Minced Meat Noodle 2

I was experimenting DouBanJiang (Chinese bean Paste) in this minced meat noodle dish.  If you have a DouBanJiang in your fridge, did you buy the spicy one or plain one?  I saw two versions and decided on trying the plain one first because I was afraid the spicy one would be too spicy for my girls.  To spice it up, I can always add chili oil or chili paste in my bowl.

I learned this presentation from Chef Chen Kenichi as this was how he served his minced noodle in his cookbook, cool huh?  I seem to only pile it in the middle but this was a great idea from him.

I'm sharing this noodle with Presto Pasta Nights, an event created by Ruth from Once Upon a Feast.  This week host is Ruth herself! Check out her delicious round up on July, 2nd! 

Easy Baked Tilapia Fillets

This baked fish is super easy even for busy working mom or stay at home mom.  Total time in preparation and cooking is less than 20 minutes.  It looks like it has crusted top, but it has not, all it has on top is just spices and salt.

I used Italian herbs seasoning because I couldn't use Teriyaki sauce or Chinese seasoning in this as it needed to be paired with my macaroni pasta.  You can say it was a western dinner night.  :)

Peanut Butter Banana Cupcakes with Junior Mints

I had relatives coming over to my house and I wanted to bake something for breakfast.  I really liked my peanut butter banana cake so why not?  I made it into cupcakes because it was easier to consume and I had the idea of using the Junior Mints as decoration on top.  What do you think?  Cute or not?  Since we would be leaving to Yellowstone National Park the next day, cupcake was an excellent idea for traveling.  I just put the leftover in a ziplock bag and we could eat it in the car.  They liked it and my girls would choose to eat this instead of croissant.

The recipe can be found at my post Peanut Butter Banana Cake.  Just instead of using a square pan, you lined the cupcakes pan with cupcakes paper and fill it 2/3 full and decorate the middle with a Junior Mint.  Bake in the same temperature but for only 20 minutes.  Let it cool completely before storing.

Watermelon Soup

Do you know all part of watermelon can be consumed?  I know the white part of the watermelon can be used to boil soup and the soup is actually healthy for us.  Watermelon is a cooling food so this soup is best to consume during the hot summer days, especially good to relieves heatiness.  This soup is sweet on its' own and you only need to season it with a little salt to bring out the overall flavor.  I saw the Chinese used the white part of the watermelon in boiling soup from the Chinese's cooking show and was really intriguing.  So, when I cut the watermelon, I saved the white part to try it myself.  I discard the green skin but I read that some people use it to make salad.  I saved it in portions in ziplock bags and freeze it for later use.  Just defroze it a day before in the refrigerator. 

This soup is really delicious, very sweet and has the cooling effect.  Watermelon is in season during summer days so what a great way to utilize most part of the watermelon eh?  It is similar to the sweet soup came from fruit such as apple or snow pears.  Since this soup is very cooling, it is not advisable for pregnant women to consume.

Stir Fried Macaroni with Broccoli and Tuna

This meal was created when I took out the fish fillet to defroze in the refrigerator and ended out too lazy to do a Chinese stir-fry dinner for the night.  I loved baked fish because it was easier and healthier.  The baked fish above was really easy which I will provide the recipe in a later post.  Since I was not cooking rice, I had to come out with a dish to complement my American style baked fish .  I came out with stir-fried macaroni pasta and added broccoli and tuna in canned.  I did a similar pasta dish before but with a different pasta.  This pasta dish alone was healthy because it had broccoli, tuna and extra virgin olive oil. 

Have you tried turkey bacon before?  I tried it at Denny's when I ordered my healthy breakfast (egg white scrambles, turkey bacon and chicken patty).   I was hooked since then because it was really crispy and good and less fat than the original bacon.  I would recommend you to cook the bacon in a convection microwave oven if you have one, it was really crispy and most of the oil oozes out during the cooking process.

I'm sharing this noodle with Presto Pasta Nights, an event created by Ruth from Once Upon a Feast.  This week host is The Sweet Kitchen. Check out her delicious round up on June, 18th!

Chinese Water Chestnut Cake

My friend gave me three packets of water chestnut flour recently.  I wanted to try this Chinese water chestnut cake for a long time and finally I got my chance.  The above is my Chinese water chestnut cake without the bits of chestnuts.  I didn't have the water chestnuts but decided to make it anyway.  It turned out pretty good I think, tasted like cold jelly straight from the refrigerator.  I will certainly play with this recipe in the future because I saw others people water chestnut cake in yellow color instead of white.

This cake is actually served during Chinese Lunar New Year by Chinese, depended on where they are located.  I don't think we Malaysian eat this during Chinese New Year.  I pan-fried this with the equal mixture of flour: rice flour.  The batter was really crispy!

Stir Fried Pork with Long Beans

This dish was created with something I had in a restaurant here.  They stir-fried it with a kind of Chinese preserved vegetable (usually come in small packet selling for few cents each and slightly spicy, gosh what does it called!).  Anyway, I omitted here because I hardly buy Chinese preserved vegetable.   I read that it is best to eat less of the preserved food, more so if it is from China.  I even stay away from the salted fish and used only dried anchovies as substitute.  The motto for me is "If I don't buy, then I don't have to cook with it, thus we don't have to eat it", with this motto, we certainly eat less of the preserved and salted food.  It is hard to resist from not buying all the times, so once in a blue moon, I gave in.  Do you all stay away from certain unhealthy food? 

Peanut Butter Banana Cake

I am not sure whether you have noticed.  I have been baking lots of banana cake lately, ranging from just plain, marble, chocolate and now I am trying with peanut butter!  I needed variety so that even though I have been baking almost the same thing but it tasted different.  As I was figuring what else I can put into the banana cake or how to make it different and peanut butter came to mind.

I added chocolate chips per my daughters request, but I didn't add much.  You can add more if you like.  Since the top was kind of bland, I decorated it with heart shape chocolate chips design.  It turned out well don't you think?

This turned out great!  We all loved it and we could definitely taste the peanut butter in it even though it was subtle.   Evy even ask me to make it again.  If you are a fan of my banana cake recipe, give this a try too, providing of course you have no peanut allergy in your household.

Chi Ku Teh (Chicken Dark Herbal Soup)

Bak Ku Teh, a popular herbal soup that is dark in color that uses pork ribs, meat, etc.  But there is another version that uses chicken.  This is my first time uses chicken drumsticks for this soup because I believed the pork ribs made the soup sweeter.  After trying this, I can say it was good with chicken too, the drumsticks tasted good with the herbal flavor in it.  I loved to add boiled eggs and taufu pok (fried beancurd puff) in mine.  I was planning to create a marble eggs in this but decided against it at the last minute because I was afraid a piece of the egg shell might fall off and my daughter might accidentally drank it.  Thus no beautiful marbling effect with my boiled eggs here.

For this chicken dark herbal soup, I just used the A1 Bak Kut Teh premix that easily available at any supermarket in Malaysia.  I always bought some of these to bring back here whenever I am back in Malaysia. Got to stock up on food that I can't get it here right?  I noticed there were two types, one was without the Chinese herbs, just the premix and was selling at a cheaper rate.  The other one was in bigger packaging and included some Chinese herbs in it. I bought the one with herbs and just followed the packet direction in cooking this.  My hubby bought some fried yu tiao from Denver and we had this soup with some yu tiao just liked how I used to eat back in Malaysia.

Spicy Long Beans with Minced Chicken

This is one easy and delicious Malaysian dish we often have at home.  At home, we normally cook it with home made sambal belacan and pounded dried shrimps.  Living in the U.S., I managed to find a cut short for this dish many years ago.  I combined the shrimp paste in soy oil (Thai product) and fish sauce (to substitute belacan) to recreate this dish.  Now making this dish is so convenient, just open a bottle!

I finally saw some fresh looking long beans at my Asian store here, so I grabbed a big bunch as I haven't cooked with it for a long time.  Evy loved this long beans too.  If you don't have children at home, feel free to add bird eye chili or chili paste/sambal to make it spicier.  You can use ground pork/beef if that's what you have a home.