What to do with leftover cooked pasta?

Those days of "think of the Kampucheans/poor" to encourage my children to finish their food are over. Now that they can prepare their own meals I encourage them not to waste food by sharing with them ways leftovers can be used.  

But who would want to eat leftover cooked pasta?  Your cooked pasta will no longer be al dente if you reheat it to be eaten.  So, I like the idea of serving leftover cooked pasta crispy by baking it in an oven.  And, that is one of the ways Italians finish their leftover cooked pasta. 

  

 

You can find the full recipes at PastaGrammar.

Breakfast Expectations in the Family

We used to go out for breakfast every morning.  So, we have a wide variety of food to choose from depending on whether we eat at a kopitiam or at the mamak shop.  We stopped doing that during Covid-19 pandemic.

  

This is the kind of breakfast I would like to make for my family.  Quick and easy. All the easier if I can make it in the airfryer.

This is the kind of breakfast my daughter wish I can make.  Preferbly buns with ingredients she enjoys eating incorporated.

I have to rush to the bike shop after cooking lunch and dinner for the family.  So, this is how she will be geting her bread.  Easy with the breadmaker or store bought buns.

Life After the Covid-19 Pandemic

When I stopped cooking after we started the bike shop in 2012, we used to go out as a family for breakfast and dinner.  It was a great time to bond and the children enjoyed eating out.  I started cooking again when the Covid-19 Pandemic was reported in 2020.

To avoid the crowd I started buying my groceries online from Tesco.  I continue to shop there after it was taken over by Lotus. My family members like thier coffee buns (Roti Kopi) and Cheese Onion Buns. So I buy them on a weekly basis for breakfast.  They are available in packs of 4. 

Since last November I have not been able to buy their Cheese Onion Buns online. I found out from Hafiz, a very friendly Store Manager at its Kajang branch where I collect my orders, that not all outlets sell this bun.  That is why it is no longer listed online. Most of the time the Cheese Onion Buns will have been sold out when I get there to collect my order.

So, that started my quest to look for Cheese Onion Bun recipe to bake in my breadmaker.  I bought it from Cosway during the pandemic, when they had a promotion running.

My favourite bread to make is the Milky Loaf.  

This is the recipe for it. 

As you can see, I can choose the "dough setting" on my breadmaker to make the dinner rolls with the same ingredients.  If I make dinner rolls, I can top them with onion and cheese to bake in the oven.  But I prefer the lazy way.  Once my loaf is baked, I cut it in half horizontally.  I then slice the top half of it 3/4 way through so that I can slip in my fried sliced onion and cheese to airfry.  If you watch this video, you will get an idea of what I did.  You will also discover from it other ingredients you can shove into the cuts to flavour your bread or buns.

Did that but I still prefer the ones from Lotus as it did not turn out cheesy enough.  

Then I found this Cheese Bread recipe. 

It requires 1 cup of sredded cheese which is 120g.  I used a 200g pack of Emborg Shredded Mozzarella Cheese to bake it.   But I am still not happy at how it turned out and decided to modify the recipe. I used the ingredients for the Milky Loaf and added 125g pack of shredded Parmesan cheese, as it was on offer at Lotus. I like it better baked this way as it tasted cheesier.  

However, eating it with peanut butter, which I like eating, will kill the cheese flavour.

After all my trouble, I found out recently from Hafiz that if I call Lotus with the number he gave me, the staff at their "Self Collect" counter will keep the Cheese Onion Buns for my next collection.

The other bakery that I will buy from Lotus is their Croissant which is also available in packs of 4 pieces.

I usually serve it with sardine which I have cooked and stored in the fridge.  This is the recipe for cooking it:

I am usually wary about buying house brand food item but I am happy with the canned Sardine with Tomato supplied by Lotus.  

Other than the airfryer, bread and sardine kept in the fridge can also be heated up with a sandwich toaster.

I have a reason for cutting my loaf in half horizontally. The containers I have, large enough to store my bread are shallow. After I cut it up horizontally, I will slice it to store in the fridge. This is the top half section of my Milky Cheese Loaf with 2 peices of Milky Loaf leftover from an earlier bake.

This is the bottom half section of my Milky Cheese Loaf.  Though I chose "light" colour setting, it turned out darker than my Milky Loaf baked at "medium" colour setting.

Shortcuts for cooking a curry dish

The easiest way to make a coconut curry dish is to buy ready made chilli paste for curry. That will eliminate the process of pounding chillies with the many other ingredients that will make the curry flavourful. However, check the packaging to see that it has cooking instruction for making the curry dish. I used to get my homemade chillie paste from my aunt.

Whenever I am not sure about how to use a ready made sauce or paste at the sundry shop I usually go to, I will check with the store owner. If the store owner cannot help me, I can check out the brand online. When I shopped online at TESCO before it became Lotus, I noticed that they usually include the cooking instruction for the paste I am interested in, which they had extracted from the packaging itself. 

Once you are able to find the chillie paste you like, all you need to add to it is the curry powder for meat or fish, based on what you are cooking, and santan (coconut milk). This is the curry powder I use for cooking fish curry.  It is from my cousin's factory in Melaka.

You can also add to your curry dish any of the following ingredients:

-potato (our family’s favourite choice)

-lady’s finger

-long beans

-cabbage

-tomato

For the santan, I prefer to buy the packet version.  It can keep longer so that I can cook my curry dish anytime I want to as long as I have curry powder and chillie paste in the fridge.

Recently, I discovered an even easier way to make curry. These are the ingredients noted on the packaging:

As you can see from the list, coconut milk is already included in the paste. This is how you can use the curry paste to cook chicken curry.

This is how the Brahim’s chicken curry sauce should look like after it is cooked but I prefer it with more sauce. So, I usually add extra water or santan to the pot. If it is not salty enough, instead of salt, I add soya sauce.

However, I prefer to eat their MRE (meal ready to eat) version which is even easier to prepare. I just put the packet into a pot of boiling water and wait for 3 minutes. I am drawn to this brand because I found out that their rice and dishes are served to airlines passengers too.

I usually serve it in a glass bowl so that if there are any leftovers, I can keep it covered in the fridge. As my glass bowl is microwave safe, the following day, I can just pop it in the microwave oven to heat up for about 2 to 3 minutes. 

As I am not an adventurous eater aka fussy, whenever my family travel overseas for a holiday I usually bring along a mini cooker, instant noodles and some of Brahim’s MREs. I also bring along metal containers to store the food heated up to eat. They are great for days when we do not feel like eating the local food over there or when we have hunger pangs because of the time difference.

MREs with curry or chilli sauce were the best dishes we travelled overseas with as we could also eat it with bread which we could easily pinched from the buffet spread of the hotels we stayed at. 

If you cannot buy ready made curry paste, this is how you can make your own.

Once your curry paste is ready, you can start cooking your curry dish. I prefer to use chicken and potato in the dish. *Note that you only need 2 stalks of lemongrass cut in half. The white portion for making the curry paste while the green portion is for cooking the curry. However, if you are able to buy the curry paste, you can omit adding it to cook this curry dish.

I found this recipe from The Burning Kitchen. Check it out. The mother and daughter team, Bee Leng and Melissa, provides lots of photos and tips which you will find useful.

Cooking with frozen ingredients

I usually cook frozen food, meat or fish without defrosting them. It is because I can defrost and cook the frozen ingredients at the same time by steaming it over the soup I am boiling for the day.

I can put my frozen ingredients for soup, directly into the pot of water to boil. I do that for frozen chicken feet I used to enhance the flavour of the soup.

However, I prefer to place the frozen soup bone, pork or chicken in a round metal container and steam it over the soup. You can see from this photo that while I am boiling my soup, I can also steam enough rice for the day and frozen dumplings (dimsum). From my experience, I know that some soups can affect the flavour of the dishes I am steaming up. So I do not do that if I am boiling herbal soup or Lotus root soup.

I steam the meat till it is no longer red with blood before putting it in the soup to boil till tender. I then sieve the liquid in the metal container into the pot of soup to remove the scums. This is how the meat should look like before I put it in the soup.

It is easier for me to remove the scum from the meat in the metal bowl then while it is boiling in the soup.

If I plan on using my airfryer to cook a pork or chicken dish, I will marinate the ingredients first in a round metal container before storing it in the freezer. When it is time to cook it, I will remove the cover and pop the metal container in the airfryer to cook for about 10 to 15 minutes on one side and turn the meat over to cook for another 10 to 15 minutes. I then pour it into a pot, add about half a cup of water to boil it over low fire till the meat is tender enough. After tasting it, I can then decide if I need to add salt or soya sauce or oyster sauce to the dish.

My favourite dishes to cook this way are Oyster Sauce Chicken and Ayam Percik. You can see how I am supposed to cook the Ayam Percik from its packaging.

This is how I cook my Ayam Percik dish with frozen chicken.

I noticed that I am able to speed up the cooking process by not thawing the frozen ingredients I used.