Cilantro baked fish

This is another express cooking day type of dish. I normally use the oven or steam food when I need food to be cooked in parallel with rice so I can get food ready on table in less than 40 minutes.

This the baked fish which is so easy to make. I don't think I need to list the ingredients. You can see everything in the picture. Basically just lay your fillet on aluminium foil. 

Rub sea salt on both sides of the fish. Sprinkle black pepper, drizzle some extra virgin olive oil. Be generous with the oil. Squeeze half a lemon, or 4 small limes juice. Then cut the cilantro and just throw on top.

Pre-heat oven and bake at  200 celcius for 20 minutes

Cilantro stew pork with potato

I am trying to stew pork using western herbs and not the usual chinese stew ingredients. So here we go, I named it cilantro stew pork with potato.

It was a day which I took off to vaccinate my baby. After sending her to nanny place I returned home and did the usual house chores. Since I have longer time to cook dinner, I prepared this stew.

For the pork, I spent a little more time to brown it in oil before stewing. The result is rosemary fragrant stew which the meat is also tender because of the long slow cooking. I can settle other chores also while it cooked.

Ingredients:
300g soft bone pork , cut into 1x1 cube
2 potatoes,  cubed
1 tomato, wedged
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 medium red onion, wedges
1 teaspoon dried rosemary
5 stalks fresh cilantro , break them into shorter parts
salt and black pepper
Flour
Cooking oil
1 cup water


1. First, dip the pork in flour and salt and brown in a little oil then set aside
2. Heat up 2 tablespoon oil in a stewing pot and saute garlic.
3. Brown potatoes and add in tomato and pork.
4. Add in the cilantro, dried rosemary, black pepper.
5. Add 1 cup of water and let the mixture slowly cook for about 2 hours.
6. Add salt to taste before serving hot with rice

Braised sea cucumber and pork rib

Hello all. I have been away from blogging for a very long time as my last post was 6 months ago. I am still cooking but nothing really fancy. Just the usual stuff that I had written before and the daily quick meal. Maybe one day I shall blog about how to prepare meal in 40 minutes. That's the time I have to get stuff ready and clean up before tending to my very demanding children. I love them to bits and the love me so much that they like me to be around all the times. So I need to be super efficient in everything that I do at home.

This dish is out of the ordinary food that I cook everyday. I made this in the past long weekend which inclusive of weekend, Labor Day and replacement Wesak Day. Why it's out of ordinary is that I was using sea cucumber and I never cook with this sea creature before. My mother in law came 2 weeks ago and brought along some sea cucumber with her. She was an awesome lady, she cleaned them up and cooked for us and left a few more in freezer for me to use later. So I took them out and cooked for our dinner on Saturday.

I used claypot to cook this. Ingredients required:

A
300g pork ribs
3 pieces of sea cucumbers (post clean up) cut into smaller strips
4 dried shitake mushrooms soaked and cut into thick slices
2 hard boiled eggs (peeled)
2 shallots, minced
2 bowls water
3  tablespoon cooking oil

B
2 star anise
1 teaspoon of five spice powder
5 tablespoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon dark soy sauce
1 tablespoon oyster sauce
1/2 teaspoon of salt

First heat up 3 tablespoon of cooking oil. Saute shallots till fragrant.  Then stir in the pork and brown them a bit. Put the mushroom in and stir a while more. Before the pork burnt up, pour 1 bowl of water. Add in ingredients B and turn up the heat and let the mixture simmer.

After they simmer for about 5 minutes, add in remaining water, sea cucumber and eggs. Cover up the pot and slowly cook it for about 2 hours. Before serving taste and see if you need extra salt. Some soy sauce are salty enough that you do no need to top up.

Serve hot with rice. Enjoy!

Sour and chilli crab

The big boss always ask me why I never cook anything with lobster or crab before..so in one of the groceries pick up, I bought 2XL size "ketam bunga". It cost around rm11. Alright this was my first time handling crabs. Good thing is that they are not alive. I believe these are frozen crabs. I looked upon YouTube for the way to clean crabs and followed exactly fearing the  crabs will suddenly wake up.

I settled down with a recipe that calls for sour and spicy flavor because this is not a live crab so steam is totally not a good choice.

Sauce ingredients
Small bowl of water
5Tbs ketchup
1 Tbs oyster sauce
2tbs chilli sauce
Fresh yogurts 4Tbs
1 tbs shaoxing wine

Other ingredients
Salt
Cleaned crabs
Cooking oil
Minced garlic
Minced ginger
1 egg beaten

Steps
1. Heat up 3 tbs oil in wok.
2. Saute garlic and ginger for about 10 seconds
3. Add in crabs
4. Simply stir for about 3 minutes
5. Mix the sauce ingredients except yogurts and pour  in the mixture into wok.
6. Close the lid and simmer for about 10 minutes
7. Add in yogurts and simmer for another 5 min
8. Add some salt as needed and egg
9. Stir for another 2 minutes and serve immediately with hot steaming rice

There you go.....!!

Easy banana muffin

I have some over ripe banana at home from last week. I used up 2 to make flourless banana pancake for breakfast yesterday and there  are 4 more. So here a quick fix for tomorrow breakfast.

I found a recipe which I have all the ingredients ready. So in about 20 minutes I prepared all the ingredients and pop into the oven to bake.

Here's the recipe if you are interested

1 2/3 cup organic unbleached flour
2/3 cup sugar. I reduced this a bit
1 cup corn &canola
2 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp cinnamon powder
1 tsp baking soda
4 mashed bananas

Steps
Heat up 190c oven
In a bowl, beat oil, sugar and eggs using metal whisk
Stir in the vanilla extract and mashed bananas
Add in the rest of ingredients
Divide into 10 muffin cups. I used cup cakes cups
Bake in oven for 20 minutes

Hope the boys love the muffins tomorrow

Healthy chicken nuggets for toddler

I have left this blog too long unmaintained due to busy work schedule and dealing with demanding toddler while carrying our new baby.yes, we are expecting a new member of our family this year! Basically my everyday life is like rushing to everything and everywhere.I squeezed in a week of business trip in May to Ireland. It was a bonus as I got to run away from hectic home life for a week however is not a real bonus a well..this business trip was as hectic a well. I lazy to recall how our flight was canceled due to plane function error when we were already seated I'm the plane and how I  threw up in the bus that reroute to take us to our destination and everyday meeting full day and only manage to shop in airport on the last day.

Okay back to original purpose of writing this entry.I am currently in a vendor tool workshop. Since the tool that is being discussed is not of my interest,I took my phone out and start blogging again.

This is the chicken nuggets that I made for my kid.he is a typical picky kid who doesn't eat meat and there was once when we were in ikea, we gave him nuggets and he took without fuss. So I am really determined to make a healthy version for him, baked not fried.

I roughly list down the ingredients.

2 slabs of chicken breast, deboned
Garlic powder
Parsley
Black peppers
Salt
Bread ( white or wholemeal, whichever)

Steps
1.minced chicken meat, I used knife and just chopped them for 15 min
2. Mix  salt, parsley, garlic powder and black pepper, marinate for about 10 min.
3. Tear the bread into 1x1 inch pieces and toast in preheat oven for about 20 min until crunchy. I turned them around at half the time so I don't get burnt bread on a side only
4. Processed the bread in food processor or blender into fine bread crumbs and put them into a dry plate. Mix grated parmesan with breadcrumbs if you like
5. Clean your hands and wet your palm
6.Take a some minced chicken meat and roll into into a ball then press it. You can make out into any shape you like
7. Place the meat piece in the plate containing breadcrumbs and cover all sides with breadcrumbs.
8. When you are done doing this for all the minced chicken, you can either bake them directly in oven for 30 min or keep them in freezer for future use.

I made about 20 pieces from this batch and bake a few every weekend for the little toddler.its healthy and yummy!

Steamed pork in bean paste

I can't remember if I ever posted this but if I did, it must be on pork rib. Nowadays I don't purchase pork rib anymore. I will buy "ruan gu" ( soft bone) from the butcher. The reason is that both types fetch same price but one is with lots of bone which can't be eat and another can be consumed wholly. So I opt for "ruan gu" for soups, stew or steamed dish like this one.

1. Marinate pork overnight with shao xing wine, bean paste, chopped garlic and soy sauce. Be careful not to overmix the bean paste because it is kind of salty.
2. At the time when you wanted to cook, just add bit of water and a handful of wolfberries and steam for 20 minutes. I usually use rice cooker to steam when cooking rice. I always promote parallel tasks especially during weekdays when after work time is limited.
3. Before serve garnish with spring onions.

This is one of my favorite food since childhood and I will definitely continue loving it.

Loh eggs

One day I received 4 boiled eggs from full moon package. I am not the particular person who loves boiled egg so I need to find a way to make them more interesting to consume. Quickly I went to prepare the mixture in a pot. Star anise, cinnamon powder, 5 spices powder, sugar, soy sauce, dark soy sauce and water all went in. Heat the pot and stir till all mixture dissolved. Let place the peeled boiled eggs in and let simmer for 15 minutes in very low heat. Later just let them sit in the pot for overnight. There you have the eggs ready. Eat with rice or put into the noodle soup

Pesto and salami spaghetti

Here's are the some kitchen ingredients that I bought from Milan during our trip there. Forget about the bottle in the middle, the other 2 at the sides are pasta sauces. There are 2 types of salami, one is the normal type, the other is spicy version. 

On Thursday I made pasta for dinner although we had pasta on Tuesday by our dear friend Fang Fang. I used the pesto sauce I got from Milan and some left over cream from Tuesday.

For the salami, I used up all that left from Tuesday. I cut them into strips using scissors. Some of the strips are a little larger than the rest as I lost my concentration after a while because I need to prepare dinner and struggled with my toddler pulling my legs and clothes asking me to go out to play with him in the living room.

The ingredients are very simply as pesto sauce already made up much of them.

So what I did was only to cook the salami and mushroom slices in olive oil. My friend told me she started to move to fresh shitake mushroom as it gives better flavor. I agree with her that's why I did the same too now and better still, it's cheaper than the white button mushroom or the grey ones.  After the 2 ingredients are cooked, and sucked up all the juices, scoop half of the pesto sauce into the pan and add a little water and 2 tablespoon of cream. By the way, the pesto sauce came in the bottle that said it's ready for 5 pax. So I guess 2 of us make roughly half of the bottle. :p I made a mistake by adding in salt and the outcome was a little salty. I forgot the salami and pesto sauce were already flavored. When the pasta sauce is ready, off the fire and mix the pasta which I already cooked al dente earlier. Just mix them up and there you are.

Long bean rice

Since  we introduced the box of pencil colours to our boy, he loves "drawing" very much. He said "draw" each time he wants to make some mark on paper. He simply make some random colouring on the paper according to his liking however he learns each of the colour from this activity. He loves saying purple and he says it cute like "popur". This picture shows the daddy trying to impress his junior on his drawing skill. and the junior seems to be intrigued by the stunt.

A dear friend called on last weekend for afternoon tea. We met up in a restaurant in a new area called Four Season place in Air Itam. Short but nice to meet up. This is my first time having this beautiful art coffee. Felt so nice.

2 weeks ago we had a great rainy weather. Don't misunderstand me by thinking I love the rain, I just love the temperature! It felt like staying on the highland, Cameron Highland! Even by not switching on the fan, the weather is very chilling indoor. How nice was that. But it only lasted for a week. Now we are back in the oven. I am still cooking most of the days and I made this yesterday. It is something that my mom used to cook every once and then back when I still live at home. We call it "dou jiao fan" which translates to "long bean rice". I wanted to make it earlier of the week during working day but we kept coming back home later than 6.15pm so I can't make it on time for dinner at 7pm. At last I managed it on weekend. It is not too hard to make just that it's not as easy as just drop everything into rice cooker and turn it on.  Here what my mom usually did was to cook everything in the wok then transfer them into the rice cooker to cook.

What you need is :

2 cloves of garlic, flatten them using the side of knife

2 tablespoon of dried shrimps, washed and drained

3 chinese mushroom, soaked in water to soften then sliced

A handful of long beans, washed and cut into 1.5cm length

200g of pork belly, cut and season with corn flour and soy sauce

1 cup of rice, washed and add enough water for cooking

Heat up wok with oil , saute garlic till fragrance and add in the dried shrimps and mushroom. Stir fry for a while until the ingredients dried up then add in the pork. When you see the pork is sticking to the base of wok, you can add in the long beans. Add half bowl of water, 1 teaspoon of dark soy sauce, 3 tablespoon of light soy sauce, 1/2 teaspoon of sesame oil, salt and pepper to taste. Let the long beans simmer for like 20 seconds then pour in the rice and water mixture. Let simmer for another 20 seconds and scoop the rice out first into rice cooker followed by everything else. Let it cook following your rice cooker manual. 

ABC soup

I like to cook soup because it simplify my kitchen tasks during weekdays. It means I just have to stir fry a vegetable dish to go with the soup and rice. The best is the one that has vegetables and meat together because I can eat all the goodies in a bowl. This is a common soup that many of us think as comfort food as we drink this since young. ABC soup is named as such because of the variety of ingredients that provide multi vitamins to the soup. ABC is just a way to represent the many vitamins you can get from all the vegetables. Tomato-vitamin A, carrot-vitamin B, etc..

This time I use the thermal cooker to boil the soup because no electricity and minimal gas are used . I just put everything in the pot and boil for 10 minutes or so before I go to work. Usually I washed and cut the ingredients that can be prepared a day before to save me some time. 

Ingredients that can be cut a day before:

2 large onions

1 potato

1 carrot

Cut them into cubes.

Other ingredients:

Soft bone pork/Pork ribs

2 tomatoes

2 teaspoon of peppercorns.

Salt to taste

Alternatively you can also use slow cooker or stove top to boil the soup. Stove top will take  about 2 hours.

Baked chicken wings

Today a friend commented about my lack of update on my blog. I told her I am too busy to update as I have too much errands to run and need to take care of the home. Since it's public holiday today and I've got some extra hours after the monster is asleep, I can update today's cooking.

I made this extra slurpy baked chicken wings that my hubby loves so much using the oven. We didn't get to join any barbecue nowadays so I have to create this at home. It is as good as the barbecue ones. The secret ingredient is HONEY!  yet I don't need to stand in front of the hot red charcoal to bbq the chicken wings. So easy! I make this pretty frequent. 

You can cut the whole piece of wing into drumettes and other part or leave it as a whole piece.

Marinate the wings for at least 2 hours using these:

3 cloves of garlic, chopped

1/2 teaspoon of sesame oil

Salt & pepper

2 tablespoon soy sauce

2 tablespoon honey

Preheat oven to 200c. Put the wings on aluminium foil and place on the tray. Save the marinate. Usually I use aluminium foil to save time from scrubbing to clean the tray after use. 

Bake for 40 minutes. Every 10 minutes, brush the wings with the left over marinate and turn them around. 

You will get something like below after 40 minutes, equally good as barbecuing. 

Pizza week

Last week I made pizza twice. Okay I didn't make the dough, I bought ready made one from the store. I don't have enough time to make it myself since they were weekdays. First pizza , I forgot to grease the pan before putting it in for bake in oven..so the base sticked that I had to scrap the base and cut the pizza half to get it off the pan. It didn't look too appetizing afterward. For the second pizza of the week, I remembered to grease the pan so the pizza turned out excellent.

Pizza 1 toppings: tomato, parsley, spring onion, tuscan mushrooms, black pepper sausage, garlic
Pizza 2 toppings: tomato, pork, dried seaweed, button mushrooms, onion

Must top with generous amount of cheese! I used mozzarella.

Ginger and scallion chicken

This is one of my hubby's favourite, jiang chong ji which directly translated to ginger and scallion chicken. It is quick to prepare on normal working day. The reason is the cooking time is short  because of the use of boneless chicken or chicken breast whichever you like.

Ingredients
2 chicken legs
2 tbs corn flour
2 tbs vegetable oil
3 stalks scallion julienned
1 piece ginger sliced
2 tbs shaoxing wine
1 tbs Oyster sauce
2tbs soy sauce
Salt and pepper

Steps
Get chicken leg and deboned it or you can use chicken breast. Cut the chicken into smaller strips. Mix corn flour and vegetable oil to chicken to seal the juice.

Heat oil in wok. When oil is hot, saute ginger and scallion for 20 seconds.

Add chicken and stir. Add all other ingredients and a bit of water so there is gravy.

Stir fry for few minutes until chicken is cooked. Scoop and serve hot with steamed rice.

Enjoy!

Baked pork rib in oven

I cook Chinese food like 90% of the time. On Wednesday I made a more western side of meal. I bought 2 pork ribs from market at weekend and told the boy not to cut them into smaller pieces this time. Just chop each rib into 2. I go to wet market every 2 to 3 weeks to replenish ingredients like pork, red snapper for my boy's porridge, fish balls and "lao shu fen". The rest I will get from Aeon, cheaper especially on chicken and vegetables.

I found some recipe online to marinate the rib but I don't have much of the ingredients so I made up my own.

Marinate
2 Shallots chopped
2 garlics chopped
2 tbs Soy sauce
Few drops of worchesteshire sauce
2 Tbs white vinegar
3Tbs ketchup
Pinch of salt and ground pepper
4tbs brown sugar

The ribs were marinated overnight.

When I came back from work, I will on the oven to heat it up.I turned the knob to 60 minutes and 240 celsius. Dripped off the extra sauce and placed the ribs on aluminium foil and waited for 5 minutes before placing the ribs into oven.

Take the ribs out and rub the marinate sauce every 10 minutes.

While doing this, prepare mashed potato, salad and soup. When the time is up, serve and enjoy your food!

Lastly, here is a picture of my small mushroom boy

Stir dry tofu with pork

These days the sky is not clear. The west side of peninsular Malaysia is attacked by haze that comes from open fire burning by our neighbour, Indonesia. We are not happy about it because it affects our daily life, everyone stays indoor to prevent inhaling too much of the toxic and smelly air. More and more people are using air conditioner. I heard air purifier is selling fast in the store. Every brand is snatched, everyone is trying to the best protection for their family members.

As usual we eat at home most of our dinners. I cooked this dish 2 days ago.  It is easy and tasty.

Ingredients
1 piece tofu cubed
Minced or slices of pork, seasoned with soy sauce and corn flour
1 egg
2 Shallots
Spring onion for garnishing
Half bowl of water
2 tbs Oyster sauce
2 tbs soy sauce
Salt and pepper
Tapioca starch

Steps
Heat up 2 tablespoon of oil in wok. Saute shallots until fragrant. Stir fry pork for 10 seconds and add tofu. Add water leaving 1/4 over for later . Add soy sauce, oyster sauce and salt. Let it simmer until tofu is soften about 3 to 5 minutes. Mix tapioca starch into the left over water and add into the wok. Let it simmer a while and off the fire. Break an egg and mix. Garnish with spring onion and serve hot with rice. Enjoy!

Seafood ramekin

It was lazy Saturday and I wasn't very hungry approaching lunch hour. After feeding my boy, bathed him and put him to nap, I tried to put something together to fix a quick lunch. Anyway, it wasn't too quick . I think I used about an hour to make this for lunch.

1. You can use any seafood that you have. I used squids, prawns and fish. Melt up 2 tablespoon of butter in pan. Add onions. Add the seafood, salt, pepper and wine. Stir fry for about 4-5 minutes. Scoop up and set aside. 

2. Boil 1 cup of milk

3. Melt 3 tablespoon of butter into skillet and dissolve 2 tablespoon of flour in it. Add the boiled milk and stir vigorously until everything mixed properly. Add the seafood into the mixture.

4. Preheat oven to 200celcius

5. Pour the mixture into ramekins

6. Top with bread crumbs and Parmesan cheese. I don't have parmesan so I used Cheddar :p

7. Bake in oven for 20 minutes.

I feel like eating clam chowder when eating this. It was yummy

Mango lassi

I was craving for some mango desert few weeks back but we didn't have enough time to enjoy desert outside because we have to rush back each time after buying groceries/outing because our little boy need to nap. Luckily I grabbed 2 mangoes under sale in AEON! I only used 1 of them for each time I made the mango lassi. It's super easy. Just mix plain yogurt, full cream milk and ripe mango chunks into your food processor and process them. It's hard to tell the measurement here because I simply add them according to my likeness. It was a little to the think side but I can always dilute the drink down with some milk. I let my boy sip from the glass and he loved it! 

Mihun in chicken curry

I was in US for a couple of weeks. Then Aichee's husband cooked curry chicken during picnic at Salem. I told myself that I am going to cook this when I am back to Malaysia. So here it is, curry chicken with tauhupok (fried tofu). It is not as good as his one, but I am satisfied. I added long beans into the curry and ate with blanched mihun.

Ginger and scallion squid

This is a common dish among the Chinese. We have"Jiang Chong ji" as ginger and scallion chicken but I cooked the squid with the exact same ingredients. Earlier I purchased some shrimps and squids for my mother in law to cook when she is coming next week. I made a better decision to have used the squids to cook this dish. It is yummy because the ginger and  scallion taste really mixed well with the seafood. Ginger will overpower the usual sea food stink smell. The only additional ingredients I added is the black fungus. The squid, scallion, ginger and black fungus are great as a team. I definitely will make this again when I am back to Malaysia.

Ingredients 1:
2 squids, cut into rings
1 stalk of scallion, cut into 2 cm long.
medium size ginger, sliced
black fungus, julienned

Ingredients 2:
Salt , 1/2 teaspoon
1 tbs corn starch diluted in 1/2 cup water
1 tbs Shaoxing wine
1 tbs oyster sauce
1 tbs soy sauce
Pepper

1. Mix ingredients 2 together
2. Heat up a tbs of oil in wok
3. Saute scallion and ginger  until fragrant
4. Mix ingredients 2 and black fungus and let simmer for 10 seconds
5. Put the squids in. Do not cook to long to avoid rubbery texture. When the squids turns white, off the fire
6. Serve hot with white rice

Enjoy your meal! I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.