Beef with egg and rice - Japanese & Korean Inspired

This is one of the dishes I enjoy preparing for my family as it is not only easy for the cook, it also makes the family happy. A win-win situation! How ideal!

It is also a versatile dish as it works for other meats like pork and chicken.

Ingredients
- beef (I bought the shabu shabu type in the frozen section. I like it because it is sliced thinly for me already and it has a bit of fats. You can also get pork/chicken)
- Korean/ Japanese sauces for marinade
- Onions
- Eggs
- Rice
- Lettuce (saves on cooking as you can serve this raw. Woo hoo!!)

Steps
1) Marinade the beef for at least 3 hours with the Korean/ Japanese Sauce. I used this last night when I cooked this dish.. But other times, I usually use the Japanese marinades. For me, I use whatever I have in my fridge and is in need of clearance.

2) Slice up one large yellow onion. Last night, I used shallots as I didn't have yellow onions at home. So once again, its still fine. Don't beat yourself up just because you lack an ingredient. Cooking is meant to be fun and creative. If you lack something, just be flexible and think of another substitute. The shallots work beautifully too!

3) Add butter into the pan and then add your onions. Caramelise first by tossing it around. I add a splash for Jap sauce on it too. It's to quicken the process of cooking the onions and making it tastier.

4) Add the sliced beef in it. This would not take too long. You would not want to overcook the beef and dry it out. I pour all the marinades in as well so that there will be gravy for my rice.

5) Fry the egg with butter on another pan separately. Sunny-side up!

6) Finely chopped the lettuce

7) Lastly, assemble everything together

8) Add your rice, sunny side up egg, lettuce on one side with the beef on top of it to cook the lettuce a little. Then top the rice up with some Japanese seasonings which I bought and gravy from the beef.

 (By the way, I used normal rice instead. Save cost and trouble from going out to buy specially for Japanese rice. To my hubby and children, it wont make a difference. Still tasty and enjoyable!)

Enjoy!

Chinese Wolfberry Leaves (Kou Kee) Anchovies and Minced Pork Soup

This is one of the soup I would crave for once in a while. However, it is not often you find the kou kee leaves. So if I happen to see it, usually, I would grab it!

Decided to cook this soup today when I glanced at my window and saw an imminent thunderstorm approaching as dark clouds loom the sky.

It's a very easy and nutritious soup to cook for the whole family! However, some ingredients may not be the normal stuff you find in this kind of soup. I tweaked it according to what I have at home and how I wish to use it to compliment my dinner dishes.

Ingredients
- Dried Anchovies
- Salted Egg
- Dried Chinese Wolfberries
- Chinese Wolfberries Leaves (Kou Kee Choy)
- Minced Pork soak with a bit of water, soya sauce, white pepper, sesame oil, fish sauce, salt (to loosed up the pork so that its all disintegrated)
- Shitake Mushrooms

Steps
1) Boil the dried anchovies in a pot of water
2) Add the Chinese Wolfberries in after a while
3) Add the Shitake Mushrooms. (Reason why I added this is not only because I have it in my fridge but because I feel its a good balance to offset the saltiness of the soup from the anchovies)
4) Separate the salted egg yolk with the egg white. Cook the egg yolk and break it up into the soup.
5) Then pour the egg white over the soup while its still boiling
6) Put the leaves in
7) Finally, pour the minced pork in
8) Off the fire so that the leaves and pork do not overcook
9) Taste it before serving

I did not add the usual egg in as I will be cooking fried egg for dinner. So I didn't want dinner to have so many eggs. So I just added a salted egg in for this dish. But of course, you can also throw in a beaten egg just before you off the fire. And if you like century eggs, you can consider adding this so it will become a triple egg dish but a soup version.

Anyway, enjoy!

Water Chestnut Egg Drop Dessert

This is the time of the year where most people should take extra care of their health since Chinese New Year is coming and there will be lots of 'heaty' food going around. Moreover, the weather has been very unusual this year with the temperature going on an average of 25-27 degrees in the morning. It's perfect and I haven't stopped thanking God for the nice weather so far. However, it's maybe because of this change where its cooler and dryer, that my children as well as myself are down with itchy throat.

So, I thought of what ingredients are in season now and what I should be cooking to make my throat feel better.

Decided on doing something with water chestnuts since its the Chinese New Year season. You can sure find it. So check out this simple dessert for the whole family!


Ingredients
- one bag of water chestnuts
- one egg
- rock sugar
- pandan leaves
- corn starch
- gingko nuts (optional)

Steps
1) Peel the skin of the water chestnuts (This is the most troublesome step for this dish!) and cut them in small pieces.

2) Boil about 4-5 bowls of water. Add one rock sugar in it as well as pandan leaves.

 

 

3) Then add the water chestnuts and gingko (optional) in. Let it cook over medium low heat. Cook it till you are satisfied with the taste and the quantity.

4) Put corn starch to thicken it a little (optional)

5) Put in beaten egg before turning off the fire. Stir it so that the egg is dissolve and cooked nicely.

You can eat this warm or chilled. Up to you!

 

Enjoy!

 

Egg Omelette with Bean Sprouts and prawns

If you like egg omelette and bean sprouts as much as I do, then how about adding them both? So if you are eating alone or just in a company of two, this dish with rice is enough to fill you up!

Ingredients
-Bean Sprouts
-Eggs (beaten)
-Prawns
-Onions
-Spring Onions
-Fish Sauce
-Soya sauce (optional)
-cooking wine(optional)
-white pepper

Steps
1) Heat oil in the frying pan. Then throw in the onions. Fry till translucent
2) Throw in the bean sprouts and toss it. Add a few splashes of fish sauce and cooking wine
3) Then lastly throw in the prawns and toss a few times before switching off the fire. Cook the prawns such that it just turned cook. Watch it and not make it overcook.
4) Pour all the ingredients into a bowl of the beaten eggs and stir them, mixing it well. Add 1tsp of soya sauce if you like. But you can skip this since fish sauce has its own saltiness already. You can also add white pepper too. So mix everything up.
5) Put in the spring onions into it

6) Finally pour this mixture into a heated up frying pan with oil to cook the egg

7) Turn both ways to fry it till nicely coloured

Enjoy!

Heston Blumenthal - The Perfect Poached Egg

Always wanted to cook poached egg but hit and miss each time you try? Well, Heston Blumenthal has a fool-proof and interesting method to a perfect poached egg.

Enjoy!

Curry Puff

This has been one of my favourite snacks since young. But it has been growing increasingly expensive- from 40 cents to the present, $1.50.

Anyway, thank God my helper makes quite good curry puff and so it was a great opportunity learning from her so that in future, I can make for myself or even for parties. Definitely useful to learn!

Ingredients (for making 15)

4 potatoes
3 big red onions
7 shallots
curry leaves
3 packets of chicken thighs (can use breasts too or mixture)
5 eggs
Planta margarine
rice flour
plain flour
sugar
salt
water
meat curry powder

As you can see, the ingredients are quite straight forward and easy to get. If you cant find curry leaves, it is ok. Its just to make the filling more fragrant. And also if you are abroad and do not have the specific Planta brand margarine, it is also ok. Don't kick yourself or skip this recipe just because you cannot get those 2 items. As for the rest, I am confident you can get it!

Steps
1) Skin the potatoes and dice them. Then, put them in boiling water to cook. Drain them out after its cook

2) Then dice the shallots and big red onions

3) Put the chicken thighs in boiling water to cook them before dicing them up

4) Boil the eggs till they are hard boil. Then you cut them up in quarters, lengthwise.

5) Then pluck out the curry leaves and wash them.

Now, the tricky part is the dough. There are basically two layers of dough in curry puffs- the water dough and the oil dough.

6) Water dough - put 200g plain flour into a mixing bowl, together with 1 egg, 60ml of water, 1TB of rice flour and 1 tsp of salt. Mix and knead till its like that.

7) Oil dough- put 100g plain flour, 85g of planta margarine, 1 TB of rice flour, 1 tsp of salt. Mix and knead.

8) Then weight the water dough and roughly divide the weight to 15 portions so that you can cut it up and distribute evenly. Do the same for the oil dough and divide them into 15 equal portions. I used the weighing machine to be exact.

This will turn out to be a huge curry puff. If you prefer smaller size ones, then I suggest when splitting up the dough into equal portions, you can maybe divide them into 20-25 equal portions instead of 15.

9) Then take one water dough and flatten it with your hand, then put the oil dough in it.

10) Wrap the water dough over the oil dough before flattening both down.

11) Then use a rolling pin to flatten and roll it horizontally and vertically.Then just make it like a ball and put aside. Do for all 15 of them by placing the oil dough inside the water dough.

12) To cook the ingredients, have all this stand by

Diced onions, shallots, potatoes, chicken, curry leaves

13) With a little bit of oil in the frying pan, add the shallots first. Fry till its fragrant and then put in the red onions. Do it step by step.

14) After both shallots and onions are translucent, throw in the diced chicken and potatoes

15) Stir and mix it up before adding the curry powder. For the curry powder, put 1 TB of curry powder in a bowl first with a little water to dissolve the powder before pouring into the frying pan with the ingredients.

16) Add curry leaves, salt, sugar, white pepper to taste after stirring and mixing. If the colour looks too pale and you like spice, then add one more TB of curry powder. If you find that the potatoes is still quite sturdy looking, add a little water to the pan so that the potatoes can go mushy. Cook till the water/gravy has been absorbed by the ingredients.

potatoes still in blocks-straight edges

That is what you want to attain- mushiness with no gravy.

potatoes gone soft and edges are rounded and outcome is mushy

17) Once turned mushy, off the stove and leave it to cool for about 15 mins.

18) Then get ready to start wrapping

19) First roll the dough to a rough circle.  then place the egg and the ingredients on top before wrapping.

20) Then you just wrap them up. Twirl and pinch at the sides to seal. Do this for all your doughs.

21) I cut up plastic bags to wrap my curry puffs as I only wanted to fry these curry puffs the next day. So for storage, I wrap the curry puffs in plastic and put in the freezer.

22) The next day, when I open it up, it will look like this

23) To fry, I used peanut oil. Make sure when frying, the oil is enough to cover the curry puffs.

24) Fry till its golden brown

You can vary this recipe with whatever ingredients you like. Other variation can be sardines. You can just get the canned sardines and fry with shallots and onions. Main thing is to make the ingredients like a paste with no gravy so that it will not soak through the dough.

Enjoy this delicious snack! 

Croque Madame Muffins

Enjoy this simple, tasty breakfast or snack for the family!!

However, if you really love eggs that have runny yolk at the end of the day, use less time then what she said in the video as I followed accordingly and my yolk was still dried up after that.

Nevertheless, its still a very enjoyable food to prepare!