Recipe : Steam Chicken

Been a while that I blog on cooking, so decide to share this dish that we had while the family was down with flu and cough recently.

Steam Chicken is a common dish that most prepare at home I guess. On lazy days, or like recently, sick days, I'll just put it to steam together with the rice in the cooker. Save time, effort and electricity.

But when the family is down w cough or getting heaty, I'll prep this with dried lily bulb instead of ginger.

Lily bulb is a good general herb to tonify the body, especially beneficial to the lung and heart. It helps to reduce cough but not suitable for those with cold base cough.

Ingredients :

Chicken pieces, marinated with soy sauce and pepper.

Dried mushroom, soak

Water from soaking the mushroom

Dried lily bulb, soak for 2hrs

Put the ingredients together, partially covered with water from soaking the mushrooms. Put to steam till chicken cook through.

No additional seasoning is added for my family consumption as we minimise our salt intake. But the taste is sufficient if the chicken has been marinated well in advance and the water from mushroom is already fragrant. Normally sesame oil is skipped too to reduce heatiness. Wolfberries can be added at the last 5mins of steaming.

Dinner : Simple Salad

Made this quick and simple salad for myself since the ingredients are already there. Mark doesn't go for celery and tomatoes.. oh well, he just don't know what he is missing out.

Ingredients :
Chopped Celery
Chopped Cherry Tomatoes sprinkled with Basil leaves
Toasted Pine Nuts
Black Pepper to taste
Extra Virgin Olive Oil

1) Toss all together and serve.

Basils blends superb with tomatoes giving it an extra ommph. The toasted pine nuts will add a rich nutty fragrance to the olive oil.. similar to that of sesame.

If you are wondering why I used Virgin Olive Oil for this dish and stated Olive Oil for Baked Fish... it's becos they are different. Virgin Oil are purely from Olive and have a strong fragrance thus great as flavouring. However, they have a low tolerant for heat. So it is better to use Olive Oil, which is mixed with refined oil for stirfries.

Dinner : Baked Fish

layers of cheese, mushrooms and fish

Ingredients :
3 tbsp Olive oil
2 tbsp minced garlic
Shitake mushrooms
Button mushrooms
Dried breadcrumbs
Grated Parmesan cheese
2 to 4 White fish fillet (I used Sutchi fish)
Salt and black pepper to taste
Sour cream
Japanese Mayonnaise

1) Preheat oven to 200'C

2) Heat 2 tbsp oil over medium heat. Saute garlic till brown and add in the mushrooms. Stir till tender. Transfer to a large boil making sure that the mushrooms are dry with no sauce.

3) Heat remaining oil and add breadcrumbs, fry till lightly toasted. Add to bowl of mushrooms then toss with cheese.

4) Place fish in a single layer in a baking dish. Sprinkle salt and pepper. (Note that cheese is salty too)

5) Stir together sour cream and mayonnaise. Spread mixture over fish then spoon mushroom mixture over. Bake for 25mins or until fish flakes when pressed with fork and is cooked through. Serve hot.

Amount of ingredients varies according to taste and the size of the bakeware used.

Dinner : Fishball Spinach Soup

Yeah... Jem's back to School! Thus over the weekend we only went fishing and Suntec for a while. Nothing to post so i'm gonna post last nite's dinner :)

In this pot :

Ingredients

Round Spinach

Lean Pork

Celery (leftover from salad so optional)

Carrot

Dried Scallops (run out of ikan bilis)

Tofu

Fishballs

1) Boil slightly more water needed for the soup. Once it is boiling hot, use the extra hot water to scald the pork.

2) Add Pork, Celery, Carrot, Dried Scallop into boiling water and simmer for 10mins. Add in the thick branches of Spinach and simmer for another 10mins.

3) Basically, the soup stock is ready after 20mins of simmering. Remaining ingredients can be added to cook before serving for dinner.

Tips :

Celery add extra taste and nutrients to soups. Most doesn't like to eat it raw becos of the thick fibre. Thus I will hand tear the sides of the celery till the thick fibres are pulled out. Then the 'sides' pieces are being thrown into soup and the middle portion are use for salads.

It is better to parboil the meats before adding into soups. To be earth friendly, I go through the meat with boiling water meant for the soup to save on gas and water.

Deep Fried Fish

It's really a bad day for me and I'm in those mood of not wanting to do anything... but then it's Thursday already. I don't wanna risk 'expiring' the greasy grouper lying frozen in my freezer thus I forced myself to get it cooked.

I love deep fried greasy grouper despite all the cleaning up needed after it. It just have this oomph taste to it.

But like I said... I wasn't in the mood. And when I'm forced to do things in such conditions.. i just get wacky ideas.

I decide to de bone it so that it become a flat piece of fillet and instead of the usual rice and corn flour... i used egg and breadcrumbs instead. hahahahah... Ta-da! My deep fried fish on a bad day





Ingredients :
1 Greasy Grouper, middle bone removed
salt
garlic pepper
cornflour
beaten egg
breadcrumbs

1) sprinkle salt and garlic pepper on fish to season.
2) coat fish all over with cornflour. Shake off excess.
3) coat fish with beaten eggs and sprinkle breadcrumbs all over. Pat to make sure the breadcrumbs stay on.
4) Deep fry fish till golden.