Stuffed Bitter Gourd

I was inspired to try this out after having sampling this dish made by hubby's eldest sister. I realized that I missed out a very crucial ingredient when I was halfway frying it because the filling doesn't seem to stick well to the vegetable. The culprilt is  mackerel (ikan tenggiri). We just had to make do without it then. Can you believe I was actually being shooed out of the kitchen by hubby because he insisted that he knew better how to make the sauce than me?  This dish turned out great. We both love bitter gourd and the simple marination of the meat seemed to go well with the vegetable. The sauce... well... what can I say? It was awesome. This dish goes well with white rice or you can even eat it on its own. We ate it with steam white rice topped with a juicy piece of ayam goreng berempah. l'll rate this as an easy and fast dish to whip out. In case you're interested, here's the recipe. Enjoy!

Filling & Marination :

Mackerel fillet

Mince pork

Soy Sauce

Sesame oil

Chop onions

Salt

Sauce :

Bean paste (taucu)

Water

Dash of salt

Sesame oil (optional)

Cornstarch

Sugar

Other Ingredient :

Bitter gourd (of course!!)

Small onions - slice

Method :

1. Marinate the filling with the sauces mentioned. Set it aside.
2. Cut bitter gourd to about 1 or 1.5cm thick. Remove seeds and white pulp with a spoon.
3. Stuff the a generous portion of filling into the centre of bitter gourd. Pat around it.
4. Heat wok with little oil. Fry the bitter gourd in low fire.When it is cooked, dish out and set aside.
5. Heat wok with little oil and fry onions in slow fire till slight golden brown. Scoop in sone bean paste, stir it a while before adding water and remaining sauce ingredients except cornstarch.
6. Bring to simmer. Add in the bitter gourd, stir around and lastly add in the cornstarch.

My One Pot Vegetable Pie

I bought the 50% off baking voucher a month plus ago and registered for this Pau making class. Instead of posting pictures of the pau I made during the class, I was however eager to show off my easy peasy vegetable pie. What triggered this sudden impulse was all because of the chicken pau I made in the morning class. The chicken filling smell so darn good but I could only taste the gravy all because I'm still on vegetarian (and will be for the next 2 months). It was agonizing enough not to touch meat of any sort (minus the fainting spell) but the pure agony of all was to watch hubby wolfing down the brownish reddish crispy fried chicken the other day at this Melur Discovery. Seriously, at this rate, I'm gonna cracked very soon. I clamped  down on my temptation today and that meant I didn't get to eat the chicken pau I made.

To compensate, I decided to modify the filling to a vegan filling, subsituting the chicken with all the vegetables that could go with it : shitake mushroom, green peas, carrots, celery and capsicum. Naturally it didn't taste as good without chicken meat but that'll do for the meantime. The filling could go very well with rice or instant noodles but since I have 2 tiny sheets of puff pastry in my fridge, I thought it was time for my remekins to make its appearance. And so I had a vegetarian pie for dinner and nice juicy papaya for dessert. What? Hubby? As long as he is eating at home with me, he has to eat what I cook. Period.

Filling (chop to small cubes for all vegetables) :
Shitake mushroom
Carrot
Celery
Green Peas
Green Capsicum
Red Capsicum
Big onions 1
Garlic 3 cloves
 Hoisin sauce 1tbsp
Oyster sauce 1tbsp
Sesame oil 1tsp

Other Ingredients :
Puff pastry
Beaten eggs as egg wash

Method :

1. Heat up oil and saute onions and garlic together till fragrant.
2. Stir in shitake mushroom and saute. Once mushrooms become slightly softer, add in the rest of the vegetables.
3. Stir in the sauces, with sesame oil coming in last.
4. Turn off fire and transfer filling into remekins.
5. Brush a little beaten eggs on sides of the puff pastry and place the side with beaten eggs downward to cover the remekin. Pull it slightly to stick to the edge of remekin to make it taut. Repeat same process with 2nd sheet. You may add another sheet (total 3 sheets of puff pastry) of puff pastry if you like. Brush and top with  puff pastry with beaten eggs and bake in a preheated oven for about 15 mins at 190 - 200C.

My cooking tips : Subsitute the filling with  chicken by removing mushrooms, capsicum and celery. This filling can be used to make chicken pau.

Fried Beancurd with Satay Sauce Dip

I came home from work with a pleasant surprise. Mom had actually made a satay sauce from scratch without the help from the instant packet which most people will conveniently get from the hypermart. Unfortunately, I wasn't at home to witness the entire procedure. Apparently, she made this several times in Singapore and Sydney and it was a hit with everyone. The sauce was meant as a dip for the fried beancurd and freshly cut cucumber. Of course, you may use it as a 'salad' sauce where you drizzle it over smaller cut fried beancurd, shredded turnip, shredded cucumber and shredded carrot. Sounds like a rojak, eh? We all love the sauce, hubby and myself. We couldn't get enough of it and had to glean off the very last drop from the bowl. 

The recipe? Yeah.. the recipe is in her grey matter. I hadn't got a chance to ask her before she left for Singapore. Will get it from her soon.

Chinese Leek with Pork Belly

Dad likes to have meat in every meal and  I don't mean any meat will do. He specifically likes fat kampung chicken or pork belly with thick layers of fat. With just 4 of us having dinner and hubby not keen on having a heavy  dinner, my mom will usually keep our dinner with just 2 or 3 varieties. Gosh... it just hit me that it's the same number of dishes I cook for just hubby and myself. Well.. anyway, we have got this healthy looking chinese leek in our fridge and mom suggested we can mix the pork belly with the leek and made a simple stirfry. In this way, we got both meat and vege in one simple dish. I usually like to cut the leek real slim and small. Mom apparently had a totally different idea of cutting the leek. Let me tell you the dish was outstanding. Leek was crunchy, pork belly was well seasoned and the entire dish has a hint of sweetness, thanks to the carrot.

Ingredients :
1 piece of tofu
6 stalks of chinese leek
1 carrot
200g pork belly
5 cloves garlic, chopped
some chicken powder
1 tsp shaoxing wine
pinch of salt

Marinates :
1 tbsp shaoxing wine
soy sauce
pinch of salt

Method :
1.  Marinatae the pork belly and set aside. Heat up oil and fry the tofu. Set aside to cool before slicing it thinly

2.  With remaining oil in work, fry the chopped garlic for a while before adding in the pork belly. When meat turns color, add in the leek. Saute for 5 minutes before adding in the carrots. Add in the chicken powder, salt and shaoxing wine.

3. Add in the sliced tofu and mix with the rest of the ingredients in the wok before cover it and simmer for a further 1 - 2 minutes. Dish out and serve.

CNY Vegetable dish

I bought Xiao Bai Cai to be cooked for dinner on new year's eve but then I was asking myself how else can I cook it differently this time other than just with chop garlic and oyster sauce? It then suddenly hit me that I could just blanch the vegetables, arrange them in the way that the restaurants normally serve  it and then fry some assorted mushrooms and place them on the centre. And so, this is how the presentation looked like.

Stir Fry Leek with Roasted Pork

This used to be a dish we get to savor on every chinese new year eve (as far as I can remember). However in those days, my mom never fry it with roasted pork. Little did I know how awesome it will taste if you just stir fry it with several slices of roasted pork with lots of garlic. Since this dish will not take much of my time to prepare and cook, I decided to cook it as dish for the reunion dinner on new year eve. Just a day prior to eve day, we scrambled to the morning market to get our hands on the best part of the roasted pork. They didn't come cheap if you buy it especially close to new year eve. The main taste for this dish comes from the roasted pork itself, I must say. As such, I spent quite a hefty sum on the pork alone. Well, as long as everyone is happy eating it, it doesn't matter how much it cost. It's not often I cook this dish anyway.

Sauteed Garlic Asparagus with Erngii Mushroom

The recent spate of  frenzied baking is slowly taking its toll on me. Apart from baking, I gotta attend to the daily chores and not to mention the work in my office which never seems to lessen. I really gotta take things slow after today and by that, it means no more baking after today. Well... not until next week at least. With chinese new year just round the corner, I don't have many weekends left to start baking my cookies.

I left office on the dot today and obviously that means I already had something in mind. 1st I set off my bread machine to do another round of bread making later on. Thereafter, I cut some assorted fruits to go with my dinner, something which we usually have before our main dinner (be it a chinese homecook dinner or a simple salad). So what's gonna be my main dinner then? Feeling slightly out of time, I took out the remaining asparagus and eryngii mushroom. Placing these 2 together, an idea slowly formed in my brain. I came up with the idea to saute the garlic with the blanched asparagus, then it aside. Next, with a little olive oil in the work, stir fry the slice mushrooms with some garlic, a little chicken powder with a little oyster sauce. I just added a little water to it and after a while,  added in the garlic sauteed asparagus. With just a few stirring and flipping, I turned off the fire. Just before eating it, I sprinkled some chilli flakes to give an additional hot flush taste. So that's that for dinner. A couple of hours later, someone crept stealthily to the kitchen to steal my hidden bottle of Pringles chips. Apparently, his stomach was already growling with hunger :-)

Stir fry pea sprout with wolfberry

The weather is rather cold lately (by my standard) with the evening raining pouring down almost everyday. We are still slightly under the weather and have been eating porridge for dinner of late. Today is yet another simple vegetable as a dish to go with our plain porridge. As I am writing now, I could hear hubby chopping something loudly on my chopping board. He's preparing another dish to go with our porridge and I have no idea what he's making. I just hope he cleans up my kitchen after he finishes whatever he has started out. Well.. we'll see.  Okay...today's vege is a simple stir fry pea sprout. It's of a different species where the stem is fatter, longer and juicier than the otherwise thin and scrawny stems.To make it slightly more tasty, I've added in a generous amount of strip ginger and an even more generous amount of wolfberries (kei chi). I was tempted to add in a little enhancer but since it's meant to be a healthy meal, I decided against it. It's great eating it with porridge and I can't wait to see what hubby is cooking.

Steamed Mix Vegetables

Lately my dinner seems to be steamed food besides the usual platter of fruits and fresh veggies. It's not entirely because I wanna fully utilize my i-chef steamer pot but rather it's because of the contraint time I have. Every week, I found myself wishing I have the time to cook certain interesting dishes that I suddenly thought of, saw somewhere or had recently eaten it somewhere. But the fact remains that I'm a working woman who starts work at 7+am and reaches home either before 6.30pm or after 8.30pm. My routine is as such that whatever dish I wanna cook has to be pre-planned, pre-prepared and preferably, simple and fast. This mix vegetables do not need much of planning and work done. So little time was needed for washing , cutting and cooking. Since steamed vegetables for me only has one singular boring taste (unless I add seasoning like oyster sauce and the likes), I sliced some ginger and threw in a pinch of mushroom powder. To satisfy my cravings for baked beans, I opened up a TST brand baked beans and cooked it over some fried garlic and tomato sauce. And so.. in the end, I found myself having 4 dishes and a rice on the dinner table. And all.. for just me and hubby to dig in.

Stirfry Brocolli in Abalone sauce

The first and foremoset reason why I like cooking brocolli over other leafy green vegetables is not because of its compound that fights against cancer. Rather it is because I don't need to waste too much time washing and rinsing it; there's just not much sand to rinse off anyway. Frying vegetable is the simplest tasks of all. All I need to do is heat the fire, throw in the garlic and fry till fragant, add in the brocolli. After a while, I add in the carrot. Of course exactly when to add in the carrot depends on how thick you have cut your carrot. Then comes the abalone sauce and oyster sauce. I have Lee Kum Kee Abalone sauce in the fridge where you can actually see strands of abalone in the bottle.After dishing it out, garnish with some golden garlic crisps. That's one simple dish the other night and we ate it without rice. Yea.. we did away with the carbohydrate.

Steamed Ladyfingers topped with fried shallots

Here's another dish I cooked last week, the day my pot made its first 'debut'. It's steamed Lady's finger sprinkled with some fried shallots. Of course prior to steaming it, I had to deliberately cut the onions and fry it over slow fire. I reckon if I were to keep steaming vegetables for my dinner in the forthcoming days, my vege is gonna taste the same : with just soy sauce and fried shallots. Eating healthy certainly comes with a price, a price that most people are reluctant to pay at this moment, but will gladly pay when their health deteriorates. I for one, usually opt for tasty food with abundance of salt, sugar and chili. I am slowly training myself to choose healthier foodstuff over my all time favorite fried foodies. It's hard to change overnight but I'm making a change today. Hubby will just gobble anything I make for him so he didn't have much say on my healthy regime.

Crunchy 4 Season Beans with Dried Shrimp

On the way back from Genting the other day, we deliberately drove towards Bukit Tinggi route to have dinner. This place happen to be pretty much of a kampung place and there were several stalls selling pure honey and fresh vegetables. I went over there to check out the fruits but I bought honey instead. It was a good thing that my eyes roved over and saw this vege which in Mandarin, we call it Shi Ji Tou. I have not the slightest notion what it is called in English but direct translation would be Four Seasons Beans (genuis, eh?). Mom fried it for me before but I just ate and never bother much. Thanks to my sis in law who taught me the simplest way to fry it with dried shrimps and cilipadi. It tasted yummy. The freshness of the vege contributed a part . ... I guess....