Cook For Family - Yam Rice with Lotus Root Soup.

Today if you are reading Singapore blogs, you would have noticed that over 100 blog are posting about Cooking For Family.

Keropokman and KopiKosongGirl are also participating in this initiative that Daniel had started the ball rolling.  We know we can cook elaborate dishes, but we thought why not put up something that almost everyone can prepare.

Yam Rice. This version cooks in a rice cooker, so most households in Singapore can easily prepare it.



I have been having this dish since young because mum does it very well. This version is the wife's version. It's almost similar to what my mum cooks, just a bit different and adapted for busy people and almost fail safe.

Here's the ingredients:
- Yam (diced, 300 grams)
- Mushroom (about 8 rehydrated shitake mushrooms, sliced)
- Pork belly (250 gm, cut into strips, without skin, marinated with pepper, soy sauce and cornflour)
- Dried Shrimps (Hae Bee) (a hand grip)
- Chinese Sausages (Lup Cheong) (1 sausage, sliced thinly)
- Garlic (3 cloves, chopped)
- Shallots (5 bulbs, chopped)
- 3 cups of rice (rinsed, drained)

Seasoning:
- 2 Tbsp oyster sauce
- 1 Tbsp dark soya sauce
- Salt, pepper
- 1 tsp sesame oil
- 1/2 tsp sugar

Method:
- Rinse and set aside the 3 cups of rice.
- Heat oil, fry the garlic, shallots until fragrant.
- Add pork, sausages, mushrooms and dried shrimps. Fry for 2 minutes.
- Add in yam, rice and all the seasoning. Stir until it becomes fragrant, around 3 minutes.
- Pour the mixture into the rice cooker and add water till it just covers the rice.
- Turn on the rice cooker as how you would cook normal white rice.




Served on a big huge bowl. You would definitely finish it all up!




If you want a soup to go with it, you can also prepare Lotus Root and Pork Rib soup to go with it.
It's very simple as well.

To save energy and also not bother to watch it, we usually use a Thermal Pot to prepare soup.
Here's what you can do to boil the soup.

Ingredients:
- 1 lotus root, sliced.
- Pork ribs, 250gm
- Soft bone meat, 250gm
- 10 red dates
- 5 slices of ginger
- 5 cloves of garlic
- 1 piece of dried octopus (soaked a few hours then cut into strips)
- 12 small scallops (optional)

If you are boiling soup using a thermal pot, the water does not evaporate, so use the bowl that you are going to serve the soup in and add in. We had 6 bowls of water.

Method:
- Boil a pot of water and boil the pork ribs and pork meat in it for 1 to 2 minutes first. This is to get rid of the scum.
- Boil another pot of water (the 6 bowls of water) and add in all the pork and all the other ingredients.
- Add in Boil the soup over fire for around 10 minutes and transfer to the thermal pot.
- We usually leave the soup for 3-4 hours in the thermal pot.
- 15 minutes to half an hour before serving, take the metal pot out of the thermal container and boil it over medium fire. Serve.


Try it and tell us what you think when you cook this at home. If you are ambitious, you can cook it with claypot over charcoal. We think modern rice cookers does things equally well!

Hope you enjoy our Cook For Family post today!