Tag Archives: braise

Braised Beef With Potato


Ingredients:

Beef ( cut into medium pieces)

Potatoes (chopped into medium pieces)

Light soy sauce

Dark soy sauce

Cooking wine

Salt sugar

Ginger

Star anise

1. Beef pieces in boiling water till water gets boiled again. Take beef out, rinse and drain.

2. Heat some oil in the pan. Put in 2 or 3 ginger slices. Then put in beef, add a little cooking wine. Stir fry for a while.

3. Put in potato pieces. Stir fry till the edge gets a little golden brown.

4. Add in hot water covers all ingredients. Also add 1 or 2 star anise, 1 tsp light soy sauce, 1 tsp dark soy sauce, 1 tsp sugar. Braised with medium heat.

5. When water reduces to less than 1/3 and potatoes become softened. Turn to high height. Keep stir frying till sauce becomes dry.


Potatoes are very soft and tasty.

Cook One Fish In Two Ways

Compared to fried fish in western countries, Chinese people always choose to cook fish in different ways, like fish soup, braised fish in brown sauce, or steamed fish.
I bought this sea bass from supermarket. Yet, I found it too big and we didn’t have a pan big enough to cook it. So I decided to divided it into two parts. Fish head for the soup. Fish body and tail for the braised one.


Fish head soup is very popular in China, since many people think this dish is very good for health. Nutritious elements in fish will be contained in the soup.

It is not difficult to make fish soup.

1. Heat the oil in the pan, and fry two sides of the fish head. When the color turns a little brown, pour in the hot water. 

2. Add two or three ginger slices, salt and green onion.

3. Cook the soup with low heat. The longer you cook it, the whiter will the soup color become.

4. When the soup color turns milky white, add some tofu ( better be silken tofu) slices into it.

5. Cook for another 20 minutes or so. 


I really think silken tofu is a perfect match to fish soup.

Braised fish in brown sauce
This dish can be done while fish soup on the stove.
1. Similar to the soup above. Heat the oil in the pan, and fry two sides of the fish body. When the color turns a little brown, add in a little light soy sauce, dark soy sauce (light soy sauce contains salt, dark soy sauce is for dark color) and sugar.

2. Make the fish coated with sugar soy sauce. And pour in hot water.

3. Put in some ginger slices. Cover the pan with lid.

4. When the sauce in the pan become less than 1/4. Take the fish out.

5. Keep hearing the sauce in the pan until it becomes very condensed. And pour it onto the fish.


Dip the fish with sauce before put it into mouth. It really tastes great.

Braised Pork With Potato And Vermicelli


Apart from dumpling, vermicelli is another food to help me with my nostalgia.

Vermicelli is a commonly seen food in northern part of China, especially in winter. Just imagine, it’s chilling outside, and you have a bowl of braised pork with vermicelli on your table. All the coldness will be gone.
Ingredients:

Oil, pork (cut into slices), potato ( chopped into medium pieces), vermicelli, light soy sauce, dark soy sauce, salt, water.

1. 


Heat oil in the pan, put in pork slices. Pork with a little fat would be perfect and it will taste better. The oil will come from the fat. Stir fry till the pork turn a bit brown.
2.


Add in potato pieces. Keep stir frying till the edge of potato turns transparent.
3.


Add in a little dark soy sauce and some light soy sauce. Keep stir frying till each pork and potato piece coated with soy sauce.
4.


Add in water enough to cover all ingredients in the pan. Then cover the pan with lid. Braise with medium heat.
5.


When the water becomes less, and potato softens, put in vermicelli. The vermicelli I used is easy to cook. Only takes five minutes to be cooked. And no need to be soaked in the water before cooking. Please read instruction on the vermicelli’s pack before cooking.
Vermicelli will be softened. Then stir it with potato and pork.


You can use chopsticks to stir vermicelli, because it’s easy for them to stick together.
After around 5 minutes, the dish is done when vermicelli is done. You’d better try it to make it’s truly done. Add in salt. And stir evenly.

Vermicelli will become transparent. And potato also tasty for braised with pork and soy sauce for such a long time.