Vegetarian Noodles

So recently I've been experimenting a little with vegetarian options. The inspiration to cook vegetarian options was due to a dear friend of mine who is a strict vegetarian due to religious beliefs. So this dish was made in thoughts to make a meat-free dish.

As aussie has recently also introduced food network (YAY) on television, I've also been catching up on my highly missed episodes of 30 minute cooking with Rachael Ray, chopped, etc etc. One of the new ones I've watched is Reza spice prince of vietnam. Omg, I swear, watching these make me so so so hungry. So while watching Rachael Ray, she was making mushroom teriyaki noodles which I thought was really interesting. Especially since she added in edamame. I wanted to do something similar (which I probably will in future), but I had a sudden brainstorm to try something meat-free but completely different.

I decided to stick with the theme of meat-free noodles, but I decided that I wanted to try adding a little crunch in my noodles and something that wouldn't soften up on me if I wanted to keep leftovers to reheat the next day. Back home in Singapore I LOVE water chestnuts. They have such a good crunch and are so juicy (fresh ones at least). So this dishes uses water chestnuts for the added crunch. Of course I can't really find fresh ones here so I stuck with canned water chestnuts... which obviously if you were to eat them without cooking would taste pretty terrible and you knew they weren't fresh stuff. However, after frying them up, they do taste much stronger and less sweet than fresh ones, but if you fry them long enough/let them sit long enough, they taste great due to all the other flavours in the dish.

Ingredients:
Cooked noodles (I used Ayam brand maggie noodles - just boil them to cook and get rid of all the wax)
Carrots
Water Chestnuts (I used can ones but if you have fresh ones... why don't you just eat them fresh :p)
Tofu Skin 
Zha Jiang Sauce (it's a little hard to translate to English but it's oil with bean paste together with shallots) - this will be where all the flavour comes from. No need for salt or soy sauce. 

• Step 1, in a pan heat up enough Zha Jiang Sauce (in ratio to your noodles and ingredients) 
• Step 2, slice the water chestnuts into thick enough slices for the crunch but not too thick if not it would have the dish feel too crunchy.
• Step 3, when the pan is heated, water chestnuts. Fry for a bit then carrots and tofu skin.
• Step 4, when all have mixed and the sauce has evenly spread out, add in the noodles and toss well. 
• Step 5, serve! Simple as that!

How simple was that? Most of the flavour comes from the sauce so it's a quick easy meal. 

Hugs for everyone~ What are your quick and easy meals?

Home made fishballs

I was watching television and I never knew that there were some channels that would play some Mandarin shows. I was making dinner while watching television when the program "Celebrity Chef" came on. One of the challenges was to make fishballs. So I watched as one of the judges showed how to fillet the fish and mash the fish meat and turn them into fishballs. It was so cool, I wanted to try it too! Sorry I don't have a link to the recipe I followed (or at least tried to), I can't remember but I know I just googled for the recipe.

I began my hunt for mackerels. It isn't easy to find mackerels around where I live and even when I do find it, they're not as fresh as I would like them to be. So finally one day I found a one and I decided to try!

My father took over the filleting though. I got angry with him about it because he thinks I have no clue how to fillet but at the same time he talks about how easy it is -pout- I need some hands on experience too! But I took over for the rest of the steps. I used a spoon to remove the meat from the skin. That took an amazingly long time.

Next was to further mince and cut the meat suing a knife which took a lot of arm strength. Water does help but it's so sticky! Next season and slam them into the bowl. Where it takes even more arm strength!

This is definitely a work out on the arms!

After a tedious time of cutting and slamming, we tried making the fishballs! Making them round was so difficult with them being so sticky :( but we managed to cook them up together with noodles and other other ingredients ^.^


Ultimately it was a good first try :) The fishballs were too chewy and bouncy (not in a good way) and would resemble a rubber ball, we weren't too sure what went wrong there, but I suspect that we probably cooked them a little too long.. (maybe?) Plus it wasn't smooth enough. I've still got a long way to go with mastering fishballs but I'll continue to try!

Oh yea, since we had so much leftovers, we ended up eating it the next day and made fried fishcakes instead of fishballs :) the texture for that one was awesome!

Hugs for everyone~ Food adventures!

Tomato eggplant Rice

I had some fresh tomatoes and a new jar or tomato paste so I decide to give making tomato rice a try.... which then got utterly out of hand with me adding everything that wasn't in the original recipe that I was suppose to follow. Plus since I had packaged instant japanese curry, I decided to cook up some long beans and carrot and throw them in with the curry. I didn't follow the recipe but it ended up pretty awesome!

Ingredients:
Leftover rice
Eggplant
Diced fresh tomatoes
Tomato paste
Onions
Oil
Oregano (or any other herbs that you like such as Thyme, etc)

• Step 1, in a pan (preferably a dutch pan or any pan that you'd use to fry rice) heat up some oil. 
• Step 2, when the pan is heated, add in the onions and fry till the onions are soft.
• Step 3, add in the eggplants and stirfry till they become slightly soft. Then add in the tomatoes to fry.

Add in the eggplants before the tomatoes because they take a much longer time to cook compared to the tomatoes.

• Step 4, add in the rice and mix well. 
• Step 5, Take around 2 tbs (depending on the amount of rice) and add the herbs. Mix the paste with some warm water in a cup before pouring it over the rice. Mix well till the rest color has spread out evenly.
• Step 6, continue to fry the rice with occasional mixing to ensure that the rice is not too wet
• Step 7, serve it on a plate/bowl and it's time to eat!

If you don't like eggplants, you could always pair this up with other vegetables such as bell peppers to add that extra punch in the flavour or just simply leaving it with just tomatoes. Use your creativity and explore. I like to just see what's left in my kitchen and cook. 

Hugs for everyone~ Explore away~

Slow-Roasted Pork Belly

I have a lot of respect for Gordon Ramsay. The other day I was strolling through my newsfeed and a friend shared this video. I opened it and I got so hungry I decided that I should one day try out his recipe. Mind you, I have trouble keeping to recipes. I usually end up tweaking them here but time time I tried my best to stick to it.

One of the things I realised was because there wasn't a recipe written down I had to replay the video over and over and over again just to make sure I didn't forget anything. However, after completing my pork belly I found a website that listed down everything the video said.

This is my first time handling pork belly. I have never handled pork belly ever so the fact that my pork belly came out pretty awesome, I was so happy and excited and over the moon!

My thoughts when cooking the pork belly:

• Oh my gosh, I really do need a sharp knife, I can't cut through the layer of fats at all. HELP. (I ended up sawing through the fats and I couldn't really do a cross to make cubes, only one set of lines across :\)
• Cut through already. CUT!!! Oh shoot, I think it went to deep... nooo. 
• -reading through warning signs for roasting pan- Does this mean I can heat this non-stick roasting pan over the fire like what Gordon Ramsay is doing with his metal pan? They don't say I should but they don't say I should either.... (I ended up using it over direct fire, the pan itself was $20 so as long as I didn't burn my house down I wasn't super worried. Plus I didn't get food poisoning so I think it's pretty safe... )
• Stock stock stock... he said stock but what kind? Ah well, I don't really think beef stock would work so chicken it is! Phew~ I got the stock all stocked up (don't you just love puns?)
• My roasting pan is too big!! Pyrex to the rescue! 
• Nom nom nom... this pork belly really has a crispy top while the bottom is so soft and tender

And here is the outcome of all the effort I put in! To be honest it was really quite easy. I only regret not letting it cook longer. You can see from the photo that the top is not dry and crispy enough. So here are my own tips if you're trying to use this recipe!

Tips! They are in no way questioning or criticising Gordon Ramsay's recipe or cooking style. It's just little pointers that I realised may help others when trying to make pork belly.

1. There are some pork belly with bones so if you want one without bones, be careful when you're at the butcher! They're easily spotted from the cross section and are generally at the bottom layer of the meat. If you see white circles, those are the bones!
2. You really really need a sharp knife. No kidding.
3. If you're really afraid of the hairs on the skin, use your knife and similar to descaling a fish, run your knife over the top at an angle to cut away the hairs. I ended up plucking some stubborn hairs as well. In Singapore the pork are generally hair free from the butchers, but in Australia, it's a different matter :( 
4. Know your pork belly. Give it a good smell before any preparation. Gordon Ramsay uses white wine to reduce the smell of the pork, but if your pork didn't have that strong a smell to begin with, don't use too much if not the pork ends up soaking all the flavour of the fennel and onions, but lacks it's good meaty porky flavour. 
5. To know whether the top is crispy and dry enough (because not every pork belly will turn out as beautiful as Gordon Ramsay's) take a spoon or fork and gently tap the top. It should give a clear hollow sound.

Ta-dah! A picture of the pork belly I made. It doesn't look as amazing as the one made by Gordon Ramsay but it was a great first try! I'm definitely going to try making this recipe again with a few tweaks as well as try the chinese method to make pork belly. This recipe focused on making the skin crispy with the bottom super soft and tender whereas the chinese methods generally make the bottom chewy (like a good chewy, not bubblegum chewy, like some people say, Q). Some places also make the bottom too dry. I know the last time I went to a Spanish restaurant they had double baked pork belly with both the top layer and bottom layer crispy while the middle was chewy (good chewy!). I can't wait to explore more methods to cook pork belly.

Fun fact: Pork belly in Mandarin when translated to English is three layer meat. Because there are distinctly three layers that you can see from the cross section of the pork belly!

Panko Chicken

Hi! I apologise that it's been over half a year since my last post. Uni life kicked in and everything got pretty hectic. I'm back with one of my favourite healthy recipes for chicken. It can get a little messy but I love doing this with extra people or even with children.

Ingredients:
Chicken break sliced into pieces

Panko bread crumbs

Egg(s)

Apple Cider Vinegar 

Salt

Oil (depending on your pan)
For the Panko bread crumbs, I use the ones from the brand Oriento. Please note that these is a difference between normal bread crumbs and panko bread crumbs. 

I'm not sure if other brands of panko bread crumbs are seasoned, but these ones aren't. So you'd have to add salt in and mix it before breading the chicken.

Note: This recipe requires you to marinate the chicken for a bit.

• Step 1, Cut up the chicken into slices and put them in a bowl. Pour around 1-2tbs of apple cider vinegar (depending on the amount of chicken you have) over the chicken and mix (you can use your hands) to ensure that the all chicken has come into contact with the vinegar..  

The apple cider not only gives the chicken a nice fragrance but it also helps to soften the chicken. So obviously the longer it's marinated the better.

• Step 2, drain the excess apple cider and DO NOT RINSE chicken under water. 

Usually for some marinated meat, you pat it dry with a paper towel but this recipe does NOT require that. 

• Step 3, take out three plates. In plate A crack the eggs and mix well. In plate B pour out the panko bread crumbs and add salt. Plate C will remain empty to place the breaded chicken.

The chicken does not be fully covered with breadcrumbs that you can't see the pink of the meat. It's more lightly breaded compared to normal breadcrumbs.

• Step 4, first take one slice of chicken and place it in plate A and coat it with egg. Take the egg coated chicken into plate B and coat with panko. Then place the breaded chicken into plate C.

To make this easier, you can get people to help out and have a relay system where they are each station at one spot.

• Step 5, after all chicken are breaded, it's time to heat up a pan (with oil)

I use an awesome non-stick pan so I don't need to use oil at all. If you have a non-stick pan, no oil (even healthier!)

• Step 6, using a pair of tongs, slowly place the chicken into the pan and fry. 
• Step 7, serve and eat!

I love eating this but it can really get quite tedious. So I like to cook up a two day batch and store the leftovers for the next day. You can always put them in a mini oven toaster the next day and they're all crisp and ready to be eaten :D This goes well with japanese mayo, bbq sauce, tomato sauce, or whatever sauce you like. Oh yes, if you're used to eating salty food, this dish is more on the subtle side. So if you like strong flavourful foods, you might have to tweak this recipe a little. 

Hugs for everyone~ cook away!

Cooked millet and wasabi egg omelette

Ever since I ran out of rice I've had to find different ways to substitute it. For example, noodles, millet, pasta etc. Millet has been my number one go to choice because it's nutritious and it is fast to cook.

Millet can be cooked manually the same way as rice. What I usually like to do is boil the millet till the water is nearly completely dried up and turn off the stove for the millet/rice to be left covered for the next few minutes depending on the amount. This allows it to steam and the water to be dried up instead of having mushy soggy grains in your mouth.

While I cooked the millet in the pot, I added parsley to it (did I ever mention that I love parsley?). I made sitr-fry spinach (in the dish you can't really see) and I also experimented a little with my egg. I wanted a little extra punch of flavour and if you've ever tried wasabi, you know exactly what I mean. It's spicy, yet smooth and it gives that ahhh~ kinda feel haha. I know my descriptions are a little weird but I don't really know how to express the flavour that wasabi has.

Usually when I fry my eggs, it's usually egg and soy sauce. This time I decided to add in wasabi. The results were really good. Obviously since it's impossible to really get fresh wasabi here, you'd have to purchase the small tube/container of wasabi. The most important thing is to ensure that the wasabi is of good quality if not it will not dissolve and mix with the egg.

The amount of oil is crucial when making an omelette especially when you don't have a proper non-stick pan (which seems like general knowledge). However, I have seen the horrors of how little oil my friends use to make eggs which basically leave them slightly burnt, and oil does help in term of an egg's fluffiness to some degree too.

Want fluffy omelettes? There are many many many methods out there that people have done to make fluffier omelettes. So here's a compilation of the methods. The first is an extra step that takes a little extra time as you have to separate the yolk and the whites. Whip up the whites really really well (even till their stiff if you want to go all out) and then gently fold in the yolks and pour it into the pan. Or I have seen online that it works even if you just whip the entire egg long enough. Basically the general idea is that you want to whip air into the eggs so as long as you've done so, you'd have a nice fluffy omelette. Some also find it easy to obtain fluffy results by adding a little liquid (water or milk or even cream) and give it a good mix. It's really up to you what you would like to do. Me in general, I like my eggs in any way as long as they aren't dry or burnt :p

Hugs for everyone~ HAPPY NEW YEAR!