No Time to Cook

This year, I haven't had much time to cook.

So much so that I don't think I've used the kitchen for more than 10 times in the second half of the year.

We have been either packing home (most of the time) or else eating out (on weekends).
That's really terrible!

I do miss cooking and eating home cooked food.. Actually, my mum does cook and pack tingkats for us once or twice every week.. so it isn't right to say I miss home cooked food. I actually miss "own cooked food"..

I don't think it'd get any easier in the new year with my hours at work and having to put Little N to bed when I get home.. but I can try being creative - like making stew in the morning before I go off to work and keeping them in a thermal pot.. preparing a roast chicken and throwing it into the oven when I get home.

I made a roasted chicken with thyme recently and it was nice to be eating something I made for a change.

A pretty effortless roasted chicken. Just season and cut and throw into the oven!

Leftover Pasta

Little N is selective when it comes to her food.

Her selection criteria is based on her mood... and textures.

I find myself often finishing things she does not like.

She did not like these cute little star pastas I bought her and flatly refused them. She takes a mouthful, then opens her mouth and takes the little starts out of her mouth (*FAINT*) and then plays with them (*DOUBLE FAINT*).

I've only cooked her these pasta once so what was I to do with all these little star pastas?

I started adding them to my tomato and beef stew but I don't cook often enough nowadays to use these up.

So, I decided to add them to my salad.

It's really easy as well.

Open a bag of salad leaves, boil and shell an egg, add in cherry tomatoes and grapes, shred in some carrots and any other vegetables you can get (broccoli, corn, whatever) and add in the pastas and top off with a light vinaigrette dressing or wafu dressing. I added some cilantro and pumpkin seeds to add some punch and crunch.

This is a useful way to do something with leftover pasta.

See those tiny little star-shaped pastas? These were meant for The Baby

Transition Time

In another 2 plus weeks, I'd go back to work.

Hence, starting this week, I leave Little N at the caretaker's place in the day.

I feel really blessed that my mum is that caretaker. We had found a nanny for Little N but just last week, my mum told me that she had thought about it and that she would like to care for Little N whilst I'm at work. If there is one person I trust to look after Little N whilst we go to work, it is my mum.. so I'm most happy to hear that. But I'm also worried that taking care of the baby will be too tiring for her.. After all, my mum has loads of other things to do..

So far, the transition has been good. I stayed with Little N the whole day on the first day and half a day on the second day.. She seemed to have adapted quite well to my mum's place - she has her own room at my mum's! It was actually my room during my uni days many years ago.

My mum seemed to be coping quite well.. though I am still worried for her health and personal time. I guess I'd have to try to take regular time off work to give her some rest time.

Because Little N is at my mum's, I have had quite a bit of time to myself this week.. and probably for the next 2 weeks. There are lots of things that I need to do.. I actually got a list of to-dos listed down. Cleaning, clearing up the storeroom, clearing up the balcony (my poor plants!) and lots of errands to run..

But I found some time to make a simple lunch for myself yesterday - Pan-fried Salmon and Prawns salad. It's really simple, I pan fried some salmon and prawns with sea salt, herbs and olive oil and then put them on a bed of rocket leaves. I topped the salad off with dried blueberries, sesame seeds and some Japanese sesame dressing and lunch was done!

I do miss Little N very much during the day though... I find it quite hard to concentrate fully on my stuff.. even if I do enjoy the little pockets of rest time I have now and then.

A simple lunch

My little girl can read! Haha.. or she looks like she can!

First Homecooked Meal of 2013

It's been a while since I've cooked at home. My mum cooked all my meals during my confinement in September and October and then my mother-in-law came over for 2 months and if we didn't eat out or packed food home, she'd cook.

I finally got around to making a simple lunch for myself today - Oven Baked Fish and Mixed Rice.

The fish was really simple really, I just added some scallion oil and salt to a piece of fish, wrapped it in aluminum foil and baked for 40mins. Next time, I'd try adding a slice of ginger and some wolfberries to it... maybe even some enoki mushrooms. As for the mixed rice, I just used what I had at home - pork floss, fragrant fried chai poh (salted turnips) and toasted sesame seeds.

It was nice to be able to cook my own lunch.. though Little N was up before I could eat it. She was co-operative though - I had her lie down on a mat and she played on her own whilst her mummy ate lunch...

Mushrooms on Toast

This is a really simple, yet delicious snack. I made this for breakfast yesterday.

Ingredients
- A couple of big handfuls of mushrooms, sliced
(Swiss brown mushrooms or portobello mushrooms, or a mixture of different mushrooms would be good. I used mini portobello mushrooms)
- Some dried herbs (parsley, thyme and rosemary would work)
- Sea salt and freshly ground pepper
- A few cherry tomatoes, halved
- Extra virgin olive oil
- A few slices of good bread (I used a sourdough bread)

What I did
- Saute the mushrooms with extra virgin olive oil
- Add in the cherry tomatoes when the mushrooms start to wilt
- Season with dried herbs, sea salt and pepper
- Whilst frying the mushrooms, toast the bread
- Pile the mushrooms and tomatoes (including any liquid) on top of the toast and serve immediately

You can also add chopped garlic, cheese and fresh herbs if you like.. but I like to keep things simple. The flavours from the mushrooms and the liquid from the mushrooms soak up the crusty bread nicely.

Using Japanese Daikon in Oden

I love cooking oden at home.

It's just so easy - simply chop the ingredients required into large pieces and throw them into an oden stock, which is rather simple to make.. Especially if you, like me, cheat with an oden stock mix.

It's even easier if you cook it using a thermal pot. Simply boil everything (except for the fish cakes) together for about 30 mins, then leave in the thermal pot to simmer for half a day. Take it out an hour or two before serving, add the fish cakes and then boil away for another 15 mins, before putting it back into the thermal pot. I usually make enough for 2 days, because I think overnight oden taste much better. The flavour in the stock really seeps into all the ingredients and make everything taste so much richer.

One trick I've learnt that makes homemade oden taste good is to make sure I use only Japanese daikon.

Daikon, or 大根 in Japanese, literally means "large root". Somehow, I think that Japanese daikon (which you can buy from any Japanese supermarket, or some premium supermarkets around town) taste a lot sweeter than those you get from regular supermarkets or markets, which are mainly from either Malaysia or China. Yes, the Japanese daikon cost quite a bit more.. but I do think the taste difference justifies the price. 

Somen Salad with Mini Portobello Mushrooms

This is a variation of the Udon Salad with Sesame Dressing.

Instead of using udon, I used Japanese somen instead. Somen is a kind of thin, white Japanese noodles made of wheat flour. You can get somen in Japanese or Korean supermarkets. They cook very quickly - about 2 - 3 mins in boiling water, and hence are very convenient if you don't want to spend a long time cooking lunch on a hot day.

The "salad" part of the dish was made up of mixed salad leaves, cherry tomatoes and grapes.  Then, I added some mini portobello mushrooms which I stir fried with some olive oil and black pepper and salt.

Instead of adding sesame sauce, I used wafu (和風) dressing instead.

"Wafu dressing" literally means "Japanese-style dressing". It is a vinaigrette and soy sauce based salad dressing, which you can make easily at home.. You whisk some oil, rice vinger, soy sauce and sugar to taste to get the base of the dressing. Then, you can add yuzu sauce or grated ginger or roasted sesame seeds etc to make give the dressing an extra kick. You can also add some sesame oil to make it a chukafu (中華風) dressing, ie Chinese-style dressing (although it's still "Japanese" Chinese-style dressing, if that makes sense..).

Of course, wafu dressing is also easily available in most supermarkets in Singapore. Just look for it in the Japanese food section.

I forgot to take pictures of the dressing...

Udon Salad with Sesame Dressing

I wanted something light for lunch after a swim this morning, so I decided to make a salad.

This salad is partly inspired by Dainty Bites, whose "Main Course Salad" series I really like. It is also inspired by a noodle dish I sometimes have for lunch from Wheat Baumkuchen Pasta & Noodle Bar. This noodle bar at One Raffles Place sells noodles tossed with some seafood or meat, sesame sauce, served on a bed of lettuce.

But I usually prefer more vegetables and less noodles, so my homemade version is just that. It's first a salad, then a noodle dish.

Ingredients
Mixed salad leaves, approx 50g
Cherry tomatoes, halved
Fresh apricots, quartered
Hard boiled egg, sliced
Canned tuna (I used about half a can)
Udon noodles, cooked and then chilled in a bowl of ice water (Use as much or as little as you like - the amount determines how many you can feed)
Sesame dressing (homemade or store-bought)
Toasted sesame seeds

What I did
1. Toss the salad leaves with cherry tomatoes and fresh apricots
2. Toss the udon noodles with the sesame salad dressing and toasted sesame seeds
3. Ensemble the salad together by putting the noodles on top of the vegetables, then topping off the dish with slices of hard boiled egg and tuna
4. Sprinkle some toasted sesame seeds on top
5. Mix well before eating, adding more dressing as required as you mix

You can also add in other vegetables as you like - like shredded cucumber, carrots, mushrooms etc

 The base salad

 Chilled udon noodles tossed with sesame dressing

Top off with tuna and hard boiled eggs. 

You can also use prawns, roasted chicken slices or mushrooms. 

Instead of hard boiled eggs, shreds of omelet would be nice too

To make your own sesame dressing, grind 3 tablespoons of roasted sesame seeds and then whisk in about 2 tablespoons of Japanese mayonnaise, 2 tablespoons of rice vinegar, 1 teaspoon of sugar, 1/2 teaspoon of mirin and 1/2 teaspoon of sesame oil. Add soy sauce to taste (about 1 tablespoon should do).

I used store-bought sesame dressing this time around.

Sweet Potatoes and Gingko Nuts

My mum likes to make this dessert.

Usually, she uses 2 kinds of sweet potatoes and this comes in the form of a "sweet soup" (糖水).

Today, she added pumpkin as well. She cut up chunks of sweet potatoes, pumpkin and boils them with gingko nuts and rock sugar.

However, I don't usually like the sugary water, so for me, she'd fish out the starchy chunks and gingko nuts and I'd eat them this way, without the soup.

A variety of this dessert is just tapioca with sweet potato, stewed with sugar until the starch is soft and sugar caramelizes. Yum.

I'm home today because I haven't fully recovered from my flu. It was a mistake trying to push it and go in to work yesterday, though I did feel better in the morning. By the time I got in to work, I was feeling all clammy and tired. And then it all went downhill from there...

So today, I'm being good.. staying at home and resting. I'm looking forward to be able to taste food properly again.

A Pretty Breakfast

Nowadays, I leave for work slightly later than I used to.

This means I have some time in morning to drink a cup of milk or have breakfast in leisure.

Since I haven't been feeling so well, I wanted a pretty looking breakfast to brighten up my day.

This didn't turn out as pretty as I wanted to (should have used a smaller glass) but still, it did the trick.

Have a lovely Monday and a great week ahead.

It took me about 3 minutes to make this breakfast 

- just layers of blueberries, yogurt and granola.

Tom Yum Soup with Udon

It's been a while since I managed to leave work early to take conference calls from my home instead of staying in late at the office.

It's not easy to rush off at 530pm in the evening, rush home, prepare for dinner, take 2 calls in between and then cook dinner. But the reward of all that rush was that The Husband and I got to eat a nice home cooked dinner on a weekday night, which is quite a treat for both of us.

This Tom Yum Soup with Udon noodles is very easy to make. I cheated by using instant tom yum paste - but I tried to add lots of fresh, healthy ingredients into the soup - prawns, sliced fish, tomatoes, mushrooms, vegetables and lots of fresh coriander.

I also used those dried udon noodles and cooked them for 10 minutes in a separate pot, draining them with iced water before dunking them into the tom yum soup. I liked these dried udon noodles a lot better than those supposedly "fresh" ones from the frozen/ chilled section of the supermarket because I think you can control the doneness on these a lot better.

All it took was 10 minutes of preparation and 20 minutes to cook the soup and noodles. 

Did you manage to have a home-cooked dinner today?

Ping Gai Chicken - a Laos Dish

I have never been to Toronto, nor have I ever been to Laos.

No, but this was just one of those recipes I had to try out because even reading the recipe made my mouth water.

Apparently, this dish (Ping Gai Chicken) is a dish from a restaurant called Queen Mother Cafe in Toronto. It's a barbequed chicken dish that supposedly hails from Laos. Ping Gai translates to grilled ("ping") chicken ("gai") in Laos, so calling it Ping Gai Chicken (ie Grilled Chicken Chicken) isn't strictly accurate.

But back to this recipe.

This particular recipe was enough to make my mouth water from reading it because it had everything I liked in chicken - garlic, lime juice, cilantro and barbequed.

I JUST had to try it.

Sadly, the chicken turned out good, as did the wonderful sauce.. but.. it wasn't fantastic and certainly looked nowhere near what I was expecting.

You can pretty much tell from the photo below.

And the main reason for this sad outcome was because my grill broke down when I started making this dish. I love this grill of mine - I use it for making paninis mainly, and grilled chicken wings. But it refused to work and I was forced to throw these well marinated chicken thighs into the oven. And because I had guests over, this delayed dinner for about 45 mins and the chicken did not get that lovely burnt skin.

Hence, instead of looking like this...

 Picture from this blog (I really like this blog, by the way)

It looked like this...

The chicken as it was marinating (left) and my end product (right)

You can imagine my disappointment.

But this recipe is definitely a keeper and I'd have to remember this for all future barbeques!

Recipe adapted from here

Ingredients
4-6 chicken thighs, deboned

Marinade
1 bunch Fresh Cilantro
6 cloves Garlic
1 tbsp Black peppercorns
3 tbsp Oyster sauce
2 tbsp Soy sauce
2 tablespoons Vegetable oil

Dipping Sauce
1 cup Water
1/2 cups Sugar
3 sprigs Fresh Cilantro
2 cloves Garlic
2 tbsp White Vinegar
1 tbsp Lime Juice
1 tbsp Thai Fish Sauce
Instead of using Thai Chilli Sauce, I used 1 tbsp of Dried Thai chilli flakes

What I did and didn't do
Marinade: Blend all the ingredients with a handheld blender and process until finely chopped and well combined. The marinade should look pretty green.

Place chicken in shallow glass baking dish. Pour marinade over and mix well. Cover with plastic wrap. Marinate at least 1 hour or overnight in refrigerator.

Dipping sauce: Combine water and sugar in saucepan. Bring to boil over medium-high heat, stirring until dissolved. Continue cooking 10 minutes or until reduced and syrupy. Cool completely. Add to food processor with cilantro, garlic, vinegar, lime juice, chilli flakes and fish sauce. Process until smooth.

Preheat grill or BBQ and grill for 6- 8 minutes on each side.

If roasting in the oven, you will not get the wonderful black burnt bits. But if you prefer this anyway, preheat the oven to 200 deg C and roast for about 45mins, skin side up. You might want to brush the skin with a bit of oil to ensure it gets crispy at least.

I sprinkled some toasted sesame seeds on top and then served with the dipping sauce.

By then, dinner was really quite delayed and I was too flustered to remember to take a photo of the dipping sauce.

I will be trying this out again and will hopefully have better pictures to post then.

Homemade Mee Hoon Kueh

Mee Hoon Kueh (面粉馃, or literally translated as Flour Cake) is a type of flat noodles, usually served with meat and vegetables in an anchovy-based soup. 

To me, authentic homemade Mee Hoon Kueh has to eggless and should be shaped/ pulled by hand. Today, you can easily find Mee Hoon Kueh in most food courts around Singapore, but they invariably make them with eggs in the dough and roll the noodles out using machines and then cut them out too neatly for my likely. 

Homemade Mee Hoon Kueh is a comfort food for me. The taste is rustic, simple, yet delicious. Somehow, my mum's version of Mee Hoon Kueh is the best I've ever tasted - the noodles are chewy yet smooth and the soup light and savoury soup, full of the taste of anchovies. She doesn't add too many ingredients in the soup - just fishball, some chicken and lots of vegetables. Mushrooms are usually left out because they tend to overpower the taste of anchovies.

My grandmother used to make them often when I was younger and she would usually give me a bit of the dough to make creations of my own. I'd usually make a bear or doll out of the dough and then play with my "Mee Hoon Kueh" toy for the rest of the evening.

Food with childhood memories are the best kind of comfort food.

My mum's Mee Hoon Kueh - yummy! I have to learn this from her..

A Simple Fruity Salad

I don't have much of an appetite these days.

And today's weather is so hot I found it especially hard to think o something suitable to eat for lunch. So I made myself a refreshing, fruity salad for lunch.

This salad is really easy to make. I just mix the following ingredients together:
- A bowl of baby spinach leaves
- A few sweet Korean strawberries
- A handful of dried cranberries, raisins and nuts
- A few pinenuts
- A simple dressing of extra virgin olive oil, lemon juice and maple syrup

Strawberries are high in vitamin C and full of antioxidants. These Korean strawberries that I bought from the supermarket are so sweet, I can eat the entire punnet at one go. They really help when I don't have much of an appetite.

Reunion Dinner

We always have reunion dinner at my mother's place. This is the time of the year when my mum goes all out to cook our family's dishes. For the Chinese, reunion dinner is usually held on the eve of the Chinese New Year, during which family members get together to have a meal together.

Each year, my mum will prepare the ingredients for hotpot. Hotpot is a must for our family's reunion dinner. She'd also make five-spice meat rolls, fried prawns, stewed pork with chestnuts and quail eggs, as well as fried tang-hoon (or glass noodles). 

I usually contribute a dish to the reunion dinner. This year, my contribution is haemul pajeon, or Korean Seafood Pancake.

Reunion dinner is usually a good time to catch up and spend time with my family. Unfortunately, this year, I felt a little too sick from flu to really enjoy the dinner very much.

Avocado and Tomato Salad

It's not easy to adopt a low carb diet in Singapore. Especially during breakfast.

Singapore's local breakfast fare of kaya toast, fried bee hoon, fried carrot cake, fishball noodles etc are mostly high in carb.

Since I started cutting back on carbs, I find myself having breakfast at home a lot more.

Here's a salad I made this week for breakfast.

It is a really simple salad - I cut up some tomatoes, avocado and added slices of fresh buffalo mozzarella. Then I added a few strips of fresh basil and season with sea salt and pepper.

It's nice to have a homemade breakfast before work on a weekday. And this doesn't take much time to make at all.

Popiah Party

Popiah - the finished product. 
Picture from here.

Once in a while, my mum would cook a whole pot of finely cut vegetables - turnips, cabbages, carrots with shallots, dried prawns and some meat.

All my siblings and I will then turn up for dinner and we'd have the pot of vegetable stew for dinner.

I call this our family "popiah party".

Popiah, or 薄餅 is the Chinese version of fresh spring roll. You put together some sweet dark sauce, finely ground peanuts, some chilli sauce, slices of hard boiled eggs, some prawns and a lot of stewed vegetables. Everything is wrapped in the popiah skin (or 薄餅皮), which is a soft, thin paper-like crepe from wheat flour.

My family loves this dish but it takes a lot of effort to make the vegetables since everything needs to be finely cut. The difficult part really is in the cutting because cooking this dish is pretty easy. Just stir fry the shallots, dried shrimps and meat and then throw in all the vegetables and cook on low heat.

We had a "popiah party" at home last night. I hope everyone had as good a New Year's Eve dinner as we did. Happy 2012!

Stewed vegetables - super sweet and juicy

Christmas Dinner

The star of the dinner

The beef was perfectly cooked

We had a wonderful dinner last night at D's house.

She made a great roast beef - 3 kg of beef, marinated with lots of herbs, roasted perfectly until pink in the centre. The roasted carrots and baby potatoes tasted so good I forgot all about my low-carb diet. To make the dish a little more festive, she made an apple relish to accompany the meat.

G brought her signature salad to dinner - thick slices of salmon sashimi with cold lettuce and a tangy Japanese sesame dressing.

We ended the meal with 2 desserts - The Husband's Mango Delight and Ugly Chocolate cake.

One of my favourite salad - sashimi with lettuce and sesame dressing

We got to have a really wonderful and peaceful meal at D's place, without the hussle and bustle of the Christmas crowd.

I think from now on, I'd always have Christmas dinner at home, either my own or a friend's home.

Christmas Potluck

This year, there are some changes in our Cell Group.

I'm glad that everything turned out well and we are having a potluck Christmas dinner at one of our cell group member's house later.

We are bringing over Mango Delight and Ugly Chocolate Cake, both tried and tested recipes that The Husband has made before.

I'm a lucky girl - I just need to laze around and enjoy the wonderful smell coming out of my kitchen. And then take the photographs of the finished products.

Merry Christmas to all!

Mango Delight - a recipe by the famous HK Patisserie Tony Wong

The Ugly Chocolate Cake - is also a flourless cake.. 

It is really quite ugly isn't it?

Gado Gado

Gado gado means "mix mix" and is an Indonesian mixed vegetable salad with peanut sauce.

I love to eat Indonesian food and am especially partial to gado gado. The last one I had in Batam was so delicious it made me crave for gado gado for quite a while after that.

Today, I made it for a potluck dinner with my extended family.

My version of gado gado contains all my favourite ingredients - blanced cabbages, long beans, bean sprouts, sliced boiled potatoes, baked tofu and hard boiled eggs.

I took an easy way out for the peanut sauce, using an instant mix-gravy mixture. I cooked the peanut mixture with water, lemongrass and a squeeze of lime juice.

Just before serving the gado gado, I topped the vegetables with bitter emping crackers and the spicy peanut sauce.

This is a very nice dish to bring to a potluck meal - I can prepare most of the ingredients way in advance and it doesn't need to be warmed up before serving. My family seemed to like it a lot, so I guess I'd be making this again sometime very soon.

Gado gado - without the emping crackers and peanut sauce. 

I forgot to take pictures after adding those..