Penang Style Char Kuey Teow

This is my version of Penang Char Kuey Teow.  For the past ten years, I have never wanted to share this recipe of mine even though it had been asked by my readers. But today, I decided to share it so that for those living overseas who misses this Penang's hawker delight can cook them at home.

I have never measure when I cook this dish and I always cook in individual portion because my little one wants it non-spicy at all.  My elder one wants it mild and we adult like it spicy! Some like it more eggs, no chive, etc.  So, I always cook in individual portion to suit each other taste bud and preference.

You can add lap cheong, sliced fish cake, sea hum or sliced fish balls if you wish.  I would love to have some lap cheong but the ingredient lists scared me and I read that wax meat can cause cancer.  I am trying to eat as clean as possible and away from processed food if I can.  I already switching most processed food consumed in this house to be organic or non-GMO certified. Have to take care of our bodies so that our bodies can take care of us right?  It's common sense, if you keep feeding your body with junk and poison, what do you think it is going to repay you with?  Think before you buy!

Kimchi Fried Rice Easy Version

I just made a new batch of kimchi and with a new batch of kimchi and some leftover rice, I couldn't help myself but to whip up some delectable kimchi fried rice!

This is an easy version because it has no Gochujang (Korean chili paste) in it because my gochujang turned to a rock paste in the refrigerator!  I must have left it for a long time for the paste to turn into a rock huh?  Guess I haven't been making any Korean food since last year because of some personal issue. Anyway, in the trash it went and this version is purely using the juices from the kimchi, more probiotic huh?  Haha...

Cilantro Pesto Chicken Small Shells

One pot dish that can last for lunch and dinner is an easier way to feed the family.  I would just make sure that I have one protein and lots of vegetable for a well balance diet.  It is really healthy with this pesto too as cilantro can move heavy metal out of your body and you will get the benefits of garlic, pecan, extra virgin olive oil and coconut oil into your body.  Note that I used sea salt and Himalayan salt instead of table salt.  If you are still using the table salt, please google about it and starts making the change.

This dish is really easy and delicious, try it and feedback to me ya!  I would love to hear/read about it!  :)

Pan-Fried Chicken Patties

I bought some all-natural ground chicken the other day when it was on sale for buy one gets one free.  And I thought why not tried a new recipe and made some pan-fried patties with it.  Then, the question of how to season it to make it delicious?  I thought of the bottle of Lee Kum Kee char siew sauce that I have in the refrigerator and set up to give it a try.

Verdict, really fragrant and flavorful.  The combination is sweet and salty at the same time and you could see some dark brown spot on the patties from caramelization.

Comfort Chicken Noodle Soup

Chicken noodle soup to the rescue!!  My girls were sick for a couple days of tummy aches, fever and cough and what a mommy to do in such a case?  Besides making some ginger brown sugar tea, I also cooked them their comfort chicken noodle soup!  My Asian girls don't like the comfort porridge when Asian eat when they were sick, instead they prefer the American comfort food when they were sick.  So, I would make sure I add in all the healing properties ingredients such as ginger, garlic, onion, cabbage and carrot!  I minced or diced it finely so that they wouldn't notice and would just eat it.

I only had spaghetti in my pantry instead of other kind of pasta, hence I torn those into 1 inch strips and made it more fun for them to eat.  They enjoyed every bit of it!  This would make a great lunch box for their school as well.

Cream Cheese Shrimps Spaghetti

I was not supposed to cook this pasta dish that day.  I wanted to use the spaghetti to cook an Asian noodle dish.  But I was out of fresh greens and only left with frozen peas and carrots which I always stock up for fried rice.  As I looked through my ingredients, I only had some shrimps, frozen peas and carrots, garlic and some scallion, how to cook an Asian noodle with these ingredients?  Then, I went to look at my refrigerator again and noticed the 1/2 cream cheese that I used before and the whole milk that I had.  So, tada, I could make a Western dish out of these ingredients and thus this dish was created.  It was well liked by my girls and we even had leftover for them to bring to their school for lunch.

Chicken with Cabbage

Since I started helping my friend in her restaurant, I don't have much time to cook.  Hence, less update compared to before.  Also because of that, my cooking has been much easier and preferably one dish meal.  The veggies that I bought these days, also have longer refrigerator life such as cabbage, celery, napa cabbage and romaine lettuce.  I made this dish because I was left with a bowl of glass vermicelli from the previous hot pot/steamboat dinner.  Guess who dish out most of the glass vermicelli to eat? Haha...if you guess my girls, you were right!  :)

Jalfrezi Chicken

Another easy one pot dish to be shared with my readers.  The only work is to chop the drumsticks into pieces, or save the work and just use the whole drumsticks.  One bottle of Seeds of Change Jalfrezi and a canned of Garbanzo beans/ chick peas and you are done.  My girls loved the garbanzo beans in it and kept scooping it out to eat.  If you want, you can add chunk of carrots too!  No harm in adding some veggies when you see fit.  Enjoy it with brown rice or Jasmine rice!

Stir Fried Shrimps with Green Beans

This is one of our favorite green bean dishes, besides the one that cooked with sambal belacan. Sometimes I cooked it without adding shrimps because it had dried shrimps in it.  But adding shrimps certainly made it more balance.

The trick to cook a crunchy and green color green bean is you need to fry it in oil first.  You can deep-fry it for better result.  But I usually trying to save oil and just stir-fry it in oil instead of deep-fry it.  This dish is very easy to make and I hope you like it as much as us.

Chili Black Bean Chicken

Sigh, it does come at a time when I have no idea what to cook anymore.  I like to try new things, cook new food instead of the same old same old.  Furthermore, I can't post the same recipe again in my blog so I had to be creative!  Colorful super-food will always be my priority in preparing my food, the above is just a usual home cook meal.

Hijiki Seaweed Cold Side

I have to eat seaweed regularly to keep my Hypothyroidism under control.  2-3 times a week is sufficient for me.  The most regular seaweed that I consume is wakame, cook in miso tofu soup.  I also add wakame when I prepare my kimchi ramen, any chance I have for seaweed, I would use it.  When I am too lazy to make the miso soup, I will switch to Hijiki seaweed since this can be prepared pretty easily.  Right now, I would do a blood test once a year when I visit my OB/GYN to see if there is any changes.  I noticed that if the reason of your hypothyroidism is the lack of iodine, you can easily modify your diet to keep it under control.  For me,  the regular consumption of seaweed really helped.  It might not be for everyone but it works for me.

Turmeric Spiced Chicken

This dish was me trying on something new.  I was inspired by Phong Hong's Chicken Garam Kunyit and wanted to give it a try.  But knowing me, I didn't go and shop for the ingredients but just made use or substitute what I had at home, this dish came out looking nothing like the post that I was inspired with.  I think using the chicken breast in my part was a mistake as the meat didn't turn out juicy and tender.  For this dish, the skinless and boneless chicken thigh would be much preferred.  Oh well... Certainly learnt from my mistake.  I still want to thanks Phong Hong for the recipe though!  :-)

Baby Bok Choy Kimchi

When I went to a Korean BBQ buffet, there was one vegetable kimchi that I really liked and that was bok choy kimchi.  I was surprised at how good it tasted and I always want to make it in the back of my mind. This is a short cut version as no glutinous rice paste was used as well as no food processor.  So, no onion, no apple and no pear.  As you know, I am famous for the short-cut version.  However, adding fruit and onion would provide additional sweetness to the dish.  I heard that the glutinous rice paste is to give the kimchi extra shine.  Anyway, I am too lazy to make those today so I am settle with this.

Verdict:  I would try adding an apple or sweet pear next time.  I bet it would taste better with the additional sweetness from the fruit.  I would probably use 1 Tbsp. of fish sauce first and if it is not salty enough, at least you can add more and season to taste.  Otherwise, if it is too salty, then it would be harder to adjust, just have to eat it with lots of rice.

Easy Stir-fried Celery

This dish was created because I needed a vegetable side dish for my Korean dinner and my refrigerator only had an organic celery and a tiny bit of cabbage.  So, I picked up the celery, thinly sliced it and started working through the recipe while stir-frying it and doing the taste test.  I added black sesame seeds for the color contrast and the celery was crunchy.  I am quite happy with the result and would certainly make this when I am out of other green vegetable again!

Assam Sambal Prawns

We loved nasi lemak or Malaysian coconut rice.  One of the dishes I missed the most when I first came to the U.S. would be nasi lemak.  In my 20s and totally a newbie in cooking, I thought nasi lemak was very hard to make.  It was like eating it would only happen in my dream.  Then one day, a friend taught me how to make it and I was really surprised at how easy it was to make one.  I remembered I once made some nasi lemak and asked my husband to bring it to his school to share with his Malaysian male friends and how happy and thankful they were.

For this nasi lemak, I added turmeric powder thus the yellow color (Since the curcumin in turmeric is good for us so I wanted to incorporate it more into our diet).  The recipe I am sharing here is the assam sambal prawns as I bought some medium size shrimps and I wanted to make a dish that pair well with it.  I was referring this recipe to Nonya Flavours Cookbook and will be sharing the cookbook recipe with some of my changes.  I wonder why the photo in that cookbook looks so oily and red whereas mine looks completely different?

Stir-fried Shredded Potatoes (Kamja Bokkeum)

Frankly I have no idea whether this is originally a Chinese dish or a Korean dish.  We were served a big tray of this shredded potatoes in a Chinese New Year party that we attended.  I was seriously surprised that a dish that looked so unappealing and plain can be so tasty.  I didn't even want to try it at first but I told myself that I have to try every dish there and be adventurous.  I tried it and couldn't help but went back for a second!  Interestingly this dish is also served as a banchan in Korean restaurants.  Evy fell in love with this banchan and I wished I know how to make it.  I always looking for easy banchan to serve with my Korean meal, but I think nothing is easy when you have to make a few in a day.  Anyway, this is my version and it tasted a little bit different and I have no idea why, do you think they par-boiled the shredded potatoes first? Outcome is all of us loved this plain potato dish and that's what matter most.

Mexican Squash Pancake (Jeon)

When I starts, I couldn't stop!  I have been cooking tons of Korean side dishes lately and I have no idea what's gotten into me.  I made this to bring to a Korean friend's house and just so happen that she was making the exact same thing!!  Down to the same Mexican squash!!  Talk about coincident as zucchini pancake is more common.  I bought this because I have no idea whether the store that sells the zucchini is GMO or non-GMO unless I buy organic, so I picked Mexican squash instead.  I couldn't tell the difference between these two anyway except one is dark green in color.  This is one popular Korean side dish and serve on special festivals.  It is not hard to make at all just the pan-frying part is a bit troublesome.  We all loved this so next time I would have to train my Evy to make this!

Seaweed Rolled Eggs

I have learned this version of rolled eggs from watching a Korean variety show, "Dad, Where are you Going?".  Haha...from now you have known that I watch quite a few of Korean variety shows right?  It provided me with a good laugh and it was fun to watch.  I liked those with kids, for example this and "The Return of Superman", it was just too cute!

Anyway, one of the dads cooked this for the kids and it looked good to me and what's best was it was very easy to make.  Without hesitation, I made this for my girls and got their approval.  Sometimes I made this for their lunch boxes, easy and nutritious!  They loved to open it into a strip and eat it like that too.  The eggs won't stick because of the seaweed.

Arugula Elk Garlic Pasta

I love the Sweet & Spicy Tuna Arugula Pasta that I made earlier.  But this time I wanted to try it with ground elk meat ( of course you can use any ground meat of you choice as a substitute) that I bought at Sprouts.  Got to say, this combination tasted better with the sweet and spicy tuna, but it was not too bad either.

Korean Boneless Spicy Chicken

I once made a Korean style spicy chicken wings  and really loved it.  However, I never make it again because I don't buy chicken wings (the fattest part of a chicken so I want to eat less of it), but my husband loved chicken wings so sometimes he would buy a bucket of buffalo wings to eat.

The other day, we ordered a spicy fried chicken dish in a Korean restaurant and I thought it would be wings and drumettes and was pleasantly surprised that it was actually chicken thigh.   I wonder why I never thought of using the skinless and boneless thigh to make this before!  It gave me such a great idea that I wanted to make this dish again.  Now I can enjoy this dish more often but wondering would it be as good without deep-frying the chicken first?

Adapted from Korean style spicy chicken wings.

Ingredients:

2-3 skinless and boneless chicken thigh meat, cut into pieces
Sweet potato starch/ or cornstarch
Toasted sesame seeds

Sauce:
2 Tbsp. gochujang/ Korean chili paste
1 Tbsp. raw honey
1 Tbsp. mirin
1 tsp. sesame oil
1/8 tsp. white pepper
1 1/2 Tbsp. minced garlic
1 1/2 Tbsp. minced ginger
1 1/2 Tbsp. chopped scallion

Method:

1.  In a bowl, add in all the sauce ingredients, mix until combined.  Set aside.

2.  Heat up your wok with oil.  Coat the chicken thigh with sweet potato starch.  Deep-fry until golden brown or cooked.  Drain on paper towel.  Set aside.

3.  Pour away the oil.  In the same wok, add in the sauce, stir to warm.  Add in the fried chicken thigh and mix and coat each piece with the sauce.  Dish out and serve on a plate.  Garnish with toasted sesame seeds before serving.