I usually cook my broccolini using an oyster sauce, or just as simple as using only garlic. You could add prawns with the garlic combination.

Ingredients

• 2 bunch of broccolini
• 1 chilli, sliced
• 2 garlic clove, minced
• 2 tbsp oyster sauce (more or less)
• water
• oil for stir frying

Instructions

1. Heat oil in the wok. Add in garlic and stir until the fragrance is out.
2. Add in broccolini and stir about 1-2 minutes..
3. Add in oyster sauce and do a quick stir (you could add more to add the saltiness)
4. Add water 1 tbsp at the time to prevent burning. Stir for 1-2 minutes and serve.

Culinary tradition: Chinese

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It is really hard for me to explain how to cook a very nice homely mie goreng in this blog. As long as you do your stir very quickly, then you got a nice mie goreng. I guess you have to use your senses. Good luck

Ingredients

• 300 gr egg noodles (treat according to the packet instructions)
• 100 gr chicken breast, slice thinly
• about 1 cup meatballs, slice thinly
• 1 tbsp mince garlic
• 1 medium shallot, slice
• 1 large carrots, julienne cut
• 1 small green capsicum, slice
• 1 stalk spring onion, slice
• 2 eggs
• 2 tbsp sweet soy sauce or just enough to achieve the light brownish colour
• 2 tsp fish sauce
• salt and white pepper, to taste
• oil for stir frying
• deep fried shallot to serve

Instructions

1. Heat oil in the wok. Add in garlic and shallot, and stir until the fragrance is out.
2. Add in chicken slices and stir until the chicken is almost cooked through.
3. Add in meatball slices and do a quick stir.
4. Make a well in the middle and break in eggs in the middle. Add in about 1 tsp salt (you could add some more later on if it is not salty enough). Do a stir  every few seconds.
5. When the egg mixture is still wet, add the carrots and stir.
6. Add the cooked egg noodles and green capsicum and stir.
7. Add in sweet soy sauce and fish sauce and stir.
8. Add white pepper and stir.
9. Now it is time to taste your noodle. Add salt accordingly.
10. Add in spring onion and switch off your stove. Stir.
11. Serve with deep fried shallot.

Culinary tradition: Chinese, Indonesian

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This time he brought back beef round steak. Hmm interesting, that was the first time I cook with this part of the beef. Well, they looked tender as they sliced fairly thin and there was a mallet mark on the surface of the meat. This is my new invention dish. I think the dish is complemented well with the roasted capsicum as by roasting them retains its sweetness. As you can see in the picture, there was quite a lot of juices. I didn’t add any water or beef stock. It was purely came out of the beef.

Ingredients

• about 750 gr beef round steak or tenderloin, cut into long strips
• 3 tsp cornstarch to marinate
• 3 tsp mushroom soy sauce to marinate
• 2 tsp rice vinegar (or Shaoxing rice wine) to marinate
• 1 tbsp garlic mince
• 1/2 tbsp grated ginger
• 1 chili, slice diagonally
• 1 stalk spring onion, slice
• 2 tbsp oyster sauce
• 6 tbsp sweet soy sauce
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• 1/2 tsp white pepper
• 1 large capsicum, roasted on the stove, peel the skin and sliced
• oil for stir frying

Instructions

1. Marinate the beef slices with cornstarch, mushroom soy sauce, and rice vinegar for at least 30 minutes.
2. Heat the oil on the wok. Stir the beef until they are about medium rare. Take them out of the wok and set aside.
3. Heat additional oil on the wok. Stir in garlic and ginger until fragrant.
4. Add chili and do a quick stir.
5. Add the reserved beef, sauces and white pepper. Stir for 1-2 minutes.
6. Add sliced capsicum and stir for another minute.
7. Add spring onion and serve with rice.

Culinary tradition: Chinese

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Cap Cai is a common vegetable dish to serve at Indonesian Chinese dining table. It consists of various vegetable stir together and complemented with quail eggs or meatballs or chicken or meat. The sauce is slightly thickened with diluted corn flour at the end of cooking process. This is also one of the must dish which is always ordered by my grandparents when we dine out at Chinese restaurant.

Ingredients

• 3 cloves of garlic, sliced
• about 2 cups of cuts chinese cabbage
• about 1 cup of sliced carrot
• about 1/2 cup of snow peas
• about 1 cup of cuts cauliflower
• about 1/2 cup of cuts spring onion
• 1/2 cup of water
• 1 dozen of quail eggs, boiled and peeled
• about 2 cups of meatballs
• salt to taste
• diluted corn flour to thicken the sauce
• oil for stir frying

Cooking time (duration): 20

Culinary tradition: Chinese, Indonesian

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The fried pork cutlets are really nice, tender and full of flavour. For some reasons, which I don’t know exactly why, they don’t taste greasy at all as the deep fried stuffs should be. As for the sauce, you could check out the Kylie Kwong style (click on the lick provided under the Ingredients) or you could follow mine. My sweet and sour sauce is simple and it is kind of an Chinese-Indonesian everyday sweet and sour sauce. You could add pineapple, peas, capsicum in the sauce. It just happened that I didn’t have any of them available in the fridge.

Ingredients for the pork

Recipe adapted from Kylie Kwong : Sweet and Sour Pork, for details click here

• 600 gr pork neck fillets
• 1 1/2 tablespoons cornflour (cornstarch)
• 1 tablespoon cold water
• 2 egg yolks, lightly beaten
• 3 teaspoons light soy sauce
• 2 teaspoons sesame oil
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• oil for deep frying
• 1/4 cup plain flour
• 1/4 cup cornflour (extra)

Cooking time (duration): 60

Culinary tradition: Chinese

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However, I found two ingredients that I was not familiar with, Rose wine and maltose. I wasn’t so sure that I will able to get these ingredients if I mentioned their English terms. I asked my friend whose mother tongue is both Mandarin and Cantonese  to check out the website and spelled them for me in Indonesian. I was hoping that it will make my shopping a little bit easier for me to pronounce it to the shopkeeper. Well at least I prepare myself just in case they don’t know the English term. But to my surprise, they understand what I am looking for.

Time to buy the meat. I have been checking the price of pork butt to make a perfect tender juicy BBQ. OMG, they are about  $22 a kg. Gosh thinking about feeding all the meat eaters in my household, I need at least 2.5 kg for one dinner. No way in the world. Second choice is pork belly, they are about $11-14 a kg. But they are way too unhealthy and fattening. I have to go with my favourite part of the pork, armpit. Yep, you heard me the armpit part. They are about $6.50 a kg. The fat is not as well spread as the belly, but at least it has its lean and fatty part. The most important thing is that they are economical and they are good enough for my BBQ Pork. I always go with this part every time I want to make pork satay.

If you would like the recipe, please click here. The only additional thing that I add to the recipe is sweet soy sauce also known as Kecap Manis. I add them to the sauce for brushing to increase the burning and stickiness to the meat. Finally, I ended up with having no BBQ Pork buns because all the carnivores have eaten all my Char Siu. Well, I have commit my self to make the buns as soon as I have time. This time I will make different filling to avoid the spying eyes of all the carnivores.

Preparation time (duration): 45

Culinary tradition: Chinese

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Well this was a very cute type of fried shrimp in wonton skins. If you would like the recipe, please click here. Just keep in mind that the wonton skins browns very quick so you need to set the heat into low medium, as I burned my first batch. To make it easy for you to roll the batter into the wonton skins, use to spoon to form a ball and place it straight away into the shredded wonton skins and roll.

Preparation time (duration): 45

Culinary tradition: Chinese

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I have been wondering for a long time on how the restaurants do their deep fried fish. I have been experimenting for a long time to get to this point. When my dad came last February, he offered me to cook several dishes for our family dinner on Chinese New Year’s eve and one of them is this dish. I watched him while he pour and rub the cornflour on the fish. He simply poured the cornflour on his hand and rubbed in on the fish, but you could still see the fish skin underneath. After the fish is deep fried, it was crunchy but not the sort of crunchy that I would think the fish should be.

I thought to myself maybe I should go extreme with the cornflour. I usually put the cornflour on a plate and then dip the fish on that. This time I pour lots and lots of cornflour on my hand and rub it all over the fish until the fish turned white. Then VOILA a very nice crunchy fish.

For adding Nutrisari in the sauce, I was told by my sister in law who were told by her aunt. Using Nutrisari, give a punch taste to the sauce and make the colour of the sauce brighter.

Ingredients

• whole medium size snapper, clean and gutted
• juice from a whole lime
• salt to marinade the fish
• corn flour to coat the fish
• 2 cloves of garlic, slice
• 1 small onion, slice
• 1 or 2 long green chilli, slices it
• 1 small tomato, cut into wedges
• half of a capsicum, cut into squares
• half cup of pineapple pieces
• half cup of peas
• 1 sachet of Nutrisari, diluted with 300 ml of water (see note)
• 3 tbsp of tomato sauce
• salt, sugar(I didn’t add the sugar), vinegar to taste
• diluted corn flour to thicken the sauce
• oil for stir frying

Ingredients

• 250 gr chicken breast fillets, sliced
• 1 small carrot, sliced
• 1 small zucchini, sliced
• 2 stalks celery, sliced
• 100 gr bean, chop into 2 or 3 parts
• 1 tomato, chop into wedges
• a handful of roasted cashew, optional
• 2 cloves of garlic, sliced or minced
• 2 tbsp of oyster sauce, more or less according to your preferences
• little bit of water just enough
• salt and pepper
• oil for stir frying

A little information about Kwetiau Goreng for those of you who have no clue about them. Kwetiau Goreng is also known as Cha Kwetiau or Fried Rice Noodles. It is a common dish in most Asian household, especially Indonesian, Malaysian and Singaporean. You definitely could find it in Asian food court and hawker stalls.

Ingredients

• 500 gr rice noodle
• 3 cloves of garlic, sliced
• 2 cloves of shallot, sliced
• 3 small chillies or according to your preferences
• 1 tomato, cut into wedges
• prawns or chicken or beef or pork (I used beef balls)
• 3 eggs
• 3 tbsp of sweet soy sauce or as needed (When added to the noodles, stop when the noodle is brown enough)
• 1 tbsp of fish sauce
• salt and white pepper
• 1 tbsp of tomato sauce
• oil for stir frying
• bean sprout ans slices of spring onions to serve

There are many version on how people cook dish dish. Some people add belacan or also known as shrimp paste, or oyster sauce. It is all depend on what you have in the pantry really, but I like the version with fermented salty soy beans and belacan, but since I had no stock of belacan, I just skip it.

Ingredients

• 1 bunch of water spinach, do not cut, just tear them into about 5 cm in length by hand. Rinse them in water.
• 2 cloves of garlic, slice thinly
• 2 small red chillies, or according to your preferences
• 1 tbsp of fermented salty soy beans (I used Cap Dua Angsa brand)
• oil for stir frying

I tried making Hainanese Chicken Rice so many times. They always turned out like bloody in the center, despite the fact that I always boiled them longer than the recommended time. I steamed them like an hour and they were still blood in between the flesh and bone. So we ended up having Fried Hainanese Chicken Rice instead. I almost give up making this dish, which is supposed to be a simple dish.

This is my latest attempt on making Hainanese Chicken Rice. They turned out OK, not as great as I expected them to be. I still could found some blood in the middle, but after steaming, they were fine. Now, I wonder whether the main factor of failing is the kind of chicken used. I used free range chicken for this recipe, last time I used ordinary chicken. If you would like the recipe, click here.

Culinary tradition: Chinese, Singaporean

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Preparation time (duration): 15

Culinary tradition: Chinese

Please leave your comment/suggestion if you find this recipe useful. Can’t wait to hear from you and Thank You!!!

Anyway, why did I make this this? Simple. A different menu variety for my toddler and family. Because I never make them before, I started to surf the web finding out how others make them. It turned out that people making them in few different ways. Some actually did as mine, however they didn’t steam them again before serving. Some put the sweet soy chicken in a bowl together with an uncooked rice and chicken stock, then steam them. I found the second way quite tricky, because there are lots of rice variety so that you can’t really follow others recipe in terms of chicken stock amount to cook the rice. So, I just did them my way and wouldn’t be bothered as long as it looks like how it is supposed to be and tastes great or at least eatable.

Before you start, here are few tips that might help:

• The longer you simmer the soup, the nicer and deeper the soup taste. So I suggest that you to prepare them ahead of time.
• When you wash the rice, drain them thoroughly so that when you sauteed them with garlic and ginger, they really could absorb the fragrant of the spices.
• Do not peek while the rice is cooking, at least not before 15 minutes, so that the rice could cook evenly.
• Taste the rice after cook, they should have rich taste and slight saltiness on them. Not salty but you could taste the salt, if you understand what I mean. If you find that you can not taste the saltiness, add some fish sauce to the rice and stir until well combined.
• Press the rice into the bowl, so that after steaming you could have the nice bowl shape rice like mine.
• Sometimes it is hard to take the rice out of the bowl after steaming. Just place them up side down on the plate and let the bowl cool off slightly. Or you could try pushing the rice on one side using the back of the spoon, and gently squeeze them out.

Ingredients for the soup

• chicken bone from a whole chicken
• 2.5 liter of water
• 2 medium carrots
• 3 cloves of garlic, smashed
• half onion
• 2 stalk of spring onions, cut about 1 cm in length
• salt, sugar and white pepper to taste

Ingredients for the rice

• 700 gr of rice (not steam rice but uncooked rice), washed and drained
• 800 ml of chicken stock that you got from making the soup
• 1 tbsp of pureed garlic
• 2 1/2 tbsp of pureed ginger
• 2 tbsp of light soy sauce
• 2 tbsp of fish sauce
• 3 tbsp oil for stir frying

Ingredients for the sweet soy chicken

• 600 gr chicken fillets, preferably chicken thigh fillets, cut into cubes
• 8 dried shitake mushrooms, soak in warm water until soften, cut off the middle hard bit, and minced
• half onion
• 2 cloves of garlic, sliced
• 2 cloves of shallot, sliced
• 2 tbsp of pureed ginger
• about 2 tbsp of mushroom soy sauce, or normal soy sauce
• 1/3 cups sweet soy sauce
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/2 tsp of white pepper
• salt and sugar to taste
• oil for stir frying

Preparation time (duration): 60

Culinary tradition: Indonesian, Chinese

Please leave your comment/suggestion if you find this recipe useful. Can’t wait to hear from you and Thank You!!!