Blanched Greens with Oyster Sauce 耗油菜心苗

When the laziness kicked in and yet wanting a well-balanced home cooked meal with greens, this is the dish to go to.

Any fresh greens you like will do, be it xiao bai cai, cai xin, sheng cai, etc etc. Normally i will just grab the nicest looking greens available and it happens to be baby cai xin (耗油菜心苗).

Blanched Greens with Oyster Sauce 耗油菜心苗
(adapted from NoobCook)

1 tbsp oyster sauce
1 tbsp hot water
1/2 tsp sugar

Method
1. Blanched greens for a couple of minutes. With or without oil/ sugar/ salt.
2. Plate greens and drizzle with oyster sauce mixture.
3. Serve hot.

Personally I’m not a greens-person, so I will double the sauce mixture for a regular packet of greens (~300g). No fix rules in the kitchen, adjust to your taste.

p.s. i omitted the garlic oil because when laziness takes over, minimum washing is the key. the fried shallots were by my parents’ helper.

Enjoy!

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Scallop Aglio Olio

Tags

Aglio Olio, sea scallop

Aglio Olio had always been a favorite of Mr Boyfriend. Years ago, he found the recipe online on how to cook aglio olio and insisted I cook for him. It took ages for me to have the courage to cook this. Because the ingredients are very simple, just tons of garlic and chilli padi. These are the only key ingredients. It took 2 tries to get it right. And ever since, when I feel like cooking for him, I will cook this. And threw in different stuffs every time. There’s no recipe for this. Just go with the heart and nose.

Wanting to make it more special this time round, and feeling generous, I bought a packet of frozen sea scallop. There’s only 12 huge size scallop in this pack that cost me around $16. And after tons of MasterChef, I wanted to try pan-sear scallop.

What I used for 3pax

Frozen Sea Scallop defrost
Streaky Bacon (est 80g), cut to small pieces
Fresh Mushroom of your choice (a hand full)
1 whole garlic head chopped
3 chilli padi chopped
Lots of EV Olive Oil
Dry Pasta

Method
1. Soak chopped garlic in EV olive oil prior to cooking
2. Cook pasta as per instruction with salt and some olive oil. After cooking rinse with tap or ice water and toss with more olive oil.
3. Pan-fry bacon without oil till cooked, add in mushroom and continue frying till bacon turn reddish-brown. (i find this more fragrant) Set aside.
4. Pan-seared scallop. (mine didnt go well so please google other sites) Set aside.
(If possible, do not wash the pan. As the oil/ butter in the pan would have the fragrance from the bacon and scallop)
5. Pour garlic olive oil mix into pan and add chilli padi. Fry till just before the garlic gets crispy.
6. Add pasta, stir well, add cooked bacon and mushroom, stir well and season.
7. Serve with scallop.

Though my pan-searing did not turn out well, but the scallop is just cooked with a minute plus on each side and retained it’s sweetness and sea-ness taste. And I love the thickness of the scallop! Please get the biggest scallop you can get if you wanna try this. It is definitely worth it.

And yes, I really do not follow any recipe. Goes with your eyes, nose, tongue and heart. Make sure the amount of olive oil is sufficient to coat all pasta and make sure there’s enough garlic and chilli padi to infuse sufficient taste into the olive oil. I only use garlic salt and some black pepper for seasoning. For the other ingredients, you can use anything you like. The ones I always use is fresh mushroom (for some vege) and bacon or ham (for meat and saltiness).

Home cooked is still the best.

 

Arkon Coral Seaweed Jelly

Tags

collagen, coral seaweed jelly

In this all-year-summer country, a cooling bowl of jelly is always welcomed throughout the day. And the best part? When the jelly can be homemade at ease and good for health (as claimed), there’s no reason not to buy and make this.

Mr Boyfriend and I came across a booth at JEM weeks ago and they was promoting this ‘bird nest’ from the sea which is rich in collagen, iron and calcium. It costed $16 for the big packet of 600g which consist of 4 blocks. Though vacuum packed, the scent of sweetness is still pretty significant, so I keep them in an additional zip lock (kiasu).  

There’s 2 recommended way of serving – as a drink or a dessert.

a) Melt 1 block in 1500ml of hot water as a drink (singapore is already so hot, so i never try this till date)

b) Melt 1 block in 1500ml (i use 1000ml to 1100ml for a more ‘solid’ jelly) in hot water, cool to room temperature and chilled in the fridge. You will notice that after a few hours of cooling at room temperature, it will turn to jelly form already – the sales said this is because of the collagen in it.
But of course, this is not the only favor. There’s a range of favors, like winter melon, chrysanthemum, osmanthus and even pineapple! So far I had only try the red dates with longan and it’s a hit with the parents.

Texture-wise, imagine ice jelly. Taste-wise, it’s pretty flavorful for something that came straight out from the packet.

I would definitely recommend trying this. Personally I had stock-up for it and making it once a week. The health claims is a plus to this refreshing dessert.

So, why not?

 

Nissin Kyushu Black Ramen

Tags

instant ramen

Who don’t love ramen? Mr Boyfriend and I are ramen lover. Him especially. And we truly appreciate ramen in the form of instant noodles. Imagine, your favorite food at the comfort of your home and at any time of the day! p.s. the first time we had this was 12am and cooked using microwave. What’s the latest instant ramen in town?

A proud product of Singapore! Nissin’s Kyushu Black Japanese Ramen. There’s another version, Tokyo Shoyu. But Mr Boyfriend was in favor to try this black one which we suspect is something similar to black garlic oil though not mentioned.

The recommended method of cooking is to cook the noodles first and just place the seasoning powder and oil in the bowl. But I prefer this way of cooking. Seasoning and noodles together.

In no time, we have a large bowl of japanese ramen! I love both the noodles and the soup. Noodle-wise, the chewiness and thickness is similar to that that we will have at ramen store and similar to those instant ramen bought from Japan. Soup-based is a thick favored soup based. And there’s also sesame seeds in the seasoning which added fragrance to it. Nothing not to love about this.

Overall? A must try if you like ramen. Definitely something comfy to have on cold nights. Add in any additional ingredients you like, seaweed or vege. Customize your ramen! At a fraction of a price at restaurant. I would love the try the shoyu version soon.

p.s. if you are lazy to cook over the stove, try the microwave, it’s as good.

 

Stir-Fry Glutinous Rice (生炒糯米饭)

Tags

glutinous rice

 

 

 

It had been a very long break from baking and cooking due to change of job. Sadly, I do not get to enjoy the kitchen as much as I like nowadays. I cant even remember the last thing I baked nor cooked.

But I managed to squeeze some time out to cook Glutinous Rice! The brown version.

 

Recipe (adapted from Christine’s Recipes, i tripled the recipe and modified)

500g glutinous rice
3 chinese sausage
2 handful of small dried shrimps
6 pcs dried mushroom (select the thin and flat ones)
ard 4cups of water (can use mushroom soaked water and top up with normal water or stock)

Seasoning (to taste)
5 tbsp light soy sauce
2 – 3 tsp dark soy suace
4 tsp sugar

Method
1. Soak glutinous rice for 3hours
2. Wash and soak dried shrimps and mushroom separately (can slightly chop shrimps, slice mushroom thinly)
3. Soak chinese sausage with warm water for 5min, remove wax skin and slice to small pieces
4. Stir-fry chinese sausage without oil till fragant, add dried shrimps, followed by mushroom. Remove and set aside. (i did not add any oil for this stage)
5. Add 6tbsp oil and rice, stir-fry at medium heat
6. Add 3 tbsp of water at each time when rice get dry, till cook. Est 30mins. (rice will get sticky when cooked)
7. Add chinese sausage, dried shrimps and mushroom and seasonings. Stir well and adjust seasoning to taste.

note: i added peanuts. boiled a handful of peanuts for 10mins – 15mins (still crunchy), drained and set aside. add at step 7.

 

I’m so proud of myself! The taste can be stronger, but I didn’t want to risk overcooking the glutinous rice while trying to adjust the taste. Nonetheless, it’s pretty good! Rice is of the right sticky-ness, taste slightly on the sweet side and with lots and lots of my favorite ingredients in glutinous rice.

And stir-frying this dish is the traditional way of doing it. There’s a short-cut of steaming it, you can google that.

Will I try this again? Not in the near future because it’s rather tedious but I will when I crave for glutinous rice again.