Surf and Turt Anyone?

Once in a while, I like to indulge myself and my hubby over a western dinner since it is much more enjoyable to eat at home rather than in the restaurant where we tend to fuss around the kids and trying so hard to make them sit down so we could sink our knife into our steak. I always excited over the planning on the ingredients and side dishes to accompany our steak although the steak and mashed potatoes are never changed.

So, today I decided to serve the surf and turf style by using the tiger prawn that I bought at the market...8 pieces of big prawn at only $2.50.. geess..just imagine those margin that the restaurant make!

Surf & Turf

Steak

Piece of tenderloin/sirloin

marinate in kecap manis (or sweet soya sauce)

pour over red wine/tiger beer

spirnkler with black pepper

Marinate at least 1/2 day

Use the marinate and use it as gravy by frying some onion, and season with salt, pepper & thicken with corn flour.

Mashed Potatoes

boil the potato

milk

salt

pepper

cheese

Fry garlic in butter

Fry Prawn

Medium Prawn, minus the head and split the back.

Marinate in Garlic, Lime juice, salt & pepper

Fry in olive oil + butter.

Salad

Just do whatever you want for that.

I had no time so just use those frozen veggies.

Well what can I say, at $5/portion...it's definitely a good deal and not to mention.. we don't have to worry about the kids. Just open the bottle of wine and enjoy!

Cream of Mushroom Soup

I always been a big fan of creamy soup especially mushrooms & clam chowders! But seriously...I never know how to make them coz they look so complicated. Well..confession...I did try it few years ago which put me into a phobia.. Because when I mix the butter with the flour and turn into clumps..i was stumped and throw everything down the bin...coz I thought I did it wrongly. And that's it...Campbell soup is what I depend on when I crave for it.

So, I picked up a courage to try again and this time I determined to make it happen and ..... It turned out nice and yup...look & taste like creamy soup!! Hooray..and gosh...it is actually darn easy and yes the clumps were part of the process.

Cream of mushroom soup

Ingedients

Fresh mushrooms - shitake/whitebutton/champignon

Plain Flour (all purpose flour)

Butter

Garlic

Onion

Milk

Chicken Stock

How to cook?

1. Chop onion, garlic & mushrooms and fry them in oil until soft. Put aside.

2. Ehmm..this is the part that puzzled me last time...but don't worry if it turns out like this..mean u are doing it right.... melt butter in a pan...then stir in flour (no need to mix with water)..and it will turn into clumps. Don't worry....it's supposed to be like that...you make around half a fist of your hand.

3. Pour in milk and stir in slowly (use slow fire) and stir until there is no more clumps. and you will finally see the "creamy" look in the pan.

4. Pour the chicken stock and stir together.

5. Finally put the mushrooms & onion & garlic...and season to taste with salt & pepper & parsley (optional).

6. One last trick....after you switch off the fire...put in a piece of butter and before you serve, just stir it again.

7 . Serve with garlic bread and enjoy!

Moral of the story : Don't give up in your first attempt and have faith in those instruction in cook books!

So, Canned soup? I need you no more....and now...wonder where I could find clams.....anyone?

P.s You could serve this soup as the "sauce" for spaghetti. I serve this soup with spaghetti and put some steam brocolli & carrot for the kids...a big big hit with them!

Solo Lunch

Treat yourself to a deli-style sandwich for lunch today! I think sandwich is the easiest and most versatile food in the world! Coz you could put anything that you like and leave anything out that you don't like.

So, just sharing of what I have today..

Focacia Tuna & Egg Sandwich

1. Focacia bread -- just buy in the supermarket/bakery nearest to you. Can use any other bread. But I love Focacia as they are huge and love the herbs taste. Spread a bit of margarin & toast until crisp.

2. Filling - Can be anything from Ham, tuna, salmon, egg, chicken roast, or even just salad. I use Tuna & Egg today.

3.Egg - Hard boil and mashed. Mix it with mayonaise with spring onions & salt & black pepper.

4. Salads - Lettuce, tomatoes, onion, anthing that you fancy at all!

Easy? Yes, Filling? Definitely, Healthy? Hmmm..depending on what you put, Satisfying? --Ohhhhh yessssss.....

Best of all..put me in a jolly good mood for the rest of the day....:-)

Stir Fry Veggies with Oyster Mushrooms

I just love it when I just got back from quite a big groceries trip which left me with so much choices of veggies to choose from.

And we particularly loveee mushroom..any kind any shapes...

Basically you could just do stir fry with anykind of veggies.but do have a combination of colours...red, yellow,green, white...i just love playing with the mix and match.

Ingredients :

1. Carrot chopped

2. snow Peas/french beans/asparagus

3. Sweet Corn

4. Garlic

5. Mushroom (shitake, oyster, champignon, straw)

6. Light soy sauce, salt, pepper, oyster sauce, sugar.

Have colourful fun!

Pork Patties

Press for time?

This is one dish thah I always do...

Ingredients :

1. Mince Pork /chicken/beef

2. 1 Onion chopped

3. spring onion - chopped

4. Mix them all with corn flour, salt, pepper and dash of lea perrins/any light soy sauce.

Then what?

Get a spoonful and make a patty out of it and fry in shallow oil.

That's it lhor!!!!

Stir Fry Cabbage with Eby and tang hoon

hmm..this is one dish that I always see at those economic rice....So, why not make myself..since they taste pretty good and definitely beats the normal stir fry garlic veggie.





Ingredients





Cabbage


Eby (Dried Shrimp)


Tang Hoon (Vermicelli)


Garlic


Sal & pepper





Stir Fry garlic and eby until fragant.


Put cabbage until soft and the taste mixture well


Soak the tang hoon separately until soft


Season with salt & Pepper


Just before it's cooked, put the tang hoon for last minute stir.

Ok, I'm having my economic rice meal today...

Cod Fish with Garlic Butter

Aiya..i regreted that I didn't take pictures of it because it was a colourless dish but yet the taste is so good that even my kids keep asking for more!

Anyway, just use your imagination and hope you enjoy this easy dish...

Ingredients

cod fish - I bought one quite big piece from the market and cost me $11!!! ouch! But they are really meaty..
Onion
Gralic
Butter - unsalted or salted depending on your preferene
olive oil
Salt & pepper
Parsley flakes

Fry the Cod fish with olive oil until it's half cooked and put aside
Stir fry the onion and garlic in olive oil until fragrant
and put the Cod fish back into the wok and put the butter until it melts.
sprinkle salt & pepper & parsley...

That's it!

Chicken Rice

When my brain is too lazy to think of 3 different dishes to go with each other, I would normally do the basic. Something that everyone love and it all can be done less than 1 hour!

Ingredients :

Chicken Rice

Chicken bones/neck

Ginger

Garlic

light soy sauce

Sesame oil

Just cook the rice as normal but with all the ingredients.

The side soup

Boil the chicken (i normaly use drumstick/thigh) for about 1/2 hour - 45 mins.

You can use the stock as soup..just garnish it with spring onion and put soem silken toufu if you want.

Season it with salt, pepper, light soy sauce and sesame oil.

The Chicken

The chicken which has been boiled, cut them into small pieces.

Mix Garlic, ginger, light soy sauce, sesame oil

Mix them together and put it into steamer for around 10 mins

Sprinkle with spring onion.

there you have it..the rice, the soup and the chicken....it's the ultimate comfort food..

Brocolli and Crab Meat

I like to browse the frozen food section and sometime came across some stuff which I would try to think on how to cook it with.

One of them is frozen crab meat...I guess for someone who didn't know how to kill a crab (perhaps someone can give me pointers - cause I really want to learn to cook chili crab leh), frozen one is the next thing I could use when I crave for it.

So, what do you need?

Ingredients :

A bunch of brocolli

Crab meats

Stock ( I use pork stock but chicken stock also can)

1 egg

Garlic & Ginger

Corn flour

oyster sauce

light soy sauce

salt & pepper

Steam the brocolli - I somehow been steaming my veggies..coz just took out my steamer from the cupboard...but you can boil it too.

Stir Fry garlic & Ginger & crab meat

Pour the stock

and cook them until boil

then put oyster sauce, light soy sauce, salt & pepper to taste

Corn flour to thicken

Beat egg and pour it slowly

Pour everything over the brocolli and enjoy!

This is one easy receipt for the kids too..

Beef Kailan

I'm bored with stir fry kai lan and I remember when I was in Australia, the chinese Restaurant there always have this beef kailan on their menu. So, feeling a bit of de-javu, I tried to re-create the dish and turned out to be another easy peasy one to do and definitely have high repeat rank to it.

Seriously, it's a nice dish to go with your steaming white rice and can consider it as a one dish meal...you could just use it to top your rice and there you go..having your portion of veggie and tender meat in one go.

Ingredients:

1. Bunch of Kailan

2. Beef (thin slices)

3. Garlic & Ginger

4. Oyster Sauce

5. Dark Soy Sauce

6. Cooking Wine

7. Salt & pepper

9. Corn flour

Step by steps :

1. Steam/boil kailan until it's soft especially if u have kids)

2. Thin beef slices - mix with some corn flour until well coated

3. Stir fry ginger & garlic until fragrant.

4. Mix oyster sauce, dark soy sauce,sugar, (a bit of salt), & pepper

5. Put the beef and mix well and dash some cooking wine.

Try not to cook too long coz the beef will turn hard and pour over the Kailan. I actually put it into the steamer for another 5 - 10 minutes so the whole thing infused together ..but this is optional only ok.

ah...really remind me the good old times....when the only worries you had was to do your assignment & pass that subject.

Home Made Char Siu

Well, I always have a bottle of char siu sauce in my fridge which I normally use for stewing chicken drumlets. But...come on..it's CHAR SIU sauce, so here I am today try to do as the instruction and I'm glad I did because at the end of it, I was beaming with pride of how it turned out. Well, considering it's kind of instant, of course failure rate is pretty low..but I guess, it's more of the heartful effort in doing it! :-)

Seriously, it's that easy but if you are looking for fast one..this is not the thing to make.

So, what do you need?

1. A slab of pork. I happen to have shoulder butt which has a bit of fat that turns into juicy bit of that sinful bite.

2. Honey

3. Char Siu Sauce (any brand lha - no loyalty here)

Basically, just follow the instruction on the bottle..but I did it slightly differently because I don't have a conventional oven which left me with a small toaster oven.

So, I boil the pork with a marinate of sauce for around 1 1/2 to 2 hours...and then toasted it on the oven until it turn to look like a real char siu!

The result is ....a juicy, super soft char siu that gave me so much pleasure and pride when I cut it into thin slices and presented it to my over excited kids who ate double the portion of what they would normally eat that day!

So, do try it ....and I'm sure it will become the family's favourite.

Wet Market Phobia

A Wet Market that is, if you think that only aunties go there...think again..well..you'd probably right...:-). Anyway, I think I have fallen into that category although I still done my sleek jeans capri and nice t-shirt and wore a uv protection cream on my face when I went there. But seriously, one should at least try to go wet market once in their life!

I tried to make my weekly trip to stock up meat and basically having my dose of che chong fun at the redhill market. I'll tag along my girl who hopefully would not develop a phobia like her mother of wet market (I used to hate the smell and had this puking urge when we walk by the fish & meat area and basically covered my mouth with the perfume ladden tissue which made the cocktail of smell worse).

I'll buy meat but I'll steer clear of fish & seafood...one thing about market and my poor spoken chinese..you don't know how much does the uncle/auntie charge you per 100 gram of that cod fish, they will just...take a slab and put on the weighing scale and charge me like ....$9 and leave my jaw dropped while I took out the money feeling like I had just been robbed. So, I'll stick to NTUC & Carrefour for something like this.

But this week...I can't help but to check out the seafood area...maybe this time my confidence have grown over those market trips...or maybe I already have that "regular wet marketer" face, I had finally have the courage to check out that juicy fresh prawn and guess what.....the uncle told me the price....that basket is $8/kg and the other one is $10/kg. Ah...that's much better right? So, feeling so great, I bought myself 1/2kg of prawn for $4. I went out feeling like I just won a toto....coz that's a lot for $4

And the best thing is.....I could split that lot of prawn into 2 portion and had a steamed prawn which even my harshest critic (hubby) said...nice....

You could count on seeing me next week at the seafood section...

If this mommy can cook, so can you!

Well, why I started this blog is based on my enthusiasm in my newly found Passion in cooking. Looking back, I would never thought that I would enjoy cooking so much so that my mind is just buzzing with cooking ideas the minute I woke up in the morning.

Although my cooking is still way below the standard of most mommies out there, but I'm proud to say that I have come along way. Growing up with maids and an out of bound kitchen, I never had to cook a single dish until I had to fend myself when I went to further my study in Australia. My flatmate was kind enough to allow me to learn how to cook the basic....plain white rice which ended up burnt, and later on when I had a boyfriend (now my hubby) who had to swallow my over soggy and colourless misoa with a chunky drumstick and claimed it was great (well..yeah right...that's the beauty of courtship..).

Yup...I am now the main meal provider in my little house and responsible to feed 4 hungry mouths for breakfast, lunch and dinner and occasional supper :-). As time an essence and with my 1+ year old girl always hang around my legs when I am in the kitchen, I employ the simple formula for my daily cooking routine :

1. Soup
2. Veggie dish
3. Meat dish

So, if you are stumped with your cooking routine, I hope that we are able to exchange ideas and make our cooking life easier.

and Yes,....I'm an amateur...and my dishes are so simples that you could do it too!