Dinner for 3

I invited my brother over for dinner as my hub couldn't make it last minute. My brother turned up, but not without some grumbles of him as a 'reserve'. :P It was the first time he tasted my culinary skills, so I chose 3 dishes that I am more confident with.

Pork Cutlet

This has almost become my 'signature dish'. heh!



Sweet and sour sauce to go along



Corn Soup

My mother and brother loves the soup, especially my brother who kept helping himself to this dish. The secret? Scallop concentrates and pork ribs! :)



Snow Peas with pork

This is my first attempt at this dish and I must say that I am very pleased with the result!



Cod Fish

One of the first dishes when I started cooking. Yes, I did it again with my good ol' healsio



Both my mother and my brother seemed to enjoy the meal very much. Guess the time (nearly an hour!) and effort spent on this four dish meal was worth it. My hub was actually quite upset that he missed such a feast. heh... :D

Chye Sim Soup

Peanut Soup

Cabbage Soup

As a working wife, I can only find time to cook on a day or two of the week. Thus, it is vital that I use up all the ingredients for that week, to avoid wastage. It's fun to know that I am not alone.

I also find it extremely satisfying when the dish that I cooked with the 'remains' turned out to be good. :)

Ingredients

• Cabbage (remains)
• A few slices of tomato (remains)
• 3 pieces of mock meat
• 2 tbsp Woh Hup scallop concentrates (highly recommended as it does not contain MSG!)
• 6 cups of water

Method (too simple to be true)

1) Boil water with concentrates

2) Add cabbage and mock meat

3) Add tomato just before serving

I wanted to add sugar and salt to make it more flavourful, but I find it absolutely unnecessary after trying a spoonful! The soup itself was already very sweet. Yums...

On a side note, I realised that soup made from scallop concentrates taste so much better than from chicken concentrates. And a bottle of scallop concentrates costs only like thirty cents more? :)

Salted Vegetables Soup

I am not a big fan of salted vegetables, but my hubby is. As much as I would like to cook Caixin soup, I knew I had to cook the following instead. :P

It turned out that my hub kinda like it. :)

Ingredients

- 1 packet Salted Vegetables
- 1/2 tofu (cut into cubes)
- 1/2 carrot (cut into pieces)
- 100g pork (minced)
- 3 chestnuts (minced)

Seasonings

- 1 tsp salt
- 1/2 tbsp potato starch

Method

1) Boil 6 cups of water in a pot
2) Add chicken bone (left over from the other dish) and carrot
3) Remove chicken bone
4) Mix pork, chestnut and potato starch
5) Mold into balls and add to the soup mixture
6) Add salt to taste

Soup

I really do not know what to call this soup. I merely 'dump' whatever excess ingredients I have to make this. :P Surprisingly, it turned out quite good. ;)



Ingredients

• Bones (from pork chop)
• 3/4 cup Beansprouts
• 1/2 carrot (sliced)
• 3 button mushrooms (sliced)
  
• 6 cups of water
• 3 tsp scallop concentrates (new product from woh hup!)
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp light soya sauce
• 1 tsp sugar

Method

1) Bring water to boil
2) Add scallop concentrates
3) Add carrots, buttom mushrooms and bones
4) Switch off fire after a while and let it simmer - my purpose is to soften the carrot without using too much gas
5) When read to serve, turn on the fire again and add beansprouts
6) Add sugar, salt and light soya sauce

The other dishes cooked on the same day are attached for my records. Yeah, you have seen the following recipes too many times in this blog. It's revision period, remember? ^.^

Pork Cutlet



Fried Rice



I passed the revision test. :D

Tofu Soup with Bean Sprouts and Meatballs

This is supposed to be a Tofu Soup with minced pork balls and salted vegetables. I couldn't get salted vegetables, somehow. My meatballs are expiring this week, so I had to make adjustments to the soup. My hub is one fussy pot especially when it comes to soup, so when he said that the soup is not bad, I just had to document it down! :D



Ingredients

• 300g tofu
• 6 meatballs
• 1/2 carrot sliced (all sank to the bottom of the bowl :P)
• 1/2 cup beans sprouts
• 5 cups of chicken stock*

Seasonings

• 2 tbsp light soy sauce
• 1 tsp sugar
• salt to taste
• a dash of pepper

Method

1) Boil the chicken stock
2) Add carrot and meatbals
3) Add tofu and beans sprouts
4) Once ingredients are cooked, add the seasonings

* I used the unwanted skin and bones from the chicken breast of another dish to prepare the stock. No food wastage and you get a more flavourful soup. I kept in the fridge overnight and when I took it out, the fats from the soup solidifies, making it very easy for me to remove it. Health prevails! :)

A1 Bak Kut Teh

My hub insisted that I should cook Bak Kut Teh using the ready-to-cook A1 Bak Kut Teh off the rack so that I can 'learn' how the 'correct' BKT taste like.

It turned out that the Bak Kut Teh I have cooked for the first time is even tastier than this ever-so-famous A1 Bak Kut Teh. I wonder what's the rave all about. :P The easy way out may not always be the way to go...

My hub agrees that this BKT is not that fantastic too. Poor thing, he still did not get to taste the Bak Kut Teh he likes.

It was much later that we learnt that there are actually two types of Bak Kut Teh in Singapore.

The Teochew coolies were the founders of this BKT with a lighter colour and is blander. It was the Hokkiens who follow suit and made modifications to it :P, to make it darker, more robust and with a strong taste of spice. He likes the former, and I like the latter.

That explains everything eh? I am a Hokkien and he is a Teochew. I like hokkien prawn mee, hokkien mee (it's different from hokkien prawn mee), whereas he likes teochew fishball mee. Before knowing that the the two types of soup are actually from two dialect group, we already have preference for the soup from our own dialect group. Amazing eh? It's IN us. :P

All along, I have been preparing the Hokkien style BKT. No wonder he complains. In any case, the version he likes is quite easy to prepare. Just spare ribs, garlic and salt! Maybe I should try it someday...

Bak Kut Teh

I didn't know I can cook BKT that I enjoy so much. The aroma was so strong and fragrant and the taste simply fantastic! Yums!



Ingredients

• Pork Spareribs

Marinade

• 1/2 tsp pepper
• 1/2 tsp salt
  
• 3 tbsp oil
• 1 tsp sugar

Mixture A

• 2 tsp minced garlic
• 1 tsp preserved soya beans

Mixture B

• 2 segments star anise
• 1 inch piece of cinnamon bark
• 1 tsp peppercorns
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1 tsp dark soya sauce
• 1.5 litres of boiling water

Method

1. Marinade spareribs with pepper and salt
2. Add 3 tbsp oil to hot wok
3. Fry sparerib till it turns colour and remove from pan
4. Heat 1 tbsp oil and caramelize the sugar till light brown.
5. Add Mixture A and stir fry for 30 seconds
6. Add fried spareribs and Mixture B
7. Boil for 10 minutes in a thermal pot and transfer it into the thermal container to simmer.

Chye Sim (Cai Xin) Soup

I can't seem to find a decent recipe on Cai Xin Soup online. I couldn't find any either, on recipe books. I wonder why? It's such a popular soup in Tze Char stalls and a tasty one at that.

Nevertheless, I made an attempt using the 'cheater bug' method. I used an ikan bilis stock cube (that no-msg brand) as the soup base. It was not too bad, but not as flavourful as those in the Tze Char stalls.

Any better recipes to share, anyone?



Ingredients

• Chye sim
• Small corns
• Carrot
• Minced pork

Seasonings

• 1 Ikan bilis
• 1 tbsp cooking wine
• 1 tsp sugar
• salt to taste

Method

1) Add ikan bilis cube to boiling water
2) Add all ingredients except chye sim
3) Add chye sim about 1 minute before switching off the fire
4) Add cooking wine, sugar and salt

Wanton Soup

I tell ya... the wantons are splendid! The prawns still taste fresh even though they have been frozen in my fridge for months. Wait a minute, did I say months? Fret not! Those are not the prawns I bought from the market... but ready made wanton. You know, the ready-to-cook ones? ;) heh! Getting lazy... but just want to introduce you this CP brand. Yep, the one that was advertised on TV...



Just add the powdered seasonings, maybe two tbsp of light soy sauce, a dash of pepper and top it up with some coriander or in my case, left over lettuce and you've got yourself a good soup to warm yourself up in cold days like this. ;)

Bittergourd Soup

"hmmm... this is nice" my hub commented as he tasted the soup in the pot that was still on the stove.

Trying to act like a food connoisseur, he added, "But there is something missing. I think you just need to add that something and it would taste like the one in kopitiam"

"Prawns lor", I immediately replied. In which, he responded 'ya ya ya'.

1) It does not make economical sense (cents) for me to buy prawns as I will only be cooking it on one day of the entire week.
2) I only need 2 or 3 of it and I guess nobody in the right mind would want to sell that pathetic number to me.
3) I don't like to handle prawns. Kinda scary to remove the legs and stuff, if you ask me. :P

In any case, I do believe that prawns play an important role in making this soup even tastier. So feel free to add it to the recipe below. :)

Ingredients

• 8 halves of Bittergourd
• Button mushrooms
• Corn cobs
• Sliced Carrot
• 1 Egg (beaten)
• 5 cups of water
• Ginger
• Mock Meat (optional)

Seasonings

• 1/2 tbsp concentrated chicken stock
• 2 tbsp light soy sauce
• 2 tbsp cooking wine
• 1 tsp sugar
• Salt to taste
• 1 tsp seasme oil

Method

1) Add concentrated chicken stock and ginger to water and boil

2) Add carrot, mushroom, corn cobs and Mock Meat

3) Add bittergourd

4) Add the remaining seasonings except for sesame oil

5) While the soup is boiling, slowly pour the egg mixture in and stir

5) Add sesame oil 1 minute before switching off the fire and serve

Preserved Vegetables soup

I am not good at cooking soup. At least not to my hub. But I love soup and to be honest, I find most of the soup I cooked okay ley... :P My hub said my soup is all about the same, which I had to agree lah. So this time round, I had to use his favourite preserved vegetable soup as a 'carrot' for him to allow me to cook soup again. LOL. He not only agreed, but seemed to look forward to taste the soup.





















Ingredients

• 1 small packet of preserved vegetables
• 5 cups of water
• minced meat (enough to make into 5 medium-sized balls)

Mixture

• 3 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 1/2 tbsp sesame oil
• 1 tbsp flour

Seasonings

• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp sugar

Preparation
1) Marinade the minced meat in the mixture and leave it in the fridge for at least 30 minutes
2) Soak the preserved vegetables in water. Change the water after 30 minutes

Method
1) Boil water
2) Add preserved vegatables
3) After the preserved vegatables are slightly soften, add the minced pork balls
4) Add seasonings to taste
5) Serve