Yau Char Kway aka Yau Tiew

At long last i have finally managed to make a decent yau char kway, thanks to my dear friend blogger, tt. With lengthy discussion on the liquid and other ingredients, i have come to understand that the flour needed much more liquid than stated in the recipe. I have made so many recipes, following them to the tee, and failure. My friend Lena, said - lily, you are not make to be a yck lady. forget about it. All the failures happened because of where i am residing. Being a mile high above sea level and no humidity, baking and cooking have to be fine tuned and adjusted accordingly. In this case, the flour here is extra dry and needed more liquid. tt's recipe only needed 180 ml but i needed 240 ml to make it the right consistency. There are not many ingredients but alot of practise is needed to form uniform yck as the dough is so sticky and soft.



Ingredients:

290g all purpose flour
or
260 g bread flour and 30 g wheat starch

1/2 level tsp ammonia

1 tsp salt (level or heaped; doesn’t matter)

1 1/4 level tsp double acting baking powder-

180g water(enough water to make a sticky dough, in my case, i used 240 ml(1 cup))

Method:

Mix together flour and baking powder.

Dissolve ammonia and salt in water and pour this mixture into the flour.

Knead with your hands to get a sticky but smooth dough. The dough should be wet and sticky (sticks to hands and bowl). Rest dough for 10 - 15 minutes(the longer the fluffier yck)

Wash hands, get out a frying pan or wok, add oil and heat on high (do this while dough is resting,)

Divide dough into 2 portions.

Dust hands and dough with flour.

Roll dough into a rectangle (length and width depends on the size of your frying utensil) by now the dough should be like bread dough. Dough should be about 1/4 inch thick. Cut with a pizza cutter 3/4 inch wide strips. Using a bamboo skewer, dip in water and swipe onto the bottom strip. Top with another strip, and press down lightly with skewer. Let these strips rest. (see notes)

Check to make sure oil temperature is 380’F. Take a piece of yck, stretch it and drop into the oil.

Leave it along until it floats, it should float within 10 seconds. Once it floats, use chopsticks (one in each hand - this i am not able to do) to constantly turn the yck as it expands (it should reach its maximum expansion within 30 seconds). After it has expands as much as it could, continue to fry it turning every 10 seconds or so until it is golden brown (another 3-5 mins.).


Notes from tt:

After shaping the ycks, the longer you let it rest the puffier it will get when they are fried (you can fry right away if you’re in hurry).

Notes from lily:

When yck is ready for frying, move pastry board with the strips of yck as near to the frying utensil as possible so that it goes into the oil without stretching too much.

Since i fry the yck one at a time, i will fry them until they reached the maximum expansion. When all the strips are done frying, then i bring back the oil temperature to high and refry all the yck until golden brown.

I will leave in a 250 f oven for 5 - 10 minutes to further crisp and loose some oil.

Serves