Tag Archives: recipe

Pork, Potato, Uncategorized

Pork & Mixed Vegetable Stew Recipe

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In earlier days, transportation was not as convenient as how it is now. People in northern part of China didn’t have much choice about vegetables in winter. The most usually seen vegetables are potato, Chinese cabbage and turnip. They can be boiled, stewed, preserved and used to make soup. Pork stew together with these vegetables were very popular and so are they now. This hot dish is ideal for a cold winter.

1. Cut pork belly into smaller chunks. Put them into a pot. Add in enough water. Bring to boil with high heat. Take the pork out and rinse under water.

2. Heat a pan. Add in 2 tablespoon oil and 2 tablespoon sugar. Turn to low heat. Keep stirring to let let sugar melt first and then turn brown.

3. Add in pork. Stir fry and pork will also become brown. Add in spices: ginger, bay leaves, star anise, and dried chili. Stir fry till aromatic.

4. Pour in hot water about 2-3 cm higher than all ingredients. Cove the lid and simmer for 20 mins.

5. For the vegetables, I chose potatoes and puff tofu. Potatoes are peeled and cut into medium pieces. Place potatoes over pork and then tofu puff on the top. Those that hard to be cooked are always at the bottom layer. Cover with lid and simmer for another 25-30 mins.

6. Turn to high heat and reduce the sauce a bit. Then ready to serve.

mushroom

Fried Mushroom

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I wrote another deep fried mushroom recipe before:

Deep Fried Mushroom

This time, I tried it cook mushroom in a different way.

And I used this kind of mushroom:

Ingredients:

mushroom 150 g

flour 1/4 cup

starch 1/8 cup

egg 1

salt

black pepper 1/2 tsp

baking soda 1/4 tsp

five spice powder 1/2 tsp

water 1/4 cup – 1/2 cup

oil

 

  1. Tear mushroom into strips by hand. Put them in a big bow. Sprinkle 1 tsp salt and leave them there or 30 mins. Squeeze all the water out and drain.
  2. In another bowl, add in flour, starch, 1/4 tsp salt, black pepper, five spice powder and baking soda. Mix well. Then beat in 1 egg. Stir to mix. Add in water, to make smooth batter.
  3. Heat oil in a deep pot. Drop in a little batter, if the batter immediately floats to the surface with sizzling sound, then the oil is ready for frying.
  4. Dip mushroom in batter first, then deep fry till golden brown.

My husband couldn’t stop eating them. 🙂

Beef, zucchini

Beef & Zucchini Spaghetti

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1. Chop zucchini into thin slices with the help of a grater.

2. Heat a pan. Add in a little oil. Sauté 1 clove of chopped garlic.

3. Add beef slice in. Stir fry a bit till beef is no more pinkish.

4. Dish beef out and set aside.

5. Heat the same pan. Add in a little extra oil. Add zucchini slices in.

6. Gently stir fry zucchini and try not to break them since they are very thin and fragile.

7. After about 2 mins. Add beef back into the pan. Toss a bit with zucchini.

8. Add in cooked pasta. Season with salt and pepper and mixed herbs.

Chicken

Fried Chicken Drumsticks

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When will my husband be tired of fried chicken? I guess the answer is “NEVER”!

This time I used chicken drumsticks. I cooked 6 of them.

  1. Use a sharp knife to cut a little above the joint. Then pull the chicken meat down to separate from the joint.
  2. In a bowl, add in 1/2 cup chili sauce, 1 egg, 1/8 cup water. Mix them well.
  3. In another bow, add in 1 cup flour. Season with 1 tsp salt , 1 tsp black pepper and 1 tsp paprika powder. Mix well too.
  4. Dip chicken in the sauce then roll in the flour mixture. Shake off the excessive. Deep fry for about 10 mins.

When I called my husband to come for lunch, He saw the fried chicken.  He’s super happy and did that weird dance.

https://flic.kr/p/2e8ypKA

Uncategorized, Vegetables

Radish Kimchi

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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)

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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?

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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

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  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

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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)

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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.