How to choose and prepare dired mushrooms

Just discovered, from watching this video, that instead of soaking dried mushrooms to soften them, I can also opt to steam them.

These are the steps if you do not have time to learn more by watching it:

Stewing My BBQ Chicken with Mushroom

I have discovered another way to cook my Marinated Chicken with BBQ Flavour from CP.

I airfry the frozen BBQ chicken in a metal container according to the setting for cooking it on my airfryer.  Half way through cooking, I will turn the chicken over.  Once the cooking cycle is over, I will cut up the drumsticks into bite size pieces.  It is alright if my chicken is not well cooked as I will be stewing it in a pot with:

-1 cup of water
-a few slices of ginger
-4 cloves of garlic
-3 seeds from a pod of star anise
-4 white flower mushroom (Bai Hua Gu)
-1 tablespoon of oyster sauce
-1 tablespoon of sugar or 1 to 2 pieces of rock sugar

Once the liquid is boiling, I will turn down the fire and let it simmer till the mushroom is tender enough to eat.  If the mushroom is not tender enough, I will add half to a cup of water to the pot to continue simmering it further.  I will add cornstarch slurry to thicken the sauce.

This is what white flower mushrooms (Bai Hua Gu) look like.

You can see from this video how the mushroom is prepared to be cooked the traditional way:

I do not use flour to wash them though.  I just rinsed them clean and soak them in hot water to soften them so that I can cut the stems off.  The stems can be included to add flavour to the stew.  You can omit them when it is time to serve the dish.  Before adding the mushroom to the pot to cook, you can decide if you prefer to quarter it.  As for the water for soaking mushroom, I will sieve it into the pot to stew. 

This is how you can marinate your chicken if you are not using the prepacked BBQ chicken:

If I have leftover Ginger Soy Sauce Chicken, I can cook the mushroom the traditional way to add to the dish.

  

You can check out the other ways I mix and match this BBQ chicken to cook other dishes at the following link:

Mix and Match Dish with Potato

One Pot Rice

If I am running short on time to cook a full meal for your family, I would consider cooking a one-pot meal as it is a time saving cooking process.  It will also reduce the number of dishes I have to wash.

One of such meal you can find at hawker stalls in Asia is the claypot rice.  Let's learn from a chef who has retired, how to cook it.  

Do you like eating the crispy, slightly burnt rice that you can dig out from the bottom of a claypot?  He also shared how you can get that right by moving the sides of the pot over the fire.

You can also use a rice cooker to cook it if you do not have a claypot.  It may not be as flavourful without the scotched rice that you can only get from using claypot.

You can also cook this one pot meal with glutinous rice.  If you would rather not as you will get a nauseous feeling like you have overeaten after eating glutinous rice, here is a tip the cook shared.  Instead of using just glutinous rice, for every 1 cup of glutinous rice, add 1/2 cup of white rice.  She said that you do not even have to wash the rice cooker after you have cooked the required ingredients in it.  Just wash the rice and add it to the (stained) rice cooker with the required amount water to cook it.  Then add the cooked ingredients to mix in once the rice is ready.

Here is another method to prepare this one pot meal.  You can marinate the ingredients used and keep it aside.  The boil the rice.  Once the water is reduced and bubbles can be seen on top of the rice arranged the chicken on top the rice to continue cooking.  The heat from the rice will cook the raw ingredients properly.  

I would prefer to use boneless chicken to cook it as I do not like the idea of bitting into bones when I eat the rice.

Another way to cook this one pot meal is to steam it and serve it with rice.  

You do not have to use a steam oven.  I will steam it over the pot of soup boiling for the day (which will not be Lotus soup).

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.