My fried rice can put me in a place of exceptional happiness and delight. And it is not because mine is better than the one served in restaurants. I used to pack fried rice for my daughter to eat in school. I thought nothing about my fried rice till she shared some with her classmate.
I discovered last night that my daughter's friend still enjoy eating my fried rice. So, I decided that I should teach it. I hope that I will one day get to eat my daughter's or her friend's fried rice and be able to praise them for their efforts; which will lead this teacher to another of her fried rice paradise realm.
This is another variation of the fried rice with additional ingredients included.
Receiving thumbs up for my fried rice, made me feel that all my efforts to learn how to make it taste better have not been wasted. There is a Chinese idiom, “活到老，学到老”. It means one is never too old to learn. So, no matter your age, you will always be a student, exploring life experiences to learn new things. I hope that I will always be able to share something useful or interesting or new in my writings.
For someone who hates to see food wasted, let's start with this suggestion. When you attend wedding dinners, bring home the last dish served which is usually fried rice with sausages. By the time it is served most of the guests at your table will already be too full to eat it. Moreover, it will be followed by dessert which most would prefer to end the event with.
When it is time for you to heat it up to eat the next day, add white rice and an egg into it as they tend to be salty. Use your flair to make it "up to your taste".
I love eating braised pork. The idea for braising is to cook till the meat falls off the bones and the sauce has been reduced and thickened. You can see how it is done from this video for braising intestine with pork belly.
I would prefer to use pork ribs or pork butt or pork shoulder for braising. If I plan on cooking this dish, I will use pork ribs to boil in my Bak Kut Teh. I can remove the pork ribs and intestine before they become too tender. It is alright if I want to add extra pork ribs when boiling my soup as it will enhance its flavour. I like it that I will require less time to braise the meat if they are already boiled in the soup I cooked for the day.
This dish will taste just as flavourful braised without the rice wine. I only need a few bits broken off the star anis and the required sauces. I do not fry the star anis either. I prefer to use a pot to braise as I will not require more liquid to cover the ingredients. When braising, always check the sauce level. It is ready to be served once the meat and intestine in the dish is tender enough and the sauce is flavourful. If the ingredients braised are not tender enough I can add water to boil further. If the sauce is not flavourful enough, I will simmer it further to reduce the liquid.
I am Hainanese and the type of soup my family members boil are very basic with just meat or seafood and vegetables. My mother-in-law (MIL) was a Hakka but she often boiled soup the Cantonese way. So, her soups were more flavourful compared to what were served by my side of the family. You will understand by looking at the additional ingredients she used in boiling her ABC soup compared to only the basic ingredients we use to boil ours.
When I boiled the ABC soup my MIL way, my sister who is the cook in the family, said that it is too fishy for her taste.
My MIL was also very good at boiling herbal soups which my family do not fancy drinking. These are some of the ingredients she used in her herbal soups.
So, I am expected to be able to take care of my family's health by boiling nutritious and nourishing soups. But instead of buying the herbs in large quantities separately, I tend to buy prepackaged Chinese herbal soup mix from herbal shops or from the grocery.
When my children were younger, my favourite soup to make was Bak Kut Teh because it is herbal and a great all-in-one meal. I will serve it with rice and fresh lettuce. If I boil it the way my MIL boiled it, it will take 2 to 4 hours and require about 15 herbal ingredients. You can see how it is done by watching this video by Grace of Nonya Cooking.
I tend to use pre-packaged Bak Kut Teh sachets. One of the brands I use is A1. All prepackaged Chinese herbal soup mix comes with cooking instructions printed on the packaging. This one is from A1 Bak Kut Teh.
Ten bowls of water is about 1.8L but I would rather use less and add accordingly after tasting the soup. It is suggested that the soup be left to simmer for 30 minutes after the water is boiling. This is because the herbs in the pack have been grinded into powder form. The other brand I prefer is from Mo Sang Kor as not all the herbs in the pack have been grinded. You do not have to follow the instructions to a tee. You can boil it further if it is not tasty enough or if the meat is not cooked tender enough. You can also add water if you think that the soup flavour is too herbal for your liking. You can apply this principle to any soup you boil.
You can refer to the list of ingredients and useful tips shared by Grace on her website for boiling Bak Kut Teh. These are the ingredients I like to add when I use the pre-packed herbs.
I was taught to use a whole garlic to clean the intestine but I prefer to smash it first before inserting it through. You can watch this video to see the cleaning process.
The intestine boiled in the soup, can be removed to cook another dish. My favourite way to cook it is with:
-garlic oil -soya sauce -dark soya sauce
-sugar -white pepper
I cook it with 2-3 tablespoon of water till the sauce is reduced and thickened, because the sugar has caramelized, to coat the intestine.
As I made the soup to serve 4 in the family, I added 4 boiled eggs to it. You can add as many as you want as it will not affect the flavour of the soup. Just make sure that there is enough liquid to boil the additional ingredients you added to the soup. Take note that too much liquid added will reduce the flavour of the herbal soup mix.
There are many ways to boil Chinese soup. You can find many more techniques and useful tips from The Chinese Soup Lady. Their information are very clear as shown in this chart the Tong sisters shared.
When I am at the wet market, I am drawn to buying watercress if I noticed that there are no yellow leaves on the bunches for sales. I will usually buy about 500g to 600g of watercress. I will choose some young shoots with thinner stems to be stir fried and served as a vegetable dish. The ones with thicker stems will be used to boil soup with.
You should wash watercress by soaking it in a pail of water with two tablespoons of salt added. After a while, you will notice baby snails climbing to the top of the bunch to get away from the salt water. So always give your watercress a good shake in the water to remove any dirt or critters still on it. Soak it again in a pail of fresh water to remove any salt residue. When you remove the watercress from the pail, the water should look clean. If it is not, give it a good shake in the water and soak it one more time in fresh water.
Once it is clean, I will remove the tips of each shoots and the leafy greens from the stems.
The tips from the young shoots can be kept for stir frying. If I am using their stems too, I will break it up about 2 inches in length. I will not break up any of the thinner or thicker stems kept aside for boiling soup as we will not be eating them. They will be removed from the soup before I add the tips of the shoots and leafy greens. I turn the cover from my pot upside down so that I can placed them on it to remove. This is how the stems looked like after boiling them for an hour.
This is how the watercress soup should look like when it is ready to be served. This time I added dates and chicken feet to enhance its flavour.
Here are the steps for preparing and stir frying watercress. If I have enough greens to cook the dish, I will not include the stems.
This is how you can boil watercress soup. Note that any leftovers from the stir fried dish and its sauce can be added to the soup when it is ready to be served. Do not let it boil too long after adding as it is already cooked.
Would you like to cut down visits to KFC with your children? Stock some cream crackers at home. I used to buy them when my children were younger. I can crushed them up to coat marinated sliced meat to deep fry.
I was taught by a former colleague to marinate the chicken with MSG but I think this recipe from Heavenly Rice is better.
Check out how I make it for my children. For a start, I do not use wine in my dishes as it can cause my skin to itch. You can replace chicken with thinly sliced pork. I usually cook with pork loin.
You can save on oil when the meat is sliced thinly because you can just pan fry it.
I was taught to marinate the meat with MSG only but you can skip the marinating process because the cream crackers will make the meat taste salty enough after deep frying. I often add this pan fried meat to my sweet and sour dish.
I usually marinate my pork in advance with the following ingredients:
1) Garlic Oil
2) Soya Sauce and/or Oyster Sauce
3) Sugar
4) Cornstarch
If you like your meat crispier, you can dip the meat in egg, then cornflour (as I was taught), egg again before coating it with the crushed cream crackers. Since I have already marinated my meat with cornflour, I just dip it in egg followed by cream crackers. The deep fried chicken or pork will taste just as good, in the way I was taught, without shaoxing wine or sesame oil. If you run out of cream crackers you can dip the meat in egg, then cornflour and repeat with egg then cornflour before you deep frying it.
Other than the cream crakers, I have also tried coating the meat with:
-breadcrumbs (my son bought a pack and used it only once) -potato chips (I like onion flavored chips) -cornflakes (because what we have in stock have gone soft)
You can discover other coating ingredients you can use from this article:
Recently, I came across a video on Pinterest on how to cook Shepherd’s Pie by Lil’ Luna. It has been a while since I cooked it and her video inspired me to make it again.
There are 26 ingredients used in her Shepherd’s Pie. As I do not cook Western dishes often, I have to modify the recipe because I am not willing to buy ingredients that I may only use once in the recipe. I found another videoon YouTube that is similar to the way it is made on Lil’ Luna. However, in this video the onion and carrot are saute first before the meat is added to cook, which is the way I prefer to prepare the filling.
Since I need meshed potatoes, I decided to make it when I boiled ABC soup. Check out how I made my Shepherd’s Pie with only 17 ingredients. You can see clearly, the adaptations I have made to the recipe in this chart I have created:
I made a discovery on Pinterest that I can use the press we have at home to make it easier to mesh up the cooked potatoes.
