Stir-fried Sweet Potato Vermicelli

Sweet potato vermicelli is a gluten free noodle usually found as an appetizer or side dish in the Korean restaurant.  I was first introduced to this noodle in a Korean household where I was invited for dinner.  It so happened that the family's parents came to visit them from Korea and her mom cooked up a feast for us.  It was love at first sight when I first tried the sweet potato noodle or Japchae in Korean.  I loved the chewy texture that this noodle provided as compared to the usual Asian style noodle that I had before.  It was delectable and it was fairly easy to make.  You can purchase the sweet potato vermicelli at the Asian supermarket and just followed the direction at the back of the packet to cook up this noodle dish or Japchae!

Spicy Szechuan Fish

A co-worker gave me a packet of Szechuan fish premixed to try and told me that it was very good. As I loved spicy food and I also liked Szechuan fish, I gladly tried it at home.  Since I had some Szechuan peppers at home, I added that for the numbing effect.  I also added non-GMO tofu, organic romaine lettuce, organic portobello mushroom and some cilantro.  I used Swai for this, but you can also use Tilapia or Cod fish.  The rest I just followed the instructions at the back of the premixed packet.  Definitely very spicy and numbing, very good serving it with white Jasmine rice.  Enjoy!

Golden Oak Shiitake Spaghetti

I bought a box of Golden Oak Shiitake Mushroom the other day and was wondering how to prepare it.  I wanted to taste the mushroom and wanted to make a clean and natural one dish meal to compliment the mushroom and I thought of this pasta dish.

I used the thin spaghetti for this, garlic, one box of the golden oak shiitake mushroom and green onion, very simple with minimalist ingredients.  I cooked it with extra virgin olive oil and seasoned it with sea salt and black pepper.  Very simple and yet very tasty, I was surprised at my own skill as well.  Hahaha.....

Mushroom Tuna Thin Spaghetti

I created this recipe just because I had to really use up the organic button mushroom that I bought few days ago.  I also saw 4 canned of tuna in waters that I would have to use before it expired in 2018.  I know tuna was good in spaghetti with a little lemon juice added, so this was the best way to use up my tuna and mushroom.  I stocked up some Non-GMO thin spaghetti, spaghetti and linguine when it were on sales the last time.  I bought 2 bottled of Non-GMO spaghetti sauces too for the really lazy moment or quick fix.  I figured my elder daughter should be able to boil a package of spaghetti and heat up a bottle of spaghetti sauce for herself and little sister if needed to.  Perhaps I need to make some meat balls and freeze it for their convenience.

Oh yeah, if you have noticed my recipes recently, I liked to use both the Himalayan pink salt and sea salt together.  I thought in this way I would get the best of the 2 different minerals that were found in these 2 different salts.

Crispy Shrimp Chili Shrimps Fried Rice

This was one of my lazy lunch.  I had to eat and I have no food in the refrigerator.  Luckily I always make sure my refrigerator has eggs, frozen veggie and frozen shrimps.  Hence, this shrimps fried rice to the rescue.  Shrimp is easy to thaw and with some leftover rice, fried rice is an easy one dish meal.

I found the Malaysian's Spicy Tiny Shrimp Sambal by Mama's Delights at the Denver's Asian market so of course I had to buy it regardless of the price tag.  I couldn't be choosy when they were none to begin with right?  This sambal added a little spice and fragrant to the fried rice and we really enjoyed it.

I cooked this very easily, just add the spicy tiny shrimp sambal, soy sauce, salt, a little sugar and finish it off with white pepper.

Chili Crab Claws!

While I was shopping at Sprouts one day with my elder daughter, I saw these gorgeous crab claws on sales for $5.99/lb.  The cheapest I have seen for sales was $3.99/lb.  But these claws looked big and tempting and it was Chinese New Year.  So, I asked my Evy, do you want to eat some crab claws and she said sure.  Hence, crab claws it is!

I had Chili Crabs in mind when I bought this and since I wanted a really easy recipe so I looked online and adapted the recipe from Food.com.  Of course I made some changes to suit what I had at home and viola, a chili crab claws was created.  We had it with bread as the gravy was so great to mix with bread (I was too lazy to drive 25 minutes away to an Asian market to buy mantau/steamed buns and deep-fried it, thus the alternative.).  Surprisingly my little Edda who was not so keen about the idea of Chili Crab, enjoyed it a lot.  I was quite surprised actually but looking at them enjoying their crab claws really made me happy.  They even requested me to buy more crab next time!  Hahaha...

Chinese New Year Feast 2017

I am blessed to be invited to the Chinese New Year Feast of 2017.  Blessed with so much delicious and luxurious food to celebrate with co-workers and friends.  When you were faced with so much great food, what would you do but to dig in!  :)  Thank you boss for this divine and scrumptious meal.

This crab was super delicious!  Finger licking good!

Steamed fish for nian nian you yu.

Lobsters! 

Deep-fried Quails, my love!

Steamed Chicken, tradition.

Stir-fried Leek with squids, so that every day you get to count money.  Haha...

Golden Shrimps to Welcome the Chinese New Year!

Happy Chinese New Year and Gong Xi Fa Cai to those who celebrated!!  May this new year brings all of us much joy, peace of mind, great health, good luck and fortune!  I had experience a lot over the past three years.  Hell in 2014 and 2015 and basically had my world turned upside down.  Things that I have never thought could happen to me, happened to me and I had to wake up and be strong for myself and both of my girls.  Emotional roller coasters that I had to overcome and the responsibilities that I had to bear to ease the transition for my girls.  Glad to say that everything worked up well in God's hands.  Everything flown into place with the help of the invisible hands and the universe and I am very blessed.  We settled ourselves and move on in 2016.  That was the reason for the lack of postings all these years, I didn't have the luxury of staying at home and inventing and experimenting with new recipes anymore.  My time was limited to sending my girls to school and back, taking care of them and work, work, and more work.  My day off I just want to rest and/or bring my girls out to eat and do stuff.  I finally got more half day off for myself and spending more time with my girls and get to cook more home-cooked meal which was great!  I needed a break and learned to truly appreciate those working and full-time moms. It was not easy.

Okay, back to this recipe.  I made this super-easy deep-fried Golden Shrimps recently for a CNY party.  One bag of 2 lb extra large shrimps, shelled but with the tail on.  Made some cuts on the side of the shrimps to make it straight.  Then season the shrimps with sea salt, black pepper, organic no-salt seasonings from Kirkland, sesame oil and a little sweet potato starch.  Mix well.  And then wrap each in the wanton wrapper, seal with flour/water glue, set aside and finish the rest.  Lastly, deep-fry until golden brown and cooked through.  Serve with Thai sweet chili sauce.  Enjoy!

Baked Cheesy Rotini

I hardly cooked a proper Chinese meal these days.  Hmmm...not sure why!  Perhaps when I have an off day, I wanted to bring my girls out.  It might be also it will be too hot to cook at home during the Summer when my house doesn't have an air-conditional.  I didn't want to warm up my house and sweat myself when wok frying on the stove.  If I do cook, simple one dish meal would surface. Maybe one dish rice dish finished in a rice cooker is another idea.  Or just a simple noodle soup with frozen dumplings, green veggie and an egg throw in.  Something simple like that or just a bowl of fresh salad with dressing.

This pasta dish was actually not quite simple to make as I have to precook the pasta first and then set it aside and then cook the ground chicken (with chicken breast that I have to cut and ground myself) with tomato sauce and then set it aside.  Before I assemble the poultry tomato sauce and pasta with cheese in layers before finishing it off with a cheese layer on top and then baked it in a preheated 350'F oven for 20 minutes and then broiled it for 3 minutes to brown the cheese to finish it off.  I probably won't be making this anytime soon as it was quite tedious.  Ha!

Butter Parmesan Linguine

This is one simple one dish meal to prepare for your family.  I like the simplicity of it and yet so delicious.  All you need is some leftover chicken breast meat, frozen veggie, linguine or any kind of dried pasta, butter and shredded Parmesan cheese.

I like the frozen broccoli and cauliflower mixed as it matched well with the pasta but you can certainly used any kind of veggie you have at home, frozen peas and carrots work well too.

Korean Fish Cake and Italian Sausages

I had some Italian sausage in the refrigerator and thought that Korean fish cake and Italian sausage would make a good pair, so this dish was created.  You can add some sliced jalapeno too if you prefer it spicy.   My girls only picked up the sausages and fish cakes to eat and ignored the onion and carrot, haha...  I guess you can omit the onion and carrot if you have picky eaters at home too.  This is definitely a great side dish to eat with rice!

Long Grain & Wild Rice Chicken Soup

I got the idea of making this chicken rice soup from a sample lady working at Costco.  She used only 4 ingredients, chicken base, organic no-salt seasoning, Seeds of Change's quinoa and brown rice and canned chicken breast.  Just add everything with water and viola! 

I remembered I have packets of Uncle Bean instant rice in my pantry and some leftover chicken meat so I bought the Kirkland Organic No-Salt Seasoning and organic chicken base to make this.  Of course for me got to add some vegetable to make it more balance and colorful!  To think about it, instead of chicken noodle soup, you can always make this chicken rice soup whenever someone is not feeling well at home and just wanted some chicken soup eh?

Cheesy Sausage Rotini with Broccoli and Cauliflower

My little Edda told me she wanted to eat cheese pasta and my Evy told me she has a craving for sausages.  Hence, this dish was created to satisfy both of my girls.  As for me, I wanted some veggies in every meal so of course I had to add some broccoli and cauliflower into the pasta to make this one dish meal more balance.  Very easy to make and delicious to eat, try to make it yourself!

These days I found frozen vegetables more suitable to my lifestyle.  With work and taking care of my girls, sometimes I just don't have time to cook an elaborate meal anymore.  I am not a wasteful person and I hate to throw away rotten vegetable but I found myself doing that quite often because I just didn't have the time to cook it.  So, frozen veggies work best for me and it is so convenient too and I don't have to worry about wastage.

Korean Rice Cake Soup

My original plan was to make a seaweed tofu miso soup with added Korean fish cake.  And then I remembered I still have half a packet of the fresh rice cake in the refrigerator and then the AHA moment, why not I just mixed it in together with the soup?  Now I had a one dish meal ready to consume hot in this cold weather day and I didn't have to worry about cooking the rice.  This makes one excellent meatless meal as well.

The fresh rice cake is good in stir-fry, spicy with gochujang or non-spicy with soy sauce and so good in soup too, so remember to grab a packet of this whenever you are in a Korean supermarket, it can certainly comes in handy.

Caution:  Don't overcook the rice cake, otherwise it won't be chewy anymore, it will expand and become soft.

Stir-fried Soy Shrimps

Shrimps have been so cheap lately, every supermarkets have it on sale, as cheap as $5 a pound for x-large or large shrimps, it got to make me wonder, why?!  I checked my bag of shrimps and it said farm raised from CA.  It made me feel safer because at least it is not farm raised from China or Vietnam.  But seriously, is anything safe to eat these days?  Fishes from Pacific Ocean is contaminated by the Japan radiation.  Farm raised fishes or shrimps that were produced by China, Vietnam, India, etc were said to be very dirty because it were fed with feces from pigs or chicken.  I don't know man... it seem like I either eat organic or become a vegetarian.  Eat more veggies should be the better choice for now as eating more variety of fruit and vegetable is good for us.  We can have occasional seafood, poultry or meat so that the diet is more balance but more towards vegetarian for future health.  Reading as some of the chickens and pigs from the US are going to ship to China to process and package before it ship back to the US to sell to the US consumers, I don't know man.  As the China guidelines and quality control might be in question.  If you are what you eat, and what you eat matter, what should you be eating?

Spicy Kimchi Soup with Dumplings and Veggie

I cooked this on a cold snowy day.  I couldn't think of a better way to warm up our bodies but a hot and spicy kimchi soup!  Of course just a kimchi soup was not enough, it got to pack with the other healthy ingredients to make it a one dish soup.  Serve well with rice.  And for the leftover soup, add in some sweet potato starch noodle noodle to make it into another meal!

Stir-Fried Rice Sticks with Korean Fish Cake

I bought a packet of rice cake just because I had it in a restaurant and thought it was pretty good and I should buy it and cook at home.  Since I had the last 2 pieces of Korean fish cake in the freezer so I thought why not used it in this dish and so this dish was created.  I had some bean sprouts and chives from frying Char Kwey Tiao just two days before so I used that and added some carrot.  My girls loved it and it is good with Sriracha sauce too!  Just spice it up a little ya!

This is how the rice cake looks like from the package.  I cut each strip into half for easier consumption.  It was chewy and delicious.  I have never have it in soup or hot pot before, wonder how it would taste like?  Perhaps next time I should use this in mala hot pot and try it myself huh?

Porridge with Peanuts

I liked to save the roasted duck necks to make soup or porridge.  Just to let it fragrant the broth or porridge.  Cooking the porridge in a rice cooker is so easy as well, I just throw the ingredients in in the morning and let it cook itself and I had myself lunch and dinner ready.

Added toasted peanuts and sesame seeds plus cilantro kick it up a notch.  It just made the porridge super delicious!  I guess it is also my excuse to eat more sesame seeds.

Thai Basil Chicken Fried Rice

My girls and I loved the Thai basil fried rice that a restaurant serve here.  So,  I tried to recreate it at home.  I think I need to add more basil and jalapeno because it was not spicy at all (perhaps jalapeno now is not spicy?) and it lacked the fragrant of basil.  I will need to attempt this recipe again with double the amount of jalapeno and Thai basil!

You can replace the chicken with shrimp, beef or pork or make it vegetarian, it's all up to your preference.

Siew York (Baked Pork Belly) with Chive and Onion

I remembered eating the leftover siew york in sweet dark soy sauce when I was little.  It was either a leftover Chinese New Year dish that my late grandma used to make or from my mom.  So, when presented with a leftover siew york or charsiew, I would think of this dish.

You can buy the siew york or char siew at the Asian supermarkets or restaurants, but if you want to make your own, why not?