Poon Choi, a One Dish Meal

Poon Choi is a one dish meal that can be served during Chinese New Year. For families who prefer to eat vegetarian food on the first day of the lunar year, this is how it can be prepared

This is a non vegetarian version of Poon Choi.

I discovered that I can also use liquid from canned food to cook it.

I tried making use of the sauce from this can of braised abalone. 

To save time, I used the slow cooker to cook it with mushroom the night before. I added the water I used to soak my mushroom, 2 cloves of garlic and a few pieces of smashed ginger. I also add about a cup of chicken soup to increase the volume. It tasted alright without adding any other ingredients. 

The next day, as I have leftover from this mushroom abalone dish, I added chicken from the soup I cooked and heat it up. It turned out well. 

Pan Fry a Whole Fish

It takes skills to pan fry a whole fish without its skin sticking to the pan or breaking it up when you try to flip it over to fry the other side. Learn some tips and tricks to get your fish fried nicely from this video.

If you prefer your pan fried fish with less sauce, use the recipe from The Wok of Life.

Mix the following ingredients in a small bowl:

-2 tablespoons hot water
-1/4 teaspoon salt
-1 teaspoon sugar
-2 tablespoons soy sauce
-A pinch of fresh ground white pepper

Heat 2 tablespoons oil to fry 2-3 slices of ginger (1/8-inch thick) till they begin to sizzle. Add the above sauce mixture and heat it up until it simmers. Set it aside

Add the 2 tablespoons Shaoxing wine around the perimeter of the wok of pan fried fish and let cook off for 30 seconds. Pour the soy sauce mixture around the perimeter of the wok and turn the heat back up until the sauce is simmering (about 30 seconds). Add in the chopped scallions and it is ready to be served.

Satay My Way

Whatever I cook, I try to do away with some of the steps whenever it is possible to. For satay, it will be attaching the meat to the skewers to grill. I do not use the wooden skewers or grill the meat. I stir fry it like it is shown in this video.

However, I marinate my meat with the following sauces:

-garlic oil

-ginger juice
-soya sauce

-sugar

-cornstarch

For the satay sauce, I mix the following ingredients together:

1) 1 big scoop of crunchy peanut butter

2) 8 Tbsp of canned peaches syrup

3) Sugar

4) Half a lemon squeezed for juice 

5) Lingam Chillie sauce 

I do not add the sliced onion or the peanut sauce to the stir fry either, which I think helps keep the dish moist. I will give it a try the next time I cook it.

Check out how a Westerner cooked Chicken Satay.

Now check out how an Aisan do satay from scratch.

Cooking with Sengkuang

 Sengkuang (yam bean) is also a weekly buy because my girl loves eating it.

I can only cook it when my bike shop is closed as it takes time to prepare. As sengkuang can also be used to sweeten soup, I usually cut out a few pieces to store in the freezer. 

This is how it looks like cooked with
-garlic oil
-salt
-soya sauce
-pepper

As you cook it, the sengkuang will soften and its juice will drip into the sauce. Turn the fire down low to simmer still the sengkuang is tender enough to eat. Add water if the sauce dries up. Leftover sengkuang can be made into popiah by rolling the ingredient in spring roll pastry. 

I do not discard the leftover sauce from this dish as it can be used to flavour rice or porridge. The spring rolls can be deep fried but I prefer to use the air fryer.

If you have the time, you can even make your own wraps.

I will also share with you the traditional way for cooking this yam bean dish which I found on Huang Kitchen.  This is also the way my mother-in-law taught me to cook it.  She also added dried shredded squid, which she soaked in water to clean and soften.  This is then added to the fried dried prawns to fry before the yam bean is added.  I started cooking it without the seafood products when my husband was down with Graves disease and should avoid eating them. You can see the adaptations I have made to it from this chart.

Di San Xian: Potato, Eggplant & Pepper Stir Fry (地三鲜)

Discovered a dish shared on Taste Life that has potato, eggplant and bell pepper. All the ingredients my family enjoys eating. It is Di San Xian.  I decided to share the video from Chinese Cooking Demystified as I like the tips shared on preparing the ingredients to be cooked.

This is how I will cook it:

Instead of using lots of oil to deep fry the veggies, I will most likely cut them into slices so that I can air fry them in a round metal container with garlic oil.

Cooking with Bitter Gourd

Children, your dad loves eating peppers and bitter gourd. Here is a recipe that we should try making for him.

Since we are small eaters, we should not have any problem cooking the second dish too with just one large bitter gourd.  As I have tried it with cucumbers, we can also use the steamed dish to make soup for dinner if there are any leftovers.