Now that the mil is back from Hawaii, I feel a little weight taken off my shoulders 😁 This weight that I am talking about is cooking lunch and dinner. For someone who is not that passionate about cooking, cooking can sometimes be stressful for me. When I had live-in helpers, I liked cooking very much. I would plan my menu ahead for a few weeks. My helpers would help me prep the ingredients while I took my leisurely morning and evening walks with my toddlers, followed by watching TV. Speaking of TV, I have not watched TV for God knows how long. Not that I do not like watching the TV, I love watching TV. I can be a couch potato, if I want to. But I simply cannot afford the time to do so, plus the TV is usually not allowed to be turned on, on school days. When it was time for dinner, all I had to do then was to walk into the wet kitchen and whip up the dishes. All the ingredients would be laid nicely on the kitchen top for me. My dear helpers would then clean up everything for me after I was done with the cooking. Gone are such good days. How I wish we still have live-in helpers to pamper me. I miss those good old days so much!
Now that I have the mil around, my duty is to plan the menu (sometimes she plans it), shop for the ingredients and tell her what’s for dinner. The mil would then gladly whip up the dishes. She loves cooking. She’s a natural talent in cooking, baking and sewing. Thank God she’s around to help me sew the girls’ torn uniforms and clothes and fix lose buckles on pinafores. I’m hopeless like a spoilt brat like that, coz at my parents’, I have my dear mummy to help me alter and mend my clothes. I know basic sewing but am just too lazy to do it.
Ok, enough of gloating. Now, moving onto the food pictures, staring at you hehe!
I wokked up this pan-fried five-spice chicken fillet with Bombay onions some time last week. This glorious dish is cooked using antibiotic and hormone-free Kee Song lacto chicken fillet.
I like using chicken fillet as it’s healthier (lower in calories and fat) and easier to clean, cut and cook. Chicken breast is cheaper than drumsticks and wings too. I can cook it in 101 different flavors and our finicky girls will scoff off the dish and lick the platter clean. Not exaggerating here but someone really licks her plate clean 😆
One plate is for dinner and the other portion is for next day’s lunch.
Ingredients:
~ Chicken breast
~ Chinese five-spice powder
~ Soy sauce
~ Black pepper
~ Palm sugar syrup
~ 2 Big onions – 1.5 big onions cut into rings or half rings and remaining half onion finely chopped
~ A little corn flour
~ Cooking oil
Method:
~ Cut chicken breast/fillet into strips
~ Marinate meat with Chinese five-spice powder, soy sauce, palm sugar, chopped onions, black pepper, a little corn flour and a little cooking oil. Set aside for several hours in the fridge.
~ Heat up oil and shallow fry the chicken fillet till thoroughly cooked and browned.
~ Remove the chicken fillet from the wok. If your wok is large enough, just push the chicken fillet aside. Add in the onion rings and saute the onions till they turn soft and brown.
~Pour in remaining marinate sauce into the wok. You can add a little water if you want some gravy.
~ Mix the chicken and onions together.
~ Plate up and eat while still hot
This dish goes well with rice, noodles and even bread. I love the aroma of the Chinese five-spice powder. Just a touch of Chinese five-spice powder can give a distinctive depth of character to dishes. Not only is this spiced concoction flavorful, it is also packed with many medicinal properties.
After cooking this dish, the hubs came home with 5 loaves of potato baguette, an excess from one of his functions. With so much baguette, someone decided to have toasted potato baguette with the dishes that I had cooked. She quickly fished out the long bread knife, sliced the potato baguette and popped them into the toaster oven.
Crispy potato baguette with Emmental cheese, five-spice chicken fillet and pak choy 😀 Super yummy this Oriental open-faced pizza sandwich 😋
Since there was so much potato baguette, I had a slice of it with fish curry, also from the hubs’ kitchen.
Chicken fillet is extremely versatile and easy to cook. You can use whatever spices and marinates that you have to marinate the fillet and you’ll always get a lip-smacking chicken dish. Make sure you add lots of big onions to it as that’s what impart a lot of sweetness and flavor to the dish.
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