A Fan of Leftover Recipes

There is always leftover rice in the house because I usually cook more than I need for the day.  I am exploring other ways to eat them.

I discovered that I can make rice roti or rice ball to pan fry by blending the rice. 

Here is the recipe for rice roti (click on the link provided to watch how it is made): 

I can also make spicy strips by pounding it up into a dough, flatten and cut it up into strips to steam before stir frying them with spices.

Cooking with Air Fryer

My first airfryer was a gift from my sister because she does not know how to make full use of it.  My son was the first one who experimented cooking with it and I got hooked.  When he moved out, I gave him that unit and got him to buy me a unit in larger capacity since I am cooking for three in the family.

Many people think that an airfryer is just a gimmick.  I can only say that they are just not playful enough to create interesting fusion of Asian or Western dishes with it.  I use my airfryer to:

-thaw and cook frozen food and ready to eat meals.
-reheat food and continue to keep it warm by leaving it inside.
-deep fry frozen food without oil.
-toast my bread, pancakes, pizzas and wraps.
-melt my butter.
-make my deep fried food crispy again.
-roast.
-bake.
-grill.

Any dishes you can cook in an oven can be cooked in your airfryer and in a shorter time too, even though you have not preheated it.  It is more economical to use an airfryer, especially if, you have a smaller portion to bake.   This video gives you a general idea how you can use the airfryer to cook which is possibly why you think cooking with it is such a hassle.  

However, you may reconsider using an airfryer if you use the tips I shared below:

Try to avoid cooking food directly in its basket by using a metal container.

From the video you can see that the ingredients are placed on the basket to be cooked.  I don't do that.  I have many round stainless steel food containers with lids like these.  

They are handy for storing food in the refrigerator and for steaming food over a pot of soup or in my airfryer.  Most of my meat are marinated ahead and stored in such round metal containers.  When it is time to cook, I just remove its cover and place the container on the basket to airfry.  Once the meat has thawed enough, I separate them to cook further.  By doing that I save the time and hassle of cleaning up a my heated airfryer to cook the next dish, 

Spread oil in your metal container. 

If I am cooking room temperature raw ingredients like meat or fish, I will spread garlic oil in the container before I place the food inside it to cook.  The oil will prevent the ingredients from sticking to the container which will make it easier for me to turn them over to cook further.

To avoid burning raw minced garlic, use garlic oil instead.

I prefer my greens with sauce, so, I will not consider cooking them in an airfryer.  Also, instead of adding minced garlic in to airfry, consider using garlic oil.  You make it by deep frying minced garlic in a pot of oil.  When it is time to cook, just place the ingredient in a metal container and spread 1-2 tablespoon of garlic oil over it before airfrying.

Use a piece of bread to catch oil drips.

It will be easier for you to clean your airfryer if you place a piece of bread below the basket to catch oil dripping out of food like bacon or fried chicken you are airfrying. 

Don't wash the airfryer to cook the next dish.

You can use a piece of kitchen towel to wipe down and remove any bits of food still sticking to the basket.  That will also help maintain the heat of the airfryer to cook the next dish.

You can easily find recipes for dishes that you can cook in your airfryer.  Webspoon World shared 7 such recipes that have gone viral on TikTok that should interest you to try making.

These are the ingredients he used:

Cloud Bread in AirFryer 

● 3 pcs egg whites 

● salt

● 80g cheddar cheese 

● 1 tbsp bagel seasoning 

Air Fryer Rice Paper Feta Burek 

● 100g feta cheese 

● 1 egg 

● 50g mozzarella

● egg

● 3 rice paper 

● sesame

Crispy Gnocchi Caprese Salad 

● 250g gnocchi

● 1 tsp paprika 

● 1/3 tsp salt 

● 1/2 tsp Italian herbs 

● olive oil

● 100g mozzarella cheese

● 100g сherry tomatoes 

● basil

Air Fryer Garlic Tortilla Crackers 

● 3 tortilla 

● 1 tsp dried parsley

● 1/2 tsp salt 

● 1/3 tsp chili flakes 

● 50ml butter (melted) 

● 1 clove garlic 

Viral Chicken Wings in Air Fryer

● 500g chicken wings 

● 1 tsp salt

● 2 tbsp honey

● 2 tbsp ketchup

● 3 tbsp soy sauce

● 1 tsp garlic powder

Apple Pudding in Air Fryer

● 2 apples 

● 2 eggs 

● 60g sweetened condensed milk

● 1 tsp cinnamon

Air Fryer Chicken Sticks

● 500g chicken breast 

● 1/2 tsp coriander powder 

● 1/2 tsp garlic powder 

● 1 tsp salt

● 1 tsp paprika

● 1/3 tsp chili pepper 

● olive oil

If you want more recipes and tips on how to use the airfryer efficiently, you can find them on my Pinterest board at the following link:

Air Fryer

You can also find dishes I have cooked with my airfryer if you do a search for airfyer on this blog. 

How to Make Potato Tart

A tart is a pastry dish with opening so that you can bake it filled with sweet or savoury ingredients like:

-fruit
-custard
-chocolate
-cheese
-mushrooms,
-curry
-pastry cream, also known as, crème pâtissière

Shortcrust is a type of pastry often used for the base of a tart, quiche, pie, or flan.  To make a basic shortcrust pastry you require:

-plain flour
-butter
-milk
-a pinch of salt

Sugar can be added for sweet shortcrust pastry.  Some recipes use an egg yolk to to create a richer, more tender, and flavourful crust with a golden hue.  A thin layer of egg yolk can also be brushed on the blind-baked shell to seal it and prevent the filling from leaking.

You can watch this video to learn how to make it.

You can learn more about tart from Hali, a French-trained baker, at the following link:

A guide to tart crust

Do you know that you can make your "tart" with mashed potatoes?  You can learn how to make it and cook the fillings from this video:

I prefer the simpler version as shown in the following video:

Crispy Potato Tart recipe

I will use pork instead of chicken to cook it.  These are the ingredients required:

I will consider using my sardine with onion dish as fillings:

 Or my peppers, onion and carrot dish:

I wonder if it will taste good with scrambled eggs and tomatoes added as fillings.

Should I can mash the potato from my curry dish to make the tart and tear apart the chicken to add as filling?

I can also use this filling for making chicken curry puff.

Deep Fried Brinjal

Do you like eating brinjal (eggplant)?  My husband enjoys eating it, so I am always on a look out for recipes.

I usually steam it with chilli paste, over the soup I am cooking for the day.  I came across this Deep Fried Brinjal (Eggplant) recipe on Quora which I would love to try.

These are the ingredients required to cook it.

I also came across an Eggplant and Roasted-Pepper Pasta recipe in a newsletter from Mary Stewart.  This is how the eggplant is prepared:

-Heat 1/3 cup oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high.
-Add eggplants, garlic, and 1 teaspoon salt; stir to combine.
-Add 1/3 cup water. Cover and cook, stirring occasionally.
-Add more water to cook if needed, until eggplants are very tender but still hold shape.
-Should be ready in 10 minutes. 

I can imagine topping that with my Bell Pepper Dish to serve.

I am also following this question posted on Quora:

What is the best way to cook egg plant?

That's your mom

We are not Christians.  We do not celebrate Christmas.  But here I am, sharing information on social media on how one can use trimmings from a living conifer tree on display for Christmas to start a simmer pot of homemade air freshener.  It just shows that I am a hoarder of useful tips and I enjoy sharing them to help others live a more eco-friendly life aka frugally.  Continue reading if you are interested to learn how to save money on buying scented candles or fragrance oils.  

I found out from reading some newsletters from Martha Stewart, that you have to trim the conifer tree you wish to display for Christmas.  This is to ensure that you will have plenty of space between branches for decorations to hang freely. From what I have read, you don't have to throw away thoes trimmings.  You can start a simmer pot by boiling them with pear slices and one or two sprigs of rosemary for an aromatic scent of winter in your home.  

This video will give you an idea what a simmer pot is all about.

You can check out the other ingredients you can use from your kitchen to start a simmer pot from this articles shared by Martha Stewart:  

7 Simmer Pots Recipes to Fill Your Home With a Customized Scent

If you like the idea, do a search online for "Simmer Pots .pdf".  Through this search, I found more tips about starting a simmer pot from Compost Simmer Pots.  You can even toss the peels from fruits you have eaten or juiced into the simmer pot. 

This is the process for making a simmer pot:

-add all ingredients to a soup pot.
-fill with water almost to the top.
-boil over high heat.
-once water is boiling, reduce heat.
-let it simmer for as long as you like.
-you can keep it in the refrigerator between simmers to extend its lifespan.
-repeat each day until the mixture loses its scent.
-compost the ingredients in the pot for your garden. 

Rock Sugar Egg Syrup (冰糖鸡蛋糖水)

When I was younger, my mom used to make Rock Sugar Egg Syrup (冰糖鸡蛋糖水).  She used a double boiler to gently cook the raw eggs which she added one by one into the pot of rock sugar syrup that she had prepared. In that way the yolk will be cooked but the whites will not break away from it too much. They looked like poached eggs but the yolks are well cooked.

I found an image of the enamel double boiler, she used at What To Cook Today.  Marvellina is the publisher of this website.  She also develops her own recipes which she shares with clear instructions and lots of photos.  

If you do not have a double boiler, you can use a pot and a glass or metal bowl to do the job, as shown in the following video. However, the bowl must have a lid for it.

Drinking rock sugar water or syrup has a cooling effect on the body. I was told that it can become heaty to consume if it has been cooked over fire for a period of time. I guess that must be why my mom used the double boiler. Read the following articles if you are curious to know what I mean about cooling and heaty food and their effects on the body.

Heaty’ vs ‘Cooling

What Do ‘Heaty’ and ‘Cooling’ Really Mean?

These are the steps for making a bowl of 冰糖鸡蛋糖水 (Rock Sugar Egg Syrup) if you use the above makeshift double boiler:

-boil water in the pot.

-place a glass or metal bowl over the pot as shown in the video.

-the base of the bowl should not be touching the boiling water.

-place rock sugar (a small piece) in the glass or metal bowl.

-add a bowl and a 1/4 of boiling water to the rock sugar.

-stir till rock sugar has dissolved.

-cover the glass or metal bowl.

-lower heat and continue to boil.

-add a raw egg when the water in the bowl starts steaming up and is hot enough.

-cover the glass or metal bowl and continue heating.

-it is ready to be served once the egg looks like poached egg.

It is alright to add hot water to the syrup if it is too sweet for you. However, do not make it with too little rock sugar or the 糖水 (sugar syrup) will taste too bland.

You can read how rock sugar nourish the body from the following article:

糖水鸡蛋

From there, I picked up 3 other methods to prepare it without a double boiler:

I can even use a rice cooker to make it with red dates and brown sugar:

I also like eat my eggs with white fungus cooked as a dessert or soup. These are the ingredients for the dessert:

-White fungus

-Wolfberry

-Red dates or dried longan

-Hard boiled chicken eggs and/or quail eggs

You can see how it is made by watching this video:

However, when I use white fungus, especially, in my soup, I like it to have a more gelantin texture. Watch this video if you like it slimy too. The hard boiled eggs, if required, can be added to the dessert with the white fungus.

Though it is suggested that you leave the dessert overnight in the fridge for the gelantin texture, it can be eaten as soon as it is cooked.

These are the ingredients for making the soup:

-White fungus (wash and prepare as shown in video)

-Wolfberry (for me it’s optional)

-Red dates (I just soak them in water and rinse them out twice)

-Yok chok (soak in water till soften and clean)

-Chicken (my choice drumsticks cut into 3 sections)

-Hard boiled chicken eggs (1 for each person) or quail eggs (15 per pack)

-1 Soup bowl of water

-Salt to taste

When I use my slow cooker for boiling soup, I prefer to boil the meat (chicken or pork) in a pot of water (1 1/2 soup bowl) first. In that way, when I pour the water into the slow cooker, I can sieve out any impurities from the boiled meat. Then I will add the rest of the ingredients to the slow cooker and cook it on low for 3 to 4 hours.

I made a nice discovery from reading, "5 Tricks That Make Your Slow Cooker Even More Useful, If That's Even Possible". You can also turn your slow cooker into a double boiler to brew herbal soup in this manner.

Useful Link from Quora

I enjoy reading postings on Quora.  I have also been active there by sharing information about bicycles and useful tips about parts and stuff that I sell at my bike shop.  I also enjoy collecting and sharing using tips I discovered at the site.  Some of the information I keep may not be relevant to me but I am sure someone I know will find them useful one day because I have shared or saved them on one of my Pinterest boards.  

This sums up my participation on Quora.

Today, I would like to share the following link to a collection of recipes used by the US Armed Force’s culinary professionals to serve up to 100 people.  You can check out their Index Of Recipes for a quick look to see if any of the recipes there will interest you.

Armed Forces Recipe Service 

I discovered this information from reading this question answered by Martin Bayer.

What is an example of a standard recipe card?

He said that they are all easy to prepare.  As each recipe is for 100 portions, you will have to convert them to cater to the number of people you will be serving.  He recommended trying out the Savory Baked Chicken.

Scrambled Eggs with Tomatoes

I have been on a look out for recipes for scrambled eggs cooked with tomatoes eversince my son told me that he likes eating his eggs that way.  I think he will like the way this Chinese Eggs & Tomato Stir Fry is done in the video by Thai chef, Pailin "Pai" Chongchitnant.  

This is how it is cooked at a glance.

I have shared many recipes for scrambled eggs as my family loves eating them.

Pickled Vegetables

Have you tried the acar served with Nasi Lemak at Madam Kwan's.  I like it so much that I have an urge to make my own.

I found this video instruction from The Meatmen Channel.

These are the ingredients required to make it:

2 cucumbers
2 carrots
1/2 chinese cabbage
1/2 cauliflower
5 Long Beans
4 chillies
1L water
650ml white vinegar
10 tbsp sugar
3 tbsp salt
120g shallots
4 cloves garlic
15g tumeric
4 candlenuts
1 stalk lemongrass
100g fresh chillies
50g soaked dried chillies
20g belacan
4 tbsp oil
250g ground peaunts
50g fried shallots
40g toasted white sesame seeds

After checking out the amount of ingredients I will have to prepare to make it, I have decided to go for the simpler Japanese version.  I found the recipes at Japanese Cooking Channel. 

These are recipes I picked out from the video that do not require mirin to make since I do not stock it in my pantry:

The good news is that I can replace mirin with rice vinegar on a 1:1 ratio as substitute.  According to All Recipes, since mirin is much sweeter than rice vinegar, I will have to add about a 1/2 teaspoon of sugar per tablespoon of rice vinegar. 

Here is another recipe I found on Daily Cooking Quest that I would like to try making:

I am glad to read from a comment posted by Anita, the cook, that though kombu will give the pickle a bit of umami, it will still be delicious without it. 

Substitutes for Potatoes

Do you know that if you run out of potatoes, you can use green bananas as substitute?  You can learn how to cook green bananas by watching this video.

This is a simpler version which is like how you would cook your potatoes but I would rather boil my potatoes in my ABC soup.  Makes me wonder how it will affect the soup flavour if I use green bananas.  I will let you know if I try this experiment.

I would just add butter and not cook the mashed bananas further if they are still hot.

I saw another green bananas recipe on Facebook. Instead of boiling the bananas, the cook grated them.  These are the ingredients required based on the video shared:

I did a search for other substitutes and discovered the following sites:

10 Healthy Alternatives To Mashed Potatoes

9 Low Carb Potato Substitutes + 50 Ways to Use Them

For days, when your bananas are too ripe for the above recipes, you can make pancakes out of them with eggs.

These are the ingredients for making these pancakes.

Rice Paper Meals

I shared how I can make braised pork and meat floss with soup bone earlier and after discovering that I can serve meat floss in rice paper, I became interested in finding recipes for them.  So, I am glad that Beryl Shereshewsky also shared such recipes in the following video because she had leftover rice paper from her last video.

There are additional recipes from this video for me to check out.

This looks so easy to make.  Just marinate bite size pieces chciken breast with salt, pepper and curry powder before wrapping each piece with softened rice paper to pan fry for 5 minutes.

3-Ingredient Cakes

I like keeping recipes that requires three or less ingredients to make.  

Here is one for baking sponge cake. 

I can add flavouring essense to the batter if I want to.

I prefer this recipe which I found on YouTube as less sugar is used.

Sponge cake can also be steamed to cook.  The preparation method is the same except that the base of the cake pan need to be lined but not be greased.

This method is a little different as the egg york is separated from the white before it is beaten with sugar.

I would also like to try making 3-Ingredient Greek Yogurt Cake.

It can be baked in an airfryer too.

Shortcut to Cooking Speghetti

To make your speghetti dish, you need to boil a pot of water to cook the noodle till it is al dente first.  Then you need a pan to fry the ingredients to flavour it.  By baking it, you cut down these two processes so you will have less utensils to wash too.

Here is the recipe for it from Feel Good Foodie.  I like it that Yumna shared her recipes with lots of photos.

I first discovered this recipe on "I love Recipes" Facebook page.  I like it better as there are lesser ingredients required to cook it.  Except for Oregano, they are ingredients which I often use in my kitchen. 

Lotus Roots Soup and Its Variations

I often shared that I can save my gas by heating or steaming other dishes above my pot of boiling soup.

I will never do that when I am boiling Lotus Root Soup.  The flavour of the soup will be imparted on the other dishes being heated or cooked above it.  I will also not use chicken or boil pork ribs in it so that it will bcome tenderise enough to cook other dishes.

There are two ways that Lotus Root soup can be made.  At home I use the basic soup ingredients to make it.  But during Chinese New Year when you have to boil enough to serve every member of the family who are home for the reunion dinner, you can add the optional ingredients to make it more flavourful.  That was how my mother-in-law boiled the soup.

The arrowroot  and chicken feet will thicken your soup and you can omit them if you want to. If you like your peanuts to be soft, soak them in hot water for 2 to 3 hours before boiling them in the soup.  You can also soak them in cold water and leave it overnight in the fridge.  

Chinese soups are cooked by boiling the water with the ingredients.  Once the water is boiling, you can turn down the fire to let it simmer.  Most soups will take at least 1 hour to cook but if you have root vegetables or ingredients that are denser, you will have to cook it for about 2½ hours.  Check the condition of your peanuts.  If it is not soft enough, you can continue boiling.  You can add water if the level has dropped too much and you need to boil a little longer.

Since I buy my groceries online, I am usually not able to get the exact amount of lotus root I need to make the soup.  I am not worried if the lotus root I received is too large as it will enhance the flavour of the soup.   If I do not have enough lotus root to make the soup, I can either reduce the amount of water I usually use, which is about 1½ to 2 soup bowls, or make adjustments to the other ingredients. 

These are the ingredients that will enhance the flavour of the soup, which I can increase the quantity required or reduce it, based on the size of my lotus root:

The basic 
-soup bones
-arrowroot (it thickens your soup and can be omitted)

You can include all or pick any one of these optional ingredients to add to your lotus soup.
-dried oyster
-dried squid
-peanuts
-chicken feet (it thickens your soup and can be omitted)

It is not a good idea to increase the amount of dried oyster and dried cuttlefish as they will make the soup taste fishy.  It will be best not to include peanuts if you are boiling soup with less water as they take a longer time to boil to soften.  

The ingredients that will sweeten the soup are:

-dates
-dried honey dates

You can reduce the amount used if you are someone who do not like drinking sweet tasting soup. I will omit the dried honey dates but not the dates. The number of dates I use depends on the size of the dates I have on hand.  If they are large, 4 pieces will do and if they are smaller, I will add accordingly, up to a maximum of 7 pieces.

If you have made a mistake by adding too much water to your soup and it tasted bland, instead of boiling it down, you can save it by adding a few pieces of sengkuang.

This is the way I will cut my lotus root if I plan on removing them to cook another dish with.

These are the sauce ingredients I often use to flavour ingredients such as meat or lotus root that I have removed from the soup:

-garlic oil

-a few tablespoons of water or lotus root soup

-sugar or honey

-soya sauce and/or oyster sauce

-black or white pepper

I pan fry them till the liquid thickens and sticks to the lotus root.  If you like to eat your lotus root crunchy, you can blanch the sliced quantity you want in the soup for about 45 seconds.  You can find ways to add flavour to the lotus root from your soup by doing a search online for "lotus root dishes".

You can cut the lotus root in large chunks if you have no intention to eat them. 

If you do a search online for "lotus root soup, you will find many other variations for making it.  Here is one from The Woks of Life, which is totally different as their ingredients include seaweed/kelp, ginger, dried goji berries and scallion.  Check out links to their glosarries if you are wondering what some of the ingredients in Chinese recipes look like.

I have posted many other useful tips about making soups on this blog.  I have collated some of the information in the following question I answered on Quora:

Do you like soup? If so, what is your favorite soup?

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.

We love eating eggs

We love eating eggs. Other than eating it sunny side up or hard or half boiled, we also like eating it scrambled.  This is a recipe that I picked up from your Aunty Janice

There is a story behind why I use garlic oil in my cooking. I always have on my kitchen counter a pot of minced garlic which I have cooked with about two cups of oil till it is golden brown. If you have children at home who do not like to bite into garlic in their food, you can use garlic oil to marinate your food or as cooking oil to infuse its flavour in your dishes.

Since my daughter don’t like eating onion, I usually scoop the fried onion slices out of the frying pan before I add the scrambled eggs in the pan to fry. Then I pour the onion back on a portion of the eggs to fry. So one side of my scrambled egg with onion dish does not have onion in it.

I always fry scrambled eggs in my Korean double sided pan so that I can easily flip it over to fry the other side. If one side is not golden brown enough for me, I will flip the pan over to fry again. It saves me the hassle of using a spatula to check for doneness and to flip the egg over, which can break up its neat shape.

This is the kind of scrambled eggs my son enjoys eating. With sliced tomatoes in it. I found the way it is cooked in this video interesting. 

You can refer to this cooking chart I prepared if you do not understand Mandarin.

This is another version I found on Wok of Life.

Other than fresh produce, we can also cook scrambled eggs with preserved vegetable like preserved radish. Preserved radish can be purchased whole or minced up, sweet or salty. I prefer to use the minced up salty version. As it is salty, it is best to soak it in water for a while to reduce its saltiness. I will cook it the same way I cook my scrambled eggs with onion by replacing onion with salty preserved radish.

You can also see how it is cooked in this video.

We can also steam our scrambled eggs.  I have not steamed eggs with salted eggs and century eggs in a while.  Found this video from Ruyi Asian Recipes.

It is interesting to discover that it can also be steamed with Chicken Essence.

Here is a East Meets West scrambled eggs recipe that I would like to try.  I found it at All Recipes. 

Here is another version from Everyday Gourmet with yoghurt added.