Back to Basics

First things you always crave for after not cooking for ages are the ones you grew up eating... And for me its nothing more than simple homey styled dishes, improvised of course with what's available in Britain.

Spring onion and ginger is always a match made in heaven for Chinese cooking, it somehow gives a subtle invigorating flavor to meat dishes. Goes particularly well with white meat, e.g. fish, chicken and frog (yes, frog meat, which tastes something like poussin). However, nowadays its common with red meat like beef too, and can be pretty much found on the menu of any chinese hawker-style restaurants.

I'll stick with the classics for now, starting with Chicken with Ginger and Spring Onion. Thighs/drumstick meat is preferable (chicken breast is ok but drier texture). So for a you'll need about 6-8 sprigs of spring onion, 2-3 inch ginger, 400g-500g chicken meat, dark and light soy sauce, garlic, sesame oil, chilli (optional).

I used thigh meat, and de-boned about 8 thighs and cut into bitesize pieces. Spring onion stalks are chopped about 2 inch long, separating the white bit (at the bottom) and the 'leaves' (the green bits at the top). Slice the ginger thin, producing a size like your thumb print. For the garlic, I prefer to just skin them and crush the cloves with the back of the knife (yup, I'm one of those that actually love fried garlics, hehe), and we're ready to go!

So heat up a little bit of oil, and once hot, put the ginger and the white stalk of the spring onions in and stir quickly. About 2-3 minutes, the ginger should be brown and then add the garlic and chicken meat in whilst tossing as usual. The key point should be here, add a few drops of sesame oil for wonderful nutty aroma and flavor, then the usual light soy sauce for taste, dark soy sauce for a little bit of color... Do add a little bit of water if its too dry, and the meat should be roughly cooked in 5 minutes or so. Remember to add the green leave bits of the spring onions, and continue to stir fry for a minute or so, and its done! You can garnish with finely chopped red chillies on top for that extra spicy kick :)

The next vegetable dish is somewhat of an experiment, inspired by a dish in Chinatown recently. It was some sort of tofu dish with leafy vegetables stir fried in bean sauce. Here's my version of it with long beans instead.

It's just a 5 ingredient dish!! 1 carrot (sliced into matchsticks), fried hard tofu or taukwa (sliced lengthwise), long beans (sliced into 2 inch pieces), garlic (crushed cloves), and fermented soy bean sauce (tau chu). This sauce is available in many Asian grocery stores, and is basically soy beans fermented and tastes sweet and salty.

Heat some oil in the pan, and let the garlic sizzle in it till slightly brown-ish. Carrots in first, and 2 minutes later the long beans. Alternatively, you could actually pre-cook the long beans and carrots by steaming them for about 3 minutes before stir frying if you prefer. It's perhaps faster and healthier. For the former case, the stir frying time is longer, and adding some water helps. 5 minutes later, or whenever the vege are cooked till your preferred level of crunchiness, add in the tofu and half a tablespoon of the bean sauce, adjust to taste, and it's ready to be served with some rice!

Seasons Change

Last 2 months have been manic, admittedly haven't had much time to pursue my usual culinary endeavors. In crazy times like this, though easier said than done, but the best move forward is probably not to worry too much, cruise along and soak up as much experience you can as it probably only happen once in ones lifetime...

And yes I haven't forgot about cooking yet, and got a nice cookbook for present, which means more kitchen meddling projects to come, starting tomorrow. Have a few wish list of stuff that I want to start playing around a bit more, like improving pasta making, exploring and building a better spice rack, and making use of the oven more :)

Now, just time for some sleep to recuperate ...

Quickest 3 Course Dinner to Impress

A presentable one too! Seems like I've been away for a bit, have had so many things happening that need a bit of thinking time ... but I'm back, as usual, this time with an impressive 3 course dinner that takes 40 minutes from start till the end. Good for those who are in a rush with this impromptu, simple classics ...

Inspired by what's seasonal/on offer in supermarkets, I got myself some fresh scallops (8 of them), a pack of rocket leaves, some sweet cherry tomatoes on the vine, baby/salad potatoes, and 2 spare rib chops, strawberry flavored Onken yoghurt and some digestive biscuits (optional).

The beautiful thing about cooking is that you DON'T NEED to be super skilled/trained to cook amazing food! Most of the time, it can be supplemented with super FRESH, QUALITY INGREDIENTS ...

This applies to the starter dish. Was gonna serve Pan-fried Scallops with Tomato and Rocket Salad. Preparing the salad first, simply just mix the rockets and tomatoes with your favorite dressing, I used French dressing in mine, done! Ooh, loving the speed eh?

Scallops cooks pretty quickly, so just heat up 2-3 tablespoons of olive oil, and once hot spoon the scallops on the pan gently, preferably cooking them in one go as they have to be serve immediately once done. Bear in mind that they overcook very easily, and full attention to the pan please for 3 minutes maximum, ok? While they are sizzling away, season with salt and black pepper, then flip them over after a minute. Do the same on the other side, season to taste and it should be slightly brown both sides after another minute. Serve with the salad immediately like below:

Beautiful yea? I prefer having them one minute a side pan fried, to be it's just nice, but if you prefer them 100% cooked, you can have them 90 seconds a side, it'll still be fine. All you want to avoid is eating a rubbery, overcooked texture ... It was perfect, P was pretty amazed at the speed and taste for sure ... this is exactly the misconception I'm trying to prove to many out there who are intimidated by cooking - taste does not always equal complicated and lengthy cooking preparations!

Ok, main course next! First, settle the potatoes: bring a pot of water to boil and place the potatoes in to cook. Meanwhile, the meat: this is my random seasoning which I thought up on the minute since I didn't have time to marinade for hours, but thankfully it didn't taste weird, hehe. So I had some leftover tomato puree from the last cooking of spaghetti, some ketchup, balsamic vinegar, paprika. Basically I put a similar seasoning to the BBQ Pork Fillet recipe, so listen up. First season the meat with salt and pepper all over and rub them well. Put 2 generous tablespoon of paprika, 3 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar, about 100g of tomato puree (for a bit of sauce for the meat so it's not too dry), and generous dollop of ketchup. Mix the seasoning and rub it all over the meat, leaving it to rest while you heat up your grill pan. The potatoes should be cooked now, as seasoning of meat probably took 5 minutes, so drain them and set aside.

Once the pan is hot, place both the spare rib chops and let them sizzle away. Note that you would have leftover marinade and use these to spoon on the meat when you flip them later. Since the meat is cooking away, you can afford some time to set up your simple salad on the plates, which is the same as your starter anyways, with the additional potatoes on the side now. Time taken? 1 minute at max :P

So full attention to your meat now, let it cook about 5 minutes on one side and flip them over. Now hopefully you have some professional looking charred lines on it, but if not it's not a disaster either, LOL. Spoon some marinade on top and let it cook for another 5 minutes. Like the scallops, overcooked meat is hard and chewy like rubber, not very nice at all. So avoiding this simply takes a sharp eye and a bit of gut feeling. For those more risk averse, after cooking 5 minutes a side, you can use a fork/knife to put through the meat and if the juice looks clear you're fine. As long as it 's not bloody/red. But that is difficult to gauge with the marinade being of similar color in this case! Hence the gut feel comes in, you know it's almost cooked and perfect when you prod the meat and its slightly springy. Serve immediately and spoon as much of the marinade in the pan on top of the meat. There you go: BBQ Chops with Potatoes and Rocket Salad

There you go, 15 mins for starter, 20 mins for main maximum, and of course 5 mins for a simple easy dessert. Just roughly break some digestive biscuits served with dollops of strawberry yogurt, for a Quick and Healthy Cheesecake Imitation! Surely you don't need a picture for that :P Enjoy!

Mee Goreng Mamak

Empty plate with a lime ... waiting in anticipation for the best dish of all time --> Mee Goreng Mamak! (fried noodles, Mamak style)

All you need is fresh yellow egg noodles, chinese greens (I used bok choy/pak choi), fish cakes, potatoes, chilli paste, tomato ketchup, firm (deep fried) tofu, dark soy sauce, garlic, lime juice and some chicken meat (drumstick/thighs are ideal). I had to do it twice, given the small wok, but personally feel that it produces a better result than mass production...

As usual, add in a bit of oil on the wok. When its hot enough, stir in the roughly chopped garlic and potato slices (or in thin wedges) for a minute or two. Next is the chili paste (lots of it!), where the heat starts to kick in. Add the chicken, fish cakes, tofu and bok choy next and stir fry quickly for another 3-4 minutes before adding in the noodles. Stir as quick as you can to evenly coat and mix. Finally season with dark soy sauce, tomato ketchup, a bit of salt to taste and its done!

Serve it on a nice hot plate with a wedge of lime. Always gives the dish an extra kick with a tangy aftertaste. Enjoy!

The Ultimate Summer BBQ Pork Fillets

This is something inspired both from Jamie's cookbook and the unexpected good weather on Saturday morning: Blackened BBQ Pork Fillets. Great for parties and ever so popular during summertime since the sauce is just finger lickin' good :) Try it out and see if I'm right!

Ingredients wise its slightly lengthy, as we're gonna create our own marinade pretty much from scratch, so let's take this opportunity to build up your spice rack ...

What you'll need:
500g pork fillets (serves 2-3)
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp fennel seeds
1 tbsp full of paprika
2 cloves
4 tbsp balsamic vinegar
120g good quality tomato ketchup
4 garlic cloves, finely chopped
a small bunch of fresh thyme, leaves picked and finely chopped
zest of 1 orange, and juiced (or if lazy, just use fresh 100% orange juice with pulp/juicy bits)

metal/wooden skewers (optional)
lemon juice (optional)

So there you go, not too bad eh? This recipe is a good start for you to start dabbing into the world of spice and knowing what they look like and how they smell, what they go well with etc ... bringing your culinary skills to a higher level with more tools in your hands!

Ok, so maybe we need a mortar and pestle, to grind those cloves, cumin and fennel seeds. And since I couldn't find one at the supermarket, I omitted the fennel seeds, bought ground cumin instead, and use all my power and might, with the back of my knife, slamming and trying to crush the cloves into powdery form, with 50% success rate, so not too bad hehe. Best if you have the mortar and pestle to grind it to release the aroma, but if not, don't beat yourself over it yea?

So first, mix the cumin, crush cloves, garlic cloves, generous amount of paprika, thyme, orange juice and zest. Then add the ketchup and spoonfuls of balsamic vinegar and gently incorporate them and you got yourself some mean BBQ marinade there, dip a finger in and taste and see ...

Next up is easy, just put your pork fillets in to marinade, at least 1 hour, preferably whole morning/afternoon for me! Refrigerate and rub your hands (or tummy if you prefer) in glee ...

So after 5 hours, I took them out of the fridge and used wooden skewers to present the pork fillets in kebab style, easier to cook in that sense. But if you don't have them, no worries again, it's not necessary, you can just cook them on the BBQ/grill and flip them around with a tong.

Time to test out my new grill pan, keen to get a few professional charred lines on my meat :P So heat up the grill and start cooking! Should hear a loud sizzling noise right away, make sure you have cut the fillets properly as its quite difficult to cook if it's too thick. You should have extra marinade leftover and use these to brush over the meat whenever you turn sides. Cooking should take about 15-20 minutes per batch on the grill. You should start seeing the marinade getting thicker and meat getting into a nice dark color as below ...

When it's done, leave it aside for 5 minutes to rest, whilst you prepare a very simple salad of your choice. I had mine with plain lettuce, cherry tomatoes on the vine and some sweet corn, with a light lemon salad dressing and balsamic vinegar. Then slice your meat up in serving portions and feast!