Pumpkin kueh

With all the pumpkin left over from Halloween....I decided to make some pumpkin kueh as I'm missing all the kueh-kuehs from back home!

I googled for a recipe but most of them called for very specific ingredients which I would never be able to find here. So, I had to improvise based on what I could get hold of....and came up with my own recipe.

Here's the adapted version of my pumpkin kueh....

Ingredients:
2 cups of pumpkin (finely chopped)
1/2 cup of bacon (finely chopped) *I used reduced-sodium bacon*
1/2 cup of shiitake mushroom (hydrated and finely chopped)
1 cup of rice flour
1 tbsp of corn flour
1 cup of water
1/3 cup of chicken stock
dash of salt
dash of five-spice powder
dash of pepper
dash of sugar
dash of chilli powder

Method:

Heat the frying pan and spray some cooking oil on the pan.
Add the chopped bacon and stir fry (without burning the bacon).
Add the chopped mushrooms and stir fry together with bacon.
Then add the shredded pumpkin to the pan and stir to mix all ingredients.
Season with some salt, five-spice powder, pepper, sugar and chilli powder to your own taste.
Add the chicken stock to the mixture (add more if it appears too dry).
Cover the pan with a lid and let the mixture cook for about 10-15min.
While mixture is cooking, add water to the rice and corn flour and stir to mix.
Remove the lid to check the doneness of the pumpkin mixture.
Add the flour mixture to the pumpkin mix and stir till well mixed.
Remove from flame and then pour the mixture into a metal dish lined with cellophane film.
Steam the mixture till the kueh is firm (to check for doneness, insert a toothpick into the kueh and it should come out clean when cooked).

The kueh can be eaten after steaming. However, I prefer to pan-fry or oven-bake it for awhile to get some crispness on the surface/edges of the kueh. You can serve it with some chopped red chilli/spring onion as garnish and some sweet Thai chilli sauce as a dip.

I couldn't find a wok or big saucepan with a tall lid.....so I had to divide the mixture into smaller portions and used a dim-sum steamer instead (which I was totally surprised to find in my american landlord's cabinet).

While the kueh tasted slightly different without the hae-bee and lup-cheong, it was good enough to satisfy my kueh-kueh cravings for now.