Buddha Casserole from Costco

My version of Buddha Casserole that I bought from Costco.   I added white radish, napa cabbage, 3 drumsticks, fish maws, lotus roots and cured pork belly into the stock, added more water and simmered for 1 hour and 15 minutes and lastly added their abalone and shrimps and simmered for an additional 15 minutes.  Viola!

It was very good!  We had it for 3 meals.

 

Homecooked meal

 

What can be more satisfying then a delicious homecooked meal made with love?  I love to provide my girls with a nutritional balance meal whenever I get the chance.  With the two air-fryers that I have, cooking a meal is so much easier and faster.  I air-fried the asparagus in one and air-fried the miso cod in another air-fryer and I time it so that both finish cooking at about the same time.  Here's how you get warm food and not one cold dish with your meal.  I also time the beancurd knots to hit start button on my air-fryers to cook.

Served it up with my turmeric, black pepper and coconut oil rice!  Yummy in the tummy every time!

Stir-fried Udon Noodle with Shrimp and Scallop

A simple stir-fried Udon noodle with shrimps and sea scallop with spinach, carrot and yellow onion.

My New Toy- Air Fryer

After hearing about the Air-fryer for two years, I decided to buy one from Costco when it went on sales.  I hope this turned out to be a good investment for me as my readers probably know that I am a pretty health conscious individual and I really sold to the idea of deep-frying with no or minimal oil.  What makes this great is it only took few minutes to cook and it doesn't leave my house smelling like I have just deep-fried some food.  As of now, I am loving my deep-fryer!

I tried it with Alexia's sweet potato tots, 400'F for 13 minutes, shaking half way and it turned out great.

I also tried it with mini Asian spring rolls that I bought at Costco.  400'F for 8 minutes, turn over half way.

Ling Ling's pot stickers.  I think I need to brush it with egg wash to produce the golden brown effect, other than that it does taste crispy and the inside is cooked through.  400'F for 10 minutes.

Lastly, I used it to bake Cod fish.  It cooked great, just be aware that lots of water came out from the fish.  So, perhaps line the bottom of the air fryer with a parchment paper for easy cleaning.

I also tried it with deep-fried tofu and it turned out well as

Stir-fried Black Bean Cutterfish with Celery

I loved cutterfish.  I will buy some frozen cutterfish when I am in the Asian supermarket because it is easy to defroze and it tastes really delicious.  I made this dish easily with some organic celery and the ready made bottled chili in black bean sauce and bottled hot chili paste with peanuts.  My girls enjoyed this dish too even for my younger girl who doesn't like spicy food.

Seafood Thai Green Curry

I just realized that I can buy a really good quality organic frozen broccoli at Costco.  I used to buy frozen broccoli at the local supermarkets and it was fulled of stems instead of the florets.  While browsing through Costco, I came across the organic frozen veggies station and decided to give it a try.  To my utter surprise, the frozen organic broccoli was all florets, no stem at all!  And it was so fresh and beautiful, furthermore, it is organic!  What best can I ask for!  Next time I am going to try other frozen organic veggie as well.

The above is my lazy one dish Thai green curry meal.  Just go buy some Thai curry paste and put it in your freezer and it will last you for a long time.  Furthermore, anytime you can just whip up some lazy one dish meal to feed your family.  The brand that I am using is Mae Ploy and you can find it in any of the Asian supermarket.  Enjoy!

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!

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...

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?

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.

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.

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?

Spinach Mushroom Soup

Spinach is so delicious in soup.  If you haven't tried cooking it this way, make sure you give it a try!  This soup is nutrients packed as I have spinach, beech mushroom, eggs and shrimps, all are healthy for us.  Just add another side dish and a little brown rice and you can call it a meal.  You are welcome to use vegetarian broth and omit the shrimps to make this soup vegetarian.  Happy trying!

Angel Hair Pasta with Clams

If you are my avid blog reader, you should know that I loved to watch healthy Chinese cooking shows from Taiwan.  And clams have always been brought up as a healthy food to eat.  It is high in vitamins and minerals especially B12 (prevents Alzheimer disease) , iron (prevents anemia) and selenium (helps fight arthritis), protein, manganese, Vit. C, copper, riboflavin, zinc, and potassium.  You can read more about the health benefits here. 

Since the clam meats that I bought were frozen and cooked, I made a pasta dish with it.  If I have some fresh and live clams, I would cook Kam Heong clam/ lala or steam it with homemade sweet rice wine with gingers and scallion.

Anyway, I read that wild clams or any seafood might have some mercury in it, so I paired it with cilantro!  Oh yes, as cilantro can remove heavy metal like mercury from the body through elimination process.  Hence, it's a great idea to pair cilantro with any seafood that you cook.

Fish Maw Soup (鱼肚汤)

I don't know why but during the Chinese New Year, I always want to cook a pot of fish maw soup or bamboo fungus soup (竹笙).  I added bean curd sticks, shrimps, mushrooms and eggs into the soup.  I did not thicken the soup with starches but tried it with beaten eggs instead.

Is there any benefits of eating fish maw?  I did a search and it said fish maw is an excellent source of collagen.  Just like what the Chinese believe the collagen of chicken feet and pig trotter would give you a beautiful skin.  It is said to help with blood circulation and improve your skin.  Do you know any other benefits besides what I had mentioned?

Lobster Heads Porridge

We were invited to a Chinese New Year reunion dinner on CNY eve.  The owners and their relatives were all Chinese restaurant's owners themselves so for sure we were having a great feast that night.  They cooked a lot so it was a night of abundance of delicious authentic Chinese food.  I forgot to sample the roasted duck, white chicken and another chicken dish (can you believe that?).  The owner even gave me a big tray of food to bring back which I was very thankful.  Her uncle (also a restaurant owner) told me how to cook this lobster heads porridge, the only thing I did different was I added 2 dried scallops in it.  The resulted porridge was so sweet and flavorful and no additional seasoning was required.  Thank him for sharing his delicious porridge recipe with me.

Pan-fried Salmon in Special Sauce

This was just a regular salmon dish at my house, except I was trying on a new sauce.  Because the sauce was sweet, slight hint of sour and savory, I didn't bother to season my salmon.  I didn't flour it either just to cut down on the refined flour intake.  When you flour your meat, poultry, seafood to deep-fry or when you add cornstarch/potato starch to thicken the soup/sauce, do you know that you are actually adding refined processed white flour into your diet?  You probably didn't know right?   I didn't notice this small little detail until I heard it from a healthy eating guru in some healthy Chinese cooking show.  It made me aware of this fact, with the knowledge, I would try to cut down on it as much as possible.  It was hard as lots of Chinese dishes need the thickening starches to make a dish palatable.  Just look at my sauce above, it would certainly look more appetizing if the sauce is thick instead of watery.  Also, the fact that all of the egg drops soup and hot and sour soup in the Chinese restaurants are laden with thickening starches, it does make me think twice when ordering it.  Wonton soup is definitely a better option I guess.

Now you are aware, it's up to you to make the right choices!  Again, moderation is the key!

Korean Spicy Stir-Fried Squid (Ojingeo Bokkeum)

Ojingeo Bokkeum, Korean spicy stir-fried squid is one of my favorite dish to order in a Korean restaurant.  I also like the octopus version.  However, sometimes the dish we ordered turned out super sweet or just too sweet for my taste, so I intend to make it myself.  The one I had was served on a bed of raw cabbage, I thought that was an excellent idea in the sense that juices would come out from this dish and flavored the raw cabbage.  Downside was of course they used lots of cabbage hence the dish looked like a great serving size but in fact half of it was the cabbage.  I also liked that they added Korean rice cake in it and gave this dish an extra chewiness.  I would have added rice cake if I have some on hand but since I didn't, I used the Korean fish cake instead.

I didn't make my sauce too sweet nor too spicy as my girls shared this dish with us.  Surprisingly Edda, my little girl loved this dish a ton!  She said it was delicious and asked me to make it again.  She is also a fan of my kimchi pancakes, even requested to save some for her lunch box the next day.  :-)

Herbs Scallops

Scallops are actually good for cardiovascular health as it has Vitamin B-12, omega-3, magnesium, potassium, selenium and lots of nutrients.  Not to say it is also high in protein, low in saturated fat and cholesterol.  Seafood have iodine in it so scallop, calamari and shrimp are actually a good source for me to get some natural iodine besides seaweed.  These seafood have higher monounsaturated fat (increase HDL) and lower saturated fat (decrease LDL) so eating these seafood should be helpful for the heart, but in moderation of course.

I read that table salt (refined salt) is toxic because it has been bleached and rid of all the natural vitamins and minerals essential for the body to function properly.  And your body needs salt in order to function properly as well as important nutrients such as magnesium and potassium which were found in natural unrefined salt (there are lots more nutrients in tiny amount).  So, I will be buying unrefined salt from now on such as natural Mediterranean sea salt, natural sea salt and natural Himalayan rock salt to season my food.  I will get my natural iodine from seaweeds such as wakame and hijizi, and some seafood.

Calamari Spaghetti

Recently, I saw a Healthy Chinese Cooking Show that actually suggested eating squid, calamari, octopus and cuttlefish to lower your cholesterol.  That was completely news to me as I always thought these have the highest cholesterol level among all other seafood and which should be avoided. But they said when you clean your calamari, squid, octopus and cuttlefish completely (don't eat the internal organ and the eggs), then the cholesterol level is not too bad.  Furthermore, it has good vitamins and minerals that the body needs such as Vitamin B2, B3 and B12, potassium, magnesium, zinc, selenium, iron, protein and phosphorous that are actually good for us.  It also has omega 3 fatty acids such as DHA and EPA which can lower bad cholesterol.  However, how you cook and prepare this is important too, raw (as in sushi), steam, or lightly stir-fry is best compared to batter it and deep-fry and eat it with dipping sauce.  For people with already high cholesterol level, consult with your doctor first as this piece of information is very new to me too.  Food high in cholesterol doesn't mean it will raise your blood cholesterol such as egg and squid, unlike food high in saturated fat.  In any case, moderation is still the key, occasional treat shouldn't be a problem.