House Warming Potluck... Savoury Cups

I think everyone has this fascination with Pot Luck since the last time we had one when Lee Shean, Kum Tak and I moved into our new place. Fortunately, this time around nearing the end of the year, we had another one to celebrate Livee and Fui Kiat moving into their new place, it's really quite a nice place I think, but frankly speaking, Pot Lucks are seriously more about the food! HaHaHa! We actually had a lot of dish that night, thanks to people who cooked and Fui Kiat who took away some orders from one of the Chinese restaurants around. Well, I wish I had the pictures that we took that night, but they are all with Livee and Fui Kiat, hence as much as I want to post about that night's event, I could only talk about the dish I made, as those are the only pictures I have...



So let's turn to the dish I made, this time around I made Pi-Tee, if I remembered the name correctly, this dish is actually available at the Chicken Rice Shop back in Malaysia, my aunt made it once as well, but obviously I made some serious amount of changes to it, HaHa. The ingredients used for this dish is also frequently used for San Choy Bao (Lettuce Wrap) as well, so feel free to use Iceberg Lettuce if you don't feel like making those cups, but they're not any hard anyway...

Ingredients: (makes..A LOT)
2 pack Wanton Wraps (about 120pc)
500g Minced Pork
450g Fresh Bean Sprouts (finely chopped)
1 bunch Chives (finely chopped)
2 Red Carrots (finely sliced/shredded)
1kg Button Mushroom (rinsed and diced)
5pc Thai Small Chili
3pc Lump Sugar
3 tbsp Light Soy Sauce
3 tbsp Dark Soy Sauce
2 tbsp Sea Salt (add more to suit own taste)
5 cloves Garlic (finely chopped)
2 tbsp Brown Sugar
2 tbsp Black Pepper Powder
3 slices Ginger (finely chopped)
4 tbsp Vegetable Oil
4 pc Khaffir Lime Leafs (finely chopped)
100g Skinned Peanuts (crushed and toasted)

Method:
I've always tried to make the 'methods' section more formal so that is easily readable, but recently I like to give the informal 'paragraphing' method a try....To make the cups, simply fit the wanton wraps into a muffin tray, u can use two wraps to make a cup if you wish to, then you will get 60 cups, or if you really want to make a lot of it, just one wrap for each muffin hole will do.

Just fit one wrap into each hole on the muffin tray, there is actually a special mould that would make the cups a lot nicer, but obviously I do not have it here, so I used what I had... Bake each tray in a preheated oven for 8-10 minutes at 200 degrees Celsius. This baking time might vary with different ovens, adjust accordingly...

These baked cups are made of two wanton wraps each, it would be a lot small and cuter if only one wrap was used, but I like them this way...

As for the ingredients, it is just a matter of frying them altogether, but the procedure is important, make sure those fast-cooked ingredients are stirred in towards the end, so that they do not loose the texture... Start of by heating the oil in a wok, stir fry the chopped garlic and ginger until fragrant, add in pork mince and followed by black pepper powder, stir fry until all turns meat-white and thoroughly cooked. Add diced mushroom at this point, followed by brown sugar, stir fry for 3 minutes. Add in chopped chives and chili, mix well, add light and dark soy sauce, salt and lump sugar, there should be quite a lot of sauce in the wok by now, add some water if there isn't. Cover with lid, braise over low heat until boiling point. Remove lid, stir in carrots, leave to cook for 2 minutes before adding chopped bean sprouts, braise for another 2 minutes and repeat the same with the chopped Khaffir lime leafs for 1 minute. Done. Stir in crushed peanuts at the end before serving. Done. Serve ingredients on baked cups prepared earlier.

Close up of the savoury cups

The Flower Cups Arrangement