Dinner March 06, 2007

Fish maw with lily buds, silken tofu and tang hoon in homemade chicken stock.


Ground Pork with diced fresh mushroom and carrot.


Sambal dried shrimps okra.

Braised Mushrooms

This recipe will only give the ingredients and techique used because that was how I cooked this dish.

Ingredients:

Dried Chinese mushrooms

Dried lily buds

Dried beancurd rolls

Dried wood ear fungus

Fa cai (optional)

(A)

Oyster sauce

Dark soy sauce

Light soy sauce

Sugar

A little chicken stock granules

Method:

1. Soaked all the dried ingredients with boiling hot water until soften.

2. For the mushrooms, cut the stem off of each mushroom. For the lily buds, cut the top harder part off (like a black tip) and tight it into a knot. If you used pieces of big woodear, just cut it into smaller pieces. Cut the beancurd rolls into 1 inch pieces.

3. In a big saucepan, add some water to boil. When boiled, add the mushrooms, beancurds, woodear and (A). Let it simmer for an hour or so. Lastly add in the lily buds and fa cai (if used) and let it simmer for 5-10 mins. Serve hot!

Chap Goa Mei (15th night)

Chap Goa Mei in Hokkein means the 15th night. It also marks the end of CNY celebration. So, I decided to cook and invited my neighbor for dinner. Fellow members at IK told me that people eat Tang Yuen at this last day of CNY, preferably the one without syrup that roll in ground peanuts. Some said people also eat the fried nian gao on chap goa mei. The fresh nian gao they eat it during the first few days of CNY and the last day of CNY, they eat the fried version. Maybe less fresh so they fry it?


I cooked four dishes (seem like three huh?). The one on top is too dark to be seen. Anyway, I stir-fry a mixed veggies, baked a soy sauce chicken, steamed some cod fish fillets and lastly braised some mushrooms (pic. below).


This is my braised mushroom with lily buds, wood ear, dried beancurd and fa cai.


I also made red bean paste tang yuen with ginger brown sugar syrup for dessert (don't have ground peanuts, so eat with little syrup lor).


This is Evy's hot dog tang yuen (as she called it) that she made herself. I thought she is too innovative so I snap a picture of her creation to share with you. :D


I fried some nian gao with sweet potatoes for lunch in the afternoon. This nian gao was given to me by Lily. You can look up her recipe at her blog.

Tong Sum Chinese Herbal Soup

This is one delicious chicken herbal soup that's good for us. I have been drinking this soup for ages, my mom used to cook this soup for us when we were little. And now I took over the cooking of chicken herbal soups. This is also the soup that I drank during confinement because dang kwai was not allowed in the first two weeks.

Cereal Prawns

Just showing a picture of the cereal prawns I made for a CNY gathering. Sorry no exact recipe because I was using a cereal prawns premix. You can buy it at Giant supermarket in S'pore.

Ingredients stated in the premix are cereal, sugar, non-dairy creamer, pepper and seasoning.

Method:

1) Deep-fry the prawns. Dish out and discard the oil.

2) Add 2 Tbp. of butter, when melted add curry leaves and chilli padi. Fry til fragrant then add the prawns and the premix. Fry and serve.

3) If you don't have the premix, just add those ingredients listed. I will try to make this myself without the premix next time.

Note: For the seasoning, it's probably salt and msg. For the cereal, it's just crushed cornflakes cereal. You can substitute with oatmeal.

Steamed Huat Kuih

My first huat kuih and I cheated by using Redman Huat Kueh Mix.


I added Pandan extract to one. Yellow coloring plus banana essence to the other and lastly just red coloring. "Swee bor?" (pretty or not?) :)


This is how the package looks like. It comes in this multi-colors one and the other is brown sugar only. Ingredients stated in the package are flour, sugar, baking powder and vanillin. All I need to add is water or coconut milk. Very easy! One package yields 12 small huat kuih.

I got one easy recipe for you to try. It's FenYing's Xiao Fa Gao recipe. Since all the ingredients can be found at home, why pay so much for a premix? I bought it earlier because I didn't know it's so easy to make. :P

Edit to add 02/27:
My conclusion: Use Gula Melaka for extra fragrant. If you want to make this colorful ones (more appealing to kids), use essence in addition to coloring (it tasted so much nicer). I thought of this while laying in bed:

~White color, add Coconut, Lychee or Almond essence.
~Green color, use Pandan extract or green tea powder.
~Yellow coloring, add Banana or Mango essence.
~Red coloring, add Strawberry, Raspberry or Rose essence
~Orange coloring, add orange essence.