When I am lost of what to cook, I’ll come up with something like this, simple and nice.

Although it looks awful and dark in picture and not a very healthy dish (especially with those fats that would melt in your mouth), all my kids love braised dishes like this! They can just finish their plate of rice with gravy and meat with the dish.

Ingredients

• Belly Pork cubes, cleaned (I usually use one slice)
• Dark Soy Sauce
• ABC Sweet Soy Sauce
• Light Soy Sauce
• Garlic bulbs (you can also mince or grate of you like)
• very little oil

Method

1. Saute garlic bulb with very little oil till brown
2. Put in belly pork cubes and saute for a while (you can also skip this step)
3. Add in water and all the sauce above (my grandma prefers adding some dark soy sauce to saute the belly at Step 2)
4. Braise meat till tender
5. Serve with a hot plate of rice

Easy right?You can also add hard boiled egg to this with the leftover sauce. In fact, this taste even better when you leave if and reheat it days after days (but mine usually finish at the 2nd round!)

Well, don’t blame me if you have to visit to the sports nutritionist austin from eating too much of those fats, LOL!

I never thought it was so easy.

Since we all love Japanese food, especially grilled Salmon and Saba, now I learn to make this at home instead. Much cheaper this way.

A piece of salmon probably only cost me Rm15. How to do Teriyaki Salmon:

Ingredients

• 1 slice salmon, pat dried and rubbed with some salt
• Kikkoman Teriyaki Sauce (I dilute it with some drinking water)

Method

1. Pan fry salmon for about 1 minute on each side (or depends on the thickness of your fish)
2. Pour Kikkoman Teriyaki Sauce over the fish
3. Turn the fish on both side so that its equally coated
4. Remove fish quickly once the sauce reaches boiling point

*Tip: I used some Planta to oil my pan instead of oil. Reason is because with oil tends to burn the fish quicker.

Now you have a piece of nicely done fish to serve with a bowl of hot white rice. Want to know how I do this? You can even call me from any corner of the world by using the great rate with your prepaid cell phones.

Coming soon next will be the yummy Grilled Saba!

When I saw this midin is available at my wet market, I can’t wait to just go back to fry them!

A bunch of midin (or some called wild jungle fern?) can be quite costly here, and it cost Rm3 per bunch.

It comes with hard long stem at the bottom, like a stick but it is the top part (which you can see some curly-curly leaves) is tender and edible.

I bought this vege twice and will cook with belacan or just dried shrimp. It is so tender and all my 3 kids loves it A LOT!

Well, it is not easy to find vege with leaves that my kids can chew or love, so I shall expect a lot of midin dish served on our table from now on……………….Provided I can find them in this often…..

Being a fan of Melaka Ba Kut Teh (where we usually eat our Bakuteh with Yam Rice), we just simply love yam rice. Hence last week I bought some ingredients as below:

Stir Fry Yam Cubes

Ingredients

• Half Yam, cubbed – I like big ones because they are more powdery
• Pounded dry prawn
• Shallot and Garlic
• Slice of belly pork (or mince lean meat for an healthier option)
• Salt and Pepper to taste
• Dark soy sauce (optional)
• Fried crispy shallot and onion for garnishing

Because we had a huge yam, we did extra so we keep a portion for our pork dishes later.

Yam rice

Method

1. Saute shallots and garlic, then dried shrimp
2. Add in cubed yam, meat
3. Add salt and seasoning
4. Add in washed rice grains
5. Put everything into your rice cooker and start cooking

Pretty easy right?

Ingredients late MIL use would be:

• Sengkuang (Jicama), shredded
• Carrots, shredded
• Cucumber (for garnishing), shredded
• Tau fu pok, finely cut
• Fish cake, finely cut
• Minced meat, marinated with some oyster sauce
• Shallots, finely chopped/shredded
• Garlic., finely chopped
• Dried shrimp, pounded
• Soy sauce
• Salt, sugar and pepper to taste

Method:

Saute basic ingredients, then add on all the vegetables. Cook and leave to simmer (occasionally stirring) over the fire till soft.

And because this dish was usually prepared to replace our meal, and since there will be so many of us eating, late MIL had to make a BIG kuali. Of course SIL would help out because it is really tedious to prepare the ingredients.

My first attempt of Ju Hu Char

When Siew Pheng told me about this Ju Hu Char dish she makes, I suspect it was almost the same as MIL’s popiah.  Cooking this dish is not difficult for me because I am so used to cook late MIL’s popiah. The only difference is that Ju Hu Char has shredded dry cuttlefish added. Siew Pheng also suggested to add one finely cut soaked dried mushroom.

Ju Hu Char – my dinner tonight

The only difference is that we usually eat our Hokkien Popiah with the normal Popiah Skin from the wet market ( I still could not find any good one from here) or the frozen ones whereas Siew Pheng suggested eating this with fresh lettuce or ‘Sang-Choy’.

Ju Hu Char with some gravy for rice

Hubby love the crispiness of the lettuce going together with this dish. However I feel the taste a bit bland when this dish goes with lettuce. Still prefers to eat this like this or with the popiah skin (with some sweet black sauce or cili sauce)!

Ingredients :
600g Spare ribs (cut to small pieces)
150g Yam (peeled andcut intochunks)
1 potato (peeled and cut into chunks)
1 Cucumber (peeled into chunks)
1 Tomota (cui into wedges)

Marinade:
1/2 tsp Salt, dash of sugar
1 tbsp Cornstarch
1 tsp Sesame oil

Seasoning:
6 tbsp tomota sauce
3 tbsp chilli sauce, dash of salt.
1/2 tbsp sugar, 100ml water.

Method:

1) Mix spare ribs with marinade and marinate for 30 minutes. Deep-fry in hot oil until golden brown and cooked. Dish and drain.

2) Deep-fry yam and potatoes separately until golden brown. Dish and drain.

3) Leave 1 tbsp oil in wok, pour in seasoning and stir well.Add in all the ingredients and stir-fry until well mixed. Dish up and serve .

Can’t wait to try it out!

In the paste, I used the curry powder but now I prefer using the instant A1 curry paste. Just add a coconut milk and some potatoes, we will get one hot steaming pot of curry chicken.

Easy Curry Chicken

Curry not only goes well with a plate of steaming white rice or nasi lemak, it goes very well as a dip with Gardenia white bread too.

Crack an egg with the leftover curry sauce

When we have leftover on the curry sauce, I’ll surely crack an egg into the boiling sauce and I will get a nice yummy curry egg!

Anyway, the best way to get your fish paste is of course from the wet market. I got mine at Rm7 per big ball  and I mixed them with some mince meat and mui heong salted fish at home. In just less than Rm15 (fish paste from the market plus some vege), I can come up with these….

Stuffed fish paste in all sorts of vegetables

Stuffed fish paste in Tofu-pok, and even Yau-char-kuai (Chinese cruller)

For a healthier option, I lightly steam all the above for about 5 minutes so that the meat is partially cooked instead of frying them with lots of oil like how they do it outside.  But steaming makes everything look a bit lumpy so I lightly pan fried them until golden brown at the surface.

Instead of eating them like that, I also made some soy bean paste (just add sauteed garlic to soy bean paste, water, sugar to taste). Once the sauce is ready, you can ither pour it over your yong tau foo. But I prefer lightly stir fry all my yong tau foo with the sauce. Just garnish your dish with some onions and  it’s ready to be served with your bowl of fragrant white rice.

Simple and easy, isn’t it?

This taste really fantastic. I do not know how Aunty Ma (my next door neighbour) did it, but everything she marinates taste always so well. That goes the same for BBQ chicken she marinated sometime back.

I usually see people using plain chicken, fish for steamboat but during our steamboat session on Chap Goh Mei, Aunty Ma marinated them and they taste just so good. Ya, we decided to hold a small steamboat session, just for the four of us and it was fun. It was not very difficult although we have the boys around. Am looking forward to have another small session again, at home with hubby and the kids one day

Among all Bakuteh spice I had tried, Cheong Kim Chuan is the best. Cost only Rm7 per box (with 2 packs of spice and fresh dry herbs in it), tt is definitely cheaper and taste very much better than the famous A1 that we usually buy in the market. This brand actually comes from Penang (I saw this in one of the tourist spot in Penang) but surprisingly I got this even cheaper in KL.

I plan to cook bakuteh again this week. Tempting right? However this shall not be taken so frequently otherwise you will need to click here for tips to help you maintain slim at all time.