All posts by chinesetuition88

Uncategorized, Vegetables

Radish Kimchi

Leave a comment

Don’t know why I am so obsessed with spicy kimchi recently. There happens to be a radish in the fridge, so I decide to make radish kimchi by myself.

1. Prepare a radish. Mine is about 250g. Peel it and chop it into small cubes. Place them in a big bowl and sprinkle 1 tablespoon salt. Leave it there for 1 hour. Drain them, because a lot of water will come out from the radish.

2. Put 1 pear (core removed), 8-10 cloves of garlic, 10g ginger into blend. Blend them till very smooth.

3. Add chili powder (according to your taste) to the pear paste and stir well.

4. Put all the radish in a big bowl, add add in chopped spring onion. Then pour the paste into the bowl. Toss a bit to mix them well.

https://flic.kr/p/2dQAt7p

5. Prepare a jar or a container. Boil in water first to be sterilized. Dry it. Put radish kimchi into it. Lid on but don’t close too tight. Leave it there for several hours to ferment. Then close tightly and store in the fridge.

https://flic.kr/p/T6j64S

Chicken

Sticky Rice Chicken (糯米鸡 Lor Mai Gai)

1 Comment

This is a very popular Cantonese dish. My husband is a big fan. Actually, it can be found easily from local supermarket, and the price is very cheap. But I really want to try and make it by myself at home.

Ingredients: (Actually my meat portion is too large compared to rice, so I suggest using less chicken and pork. Cut down to 1/2 or 2/3).

sticky rice 1 cup

water 1 1/2 cup

1 boneless chicken leg

pork belly 100 g

Chinese sausage (La Chang) 1

dry shiitake mushroom 6

light soy sauce 1 tbsp

dark soy sauce 1/2 tbsp

cooking wine 1 tbsp

oyster sauce 1 tbsp

sugar 1 tbsp

five spice powder 1 tsp

salt 1/2 tsp

  1. Soak sticky rice over night. And steam for 25 mins. Or you can just put sticky rice and water into rice cooker and let the rice cooker do the job. (When I use the rice cooker, I put in too much water. As a result, my sticky rice is very soft and grains are broken. So I suggest less water here.) When rice is cooked, open the lid to let it get dry and cool down.
  2. Soak dry shiitake mushroom in water till soft. Don’t throw away the shiitake water.
  3. Cut chicken into medium chunks, pork belly into short strips. Put them in a bowl. Add in all the marinade ingredients: light soy sauce, dark soy sauce, cooking wine, oyster sauce, sugar, five spice powder and salt. Mix well and let them marinate for 30 mins.
  4. Dice shiitake mushroom and Chinese sausage.
  5. Heat a pan. Add in 2 tsp oil. Shiitake in first. Stir fry for a min. Then add in sausage, chicken and pork. Stir fry till meat turns white in color.
  6. Pour in 1/4 cup shiitake water and simmer for 3-5 mins to reduce the sauce.
  7. Since I don’t have lotus leaf, I used parchment (cooking paper) instead.
  8. Place sticky rice at one end of the paper. Put chicken, pork, mushroom, sausage over the rice. Drizzle a little sauce to add flavor to rice.  Then roll it from one end to the other. Twist two ends.

https://flic.kr/p/2dXi8Hg

Steam for 30 mins.

https://flic.kr/p/2fgvhES

AS I said at the beginning, my sticky rice is too soft. Apart from that, everything is nice. And my husband gave it thumps up.

You can dig in just unwrap the paper, or you can put it into a bowl.

 

Chicken, egg, tofu

What’s In My Husband’s Bento Box?

1 Comment

The biggest meal of the day for us is lunch. We usually have a very simple and light dinner. And also because sometimes I go back home late after work, I don’t have much time to cook dinner. Normally, my husband and I have lunch together at home having home-cooking food. But he needs to meet with colleagues or professors occasionally, under which circumstance he can’t have lunch at home. So I came up with this idea – putting lunch in his bento box and keep it for his dinner.

This is what inside my husband’s bento box:

Meat and vegetable are must-have dishes.

Chicken leg is a good choice, since he’s never  tired of juicy and tender honey roasted chicken leg. Here is how I cook them:

Honey Roasted Chicken Leg

I also added sweet and sour tofu:

Sweet & Sour Tofu

and scrambled egg with tomato:

Scrambled Egg With Tomatoes

For green vegetables, and fish cake, It’s very simple. Just fry them with a little oil and season with salt.

The bottom layer is brown rice. The sauce from tofu and chicken will go into rice and add more flavor.

I also made some bean soup (including red bean, red kidney bean, black bean, black sesame, barley and red date) .

Healthy Bean Soup

And kept the soup in a monkey bottle.

https://flic.kr/p/RzeJMz

I put them in the fridge. When I come back from work, I can just reheat the bento in microwave. My husband likes cook drink, so cool bean soup is perfect for him.

To me, this bento method is really convenient. Another good thing about bento is that my husband can’t be picky on food. He prefers to have more meat when we have lunch together. With bento, he had no choice but to finish all the vegetables I prepare for him.

Every time he’s quite excited about eating bento. At least I can see his big satisfactory smile when he’s having chicken leg. 🙂

tofu

Sweet & Sour Tofu

1 Comment
  1. Prepare a pack of firm tofu, around 200 g. cut it into cubes. Put them in a bowl. Season with 1 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp black pepper and 3 tbsp starch. Gently toss a bit to let tofu roll in starch.
  2. Heat a pan, add in 1 tbsp oil. Fry tofu till golden brown. Then set aside for later use.
  3. In a small bowl, add in 2 tsp light soy sauce, 2 tsp tomato sauce, 1 tsp vinegar, 2 tsp honey. Mix them well.
  4. Heat pan again. Add in 1 tsp oil, saute chopped garlic and ginger till aromatic. Add in vegetables (I used thawed mixed veg including broccoli, cauliflower and carrot). Stir fry for 2 mins.
  5. Add tofu and sauce in. Stir fry evenly and reduce sauce.

https://flic.kr/p/2fjJrPP

https://flic.kr/p/2fjJrQF

Serve with hot rice.

Prawn, Uncategorized

Laksa

1 Comment

Finally, I got the chance to cook Laksa at home. It all due to my husband. When we were shopping for groceries, he suddenly told me that he wanted to have laksa. He chose a pack of laksa paste and laksa noodles. We also bought bean sprouts and puff tofu yesterday. He was quite excited about the laksa I was going to cook.

The most important part of Laksa is the paste, which is made from all kinds of spices. I really don’t want to buy many kinds of spices and store in the fridge. Cos I’m pretty sure that I will forget about them and they just stay there and rot. So the most convenient way is what my husband did to buy Laksa paste from supermarket.

This is the one my husband chose.

Another ingredient may be time-consuming is prawn stock. Although the instruction on the package says you can just add in water. I still think prawn stock will be a better choice.

I used about 500 g prawns. Remove all the heads and shells (except the tail shell). Heat  a pan. Add in 1 tbsp oil. Put all the prawn heads and shells in. Stir fry till they all turn red. Pour in 4 cups water. Lid on. Simmer with low heat for 1 hour. When stock was on stove, my husband came to kitchen and said “it smells so so good”.

Blanch laksa noodles, bean sprout and fish cake in water for 2-3 mins. Then arrange them in a bowl.

When prawn stock is down, sieve the stock and get rid of all the shells.

Heat a pan. Put laksa paste in. Because there is too much oil in the paste, I poured some out. Stir fry the paste for a little while, till you can smell the aroma. Pour all the prawn stock in. I also added in 1 cup water, because prawn stock reduced during simmering. Bring the soup to boil. Add in prawns, clams and puff tofu. Boil for 2 mins. Pour in 200 ml coconut milk. Gently stir and simmer for another 3 mins.

Arrange prawns, clams and puff tofu over the noodles. Pour the soup over them.

https://flic.kr/p/2feC9hh

My husband loves it very very much.

I also served it with a half-boiled egg.

Cake

Spring Onion Cake That I Can Never Have Enough (葱油饼 Cong You Bing)

Leave a comment

There is no word can express how much I love spring onion pancake. There are some Shandong Pau shops in Singapore. They also sell Cong You Bing. Yet, The ones they sell are not the same to the ones I like. Spring onion cake I like is the crispy type. My mom is super good at making amazing spring onion pancake. Too bad, I can’t find any similar to my mom’s. So I have to figure out by myself.

I wrote a post before:

Improved Spring Onion Pancake Recipe

And recently, I cooked spring onion pancake again, just because I really missed them.

In my previous post, I applied my mom’s advice: Use half hot water and half cold water. But this time, I think I figure out some secret to make good spring onion pancake.

  1. No matter use hot water or whole cold water. The key is soft dough, which means you better use more water to make sure dough is soft enough. If the dough is hard, then the pancake will taste hard and dry.
  2. Use more spring onion, seasoning and oil. Obviously, it is true. Spring onion, and seasoning will make a lot happen during frying.
  3. Low medium heat is better during frying. This is important to make sure the outside layer is crispy. If the heat is high, it’s easy to be burnt outside while the dough inside is still raw.

https://flic.kr/p/Rt6bme

https://flic.kr/p/2f9NUcS

Crispy spring onion pancake is the true spring onion pancake.

My husband also loves it.

Broccoli, mushroom, Vegetables

Oyster Sauced Shiitake Mushroom & Broccoli

1 Comment

It’s a healthy-looking dish. 🙂

  1. Cut broccoli into small parts. Blanch in water for 3 mins. Then soak in cold water and drain.
  2. Heat a pan. Add in some oil. Fry shiitake mushrooms. 2 mins each side.
  3. Add in 2 tablespoon stock or water (stock is better). Simmer for 4 or 5 mins or till cooked.
  4. Set mushroom aside. Heat a pan. A little oil in. saute chopped garlic. Then add in 1 tsp light soy sauce,1 tsp oyster sauce and 1 tablespoon stock). Reduce the sauce a bit.
  5. Place broccoli and mushroom in a plate. pour the sauce over them.

https://flic.kr/p/2dsf45Z

So so easy.

Potato

Potato & Sausage Stir-fry

Leave a comment

I find only in Chinese recipe will potatoes appear in slices, while in other cuisine, potatoes are usually cooked in chunks or mashed. Potatoes also are cooked often in shreds, and it’s a very very common Chinese family dish, just like scrambled egg with tomatoes.

Sausage I used is the Chinese preserved sausage. We call it La Chang （腊肠）.

  1. Peel the potatoes and cut it into thin slices. Also cut sausage into slice.
  2. Fry potato slices. Add oil into a pan. Heat it. Fry potato with medium low heat. When potatoes turn transparent and brownish on the edge, it’s done. Set them aside.
  3.   Add in a little oil in the pan. Saute sausage till sausage becomes curly and slightly brownish.
  4. Add in 2 or 3 cloves chopped garlic. saute til aromatic.
  5. Put in all the potatoes and chopped green chili. Stir fry for a minute.
  6. Add in 1/2 tsp light soy sauce, 1/2 tsp oyster sauce. Stir fry evenly.
  7. Season with salt and garnish with some chopped spring onion.

https://flic.kr/p/Rt6eQD

Ribs, Soup

Bak Kut Teh (肉骨茶)

Leave a comment

Bak kut teh is a very popular dish in Singapore. It’s kind of spice rib soup. The cooking method is not complicated but it’s a bit time consuming.

1. Wash 1 kg ribs in water. Then put them in a big pot. Add in enough water covers all ribs. Bring water to boil. Take the ribs out and rinse under water.

2. Wash the pot. Add in 1.5 L water. Bring to boil.

3. Add in 1 head of garlic (peeled or unpeeled is fine) and the spice bag. Because bak kut teh needs many herbs. So a spice bag is much more convenient and it can bought from supermarket.

4. Also put in all the ribs. Simmer for at least 1 hour.

5. Add in 1 tablespoon light soy sauce before serving.

My husband loves it.

Prawn

Braised Prawns

Leave a comment

  1. Clean prawns. Remove all the whiskers and intestine. Also make a cut at the back.
  2. Heat a pan. Add in oil. Fry prawns with low medium heat. Flip over to fry the other side till red oil comes out. Do the same to the other side. Then set prawns aside.
  3. Heat the pan again. Add in a little extra oil if needed. Saute chopped ginger, garlic and spring onion till aromatic.
  4. Add fried prawns into the pan. drizzle in a little cooking wine to remove the fishy smell.
  5. Put in 1 tbsp light soy sauce, 1 tbsp cooking wine, 1 tsp black pepper powder, 1 tbsp sugar. (you can mix all the sauce ingredients in a bowl before cook) .
  6. Turn to low heat and simmer for 3 mins.
  7. Reduce sauce with high heat. and ready to serve.

https://flic.kr/p/2f7wooh

https://flic.kr/p/2e6hGZj