Tom Yam Soup

I bought my MasFood Instant Tom Yam Paste from TESCO. I like it that they share how to use the paste on their site. It helps me to decide if I would like to give it a try.  

When I received the paste, I see that the same instruction as follows is already printed on the packaging:  

Preparation: 

800ml (4 bowl) water, 1 packet MasFood Instant Tom Yam Paste, 2 nos. tomatoes, 1 clove garlic (crushed), 1 nos. shallot (crushed), 1 sprig coriander, 6 nos red chillies (crushed), 3 nos prawns, 3 nos. cuttlefish and 1 nos. chicken breast (cooked).

Cooking Method:

1.) Tear the cooked chicken breast into shreds. Set aside.

2.) Boil 4 bowls of water in a pan. Add in tomato, garlic and shallot. Then, cook about 10 minutes.

3.) Add in MasFood Instant Tom Yam Paste, cooked chicken breast, coriander leaves, red chilli, prawn and cuttlefish. Then, cook about 3 minute. Serve.

It should interest you to know that you don't have to use the ingredients suggested if you have some soup leftover from your last meal. The soup I like to add the Tom Yam paste to is the ABC soup, which I usually boil with pork. Check out the ingredients required to boil the soup and you will understand why it makes such a great soup stock for cooking other dishes.

I seived the ABC soup into a pot. I did not include the ingredients from the ABC soup to make my Tom Yam soup. Once the soup is boiling, I added the paste, spoonful by spoonful, till I get the taste I like. Instead of fresh seafood, I used Figo 5 in 1 Steamboat Choice.  I did not use the whole pack. I added just enough to feed my family without overcrowding the soup.

I drizzled the soup with garlic oil. You can add fried shallot or its oil if you have it at home. I served it garnished with a sprig of coriander.  

The next time I make the Tom Yam soup, I will add chicken to it.

A Reason to Boil Extra Pork Ribs in Soups

Whenever I make ABC or Old Winter Melon soup with pork ribs, I will take some out to cook another dish. 

That will reduce your time to cook 1-2-3-4-5 Ribs dish.  

When your pork ribs are already cooked tender in the soup, you don't have to simmer them for 25 minutes. Just pan fry the pork ribs from the soup to brown them both sides. Then cook them in the sauces till the liquid thickens to coat the meat. 

You can also use the following sauces to coat the pork ribs:

1) Soya Sauce
2) Garlic Oil
3) Honey or Brown Sugar
4) Water 
5) Dark Soya Sauce (optional)

Here is a video with another variation for sauces. I like it that the cook also shared substitute sauces you can use:

Cooking with Cucumbers

I managed to grow cucumbers in our garden.

Since our harvest is good, I am able to give some to my friends and relatives. Other than eating them raw, I have to figure out how to use them in my dishes.

I discovered that the Thai are making soup out of cucumbers. I found Thai Stuffed Cucumber Soup (Gaeng Jued Taeng Kwa Yad Sai) recipe from Siam Sizzles. I modified the marinating sauces for my minced pork.

Since I prepared too much minced pork for my cucumber soup, I decided to use the leftover to cook Braised Minced Pork with Potato and Carrot.

I love the way it turned out, cooked with the finely chopped carrot mixed in the minced pork.

Onion Paratha

I am always on a look out for easy to cook method for an otherwise time consuming dish. 

No kneading is required for this Onion Paratha recipe as it is made with liquid dough. 

These are the ingredients and method to cook it:

Leftover Makeover for Red, Green and Yellow Peppers Dish

 Whenever I buy red, green and yellow peppers, I will cook two different dishes with them. 

One will be my version of Sweet and Sour Pork. The other stir fry bell pepper dish I like to cook have some of the ingredients used in Sweet and Sour Pork, except cucumber. While the ingredients are cut into cubes for the Sweet and Sour Pork, they are sliced lenghwise in the second dish. Pork for Sweet and Sour Pork are deep fried with batter but the meat used in the second dish may be marinated chicken or pork which have been cut into strips.

There are a variety of sauces I used to cook it. These are the combination I have tried:

1) oyster sauce or
2) vegetarian oyster sauce or
3) BBQ sauce with honey or
4) Soya sauce with Worcestershire sauce

Sugar and salt are also added to taste.

If I want to use chicken instead of pork to cook this dish, I will marinate the pieces with garlic oil, soya sauce and sugar. I place the marinated chicken in a round metal container to air fry for 4 minutes at 180°F. I turn the chicken pieces over and air fry another 4 minutes or till the meat is well cooked. The sauce from the chicken is good enough to cook the peppers and other ingredients in.

If there are some leftover from this bell pepper dish, I add celery to the dish to serve it at the next meal. 

Recently, I came accross a recipe for Korean Street Toast. 

It inspired me to made my own version. I replaced the cabbage with thinly sliced bell peppers and the ham with minced or thin sliced pork.  I cook it with BBQ and pepper sauce.  It can be eaten with rice as is or added to scrambled eggs to pan fry for making toast like it is done in the Korean Street Toast recipe. 

I also serve any leftovers from my bell pepper dishes on toasted bread and top it with cheese.  This is how it turned out after I airfry it.

CONVERT YOUR VEGETABLE DISH INTO A SOUP

If you do not like the idea of serving the leftover vegetable dish during your next meal, you can convert it into a bowl of soup. Greens that taste good as stired fried dish and as soup are:

Petola
Winter Melon
Labu Air (Long Melon)
Bayam Merah (Red Spinach)
Labu Siam
Beijing Cabbage 

You can stir fry them according to the instruction I have noted on this chart.

To convert the dish into a bowl of soup, I boil some chicken drumettes with a bowl of water.  To save time, I usually boil the broth in a 2 layer pot so that I can heat up or steam another dish in the upper steam pan layer. Recently, I bought a 28cm wide pot cum steamer with an about 10cm in height cover. Other than the regular rack with handles for steaming, it is also supplied with two extra plates for steaming additional dishes. The smaller piece can be placed inside the pot while the larger piece fits on top of it or the rack. That makes it a 3 layer pot. 

Once the drumettes are tender enough, I remove them from the broth and cook them with Kam Heong chillie paste. You can decide if you want to include the drummets in your soup. Since there are pork slices in my leftover vegetable dishes, I decided to use them to cook another dish.  

I don't have to use the whole pack to cook my drummets. For about 6-8 pieces of drummets, I use only 1 1/2 tablespoons of the Kam Heong chillie paste. After fyring the paste with garlic oil in a wok, I added: 

2 Tbsps of water
1 Tbsp of dark soya sauce
1/2 tsp of sugar
2 Tbsps of corn starch slurry to thicken the sauce before adding the drumettes. 

This is how they turned out once some of the liquid is cooked up.

To convert my leftover dish of Winter Melon into soup, I poured it into the chicken broth to boil and added salt or soya sauce and pepper to taste. It is ready once it is boiling. 

I have added glass noodles to the soup. You can check out other optional ingredients you can add to the soup by looking at this chart:

EASY CHICKEN AND BROCCOLI CASSEROLE

I like checking out recipes that has the word "EASY" in its tittle.  I found this Easy Chicken and Broccoli Casserole on Yummly and I see that it has most of the ingredients that my daughter enjoys eating.  As the instruction is incomplete, I did a search and found this Cheesy Chicken Broccoli Casserole recipe shared by Kristyn Merkley.  I like it that her instructions include how you can prepare the dish and freeze it for 2-3 months. 

I learn from this version that you can replace the can of cream of chicken soup with 1/2 cup of heavy cream.

I also discovered from reading other recipes that you can replace the chicken soup with mushroom soup. I am hoping that my daughter will find it easy enough to cook this herself. I am sure she will consider adding sliced button mushroom to the dish.

I like the idea that this dish use cooken chicken. That means that I can boil a pot of soup with the water used for cooking it.

HOW TO CUT UP A WHOLE CHICKEN

I rarely buy a whole chicken. It is usually fatty and messy to clean up. Cut out discards must be immediately thrown outdoor or it will leave a stink in your kitchen. 

But I would like to share this "How to cut up a whole chicken" guide  from Eating Well. 

You can find many more of such guides that they pinned on Pinterest.

I also like the Chicken Cuts Chart that I found on The Nibble.

There is a link to food glossary which is listed in alphabetical order if you would like to know more about the ingredients you used in your dish.

 

DIFFERENT WAYS TO COOK WITH GREEN, RED AND YELLOW PEPPERS

I cook green, red and yellow peppers almost every week, so, I need to discover different ways to serve them. 

So far, I have used them to cook:

-Sweet and Sour Pork dish
-four different stir fry dishes by changing the sauces used  
-add celery to leftover stir fry dishes to change the flavour
-use any leftovers to make Korean Street Toast or as toppings for my pizza 

This is my latest discovery. I add any leftovers from my Sweet and Sour Pork dish to leftovers from my Ayam Percik dish. They blend in very well in flavour. 

I discovered Brahim's Percik sauce from TESCO (now known as Lotus). When it was sold under TESCO, their site was very informative as it included ingredients in the paste and cooking instruction, which you can also read off its packaging as follows.  

I usually make my decision to buy prepacked paste based on the ingredients used and whether it is easy  to cook with. By looking at the table I have created based on the above packaging instruction, you can see that it takes only 3 steps and 2 ingredients to cook this dish:

If you are going to use Brahim's method, it is best to keep the remaining sauce in the fridge till it is ready to be used. 

That was how I cooked it till I discovered that I can cook it with my airfyer. I marinate my chicken tighs with the whole packet of sauce in a round metal container and keep it covered overnight in the freezer. The following day, I removed the cover and placed the container, without thawing it, in my air fryer to cook for 15 minutes. Then turn the chicken over to cook for another 15 minutes. I then pour the chicken in a pot or wok and add just enough water to make sure that there is enough liquid in it to simmer till the chicken is tender. It is ready when you see that the sauce has reduced and thickened. 

You can read my cooking instruction more clearly from this table.

Should I use drumsticks to cook this dish, I will cut each drumstick into 3 sections. I use the middle portion for the Ayam Percik dish and the bony ends for making soup.

When I bring some Ayam Percik dish to the bike shop to eat, I usually pack it in a metal container because I can heat it up by steaming it in a mini electric pot. 

Don't throw away the sauce as you can add it to your rice to eat.  It is very flavourful. Sometimes I mixed the sauce into my rice to reheat in a mini rice cooker.

If I served Ayam Percik dish for lunch and there is some leftover for dinner, I can change its flavour by adding it to my Sweet and Sour Pork dish.  I can enhance the flavour further by adding BBQ and black pepper sauce to it. 

I was inspired to do this after checking out how chicken fajitas dish is cooked.

If I am to use pork to cook a version of it, I will most likely just be cooking the Sweet and Sour dish with strips of the meat and add the Percik sauce to taste.

So, if the peppers I bought are large enough, I will prepare all three different dishes on the same day. They are:

1) Sweet and Sour Pork
2) Stir fry dish
3) Korean style toppings for toast or pizza

The Korean style toppings can be served for breakfast while one will be served for lunch and the other for dinner or stored in the fridge to be served the following day. 

SOUP AS A ONE DISH MEAL

Check out this Western soup, "Copycat Olive Garden Chicken Gnocchi Soup". It is definitely a hearty one dish meal to cook for the family.

I first discovered this soup on Pinterest. Michelle posted it on her site, The Gracious Wife. I like the way she shares her recipes with lots of images and videos. She even shares tips on how to freeze leftovers so you can save the extra for later servings. You can also learn from her how to made your own potato Gnocchi to add to this soup.

MAKEOVER WITH LEFTOVERS: SWEET AND SOUR PORK DISH

Have you ever purchase green, red and yellow peppers at the market?  It is very difficult to find them in similar sizes. So you are likely going to have more of one than the other to cook in your dish.

I used to get my source of peppers in similar sizes from TESCO till Lotus took over. For a family of small eaters, I can cook two different dishes with them. One of them will be Sweet and Sour Pork. If you cut peppers the way I do, you will notice that their curved ends are usually thicker in porpotion. These are the parts that I used to cook this dish. 

 

I tried cooking it with a ready made pack of MasFood Sour Sweet Paste but I did not like how it turned out.

I still prefer it cooked with the following liquid/sauces:

-Mahsuri Spicy Sweet & Sour
-Tomato Ketchup
-Plum Sauce
-Juice from canned Pineapple Slices 
-soya sauce to taste
-*Worcester sauce (only if the sauce is not sour enough after cooking) 

I usually buy pork tenderloin as the meat is tender. The pork used in this dish should be deep fried but I do not like the idea of using lots of oil.  So I sliced the tenderloin into 1 finger thick cutlets and pound it flat with my meat mallet. I discovered from watching how Koreans cook in their restaurants that it will be less messy if you place a plastic over the meat or add corn starch to it before pounding.

I then marinate it piece by piece in my magic sauce:

1) Garlic Oil
2) Soya Sauce and/or Oyster Sauce
3) Sugar

I add cornstarch to the meat once it is thoroughly mixed with the sauces.  The marinated meat can be store in the freezer till it is time to be used.  

As the meat has been pounded thinly, it does not require a lot of oil or time to cook. For the sweet and sour dish, I only need 3 peices of pan fried cutlets but I usually fry more so that it can be eaten like pork chop for lunch. 

For dinner, I will use a pair of scissors to cut each cutlet into 1-2cm strips. 

When it is time to heat them up to be served, I can break an egg over the meat to fry before serving, thus changing its flavour. I can also serve the meat mixed into my sweet and sour sauce. I tend to cook more sauce than is required for the dish as I can use the sauce to flavour my leftover rice when I heat it up to eat for lunch in my bike shop.  The sauce also prevents the rice from drying out. 

I can also use this sauce to flavour my fried rice.

If I do not have the time to prepare the pork to go with this dish, I will use stored bought chicken nuggets. I air fry a small portion of them with garlic oil in a round metal container until both sides are crispy, which is for about nine minutes. Crispy Chicken Finger is our favourite choice to go with it. 

As I do not like the idea of serving the same dish for lunch and then dinner, I sometimes use the ingredients as toppings for the Four Cheese Pizza 285g that I bought from TESCO/Lotus. I quarter it up air fry two slices at a time for seven minutes in the air fryer.

You can see 2 methods for preparing the crispy pork for the sweet and sour dish in the following table.

You can see how the cutlets are prepared and deep fried for cooking "Crispy Sweet and Sour Pork" from this video.

These are the ingredients the chef used to cook the sweet and sour sauce.

This is how the Sweet and Sour Pork dish with bell peppers, pineapple and onion should be cooked.  The deep fried pork should be the last ingredient to be added to the sauce to prevent it from becoming soggy.

Other ingredients I have added to cook it are:

-1 cucumber deseeded and cubed
-1 tomato deseeded and cubed

Cutting Up Peppers My Way

This is how I cut my peppers. Cut through the grains and it will be easy to remove the stem with the seeds intact.

Instead of roasting the peppers to remove the skin, I used a peeler.

I collect all the peelings and seeds and dump them in my planter box.

Sometimes they grow.

Some live on as compost as they help the rest of the seeds from my kitchen waste to grow.