Clear Noodle Soup

A hot soupy noodle sounds great in cold weather. It's hard to resist especially with my short-cut version. It's so easy to make and it's delicious too. I served it with my chilli in oil mixed with soy sauce.



Super Easy Soup Base:

2 canned of Swanson chicken broths

2 cups of water

Fish sauce to taste

Drizzle of sesame oil in the end

Ingredients:

Chicken breasts, sliced

Do Do Fish balls, cut in half

Do Do Tofu fish cake, cut into three slices

Soften Chinese dried mushroom, sliced

Spinach, washed

Toasted garlic & garlic oil (to garnish on top)

Dried noodle ( I used Jiang Xi Rice Vermicelli)

Method:

1. Heat a big pot of water and cook the rice vermicelli, drained and set aside.

2. Prepare the soup base. When boiled, add in the chicken breasts. When the chicken is almost cooked, add in the rest of the ingredients except spinach.

3. Let it boiled, when boiled add in the spinach. Do not overcooked the spinach, dish the spinach out when cooked and set aside.

To Serve:

Place some noodle in the bowl, some spinach on the side and ladle the soup and the rest of the ingredients on top. Garnish with toasted garlic and a little of the garlic oil. Serve with chilli dip of your choice.

Sweet Potato Dessert

This is one sweet dessert to enjoy in the cold winter days. Super easy to make and take less than 30 minutes.

For the Syrup:

Water to your liking
Gula Melaka (sweetness to your liking)
or the brown bar shape sugar (found in oriental stores)
Few slices of gingers

1 peeled and cubed sweet potato

Method:

Boiled the water, gula melaka and ginger in a saucepan. When the sugar has melted, add in the cubed sweet potato. Covered and let it simmer for 10-15 minutes or until the sweet potato has soften. Turn the heat off and serve warm.

Basic Bread

I finally bought a bread machine! Tried out one of the recipes provided in the booklet, got to test whether it's working or not. Thus, my first bread machine bread. :)



This is a basic 1.5 lb white bread. It's crusty on the sides and soft inside. I cut off the sides and ate it with olive oil with some spices and it was good. Funny though, why my top is like that huh? I saw others have nice rounded top. Can anyone shed some light into this? Thanks! Will see whether the sides remain crusty tomorrow or turn soft.



So, the crust turned soft the next day, just like normal bread. I added bread improver into the recipe so the bread remains soft.

Need to get me some whole wheat flour and start making whole wheat bread, healthier.

Dried Shrimps Crabs & Fried Tang Hoon

Dungenous crabs was on sale the other day, so I bought some to try out a new recipe. We had this crabs cooked in dried shrimps at a friend's house the past CNY and it was delicious. My hubby just loved it. But we didn't really have the recipe, just noticed the main ingredients used were dried shrimps and curry leaves. And thus I have to recreate this dish myself using my own version since the sauce that we used were probably different, so it didn't taste quite the same. Overall, it's still not bad since my hubby finished almost all of it.


Dried Shrimps Crabs


I also fried some tang hoon with bok choy, straw mushroom and eggs to go with the crabs. My little girl actually enjoyed the crabs more than the tang hoon. I think she didn't fancy the texture of this noodle. But she sure ate quite a lot of crab meats that night.


Fried Tang Hoon

Dinner Last Night

I bought some fresh wonton mee at my last recent trip to the asian supermarket. So, this was what I made yesterday. I didn't have any pork in the freezer so had to make do with chicken. That's mean no char siew for the mee. What you see are sliced mushroom (which had been soften by simmering for hours previously), baby bok choy, marinated chicken pieces and DoDo fish balls. Served with chilli padi.

Sauce for the noodle:
When the noodle is cooked, drained and put into a big bowl. Then, add oyster sauce, soy sauce, sweet soy sauce, white pepper and a little sesame oil. Mixed well with the noodle. If you want it to be a little wet, add a little water to the noodle.
As for the ingredients, I boiled it in water until cooked and served with the noodle.

Baked Nian Gao

I just love nian gao, either baked or steamed. Of course if I have to make it myself, I would prefer an easy recipe. Got this nian gao recipe from Lin, courtesy of her co-worker. But no clue why mine looks so different from her. I did omit the red bean paste, perhaps that's why my nian gao is so flat.



I also added Gula Melaka into the brown sugar and baked it in my new convection oven. Since my convection oven automatically lower the temperature to 325'F, it also took longer to bake. I ended out baking mine for 65 mins. The top is crusty brown and inside is soft and a little chewy. The sweetness is just nice and overall I like it. See that big slice on top, I ate two of those!!

Haven't pan-fry it with egg batter yet. Will see how long it keeps and whether the texture will be different as the days go by.

Oh, next time I would probably use 2 smaller pans to achieve the height that I want.