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!

Just for fun - Cooking Curry Day Singapore

Just for the fun of it, we had curry tonight for dinner.

We don't really care about how 'the incident' about how it came about after we found out that it happened more than 6 or 7 years ago! Cheh!

We are just curry lovers!



The Sakura Chicken Curry.

I used a curry ready to cook wet premix instead of making it from scratch. But added extra ingredients to make it better. (chinese celery roots, 1 tomato, curry leaves and 1 onion.) I used Sakura chicken because it has less fat to remove when you cut it up. It also taste nicer.

I added only half the amount of coconut milk that's required and substituted it with milk.





Curry Vegetables

The wife made curry vegetables. She also used a ready to cook wet premix. Added brinjals, long beans, okra (lady's fingers), tomato, cabbage, curry leaves. We forgot to put in carrots! Realised it only half way.

Portioned it into two portions. We cooked like 1 kg of vegetables! The second portion will be for tomorrow!




Halibut Green Curry with mushroom

Aunt cooked halibut green curry and brought it over in a thermal pot. Two families cooking and bringing food together is more fun and there's more variety. Aunt cooked it from a green curry paste that her friend brought back from Thailand.


We had it with hot steaming rice and a baguette from Delifrance (from the petrol station down the road).
We finished off with cupcakes, tea and ice cream for dessert.

Happy Curry Day!

Treats from Paris

Our cousin came back from her holiday in Europe and brought us a little treat which we had after dinner at our home tonight.



They liked us did not specifically walk into the shop it seems.
They saw a nice chocolate shop and walked in and like us found out later it's one of the best chocolate shops in Paris!



These little truffles were simply luxurious!

Sweet and yet bitter, it's so smooth and yet the chocolate dusting over it gives it some rough stickiness when it's in your mouth.

One chocolate truffle is never enough!




Our cousin was thinking of us when she was holidaying!
She also brought back a little box of macarons from Laduree!




She and her parents tasted so many kinds of macarons from so many shops. She did her research and went macaron hunting in Paris! We asked her which one she liked, she said Laduree is nicer than Pierre Herme. 

The above, the chocolate macarons from Laduree. Since there was so many of us at home, we took out a knife and cut it into small pieces, almost the size of mooncake tasting portions at Takashimaya. OK, that was exaggeration. We cut them into quarters.



Our cousin also said there's macarons sold in McDonald's in Paris as well! Yup, she tried them too! She had giant ones as well from cafe at the corner of her hotel along Champs Elysee, which she whatsapp me. I wondered how many macarons she had on her trip!

The bright yellow macarons is lemon flavoured.




The macarons were hand carried all the way from Paris to London via the Eurostar and then hand carried again from Heathrow to Changi. So the green, lime flavoured macaron got slightly 'kemek'!

The flavours were all very nice. You need to sample them really slowly. It's not only lime or lemon that you taste. You can taste other stuff they put in too! They were oh so good!


Thanks cousin for the sweet treats from Paris!

Singapore Laksa La Mian

We bought 2 packets to try a few weeks ago when we saw this on sale in the supermarkets.
After trying it, we liked it and on the next grocery trip, we bought 6 more packets to keep at home, in case we are hungry at odd hours of the day.

As I am typing this, my aunt is carrying like a whole box of it to London for another aunt and cousins!
But these instant noodles are not cheap. It's around $2.60-2.80 depending on which supermarket you buy them from.

(We wondered if it's available in UK! If it is, aunt would have wasted her luggage space!)



Even the packaging looks delicious!

We liked it because there is no MSG added, it's air-dried noodles. Mum was saying, nowadays they are all like that.




Open the pack and you see a round piece of noodles. If you are one of those who needs two packs of instant noodles to feel full, this 1 pack should be enough.


It reminds me when we were young, we were crazy over Myojo's noodles (remember the advert on TV?). Some of their noodles (I remember it was Mee Goreng) were 100gm instead of the smaller packs by other brands. They were also round!



Instead of small packs of seasoning, the seasoning looks big!
Look at 2 photo above to see the size. It's like cooking Prima Mixes stuff!

We were discussing the other day with my aunt. She said the sauce is too thick and she prefers only to put half of each pack. I think if you like your laksa super lemak and 'gao gao', you should put all in. I know some of you will say, you will go 'botak' soon!




It takes a long time to cook though! 7 minutes it says on the wrapper.
I was cooking two packs at together to be shared with my sister.




We thought it looked a bit too plain, so while I was cooking, sis went downstairs to buy $5 of Char Siu to go with our noodles. Why did not we just eat laksa from the stalls? Because some laksa stalls simply cannot make it! LOL. This cook at home noodles taste better than many laksa stalls!

Our family other favourite is Koka's Tomyam Hor Fun and also Indomie's Mee Goreng!

Have you tried it, what's your verdict of this noodles?

Burger Dinner @ Home

After this burger post, I will have a break from posting more burgers. I still have lots of photos of burgers from burgers from Singapore and also overseas. If you have the Lonely Planet Queensland guide, they have an entry about the best burger in Brisbane. It was a tiny shop, far away in the suburbs. Sis, Momo and I travelled more than an hour to go try it, and yes it was worth the trip. The burge was superb! We are sometimes so crazy while on holiday.

We will still be eating them though, we love burgers! I will refrain from posting more burgers until I have the urge to burger bomb my blog again.

A few weeks ago, as usual, we were at home working on our laptops. We usually have either Asian Food Channel or Food Network Asia providing the background noise when we work. For that particular day, we were subliminally influenced to have burgers! On both channels that we kept swapping, it was all about burgers, burgers and more burgers! Since we saw the programs making it, we decided we would make some too! We invited a few people over for dinner that night too!

My sis did most of the work. I did most of the eating. She prepared the patty, cut up everything. When there's a lady busy in the kitchen, it's best to leave her alone. The golden rule is that there can only be one person in charge in the kitchen.




A very healthy looking burger that we made. The vegetables used had more nutrition too. We had baby spinach instead of lettuce. Carrots and crunchy water chestnuts were also added into the patty as well.




If you are veggies hater and prefer more meat, no problem!
Use two meat patties instead! This is also the no carbo version! Great for losing weight!




Another version of the carbo-less burger. Tomato slices used instead of bread.
The combination is up to your imagination!

We had baked potatoes and corn as sides for those who wants more carbo that is not made from white flour.  ;-)





Since sis has done everything else, I was in charge of cooking.

I got a scolding for making the patties too small. Always remember to ask the person in charge first before being "kay-kiang" and start cooking. Use the weighing scale too, if she specifies she wants a 40, 60 or 80 gram patty!

The good that came from the mistake is that we had lots and lots of patties and we could have different variations!
 We got our minced meat from Culina at Fairprice Finest as that's the supermarket nearest to our place. The recipe sis used was originally from The Biggest Loser cookbook. It had lots of herbs and spices in it. For the meat patty, we did not add any flour into it.  If you don't have any flour in the patty, the meat loosens when you cook it. So how? You know when you cook at home, you do try to finish up stuff you have at home. I told sis, add in the almond powder that we have extra from making macarons some time ago. Hey, it turned out nice!

It has been a long time since my Scanpan grill griddle pan saw the light of day. Aren't the patties beautiful? When cooking patties, please don't keep pressing them. If you do, all the juice from the burger comes out and the patty will taste dry.

Be a little patient, let it cook slowly and gently press them to get the grill marks. I did not use any oil, because the instruction was please keep it healthy.  

(It's weird huh, we try to eat healthy at home, but when we are out, we order the most unhealthy stuff! haha)




We thought of making our own buns, we had all the ingredients at home, but we got lazy and went to buy gardenia buns instead.

We love gherkins in our burgers. There are two kinds of gherkins for sale in the supermarket. I prefer the sweet gherkins so I got the bottle above. But....  the ladies who came for dinner said I got the wrong one. They prefer the tart gherkins. Oh well....




The best tasting cheese we think are the ones by President.  It does taste better! They are a bit more expensive though. We used organic baby spinach instead of lettuce. It tastes so much better and is also more nutritious.




We had sides like steamed corn and baked potatoes as sides as well.
If you noticed in the supermarket nowadays, they sell colourful of potatoes all in a bag now. We bought a pack to make wedges!




Wash the potatoes cut them in wedges and throw in the spices you like. I had some high quality olive oil in it (I used the same brand used by the famous Ferran haha), spanish smoked paprika and dash of dried parsley with some kosher salt. Bake them for 20 minutes and that's it! Simple.

Note: We read recently that if you want super crispy potatoes when baking, soak them in water first. You might also read that cooking starch rich food in high temperature is not good for health. It produces something called acrylamide. Well, this research says that when you soak your potatoes in water before cooking, it reduces it. So, soak your potatoes before cooking! Pardon me if you get confused, just my geek-ness.

We are no burgers expert. We are just experimenting. ;-)

Bon Appétit

Christmas Dinner @ Home

Let me wish all a very Blessed Christmas!

We had our Christmas Dinner at uncle and aunt's place again this year. Here's the wonderful dinner prepared mostly by our aunt. If you are preparing it for your party next year, this can be a guide for preparing your own party at home.

*** Christmas Turkey ***

The Christmas Turkey. We went with aunt to KAP Cold Storage a few nights before Christmas to get the frozen turkey. We found what she did a little amusing, she was trying to pick the nicest looking frozen turkey. She said there's a reason for it.

She was particular about the shape of the turkey when it was still frozen. She said if you pick a shape that's not nice, the roasted product won't look nice. Ah... Don't you think the turkey's shape looks very nice? It looks absolutely delicious too!

For the turkey filling, she decided to do something different. It seems none of us like eating stuffing and the stuffing usually go to waste. So this year, she put potatoes and lemongrass in the turkey's cavity. Lemongrass gave it a nice fragrance and the potatoes can be eaten another day.

*** Prawn Salad ***

This was originally prepared by me a few years ago, and it seems we still have it until today! Something very simple that you can prepare a day in advance. Just boil the prawns and peel them. Keep the in the fridge and then arrange it on a nice bowl when it's ready for serving.

You can prepare the dipping sauce by mixing mayonnaise with say curry powder or flavours you like. If you think that's troublesome, just grab some bottled thousand island.

Everyone loves prawns / shrimps!

*** Colourful Mixed Vegetables ***

I love all the vegetables in this dish. Get colourful vegetables and quickly stir fry them. Colourful vegetables are good for you!

If you have someone that has gout at home, or inviting friends that has gout, just omit the cauliflowers.

It's like a mini Christmas Tree and decorations that you can eat!

*** Asparagus with XO Sauce ***

Very easy dish to prepare and is well loved by all who loves asparagus. Quickly boil the asparagus and a quick stir fry, that's all you need to prepare this dish.

I love things cooked with XO sauce.

*** Roast Potatoes with Bacon Bits ***

Roast Potatoes with bacon bits. It's something that you can do when you are roasting the turkey. Don't waste the heat in your oven. Roast the potatoes with your turkey.

I am sure there are always guests at home that love to 'jiak kan tang', serve them this and they will be happy. I think the potatoes goes well with cranberry sauce.

*** Cold Ham ***

One of the things that's super easy to prepare. (or rather no preparation)

The ham's already cooked and you just need to put it on a plate. You can serve them with canned pineapple rings. If you want, you can heat them up.

*** Sausages with Black Bean ***

We went to an Italian restaurant recently and our aunt ordered this for her mains. Sausages cooked with black bean. She liked it so much that she has replicated the dish for her Christmas dinner repertoire.

Quite nice.

*** Roast Ribs ***

These ribs will look better when they are cut up into the individual ribs. I should have taken a photo after it is cut up.

Steam the ribs and then but BBQ sauce over it and bake. Aunt says it is easy. Well, it was tasty too.

*** Pesto Fettuccine ***

Fresh Basil, pine nuts and garlic with olive oil. Blend it and 'tada', easy peasy pesto.

What aunt did was to pre-boil some fettuccine till al dante and leave it aside. We then cooked the fettuccine and pesto in smaller portions. This dish tasted really good straight out from the pan. We wanted to serve it hot that's why we prepared them in smaller portions.

There's so much food, so people only take a bit at a time. So when the folks wanted more, we just fry stir fry in the pan and it's ready in 3 to 4 minutes.

*** Maltesers Chocolate Cheesecake ***

One of our cousins made this and brought to for the party. She's such a great baker eh?
It taste as good as it looks. Maltesers, it has been a long time since I had them. Sorry, I don't have the recipe.

(Maltesers was one thing we had quite often when we were studying in Melbourne. It was one of those fund raising gifts and when there's fund raising for activities, we will be having lots of it!)

We also had macarons that we made.  That's our Christmas Dinner this year at home.

Beef Bourguignon

Last Saturday, Momo spent more than half a day cooking Beef Bourguignon as a birthday treat.

She used the famous Julia Child recipe and even had to ask TheHungryCow the wine expert to get her the red wine to use. As not all the ingredients were available at the supermarket that Momo bought the ingredients, there was some improvisation.





Quite good for a first try. It was very delicious too.
Since it's eaten at home, so we did not bother about decorating or plating it professionally. ;-)




Thanks Momo for all the hard work!

Leftover food @ Home

I am sure most of you know that leftover food in the fridge is to be consumed within 3 days.
Mum cooked so much food and we had lots of leftover and our fridge was full!

We were busy finishing up the food and this was the last lot.




Wondering what we can do, we transformed it into a East meets West dish.
Chinese soup with Spaghetti.




A variation of the usual macaroni that people usually use for soup.
Spaghetti is not bad!

Birthday Fried Mee Suah @ Home

Mum flew back from UK a few days ago after spending 3 months cooking for our sis who just given birth in UK. Sometimes I wonder, doesn't she get tired of cooking? Anyway, Chinese mums needs to eat proper confinement food, so mum lovingly prepares the food to feed to her daughter, so that her grandson gets premium milk! LOL...

It was also a treat for the brother in law, my brother and the girlfriend too. Whatever they want to eat, they tell mum, and my brother will get all the stuff mum needs from Wing Yip, probably the largest Asian grocery store I ever stepped into! For folks in Singapore, it's like bigger than the IT Show floorspace!

Nasi Lemak, Carrot Cake, Chwee Kueh, Ang Koo Kueh (for our little nephew's 'one month' party), Vinegar Pig Trotter, all sorts of curries. So much work. Some say so much love.

Talk about Nasi Lemak, mum cooked it in sis Le Creuset (super cheap there) and cooking rice in cast iron pots really make it taste really good! I tried it once when I was there. My brother emailed to say they have been making it even more authentic by buying banana leaves! The banana leaves there comes from the Philippines! They are trying to make it more authentic, while here in Singapore, most hawkers cut costs to maximize profits. The most we get here is green melamine plates shaped like banana leaves.


Anyway, I was at work and mum and aunt spend the whole day in our kitchen whipping up something to celebrate my birthday. Mum and aunt was sort of like exchanging recipes and ideas. They whipped up the following:

***

The Birthday Fried Mee Suah.
It's a combination of many ingredients that you need to peel, cut, soak for hours.

(Actually, I did not know it was to celebrate my birthday, I was the one cooking some of the dishes, I did the simple part by putting it together. haha)

***

The Beef, with 'white and red carrot' soup. It was boiling since afternoon it seems.

Talking about white radish / daikon, the topic of why the carrot cake has no carrots surfaced. As usual, Mum always has the answer. What she said is based on Malaysian scenario. She said when she was young, the hawkers used to prepare them with white radish. But some hawkers changed their recipes because of the requests of customers. Did I hear a 'Huh' from you?

You see, many old matriarchs buy expensive Chinese herbs and eat them for health and beauty. Deer antlers and the sorts were and still is expensive. If you spend these sort of money on it, you want to make sure the medicinal effect are not negated. White radish negate the effects. So the matriarchs will ask if the carrot cake has radish in it. If there is, they won't buy it.

So now you have one version of the answer!

***

The steamed kampung chicken.

One of my favourite dishes! Which also happens to be one of my sis least favourite food. It's difficult being a mum right when all your children like different food!

We always learn something new. When mum asked sis to cut the garnishing, mum said, you are cutting it the wrong way. To get maximum flavour out of the spring onions, you are to cut it slanted. It has more exposed surface so it will be more fragrant, it also looks nicer. Another tip for you!

***

The Nai Bai. Mum teased and said, you always think you are so clever, you fry your version and see lah. See people will eat it or not.

So I took out from my fridge the secret ingredients. XO sauce. Garlic, abalone sauce, XO sauce and a little bit of mirin was all was inside. Easy right?

***

The prawn fritters that mum and aunt made.
The ladies were discussing what kind of flour to mix so that you get the crispy bite and you need air bubbles forming so that when you deep fry it, it gets crunchy. Oh... their experiments.

During dinner they were saying the fish monger was so happy that instead of asking for big prawns they asked for small ones. Do you know why they wanted the small ones? So that their shells are not hard and you are suppose to eat the whole prawn. Hard shells have sharp edges that will hurt your tongue!

***

Vinegared Pork Trotters.
I never liked this dish. I can't stand the smell of vinegar!

Another story. Do you know that if you live in London, in a suburb where there are not many Chinese, if you know the butchers, they give pork trotters to you for free? The trotters are all clean and fresh, you wonder why it is free? It's because the British folks don't eat them! They are meant for pets!

Yes, laugh all you want. We did too!
My brother is happy too. In fact laughing all the way to the bank because he likes piggy feety and he is getting it for free!

***

Mum and aunt saw this kinda huge fish and it was only $8! They said, what a deal and they decided to just simply steam it. Yes, it was nice!

I dare not ask mummy why the spring onions here can be cut this way and not slanted. hahaha.....

***

Mum and aunt made Snowskin Mooncakes and konnyaku jelly as well.
They are experimenting with our tummies eh?

Momo got this delicious cake from Ritz Carlton.
The Mango Mousse with Mango Jelly topped with Fresh Mango cake.

I think daddy who loves mango loves the cake a lot! haha...





Oh no. Am I getting very naggy?
So many words!


Anyway, have a great week ahead and thanks for reading! :-)

Crabs and Fried Bee Hoon @ Home

When one of her niece says she wants to eat crabs, our aunt will always say OK! 
You should see the face of her 11 year old niece. Smiling ear to ear!

Last Sunday evening, our aunt bought crabs from the local wet market and cooked it for us.
She fed the 10 of us with 2 different kinds of crabs dishes with fried bee hoon.

***

Steamed Crabs with Tang Hoon. A different recipe this time and it's nice!



Tang Hoon really soaks up all the juices and essence of the crabs.
Oh it's so yummy!

***

Here's the chilli crabs!
If you are afraid to cook this at home because you dare not kill crabs, don't worry. Just ask your local fish monger to kill it and chop it up for you! It's usually FOC. Just cook it as soon as you get it home!
(Prima Taste cooking sauce if you are wondering.)
 



We had two big plates of it too!

We were just at Food Republic at Wisma Atria the other day and aunt said there was one tourist who was shocked that her order of two small crabs came up to nearly $70. (there is a reason why locals don't order crabs there. Locals just go to certain places to have crabs. Or cook them at home.)

***

We had our crabs with fried bee hoon. Our family are great bee hoon eaters!
The spicy version for the adults.



The non spicy version for the little kids. ;-)



Thanks aunt for cooking for us!