Category: Home-cooked food

What do you do with leftover salmon fish for dinner?  My kids and I do not like eating overnight fish.  When re-fried, re-toasted or steamed, the meat gets too dry.  So I normally ‘re-cycle’ the salmon fish and convert it into another appetizing dish.  I will add the shredded salmon flesh into fried rice, fried noodles, mix it with mayo for sandwich or wrap filling and the list goes.

Yesterday, I used the overnight grilled salmon to make Salmon & Tuna Macaroni.

 

I stir-fried the shredded salmon flesh with garlic and added a can of tuna fish.  Seasoned with an assortment of dried herbs and a dash of tomato ketchup, my Salmon & Tuna Macaroni was delish!

While the girls ate macaroni, I had my kind of health-freak lunch, consisting of raw broccoli and alfalfa sprouts, cherry tomatoes, cucumber slices, pumpkin seeds, toasted almonds, cashew nuts and drizzled with goma sauce.

 

The grilled  herbs crusted salmon with crackling skin that I made for dinner two nights ago.   Left-over fish was transformed into another appetizing dish.  Cass once again said this to me “mummy, you must really open your own restaurant one day. You are such a good cook!”  🙂

 

 

No. of times viewed = 453

Here is yet another post on food and I hope that this  post will not get you rolling your eyes 😀

I dished out vegetarian nasi lemak last week, using my favorite Mak Nyonya curry paste.  I added cabbage, puffed  tofu, brinjal, tomatoes, ladies fingers, potatoes and hard boiled eggs.

I used vegetarian mushroom stumps as cheat anchovies and tortilla chips to replace the usual keropok.

Rice is cooked with fresh coconut milk – my absolute love!

 

 

 

 

I made a big pot and gave some to the girls’ grand aunt.

Looking at the pix again now just makes me salivate!

 

I used 2 packets since I put in a big load of vegetables into the wok.

 

 

 

 

No. of times viewed = 447

I have been really busy the past week.  But despite the busyness, I am still not succumbing much to outside food for my girls.  Many times when I was drowned in my work, I was really tempted to just tell the girls  “mummy ain’t cooking tonight, so let’s go out and eat”.  But I know what goes into the food not prepared by ourselves– some ABC brand recycled oil (am not surprise that some eateries use oil meant for lighting up candles at the altar to cook), loads of salt and white sugar and MSG. Not to mention, the veggies and meat may not be washed thoroughly or worse still, totally not washed.

So, I sacrifice an hour  each evening to dish out something easy and yummy for my girls.

Two nights ago, I made chicken chop with orange juice and rosemary, with raw alfalfa and brocolli sprouts, cherry tomatoes and stir fried pea sprouts with garlic as trimmings.

 

I dished up the chicken chop in under an hour.  Then dashed off in my car to fetch Sherilyn back from the enrichment centre.  While she ate dinner, I quickly swallowed mine too.  Next, zoomed off to drop Sherilyn at the dance centre for hip hop dance class.

 

Yesterday, I cooked creamy spaghetti with fresh mushrooms, cauliflower, char siew (bbq meat) and Okinawa luncheon meat.

Okinawa luncheon meat which my MIL brought back from Japan…

 

So… how do you like my kind of  dinner?   In my many pigging out sessions with the foodie hubs, I scrutinized interesting dishes and then back home, I will try to reproduce them ala health freak mommy’s style. Not bad eh? This is what I call picking up culinary skills by osmosis! 😉

 

 

No. of times viewed = 443

I love dishing out grilled fish, meat and veggies.  I call them my ‘healthy homecooked fast-food’.  And they taste really good too.  Most importantly, grilling food in the oven is sweat-free and oil splatter-free too!

Funnily, for someone who gets ‘heaty’ very easily, grilled food somehow does not make me feel heaty or sick, unlike deep fried food, which would give me an instantaneous after-effect.  That is how sensitive my throat is. Thus, I have completely stopped eating deep-fried food for the past one year, well almost. If I am at a function and nothing else is served except deep fried food, I will then have not much choice but to eat whatever is served and then face the aftermath.

Yesterday was a hectic day for me.  Alycia and Sherilyn were back from school at 4:30pm.    They are normally famished whenever they are back from school.  My ‘farn thoong’ (rice-pot) will always demand for rice with dishes.  So a grilled dinner came to mind. I actually thought long and hard on what to cook for dinner in the morning.  After my half-hour run in the morning, I settled for a grilled dinner coz that’s the easiest and fastest dinner to dish out.  Plus the girls love anything that is grilled.

In the morning, I marinated the salmon fish and chicken. At 4:30pm, I cooked the rice and chucked the fish and chicken into the oven. By 5:15pm, we all had dinner. By 6:45pm, I sent Sherilyn for hip-hop dance class and did some grocery shopping. At 8:30pm, I fetched her back from class. Oh yes, by 9pm I was drop-dead exhausted.  I have been cooking two meals a day these days as I am sick of having takeout food.

My salmon fish and chicken were marinated with all the herbs and ingredients that you can see in the below picture.  I used black pepper, oregano, Italian herbs, turmeric (for chicken), blackstrap molasses (for chicken) and my latest new found love – ground cumin and ground coriander seeds.  These two robust herbs can add so much flavor to my meat dishes.

I marinated the chicken drumsticks with blackstrap molasses to give it a nice brown color as well as a touch of sweetness.  I actually did not know what to do with the bottle of organic blackstrap molasses that I recently bought as I did not like the taste of it when consumed neat.  I have read and heard all the ravings about how beneficial blackstrap is, so I bought a bottle to try.  Now I have found a way of using it.  Today, I used the blackstrap molasses to replace dark soy sauce when I cooked braised soy sauce chicken and it turned out very well too. 🙂

 

 

No. of times viewed = 662

Whenever the MIL goes abroad to stay with her daughters, I tend to find it hard to get the momentum to take over the cook’s job after having enjoyed the luxury of staying away from the hot kitchen for a period of time.   For the first few days after she leaves, I will normally cook something really simple.  In the meantime, I would need to spend some time to think and plan on what to cook, as well as check out blogs of good cooks (who cook yummy yet simple to prepare dishes) to give me some ideas and inspiration to start cooking again! Hahaha!

I was and still am feeling under the weather, no thanks to the pesky bugs that the 2 younger rascals  brought home from school.    With 2 rascals who love to kiss and hug me and share my food and drinks no matter how careful I am to stay them away from my food, it really ain’t easy to escape from those virulent bugs.

This was the super simple dishes that I served the girls for dinner yesterday …

Blanched veggie and omelette with loads of onions and scallions.  Everyone needed the potent compounds from the onions and scallions to ward off flu bugs! Onions scavenge free radicals and have vitamin C! Onions are good for your liver and body cells too. Thankfully my girls love onions and they can never get tired of eating omelette with onions.

 

Steamed chicken with tong kwai herbs, wolfberries, garlic and red dates.

 

Tonight’s menu will be grilled Saba fish, stir-fried fresh mushrooms and blanched veggie again.  Pix to follow soon! 🙂

 

 

 

No. of times viewed = 760

Inspired by my friend’s posting of the picture of her mum’s homecooked black sweet vinegar pig’s trotters in Facebook and also aroused by the killer aroma of this dish from the unit above ours (a lady just gave birth and dang it, her Confinement Lady is drowning me with the aroma of her confinement dishes from dawn to dusk!), I asked my MIL to cook this dish. And so she did a few days ago 🙂

 

 

As she cooked a huge pot, there was still some leftover in the fridge. Yesterday she reheated the dish but dang it, I could only see and salivate! See no touch 🙁

With a fresh wound from a tooth extraction, putting black vinegar into my mouth would only leave a deadly aftermath of stings and possible infection of the wound. So as I watched everyone else sipping on the mouth-watering black vinegar pig’s trotters broth, I could only eat bread and cabbage (cut till very fine with scissors) like a sick cat using one side of my mouth, boo hoo hoo 🙁

 

 

 

No. of times viewed = 2788

My girls are so in love with yee mein.   Yee Mein is a kind of noodles made from wheat flour and eggs and deep fried. One of the ingredients in it is ASH. And I have no freaking idea what ash is but it sure does not sound too healthy to be eating ash.  Also, I am dubious on the kind of oil the manufacturers used to deep fry the noodles. Imagine RM3.50 for a packet of about 6 noodles, that’s a steal. Now, can things that cheap and mass-produced be healthy? I don’t think so. Much as my girls love to eat yee mein, I try to limit their consumption of this noodles.

I was so excited when I saw organic yee mein sold at an organic shop at my neighborhood.  I bought a packet and cooked it for dinner several nights ago.

The noodles were blanched for less than a minute in a pot of hot water, to ‘cleanse’ it first before eating.   We personally prefer to eat the noodles as it is, without blanching it.  We love the super crispy texture of the noodles but I feel that it is healthier to blanch the noodles in hot water before serving them to young kids. Abuden, this has to come from a health freak mommy 😀

I whipped up some minced pork sauce with Shimeji mushrooms and meat balls for the noodles and made an extra portion of the pork sauce to be cooked with our tofu dish the next day 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

No. of times viewed = 893

This was our dinner last night…

Fresh portobello mushroom pasta with chicken fillet, fresh sweet corn kernels, garlic and whipping cream topped with cheddar cheese.   I used a mixture of ribbon and spiral pasta to make the dish look more interesting. After all, it was  a kiddo dish. Shapes, sweet corn, cream and cheese, these are things most kids will heart and yes, my kids heart this pasta dish with all their heart. Every single pasta was walloped and every drop of cheesy and creamy sauce was licked clean 😀

 

There was also a stir-fried organic baby pea sprouts with garlic.  Looks yummeh ya?  It sure was super yummeh. I kept a portion for lunch today. I should have cooked more and keep some in the freezer, to be reheated on days when we don’t get our water supply.  Yes, our area is finally hit by the water rationing despite it raining almost everyday for the past few days! WTF!

 

 

No. of times viewed = 724

Two days after Maid M resumed working for me, the lump in her neck began to nag her with pain again. Today, she sent me a text message informing me that she has to stop work and that she will only resume work again after her surgery. The last time she took a break from working part-time for me, she took a half-year break. Thankfully at that time, I found another wonderful part-time maid, but she never came back to me after she went back to Indonesia for her holiday. This time round, I guess I will be left with an even more cruel fate. I can sense that my back-up part-time maid does not wish to continue working. But I am not about to panic just yet. When life throws lemons at you, catch them to make lemonade!

So what if I am maidless?  I can cook 3-4 times a week and  eat out on the rest of the days.  Hubster who is super anal about how his clothes are ironed will have to send his clothes to the laundrette for professional ironing. He has no problem with this.  The rest of the chores, I will find a way to settle them myself with the help of the girls, whether they like it or not. When there is a domestic crisis, everyone has to pull together and pitch in.

So yesterday, I dished up something really easy-peasy yet yummy to the max! It was my first time cooking chicken rice in a rice cooker and it turned out so well! I could not believe how something so easy and fast to prepare could taste so good. My girls were pouring out praises on the chicken rice, which tasted better than Nam Heong chicken rice ^^

In the morning, I marinated the chicken with some sea salt, ginger wine, sesame oil and garlic + onion oil.

Put uncooked rice in rice pot and add water like you would to cook rice.  There is no need to increase or decrease the water.  Then, add in the marinated chicken into the rice pot.  Add in more fried garlic and onion together with the oil.  The fried garlic and onion oil will impart flavor and an oily texture to the rice, just like those oily rice from chicken rice stalls.

This is how the chicken rice looks like in the pot after it’s cooked.

 

Dish it out and serve with cool cucumbers and a veggie of your choice.  We had stir-fried cabbage.

I used low GI Basmati rice to cook this chicken rice, so that I could chomp some down without the fat guilt 😀

 

The unfinished portion was kept in a glass lock and lock container to be frozen and reheated for lunch next week.

This one-pot meal is so going to be repeated in days and weeks to come until the MIL returns.  I am so glad I finally tried out this dish after procrastinating for months since last year.

 

 

 

 

No. of times viewed = 1298

The first new dish that I cooked for 2014 is my own version of ‘loh kai pei’ (braised chicken thighs).  This is SO easy to prepare and the taste was top notch, according to my monsters 🙂

Here’s what I used, based on what I could find in my fridge.  The chicken need not be marinated.

INGREDIENTS (for 4 whole chicken thighs) :

1) Soy sauce.

2) 1 whole bulb of garlic

3)  Star Anise and some tiny dried twigs. I found this in a bottle that my MIL kept the Star Anise. I used about 4-5 tablespoons

4) About 1-2 tablespoons of oyster sauce

5) About 1-2 teaspoons of dark soy sauce

6) About 1-2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar (you can omit this if you do not like a tinge of sour and tarty taste)

7) Agave nectar – about 1/4 cup

8) Brown sugar – about 1 tablespoon

9) Filtered water

10) Black pepper – ground and unground

11) White pepper

12) About 1/2 cup of ginger wine.  I remember my MIL uses rose wine but I could not find it, thus I replaced it with ginger wine.

 

 

METHOD:

I did not use any measurement cup or spoon – as usual, everything was done in a rush as I had to get this dish done before I went out to fetch Alycia and Sherilyn back from the tuition centre.  Preparation time, including washing chicken and peeling garlic is about 40 minutes.  About half-way through simmering the chicken, I tasted the sauce. You can adjust the taste to your liking by adding more of whatever sauces or spices that you fancy or add water if it is a tad salty.  My sauce is mild in saltiness and sweetness – just right for kiddos 🙂

Add all the sauces into the pot of water, which was enough to cover the 4 chicken thighs.  When it boils, add in the chicken thighs.

Let the sauces simmer with the chicken thighs in high flame for about 20 minutes, then lower flame to medium and let it simmer for another 10 minutes.

While the chicken are simmering in the pot, I quickly did some work on the computer while enjoying the aromatic smell of 5 Star Anise and garlic mixed with soy sauce wafting in the house, which made my tummy growl 😀

After 30 minutes, I turned off the flame and went out to fetch Alycia and Sherilyn back from the tuition centre.

Remember the Chicken Adobo that I cooked the other day? My girls loved that to bits.  I asked them which they liked more – Chicken Adobo or mummy’s braised chicken and the answer was “BOTH also nice” and then they voted Mummy’s Braised Chicken first and Chicken Adobo second 😀

I have kept the remaining sauce in a pot in the fridge and am going to make another round of Mummy’s Braised Chicken on Friday. This dish is just perfect for busy days 🙂

 

 

 

No. of times viewed = 4539

Bak Kut Teh is one of the easiest and fastest one-pot meal to dish up for your family. When I am feeling a tad lazy to cook dinner, I will prepare Bak Kut Teh. I will throw in some hard boiled eggs, fresh Enoki mushrooms, dried Shitake mushrooms, garlic, fried soy bean sheet (foo choke) and Chinese cabbage into the pot.

This is our Bak Kut Teh dinner on 3 Dec, 2013, served alongside chilled organic tofu with dried meat floss, soba sauce and spring onions.

 

My pot of Bak Kut Teh is cooked with reduced soy sauce, reduced salt, reduced dark soy sauce and of course MSG-free and does not cause an aftermath of insatiable thirst.  I do love Bak Kut Teh sold outside, especially the very tasty and salty broth but I hate the aftermath of having to gulp down cups of water.

This big pot of Bak Kut Teh was enough for my brood of 3 and me for dinner and lunch the next day.

 

 

No. of times viewed = 829

Here is another sweat-free and oil splatter-free delish meat dish that I prepared for dinner yesterday.  I never knew that my oven can do so much to help me with cooking so many mess-free delish meals for my kids.

My oven-grilled pork chop tasted very much like ‘char siew’ as I added agave nectar which made the meat sweet.

I had wanted to keep 2 pieces for the girls’ lunch today but the girls walloped everything from the plate! Yep, it was that tasty 😀

So I guess I will have to think of something else for the girls’ lunch today!

 

 

No. of times viewed = 1475

I made Chicken Adobo and mashed potatoes (at the request of the girls) for dinner tonight.

It was my first time cooking Chicken Adobo, which is a Filipino dish. I saw this recipe in Nami’s Just One Cookbook the other night and since I had all the ingredients plus it was super easy to cook plus I love Apple Cider Vinegar, I emailed the recipe to my own inbox so that I will remember to cook it tonight!  Nami is my favorite Japanese recipe blogger. She is a Japanese American and she writes fantastic Japanese recipes with detailed step-by-step instructions and photos.

I adapted Nami’s recipe by reducing the soy sauce and apple cider vinegar and I added Agave Nectar, to suit my kids’ taste buds.

Ingredients:
4 chicken thighs with bone and skin. I used 3 boneless thighs with skin and one thigh with bone and skin. That was all I had in my freezer today.

SAUCE:
200ml soy sauce
1.5 cups water
200ml apple cider vinegar – I use Bragg’s and have been drinking this for over a decade
1 bulb of garlic, sliced
Freshly ground black pepper
About 1/4 cup of Agave Nectar

 

Instructions:
Rinse the chicken with water and pat dry with paper towel. Combine all the ingredients for Sauce in a large pot (I used my free pot from Melaleuca). Make sure the pot is big enough so the chicken will not overlap each other.

Bring the sauce to a boil on medium high heat.

Add the chicken and reduce the heat to medium low. Cover and cook for 30 minutes.

Flip the chicken once half way through.

In her recipe, Nami used the broiler to grill the chicken. As our broiler is at hubs’ shop, I used the oven.

Heat up oven and transfer the chicken into the oven. I placed the chicken on an oven tray lined with aluminum foil. I used a kitchen paper and dabbed some oil on it and rubbed it on the aluminum foil, so that the chicken will not stick to the foil.

Grill the chicken for 3-4 minutes on each side. Keep an eye on the chicken so it does not burn.

Meanwhile turn up the stove to high and reduce the sauce until it thickens (Be careful not to burn) – I skipped this step. Read below why I skipped it.

Serve the chicken on a plate and keep the extra sauce in a small bowl. Brush/pour the sauce right before you serve.

I kept the cooled down sauce in a pot and kept it in the fridge. With the left-over sauce, I am going to make another round of Chicken Adobo next week as the kids LOVED this AMAZING dish!

The chicken thighs sizzling in the pot of soy sauce, apple cider vinegar and garlic slices.  The aroma from the pot was HEAVENLY!  The kids just couldn’t help running into the kitchen to inhale the aroma and to check out the chicken.

Here they are, enjoying their delish Filipino Chicken Adobo with homemade mashed potato.  Cass and Alycia helped to make the mashed potato.  My mashed potato is  another appetizer that is very easy to prepare.  All you need are potatoes, fresh milk, pepper and salt.  Mash up the potatoes, mix everything together and enjoy!

Here is another very easy to prepare dish – free from oil splatter and using just a few ingredients.  You can make more sauce and store it in the refrigerator so that you can  easily prepare this dish again  on days when you are running busy. Happy trying! 🙂

 

 

No. of times viewed = 15762

This is another super easy to whip up dish that is really lip-smacking, which I’ll bet kids and adults will love – grilled honey soy sauce chicken drummets.  In my case, I replaced honey with agave nectar.  Agave nectar is a healthier alternative to sugar and honey. It has lower calories, lower GI and has medicinal properties.  I use agave nectar in my cooking and even use it as a bread spread or pancake dip.  It tastes like maltose and maple syrup.

 

 

All you need are:

1) Chicken drummets – I only had 7 in the freezer, thus this recipe is for 7 mini drummets
2) 1/4 cup honey or agave nectar
3) 2-3 tablespoons soy sauce.  I only use about 2 tablespoons as this is meant to be a kids’ dish.
4) About 2-3 teaspoons of pepper. I girls love the taste of pepper, so I used more.
5) Sliced garlic (optional)

Method:
After washing the chicken drummets, pat dry with kitchen towel.
Pour honey or agave nectar, soy sauce and pepper onto chicken drummets and mix well. You can keep the chicken drummets in a ziplock bag in the fridge. I did not use a ziplock bag but marinated the drummets in a stainless steel mixing bowl.
Place marinated drummets in fridge for a few hours or even overnight.
Place drummets on a tray lined with baking paper or aluminum foil. The part with thicker skin should face up so that it gets a nice grilled/brown color.
Pre-heat oven at 160 degrees Celsius and grill for 20 minutes or until the drummets skin turn into a nice golden color with a little tinge of burnt on the skin.
If you wish to have garlic, toss in the garlic on top of the drummets about 10 minutes before you turn off the heat.

The drummets tasted exactly like barbequed chicken and my girls gave me a 10/10 rating and A++ for this super-easy and sweat-free dish!   They are already bugging me to cook this dish again and I’ll have to get to the supermarket to get a few punnets of drummets. This time, I’ll make double or triple recipe 😀

 

 

 

No. of times viewed = 3163

The girls had been bugging me to make Japanese potato salad since months ago. I had been putting it off until their exams were over. Actually it ain’t  very difficult or very messy  to make potato salad. It is just time consuming since there are lots of peeling, cutting, boiling, mashing and mixing involved. Thankfully I have an earnest helper who volunteered to help me out 🙂

The ingredients needed are:
3 hard boiled eggs
7-8 small red onions cut thinly
5 huge potatoes – boiled and mashed. You may want to leave some unmashed for texture
1 carrot – chopped into small pieces, placed in a bowl with a little water and placed in the microwave oven for about 1 minute to half cook them. You can have it raw but I prefer to half cook it so that my fussy eaters will not complain of hardness.
Japanese mayonaise to taste
Sea salt to taste
Black pepper to taste
1 or 2 cucumbers, cut into small pieces.

 

Mix all the ingredients in a big bowl. I divided the ingredients into 2 bowls to better manage the mixing part.  1 bowl was for immediate consumption and the other bowl wrapped in cling wrap and placed in the fridge for consumption the next day.

I also grilled 2 slices of salmon fish with lots of chopped garlic, seasoned with pepper, Lea & Perrin sauce, dried Italian herbs and sea salt.

This potato salad goes well with crackers or even bread, if you are not in the mood to eat rice.   While it is very yummy and can be very addictive, it ain’t the ideal meal for weight watchers and diabetics as potatoes are very high in carbs.  I tried really hard to stop myself from taking the 2nd and 3rd helping but what the heck, a moment of neglect does not mean a lifetime of regret if this is not taken daily.  My dinner these days are really light, consisting of lots of veggie, soup and a quarter fistful amount of meat. I cook for the kids, not for myself actually.

The girls enjoyed their dinner tremendously and begged me to prepare both dishes again!  YUMS!!

 

No. of times viewed = 755