"Chap Choi" With Glass Noodles

"Chap Choi" With Glass Noodles
Originally uploaded by Food Trails.

It was the sudden craving for fried glass noodles that led to this concoction of “chap choi” with glass noodles. The “chap choi” used here were long cabbage leaves, soaked black fungus, soaked lily buds, mushrooms, Chinese parsley and spring onions. These vegetables were stir-fried with seasonings including fish sauce and oyster sauce.

The glass noodles were soaked till soft and drained and then stir-fried with garlic, shelled prawns, soy sauces, mushroom stock, seasonings and garnished with spring onions. Ladled these noodles on top of the “chap choi” and it’s done.

Honey Silver Fish

Honey Silver Fish
Originally uploaded by Food Trails.

Crispy silver fish, 2 cups, fried with garlic were added to caramelized sugar and honey. We ate this with plain rice, Yummy!

On and off, thinking of my mother’s version of savoury steamed silver fish with chillies, julienned ginger , garlic and lard then seasoned with soya sauce and a little sugar still makes me salivates! This dish is a great accompaniment with plain porridge or rice.

Chicken And Watercress Soup

Chicken And Watercress Soup
Originally uploaded by Food Trails.

A delicious soup of slowing boiling “kampong” chicken that had been seasoned with salt and pepper in 2 litres of water till the bird is tender. Next, just blenched the washed watercress shoots in the soup and seasoned to taste.

Rika suggests to have some honey dates added to this soup. Using chicken to cook with honey dates is new adventure. I will try this next time~

Samgyetang / Korean Ginseng Soup

Samgyetang / Korean Ginseng Soup
Originally uploaded by Food Trails.

Samgyetang / Korean Ginseng Soup
It is great that Rika has found a Korean Ginseng Soup recipe from the net. I prepared this soup using “kampong chicken” and by putting in random amount of ingredients with knowledge of the ingredients she had used previously. Oh, I forgot to include cloves of garlic not until she mentioned it. I did one thing differently though, that was the washed and drained glutinous rice was steamed 1st before I using it as stuffing. I did this step so as the chicken is boiled till just tender and as we like to eat more glutinous rice, the cavity of the chicken was stuffed with about 150 g of steamed glutinous rice. A 100 g is normally used for a small bird weighing 1.1 kg. I noticed a marked difference in the taste of glutinous rice though. It was less fragrant when compared to boiling the raw glutinous rice in the bird’s cavity from the very beginning of the cooking process. Time taken to simmer this soup is 2 to 3 hours with raw glutinous rice.

This is interesting: Chicken soup made with different vegetables and flavourings has acquired the reputation of a folk remedy for cold and flu.

Breakfast

Breakfast
Originally uploaded by Food Trails.

Gouda cheese toast, malai kueh and egg with coarse black pepper and Italian herbs.

Fried Beehoon

Fried Beehoon
Originally uploaded by Food Trails.

A combined effort of ER’s and mine. ER did the last part of the cooking; he fried and tossed the beehoon with seasonings till they were done.

Tomatoes and Egg With Italian Herbs

Tomatoes and Egg With Italian Herbs
Originally uploaded by Food Trails.

Part of breakfast

Chives With Chicken

Chives With Chicken
Originally uploaded by Food Trails.

Young and tender chive flowers stir-fried with chicken breast.

Lotus Root Soup

Lotus Root Soup
Originally uploaded by Food Trails.

This soup had been simmering over low heat for about two hours. When the broth changed to a rich colour, it’s ready to serve when the spareribs and root vegetable were tender.

Sambal Petai

Sambal Petai
Originally uploaded by Food Trails.

Seeing packets of bright green seeds [petai] imported from Indonesia on the supermarket shelf is always exciting! In Mandarin, we called them “chou dou” or stink beans. However, cooking these seeds with sambal made such a delectable dish for us. Besides serving it as an accompaniment with plain rice, I ate it as filling for sandwiches too.

Oyster Sauce Tofu

Oyster Sauce Tofu
Originally uploaded by Food Trails.

Two tubs of silken tofu were cut to smaller sizes and blenched in boiling water till thoroughly warmed up, removed and drained. I did this step to prevent tofu from breaking up less when compared to stirring and turning them in the wok too often. In a wok, garlic was lightly brown in olive oil and slices of meat were added and swirled around till they changed colour. At this time, oyster sauce and other seasonings were added. Blenched tofu and spring onions were put into this sauce and were tossed to coat with the sauce.

Braised Mushrooms

Braised Mushrooms
Originally uploaded by Food Trails.

My intention was to cook these mushrooms with sea cucumbers, which were not available from the supermarket. Those few sold in the wet market were not enticing enough for me to spend. So I went ahead without using any. Anyway, the taste was not affected at all!

Indian Vegetable Soup

Indian Vegetable Soup
Originally uploaded by Food Trails.

I cooked this clear soup with information gathered from two lovely Indian ladies I met while buying the vegetables from Little India after a visit to Waterloo Street with my family. This soup was light and taste quite similar to the potato soup I boiled with spareribs except that it was flavoured with chilli powder.

Stir-fried Vegetables

Stir-fried Vegetables
Originally uploaded by Food Trails.

Vegetable was one of the subjects of conversation during Rika’s friends’ visit. Rika remarked, “I had not been eating home cooked vegetables lately.” And I looked at her while I was recalling the events we had during the last week of December 2006. Before I spoke, a friend suggested, “Let’s look at the Flickr photos for evidence.” [Flickr is a sure way to find out whether I have been cooking or not :)] Anyway, the number of outings we had as a family and individually was a good answer to her why her mum had not been cooking~

Honey Chicken Wings

Honey Chicken Wings
Originally uploaded by Food Trails.

These were imported frozen chicken wings, thawed and marinated with honey, soy sauces, pepper, salt, ginger and pan -fried. Lastly, garnished with spring onion.