Simple Cooking Ideas

A simple vegetarian soup with celery, beancurd and Chinese mushrooms. It just take about half an hour to get ready. You can buy the white beancurd or the fried type.

Ingredients:

2 pieces beancurb, each cut into 4 parts
30 gm shitake mushrooms, soaked and each cut into 4 parts
1 stalk celery. cut into cubes
4 cups water
salt and pepper to taste

Method:

Add water in a pot and bring to the boil. Add beancurd and mushrooms. Keep boiling for 10 minutes on high. Lower heat and add celery and add salt and pepper to taste. Serve hot.

How To Make Extra Crispy Roast Potatoes

Chinese New Year is just less than a month and here is another dish for the occasion. Sea cucumber is a nourishing sea creature and found mostly in Pulau Langkawi in Malaysia. In this dish, I bought the ready soaked and cleaned sea cucumber in the wet market.

Ingredients:

400 gm sea cucumber, rinsed , sliced and drained
300 gm chicken breast, sliced thickly
8 dried shitake mushrooms, soaked to soften and cleaned
1 small carrot, sliced
50 gm sweet peas
5 gm ‘fatt choy’, soaked to soften , drained
1 tablespoon chopped ginger and garlic
2 tablespoon oil

Sauce:
1 tablespoon light soy sauce
1 teaspoon thick soy sauce
1 tablespoon oyster sauce
1 tablespoon rice wine
salt, sugar and pepper to taste
300 ml water
1 teaspoon cornflour with little water to mix

Method:

Blanch sea cucumber in boiling water and drain. Put aside. Then in a heated wok, add 2 tablespoon oil, saute ginger and garlic till fragrant. Stir-fry mushrooms for a minute. Mix in sauce ingredients and cover wok. Bring to boil, reduce heat and simmer for about 20 minutes. Then add chicken, sea cucumber and carrot and simmer for 15 mins. Add sweet peas and ‘fatt choy’. Simmer for 3 minutes. Mix in the cornflour mixture and heat through. Scoop out and serve while is hot.

Here is simple stir-fried dish using four types of beans cooked together. The beans are four-angled beans, long beans, lady’s finger and French beans. All cut into 2 cm. length. You can use Maggi’s Sambal Goreng Paste and Maggi’s Belacan Powder. With preparation and cooking, will take you less than an hour. In this dish I am using fresh chillies to mince with the shallots.

Ingredients:

100 gm four-angled beans
100 gm long beans
100 gm French beans
100 gm lady’s fingers
100 gm minced shallots
3 red fresh chillies
1 teaspoon belacan powder
2 tablespoon cooking oil
salt and pepper to taste

Method:

Wash and cut the beans into 2 cm lengths and put aside. Meanwhile, mince the onion
and fresh chillies and add belacan powder to mix. Add oil in a heated wok and fry the onion mixture until aromatic. Put in the beans and stir-fried for three minutes. Serve while is hot.

Dried scallops can be bought in grocery stalls. They are quite expensive, very delicious in soups and stir-fries or steam. You can also buy fresh in the super markets. Dried scallops are soaked and steamed for this dish.

Ingredients:

500 gm kai choy tham (mustard hearts)
100 gm dried scallops ( kong yee chee) soaked and keep the stock
salt and pepper to taste

Method:

Soak and wash the mustard hearts and keep aside. Steam scallops until soft for 20 minutes. In a wok, heat one tablespoon oil and fry the mustard. Add in the scallop stock and a little water mixed with cornflour to thicken. Scoop up mustard hearts on a plate and spread the scallops on top, pour the gravy over scallops and vegetables. Serve hot.

Do you know what you are breathing in? Well, you will be breathing dust, cigarette smoke, chemicals and carpet fibers to name a few. All these impurities may cause undue illness and disease in the future unless somthing is done about it. I suggest you must have an air purifier at home. There are wide selections of air purifiers at AllergyBuyersClub.com. You have to be careful to choose the right air purifier to remove dust, odour, smoke and chemicals.

Sometimes vegetables such as lettuce, cucumber, carrot and cabbage, are better to eat raw to maintain their nutritional value. Some vegetabkes such as bean sprout used in salad, I prefer to blanch beansprouts in hot water for better taste. Discard the wilted parts. So eat your salads as often as you can. Here I use prawns to enhance the flavour. The dish is enough for 4 persons.

Ingedients:

8 medium prawns
1 teaspoon ginger
1 tablespoon light soya sauce
1 cucumber, cut into thin strips
1 carrot, cut into thin strips
1 mango, cut into thin strips
1 cup bean sprouts
purple cabbage, finely chopped

Dressing:

2 tablespoon Honey Apples Cider
2 tablespoon soy sauce
1/2 teaspoon grated ginger
juice of 2 limes
3 tablespoon olive oil

Method:

Season the prawns with light soya sauce and ginger. Steam the prawns in hot boiling water for 10 minutes and put aside. Meanwhile, combine all dressing ingredients and mix well. Place all vegetable strips on serving dish and place prawns on top of vegetables and spread dressing over the top. Mix well when serve.