Happy Cooking Experience

Refreshing Meatball

2010-10-22T21:08:00.000-07:00

Ingredients : mince pork 200g, soo hoon 10g (soak until soft and cut into small chunk), shredded English Gourd, chop garlic. Shreded ginger

Marinade : Rice wine, pepper, salt, water, egg, corn flour

Seasoning : pepper, chicken stock powder, salt, sugar

Add mince pork with chopped garlic follow by soo hoon, and add in the marinade and mix well. Marinate for half an hour.

Heat up oil and fry the meatball until light golden brown.

Use a pot or wok, add in the fried meatball, shredded English gourd and ginger, cover with enough water and seasoning. Simmer for half an hour and adjust the taste to your like with the salt and sugar.

Clay pot 3-Cup-Chicken

2010-10-09T20:30:00.000-07:00

Ingredients : chicken parts (can use chicken wing or drumstick), potato, carrot

Marinade : Soya sauce, pepper

Marinate chicken for at least 30 minutes, then fry chicken until lightly brown or 80% cooked (do not overfry). Fry the potato and carrot until half cook

Heat up the claypot, add sesame oil, fry the slice ginger until fragrant. Add 2 pieces of lump sugar, follow by chicken, potato, carrot and 2 table spoon of soya sauce. Add enough water to simmer until cook. Finally add 2 table spoon of rice wine.

Tips : you can remove the excess oil by rinsing the carrot and potato in water.

Stewed Bacon

2010-10-02T20:20:00.000-07:00

Ingredients : Bacon 200g, Cube potato, Carrot, Slice Onion, Slice Pork 200g

Marinade : Soya Sauce 2 table spoon, white pepper, corn flour, sesame oil

First marinate the pork for 30 minutes or more. Prepare all vegetable ingredients.

Stir fry the bacon and onion until lightly brown (with minimum oil since bacon has enough fat).

Follow by pork, potato, onion and water. Simmer for 10-15 minutes until carrot and potato is soft. Adjust the taste with salt and sugar depending on your preference and you can serve. You can also add macaroni after the dish is cook to convert it into a pasta dish.

Katsudon Dish

2010-09-21T00:13:00.000-07:00

Ingredient : boneless chicken, onion slice, chinese leek, Katsudon sauce, 2 eggs beat well

Katsudon sauce: 4 cups of soya sauce, 4 cups of hon mirin, 4 cups of rice wine, mix well and cook until boil, turn low fire and continue to cook for 2 minutes, and the sauce is ready to be used.

Cut the chicken into bite size cube, and onion & leek into slice.

Find a small pan, put in all ingredients except eggs, add in enough katsudon sauce, when it is boiled and dish is almost ready, pour eggs on top of the dish, simmer for about 1 minute.

Bitter Gourd with sweet sauce

2010-09-11T19:52:00.000-07:00

Ingredients : Bitter gourd, chinese leek, big onion, pork fillet

Sauce : one table spoon of oyster sauce, one table spoon of soya sauce, 2 pieces of rock sugar 2 table spoon of rice wine.

Not many people like bitter gourd because of the bitterness, including myself. But the method used here will be able to reduce the bitterness and therefore it is more acceptable.

Cut the bitter gourd into cube, and boil in hot water until it is 80% cooked.

Heat up the wok, fry the onion and slice leek until fragrant, add slice pork. Fry for 3 minutes before adding rice wine, oyster sauce, soya sauce and rock sugar. Finally add in the bitter gourd and simmer for 10 minutes until bitter gourd is soft.

The result is quite satisfying as the bitterness is reduced by boiling the bitter gourd in hot water, and it taste nice and tender.

Fried Shrimp Egg Smoothie

2010-09-04T02:35:00.000-07:00

Ingredient : shrimp 300g, 5 eggs

Remove Shrimp the shell and keep dry. Fry shrimp until 80% cook.

5 eggs lightly beaten, add pin of salt, pepper, and chicken powder (optional), mix well. Wait until shrimp is completely cool before adding into the egg mix.

Heat up the oil, pour in the egg mix and continue to stir in round circle (clockwise or anti-clockwise, and must be in same direction), until the egg become smooth. If you leave the eggs frying without following the stiring motion, it will become normal fry egg, therefore this trick is very important to be successful.

When you taste the egg, it is wet and smooth which is quite different from the normal fried egg.

Fried Roasted Pork with Leek

2010-08-31T18:42:00.000-07:00

Ingredient : roasted pork, leek

I call this lazy man dish, because it is so easy to prepare, and you can finish it within 15 minutes.
First buy the roasted pork from local store or market and ask the seller to cut into slices. Clean the leek and ensure the inner layer are cleaned especially those open and exposed to sun. Cut the leek into slices.

Only a bit of oil is required since the roasted pork is oily enough when frying. Start with the garlic and continue to fry the roasted pork until it becomes fragrant.

Last add in leek, mix it well with the pork and add in a bit of water. Simmer for 3-5 minutes before adding salt, sugar and half table spoon of soya sauce.

The dish is delicious and very easy to cook, when you are rushing for time, this is a quick win.

Chicken in Japanese Sauce

2010-08-26T01:52:00.000-07:00

Ingredient : Boneless chicken leg, Big onion
Marinate : 4 table spoon of soya sauce, 3 table spoon of Mirin, 2 table spoon of rice wine.

You can buy the chicken from local market or supermarket, choose the boneless one so you do not need to debone yourself. Marinate with the sauce for at least 2 hours or over-night.

Drain the sauce before frying, no oil is required; Cover while frying for 3-5 minutes until brown, depending on the size and volume of the chicken. Turn it over and continue to fry for 2-3 minutes. Take out when finish and cut into slices.

Add a table spoon of oil, fry the onion until lightly brown. Place the chicken on top of the onion, pour in the remaining marinate juice, simmer for 2-3 minutes.

Mirin is the Japanese cooking sauce, you can get from the local Japanese specialty store.

Pumpkin Stew Pork

2010-08-14T05:10:00.000-07:00

Another easy to cook recipe which interest me when I found from one of the tv program. Basically you just need to cut up all the ingredients, cook it for about 30 minutes and that’s it.

Ingredients : Pork belly with skin, pumpkin, potato, oyster mushroom, garlic

First prepare all the vegetables and cut into small pieces, so it will take shorter time to cook. Do the same for the pork, and do tenderize a bit so it won’t be too hard. You can also marinate the pork with soya sauce and corn flour.

Heat up the wok without oil, place in pork to fry, no need to add cooking oil because the oil will come out from the meat. Fry for about 3 minutes, then add in garlic and all vegetables.

Add enough water to cover almost all ingredients, simmer for 30 minutes or longer based on your preference how tender you want the meat to be.

Finally when it is ready, add in salt, chicken stock powder and pepper. This is how it will look like, the taste is quite nice. Pumpkin is cooked until soften and melted and become thick gravy, while mushroom will give some texture to it. You can also replace the meat with beef or chicken, the only different is the cooking time. If you want to use chicken, suggest to use chicken leg so it would not be too hard.

Honey Chicken

2010-08-10T07:36:00.000-07:00

This recipe gives the taste similar to the confinement recipe but less strong, and I find it very tasty.

Ingredient is only chicken wing 10 pieces.

Marinade: Rice Wine 2 table spoon, Soy Sauce 2 table spoon, salt 1 tea spoon, Honey 3 table spoon, ground ginger 1-2 table spoon, water 100ml
Wash the chicken wing and remove the wing tip. Separate the remaining into drummet and center wing, which is easier to cook and eat. Cut open the drummet and wing for marinade. If you want to save trouble, you can buy drummets from supermarket, price wise will be more expensive.
Marinade the chicken with the sauces mentioned above for at least 2 hours, the cut will help to ensure the marinade goes into the meat evenly.

Drain the chicken before frying because too much marinade juice will affect the frying.
Cover for about 5 minutes until light brown before turning to the other side. After about 3 minutes, then pour in the marinade juice, cook until the juice turn almost dry.

This is how the end result looks like.

Egg Pancake in Chinese Style

2010-08-04T19:14:00.000-07:00

This is a very simple dish which got from one TV program, cooking only take about 15 minutes, but preparation takes longer time because 2 vegetables need to be shredded.

Ingredient: shredded carrot, shredded yam bean (or Sengkuang in Malaysian context), 100g of mid size prawn, 3 eggs and some ground peanut.

First remove prawn shell and cut into small pieces but not too small until you can’t taste it. You can replace carrot, yam bean with potato, white radish, pumpkin etc. Kitchen helper will be fast, convenient and gives even size compare to manual cutting. As for peanut, you can either buy the ready made one or you can buy the whole grain and grind yourself, easy method is to use a plastic bag or ziplog, hammer until the size you desire.

Next mix all vegetables and egg together, add 2 table spoon of plain flour and corn flour, salt and mix well. Adjust your flour carefully until the mixture is slightly wet but not too watery or too dry.

Now is time to fry. It is advisable to use non stick wok to fry as use less oil and more healthy. Add in a bit of oil, pour in sufficient but not too much batter when the wok is hot, fry until it is lightly brown then you can turn to the other side. Smaller size is easy to flip so manage amount of batter you put in, and the vegetable shreds will hold the cake nicely.

Finally you can take out when it is golden brown.

Fried Noodle with Sesame Sauce

2010-08-02T00:11:00.000-07:00

I like to eat noodles especially the dried type, so I always explore different sauces to cook with. This is one type of sauce that I found when visiting the organic shop.

The ingredients :
Shredded Oyster mushroom (or dried mushroom), Black fungus, Beijing cabbage, Filament stick, pork, dried noodle.

I bought this dried noodle when I visited Bangkok, I find it quite nice and not easily soaked as compared to some of the local made noodles.

First you need cook the noodles in hot water, drain well after 80% cooked, soak it into icy cold water for 30 second to firm up the texture. Leave it a side while cooking the ingredients.

Place garlic in wok, fry for a while and add pork, add in other vegetables and half a cup of water and simmers until almost cook. Add in the sesame toon sauce and pin of salt for taste. Lastly place in the noodle, cover it and take out when it is cook.

The end result – simple and easy to prepare.

Bacon Mushroom Rice

2010-07-29T23:04:00.000-07:00

I came across this recipe from the net while surfing, and find it very convenient, so give it a try and it proves to be very quick and easy to cook. The taste is also great and healthy.

This is how I prepared the dish.

These are the ingredients : Bacon, mushroom (any type of mushroom, fresh or dry), carrot, peeled chestnut and peanuts.

You can see peanut and chestnut need to be soaked for at least 6 hours, so if you are a working class and want to prepare after work, then you can soak it at night and leave it in the fridge. (it will not be over fermented and turn sour when you leave it in room temperature)

Carrot and mushroom can be prepared the night before so you can straight away cook when you reach home.

Stir fried the bacon until lightly brown and until fragrant. No oil required since Bacon will generate oil after frying.

Wash and rinse the rice until clean (can use the method soaking method if you use brown rice)

Put in all ingredient into the rice cooker, add in a bit extra water compare to normal white rice. Add salt for taste.

This is the end result, very quick right? You can dump into the rice cooker, go for shower and then you can have your dinner. Adding bacon can really make the rice so fragrant. If you want vegetarian style, then remove bacon and add other stuff like beancurd, black fungus etc.