The wine is very fragrant for cooking like steam chicken or fry vegetables or fish soup.  It has also a very nice color like brandy. This is so much easier to make compare to the rice wine. This recipe is also given to me by a confinement lady (maid that help in the family to cook, look after mommy and baby after arrival of baby for month).  Made this once myself. 

Ingredients

1. 1 kg Black raisin
2. 800 grams crystal rock sugar (水晶糖)
3. 2 sweet yeast cakes  (甜酒饼)
4. 2 strong yeast cakes (烈酒饼)
5. 4 litres water

Method

1. For the yeast cakes, in Singapore, some provision shops sell them.  Ask around the shops above Waterloo Street market, you will find them.
2. Boil a kettle of boiling water.  Put the black raisin in a pot and pour the newly boiled water over it.  Stir and let it sit for 1 min, strained away the water.  This step basically removed the oils on the raisin.
3. Add in the 4 litres of water, and the crystal sugar.
4. Bring it to boil and continue to boil for 30 minutes in low flame.
5. Allow it to cool down completely, very important.
6. Put the content into a big air tight container, and throw in the 4 yeast cakes, and cover.
7. 2 months later, strain out the wine and keep in air tight bottles for cooking. The wine when strained out is very cloudy with suspension of the yeast and remnants of raisin.   Keep them in tall bottles for a week or more until the suspension settled at the bottom leaving very clear wine on top, Slowly transfer to another bottle without shaking.  May need to repeat this process 2 or more times to get very clear wine.

Not sure of what to cook for reunion dinner? Here are some suggestions and links to the recipes.

汤Soup

• Shark Fin and Fish Maw Soup (with or without shark fin) (鱼翅/鱼瓢羹)     

金玉满堂 Meats      

• Steam Chinese Winter Meats(臘味)        

年年有余 Fish

• Basic Steam fish     
• Steam fish with Shitake Mushroom (花菇), Daylily (金针) and Red Dates (红枣)
• Sweet and Sour Grouper Fish     

黄金滚滚 Dumpling

• Gold Nuggets (Fried Wonton 金元宝)     

嘻哈大笑 Prawns

• Pan Fry Salted Prawn        

大红大吉Chicken

• Hong Zao Chicken (红糟鸡)

天长地久 Noodles

• Longevity Mee Sua (长寿面) with Stock and Ingredients from Steamboat  

甜甜蜜蜜 Desserts

• Glutinous Rice Balls in Ginger Soup (汤圆糖水)          
• Bean curd skin, barley and ginkgo dessert (腐竹薏米白果糖水)        
• Lotus seed, lily bulb, ginkgo dessert (莲子百合白果糖水)        
• Lime Lychee

New Year Goodies

• Pork Floss Mini Spring Roll          
• Love Letters (Egg Roll, 鸡蛋卷)    
• Kok Zai (角仔)          
• Honey Caramel Corn Flakes and Sliced Almonds

Sometimes no matter how long you boil the peanuts, they still don’t turn out to be soft.  Here are some tips you can try while cooking peanuts.

1. Soak the peanuts in hot boiling water for 30 mins before cooking.
2. Use a right pot size where you can have sufficient water depth in the pot.  A rough guide is the depth of water is at least ½ to ¾ of the diameter of the pot.  The reason is that the temperature of the water is lower at the surface compare to the bottom where the flame is burning the bottom of the pot.  Hence you need sufficient dept of water to ensure the peanuts are cooking in the higher temperature water and not near the surface.
3. Put a Chinese table spoon made of china in the pot during cooking.  I don’t know why, my mom uses this method and I think possibly the spoon is able to keep the temperature of the water higher.
4. You need patience.  It will take 3 hours. 
5. You can use slow cooker and cook it overnight.

Since I got a picture of it, let me introduce what this is.  Chuan Bei is included in many off-the-shelf chinese cough medicine.  This helps to relieve cough.  Apparently there are many grades of it.  I’m not a expert which is the best, but I will go for at least the mid range to high range.  It cost in the range of S$15-S$20 for a tael  (liang).  The shop keep should be able to advise, as some are less bitter.

Other than boiling drinks like the pear drink to relief cough, it can also be used as a ”filler” grounded with pearl (珍珠）into fine powder, which is fed to babies or toddlers (in the grounded form) when they have lots of phlegm.  As the amount of pearl is so little, chuan bei makes a good ”filler”, ie ground together with the pearl to increase the content of the final gounded powder.  It not only act as a filler (to increase the quantity for easy feeding) but also helps to relief cough, which usually comes with phlegm.  You don’t have to grind it yourself, the shopkeeper of the chinese medicine shop has their special mortar and pestle to grind them. 

Hor Fun is the most common noodle dish cooked in Singapore’s Zhu Chow stalls. It is made with pre-fried flat rice noodles (Hokkien call it kuay teow, and Cantonese call it Hor Fun), and being poured over with a cooked gravy with seafood, and sometimes with soft cooked egg (wat dan, or smooth egg-滑蛋河粉).  What really makes the dish with its unique taste is not the gravy but the fragrant of the pre-cooked noodles. 

This is how you prepare it.  Best if you have a Chinese metal wok (to really give the smell of the wok), or any frying pan will do, since most family don’t use metal wok in Singapore.  Heat up the wok very hot, add oil and garlic, and add in the noodle and fry with high heat.  Add in Dark soya sauce (2 tablespoon for 1 serving of noodles), by streaming slowly (don’t pour at the same spot) evenly on the noodles as well as some on the wok (to allow it to create some burnt smell), keep stirring at the same time. Serve on plate when done (5 mins will probably be enough).  Recipe of the gravy will be posted later.