise stated.
The only recipe I could find is on The Star Online's Kuali page. That recipe uses the Chinese puff pastry to make the puffs. Having done quite a lot of Chinese puff pastry stuffs the last few weeks, I was not too keen about making another snack using this pastry. Seeing the big tin of ghee on the counter in my kitchen - went crazy a few weeks ago in preparation for making mooncakes, I bought a 1.8kg tin of ghee - I thought I might as well use that to make the puffs. So what about trying the Malay-style epok-epok with shortcrust pastry using ghee instead.
As for the filling, I thought with just sardines in the filling is a bit plain, so I decided to add canned prawn sambal to the filling to make it more of a Malaysian flavour. I must say I was very pleased with the result, the prawn sambal definitely gave the filling a lift with just a hint of mild chilli taste. For those of you who prefer a hotter flavour, you could probably add some chilli paste or chilli sauce to the filling as well. Even though I have a little problem with my trial-and-error shortcrust pastry - it was too crumbly in the beginning and I had to salvage it by adding water two more times before it could be rolled out successfully - thankfully it finally ended up triumph with a very short-textured like the curry puff pastry I used to eat back home.
Makes approx. 38 puffs (using 8.5cm round cutter).
[Ingredients]
Rich Shortcrust Pastry:
600g (4 cups) plain flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 - 2 tablespoon(s) caster sugar
250g ghee
2 eggs, lightly beaten
2 teaspoons lemon juice
80-100ml cold water, or adjust as necessary
Sardine Sambal Filling:
215g canned Sardines in Tomato Sauce (Ayam brand)
160g canned Prawn Sambal (Yeo's brand)
1 medium onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tablespoon cooking oil
2 tablespoons plain flour
http://cafeoftheeast.blogspot.com/
[Preparation]
Sardine Sambal Filling:
1. Remove bones from sardines, mash and combine back into the tomato sauce. Add prawn sambal.
2. Heat oil in a wok and saute chopped onion and garlic. Add the combined sardine and prawn sambal mixture and cook until the sauce dries up a bit. Cool.
3. Once cold, stir in flour and mix in well - this is to prevent the puffs from getting soggy due to too wet a filling.
Rich Shortcrust Pastry:
1. Mix plain flour, salt and sugar together. Add in ghee at room temperature (soft but make sure not melting - this is for cold and mild weather situation, in extreme hot weather you may need to use chilled ghee) and rub in until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Mix in lightly beaten eggs and lemon juice. Slowly add water and knead lightly until the dough comes together and is pliable, you may need more or less water depending on your flour absorption capability. Wrap the dough in cling film and put into the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes.
2. Roll the chilled dough out to about 3mm thickness. Use an 8.5cm cutter to cut out round pastry (of course you can use cutter up to 10cm if you wish to make bigger puffs). Put about 2 teaspoons filling in the middle of each pastry, fold the pastry over into half-moon shape. Seal and pleat into rope edges.
3. Heat frying oil to about 175°C and deep-fry the puffs until golden brown.
[Variation]
Sardine Toast
With the leftover filling, I made this Sardine Toast, hmmm, yummy. Just spread a thick layer of the Sardine Filling on a piece of bread, sandwich with another piece of bread, then shallow-fry in a pan with some cooking oil until golden brown - voila, my spicy Sardine Toast!
[Note]
1. Please note this recipe uses 1 standard cup of 250ml, 1 tablespoon of 20ml and 1 teaspoon of 5ml.
2. The size of egg used is about 60g (includes shell) unless otherwise stated.
Labels: Asian Pastries
posted by SeaDragon @ 5.10.05
7 Comments:
oh..... this is my favourite!!! Do you know that as I was opening up my gate, I could smell one of my neighbour cooking sardine. How timely when I saw this. Must get a tin this forthcoming grocery trip. Sedap!!!
the pastry skin is so even! Wow _k
wow, so perfectly wrapped like machine made. The edges were so nicely done.
jc
Edith,
Yes, sardines in tomato sauce is just so sedap! :)
Kirsten,
Yeh, don't know what made the skin smooth without 'pimples' after frying, I used whole egg to make pastry for the first time here, maybe that's what made the skin even... Then again maybe due to room temperature ghee I used instead of the usual cold hard chilled butter previously to make pastry...
jc,
Thanks... lol, good thing I decided to learn how to make the 'rope' edges last year, it definitely comes in very handy when making these types of snacks :)
I made about 40 mackerel puffs the day before yesterday (mackerel tastes better than sardine) fine-tuned Amy Beh's recipe on Kuali) and added a pinch of black pepper for a bit of ummmpphhh.
I made about 40 mackerel (mackerel tastes better than sardine) puffs the day before yesterday (fine-tuned Amy Beh's recipe on Kuali) and added a pinch of black pepper for a bit of ummmpphhh.
Hi Amber,
Wow, 40 puffs, that's quite a lot of work! Sounds very very delicious, must try using mackerel too one of these days :)
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