Lotus Root Soup

Instead of painting lotus, let me just share part of the lotus that I cooked.   Lotus roots can be eaten.  We can make soup, fry or pickle out of it.  It is very easy, quick and with minimum work to cook this soup.  All we need are:  lotus roots, meat (any preferred), red dates (optional), wolfberry (optional).  Red dates and wolfberry can be found at Chinese drug stores.

Wash and peel off the root skin. Cut the root and meat thin.  Because my daughter has braces on, so I just used chicken for this soup.  Any of your preference meat will do.

If you have a slow cooker, use it to cook this soup. It takes longer time to soften the roots.  If you don’t have it, any pot will be fine too.  Just boil the cut lotus roots (dates and wolfberry) until soft.  Add meat and seasoning to your taste.  Now you have soup for dinner tonight.  Enjoy and Happy Saturday!

Fried Tofu and Salsa dip

I love tofu anyway it is cooked.  Steam, fried and tofu in soup are all good.  It is easy to cook and not heavy on the stomach.  I particularly love the fried tofu.  Eat it anyway we like with salsa; with chilly sauce or any dip/without.  The way we usually have it at home is with sweet soya sauce salsa dip.    Now you have one more way to cook your tofu.  Enjoy and have nice weekend everyone.

Daikon Chicken Mushroom Soup (蘿蔔, 雞肉, 蘑菇湯)

Daikon or white radish chicken soup has been one of my fave dinner soup. It is easy to cook and need only minimum time to prepare. Recently I have been told that when cooking daikon chicken soup, One must add mushroom, dried scallops and wolfberries which will make the soup sweeter. Coincidently, I have that leftover dried scallops given by my neighbor sometime ago and still unused in refrigerator. So I thought why not try to make this chicken daikon mushroom soup the way I was told. All we need are: chicken, daikon, dried/fresh mushroom, and dried scallops and wolfberries and also a few slices of ginger. Soak the mushroom, wolfberries and scallops.  Boil the water in the pot add the chicken, daikon, mushroom, scallops and ginger and let it simmer for about one or two hours.  Half an hour before serving add that wolfberries and add salt to taste.  Happy Saturday and enjoy.

Calamari (炸魷魚)

I am not sure if any of you eat squid at all.  I rarely cook and eat squid because it is a bit tough to chew.  It’s just like chewing rubber that usually makes it unappealing to us.  I guess that is because I didn’t know that we should blanched the squid for a few minutes before cooking or frying it.  So, I tried to make calamari few weeks ago and here it is.

What we need are:  big squid (the squid I bought were kinda small and couldn’t find bigger one), garlic, shallot, an egg and flour.  Wash, clean and cut the squid and dip them in the mixture of beaten egg and flour.  Add fine chop of garlic, shallot and seasoning to your taste.  If you have bread crumbs, that’s even better. You can just roll the squid in those and fry them.  You may prepare a dipping sauce to go with the calamari to add flavour to it too.  Bon appetite.

Chicken Stew (紅燒雞肉土豆)

Today menu is an easy to cook chicken stew. I promise it is a no fail recipe. What we need: any meat but I prefer to use chicken wings; wash and peel the potatoes and cut half; slices of tomato; grate/chop the garlic, shallots and 2 slices of ginger. We also need 3 table-spoon of sweet soya sauce if you have it, otherwise use a table-spoon of dark soy sauce and add brown sugar/palm sugar; and half tea-spoon of nutmeg powder. I used 8 pieces of chicken wing and 6 small potatoes for this stew. It served four people.

On the pre-heat oil wok, stir fry the garlic, shallots and ginger till they all fragrance or slightly brown. Add the nutmeg and chicken. Stir fry them for a few minutes before adding 300 ml water. Let it boil and add the sweet sauce and seasoning to your taste. Simmer them for half an hour to forty five minutes and toss in the tomato. Let it simmer again until all the potatoes are soft and the chicken are cooked. We usually use beef for this stew but since my daughter has braces on, I just used softer meat instead. Happy Saturday!

Steamed Egg Custard (蒸蛋)

For years, I always wonder how to make that smooth steamed egg just like what we eat in the Chinese or Jap restaurant. Well, wonder no more. After searching the internet, I learned how to cook it the right way. It is very simple. Just use the strainer to minimize the bubble on the beaten eggs.

Here is what I did. We need 4 eggs for 3 cups of steamed egg custard. Beat all of them, add seasoning to taste and add 2 tea-spoons of sesame oil. At last add water to the eggs to make it soft and tender. The ratio of egg and water is 1:4. In this case, where I used 4 eggs, I needed 16 table-spoons of water. Mix them well.

Strain the mixture into small cups. Then bring the steamer to boil and place all the cups in. Use lids to cover those cups and steam them for 5 minutes. Be sure not to overcook the eggs. When done, sprinkle it with pepper and garnish with coriander. Have nice weekend everyone!

Stir Fried Chilly Eggplant (辣椒茄子)

I don’t know about you, but I love to eat eggplant only if it is cooked with chilly. When we were young, my mom often cooked eggplant. Only once in a while we had it with chilly, because dad doesn’t eat chilly at all. When she did cook, the eggplant plate would always be emptied in an instant. It was very tasty and delicious. I guess, any food cooked with chilly will always turn out delicious. The way she cooked it was to first fry the eggplant till it was soft then stir fried them with chilly. Nowadays as we are more health conscious, we try to avoid fatty things and usually cook with less oil. Softening the eggplant by steaming it is another way we adopt right away. Here is my eggplant dish!

What you need: bay leaves. One or two long eggplants, 2 tomatoes, 2 cloves of garlic, 2 shallots and 2 slices of blue ginger/galangal. Cut them all in slices. Chilly paste as much as you like. I used my own home made chilly paste. Or you can just forgo the chilly all together.

This is how you prepare the dish: in the pre-heat wok, fry the garlic, onion and galangal and bay leaves till fragrance or slightly brown. Add the chilly paste and tomatoes. Stir fry them till the tomato becomes juice like. Add sugar and salt to your taste. Keep stir fry it for ten to fifteen minutes and it slightly dries up. Then add the pre-steamed eggplants in. Mix them well and stir fry for another few minutes more till it all blend well. Alternatively, if you do not like eggplant, you may use prawns or fish. Similarly, stir fried them with chilly and tomatoes the same way. But remember to fry prawns/fish first. I hope you like my chilly eggplant dish. Enjoy!

Dinner For One (各人套餐)

This is how I indulge myself after day long chores: prepare quick fix dinner with a piece of that NYDC cheese cake and a cup of Chinese tea. Sorry to disappoint you that I rarely drink wine anymore. I do not like how it feels when the wine gets me dizzy with only a few sips of it. I just want to enjoy my meal, having that cake and tea with moments of quietness or music at home. Moment like this is all I prefer and couldn’t ask for more.

I would never get tired of cooking and eating my own chicken rice. It is very convenient and quick fix lunch/dinner that I usually prepare for my family when I have night class. I believe I had posted this before with the step by step instruction (Please refer it to Saturday post: chicken rice). When cooking the chicken topping, prepare it more than what you need. The leftover chicken can be used for your next meal topping as well. You can have chicken noodle tomorrow. Enjoy and Happy Saturday!

Asparagus, Chicken and Egg Drops soup (蘆筍雞絲蛋花湯)

Have you ever tried asparagus and egg soup? Here is another delicious and easy recipe to cook soup! Since I could not find fresh asparagus in the market, I just used can asparagus spears instead.
1. Boil the chicken broth and the asparagus till it is soft (if use fresh).
2. Add slices of chicken (if you want, you may season the meat with a tea-spoon of soy sauce and tea-spoon of corn starch before adding to the soup. This will make the meat tender.) and one or two table-spoon of corn starch water (depend on how thick you want your soup) and season it to your taste.
3. Let it boil and keep stirring the soup as you pour the beaten egg/s into the soup. Choice of crab meat may be added instead of chicken but don’t forget to add a few drops of sesame oil. Serve the soup while hot. Happy Saturday!