Red Beans & Black Glutinous Rice Sweet Soup

This is one delicious sweet soup I discovered by accident.  I was planning to cook some red bean soup with orange peels.  And then I remembered my mom used to add a handful of white glutinous rice with hers.  Some people added some dried longan too.  But I did not want the dried longan in my sweet soup and while trying to take out my shell pasta to cook noodle soup, I spotted my black glutinous rice.  I was thinking why not I used the black glutinous rice instead of white since it was considered to be healthier.  So, I used the black glutinous rice along with my red beans and dried orange peels and set my slow cooker to low and was really surprised at how tasty it was the next day.  It was so delicious that I would cook this way often from now on.

I love to cook red beans and black glutinous rice in my slow cooker overnight, because I will be rewarded with a soft and gluey and delicious sweet soup in the morning, without fail.   I liked mine soupy thus I added a lot more water.

Golden Ingots

 

Sorry for the bad pictures because it was taken at night.  I saw this Golden Ingots at Daily Affairs and decided to give it a try.  It was really an interesting idea and very suitable for Chinese New Year.  The bottom layer was fried beancurd puff (taufu pok) and topped with meat ball of sort. 

I prepared it in the afternoon and took an un-fried version.  The natural lighting made the food looks so good.  Too bad I was just too lazy to fried some just to take the finished products for this post.  I used ground pork and water chestnut for mine with my own seasonings.

Evy & Edda March 2, 2010

 

Sharing pictures of my girls I took recently.  The weather was really nice and they wanted to play outside so I let them played on the deck.  I let them blew bubbles and drew on the deck.

Oh, I am squeezed sister!

Evy happily drew all over our deck.  Luckily it was washable chalks, so drew and expressed all you want!  Ugh, what my little sweetie doing, still holding her peace signs.  LOL!

Special Rice Dish

What so special about this rice dish? Special as in the cooking method is different, it took two steps. One is stir-frying the rice first, you can add in eggs for eggs fried rice, or leave it plain, just soy sauce and garlic. I left the rice above plain because I just had eggs fried rice the day before. Then, you prepare a white sauce dish to pour it on top. The white sauce dish can be shrimps with frozen mixed vegetable, or fish with Chinese green (chai Hsin) like above, or scallops with beaten egg white, basically anything you can think of. Serve it as one dish meal. I have a similar fish recipe here if you want to take a look. 

Because of the sauce laden on the eggs fried rice, it made the rice soft and can be easily digested by elderly people or young children.

Fried Bee Hoon or Vermicelli

 

My simple lunch on Sunday.  I don't normally cooked dishes and rice on weekends.  Usually it would be something simple like fried noodle (any variety) or fried rice.  We had something special today because I saved some jicama beancurd rolls for ourselves like what you read on my last posting. Simple fried bee hoon like what you get at the night market in Malaysia can be satisfying, simple like only fried with bean sprouts. I don't know what is the charm of this simple fried bee hoon, do you know?  Or perhaps it was just something we used to have when we grew up.

Delicious fried bee hoon!  I recommend the Elephant brand bee hoon and also Wei Wei bee hoon.  These brands of bee hoon/vermicelli are thin and won't break easily when stir-frying.

I'm sharing this noodle with Presto Pasta Nights, an event created by Ruth from Once Upon a Feast. This is my first entry for the new year 2010.  Wow, it has been a while.  This week host is non-other than Ruth herself, do go and check out Once Upon a Feast delicious round up on March, 5th! It is also the Third Birthday of PPN.

Jicama Beancurd Rolls

 

This is my jicama beancurd rolls.  I made some of these to bring to my friend's party and save two for ourselves.  The filling is my mung kuan char or stir-fried jicama.  This mung kuan char consisted of jicama, carrot, woodear, garlic and dried shrimps, season with salt, sugar and chicken granules, very simple.  Then, I wrapped it with the beancurd sheet.  I made a mistake as I dipped the beancurd sheet in water, you are only supposed to soften it with wet fingers.  So, the end result was not as crispy.  Also funny looking skin texture.

It changed the beancurd skin texture and when deep-fried, it was not as crispy.

One of the roll burst opened when frying.  So lesson learned, never to immerse your beancurd sheet in water to soften before rolling, just wet it with your fingers.  I knew that but still decided to try it out because my beancurd sheet won't seal with cornstarch mixture.  Alas!  now really learned my lesson.  I made lots of mistakes in the kitchen too, I made mistake and learned from it, only then I can improve myself.  :-)