Sunday cook-out:: Okonomiyaki

Finally got round to posting this from one of our Sunday stay-in dinners with the in-law.  Was really itching to bring out the electric grill that we had lugged back from Geneva out to play but there never seemed to be a perfect time.  As the weather started to cool off a little, I decided to blow off the dust from this machine and bring out to play.

And the meal to christen our new electric grill with?  Home-made okonomiyaki!  Didn’t seem too difficult and the thought of having cabbage seemed pretty healthy.  Found a relatively simple recipe thanks to Lianne from Food Made with Love.  Headed straight out to purchase the ingredients for our stay-in Sunday evening dinner.

Okonomiyaki (adapted from food made with love)

Ingredients (serves 4):
a) The Pancake Base:
- 1 whole cabbage or approximately 4 cups of green cabbage, finely shredded
- 1 clove garlic, finely chopped
- 2 cups of plain flour
- 2 tbs of corn flour
- 1 tsp of baking powder
- 1 1/2 cup of chicken stock
- 2 eggs
- salt to season

b) The fun part – adding the ingredients to the pancake depending on your creativity.  We used these:
- 6 fresh shiitake mushrooms, thinly sliced
- Cuttlefish, thinly sliced
- Pork

Method:

1) Combine the flour, corn flour and baking powder and mix it well. Mix the cooled stock and egg together, and combine with the flour mixture. Mix until you get a thick pancake batter.

2) Add the cabbage, shiitake mushrooms and garlic to the batter. Season with salt. Heat a non-stick frying pan on medium fire, and add some vegetable oil. Add half of the pancake mix and flatten it with a spatula.  We placed our sliced pork on top of the pancake.  For the pancake with the cuttlefish, we mixed the sliced cuttlefish into the batter.

3) Cook the pancake for about 10-15 minutes, flipping several times, until both sides are golden brown.

4) Serve it hot, drizzle the top with japanese mayonnaise and okonomiyaki sauce that you can purchase in the Japanese grocery section.

This really made for a fun and simple meal that the entire family participated in.  The batter was good for almost 8 pancakes and boy were we all stuffed, but we had fun taking turns to decorate the pancakes with mayonnaise and okonomiyaki sauce.  Check out our respective works of pancake-art! 

Can you take a wild guess who did which pancake?  Hehe…

Can burgers be healthy?

Well, yes, if you make them yourself.

I was in the mood for some home-made burgers but wanted a twist in my previous recipe.   So I surfed around and realised that I could substitute the Panko (Japanese bread-crumbs) in my recipe with tofu.  And the best part?  You won’t even know the difference.

If you like to give this recipe a try, click here and follow the steps.  Just omit the Panko and the milk if you are using tofu.  As for the type of tofu to use, I would recommend that you use the firm type of tofu and drain the moisture out of the tofu with paper-towels before throwing it into the meat mixture and mashing them up to form the hamburger patties.

An easy and wholesome dinner idea served alongside rice or in our case, a soup and potato gratin for a full meal.

 

A quick meal

After reading Miss Ene’s recent post on Cooking up a storm, I was inspired to whip up one of the dishes – Three Cups Chicken (三杯鸡)- that she made for dinner one evening.

It turned out to be a pretty simple recipe which made for a very tasty meal for a weeknight dinner.

Three Cups Chicken (三杯鸡) [Recipe adapted from Noobcook]

Ingredients: (Serves 2)

• 450g chicken thighs, cut to small pieces
• 1.5 tbsp sesame oil
• 1 tbsp light soy sauce
• 1.5 tbsp Chinese wine (Hua Tiao/Shao Hsing)
• 1 tsp dark soy sauce
• 10 cloves garlic, peeled & slightly bruised
• 2 stalks spring onions, cut to 5cm (2 inch) lengths
• 40ml water
• 0.5 tsp sugar
• 6 slices ginger & a handful of fresh sweet basil leaves (I left these out as I didn’t have them on hand)

Method:

1. Heat sesame oil in pot and add garlic cloves, ginger, the thick bottom white ends of the spring onions. Stir fry until fragrant, about 30 seconds.
2. Add chicken pieces and stir fry until the surface is no longer pink.
3. Sizzle Chinese wine and add light soy sauce, dark soy sauce, water and sugar. Stir evenly, and cover the lid to simmer for about 6 minutes.
4. Add the rest of the spring onions and continue simmering until the sauce is greatly reduced.
5. When the dish is cooked, stir in some fresh basil leaves before serving.

I guess the next time I’m making this, I will be throwing in some dried chilli or fresh chilli padi (bird’s eye chilli) for a spicy kick in the taste-buds.

What are some of your favourite weeknight meals? I’ll love to hear what’s cooking in your kitchen.

Quick fix assam meal

I love my spices (alot)! One of my favourite dishes has got to be Assam Ikan Pedas (Spicy Tamarind Fish).  My family, especially my dad, loves this dish and when we have our family dinners at the Peranakan restaurant along Joo Chiat Road, we would order a huge fish and drench our rice with the spicy sauce.  Arh.. miss those days!

So armed with one precious bottle of Assam paste from Woh Hup, I tried to recreate the dish to evoke memories of home.   Obviously that didn’t work for we couldn’t get the right cut of fish and the sauce turned out to be too spicy for the Man’s taste-buds.  Half a bottle of the paste was left sitting in my refrigerator for the longest time and in a bid to clear out our sauces before we leave, I decided to make good the sauce again.

Once again, I ‘ran’ to my genius of a cook cousin for help.  After a couple of text exchanges, she helped me with this baked seafood platter with Assam sauce.

First, I boiled some water with some slices of ginger and 2 stalks of lemongrass, then I added the paste plus 2 teaspoons of sugar to reduce the spiciness of the sauce for the Man.  Once the marinade started to come to a boil, I turned the heat down and set the marinade to cool.  Then I arranged the baking dish with a cut of Salmon, some calamari, scallops and clams.  Poured the cooled marinade and set the dish into the oven for the seafood to be baked.

And what a simple but sumptuous dinner it turned out to be.. this time round, the level of spiciness was just right!  We tucked in straight away and guess what I did?  Yup, drenched my rice with the sauce, just the way I like it!

Simple tofu dish

Tofu – miss it loads!  Why?  Because it’s not readily available here.  You could only get it at the Asian/ Japanese supermarket and Manor.  Cost?  A lot more than what we’re used to paying back at home but arh well, shelf life of these packed tofu is also longer, so guess no complaints there.

We brought back some century eggs from Singapore.  Yeah, told you we brought back loads of stuff on our last trip home.  So to accompany our simple home-cooked fare, I whipped up this simple Tofu with Century Egg side dish.  Turns out we didn’t have black vinegar here so instead of running out to get a bottle, I substituted the recipe with Balsamic Vinegar instead.  Yes, you read right… Balsamic Vinegar!  Taste-wise, I could get away with this.  Hehe..

Tofu with Century Egg (recipe adapted from Taste Hongkong)

Ingredients:

• 1 silken tofu (100-200g, vacuum pack preferred )
• 1 century egg
• Seasonings: 1 tsp Balsamic Vinegar, 1 tsp light soya sauce, 1 tsp sugar, 1 tsp sesame oil

Method:

1. Drain off all water from the pack, if any, and mash up tofu. Arrange on a plate for serving.
2. Shell, rinse, pat-dry and mash century egg. Mix it well with seasonings in a separate bowl .
3. Cover prepared tofu and century egg mixture separately and chill them in fridge for 3 to 4 hours or until cold.
4. To serve, place a layer of century egg mixture over the tofu.
5. Note:  You could serve this dish with a handful of green onions and/or with Japanese bonito flakes.

This was really yummy so I would think you would enjoy this dish too!

‘Hainan Chee-Fan’ Party

Our place in Geneva isn’t too big so while we love to have more friends over, we are often constrained by the amount of space we have.  But having said that, we did host a party for 9 people using whatever plates we have and the rest with disposable cutlery (hehe).

This time round we hosted a cosy dinner party for 4 serving up another Singaporean delight – Hainan Chicken Rice.  If you’re wondering if we’re any genius, well, we ain’t.  This proudly came out from a Prima pack box.

On the menu was the Hainanese Chicken Rice and some lettuce served with oyster sauce.  For dessert, I made a Kaya Puff Pastry which was served together with another cake that our friend brought along.  And as usual, we simply had too much to drink at this dinner party.  5 incredible bottles of vino!  Thankfully, I could just crash at home after this party while the Man helped to put away the dishes. ;o

Oven-grilled.

After Monday’s not-so-great dinner, I decided to put in a little more ‘heart’ into researching and to whip out a nicer meal for last night’s dinner.  Had some leftover ribs in the freezer and was in the mood for some finger-licking barbequed ribs.  Since I don’t have much sauces to play with, I made do with the remaining ingredients in our fridge before the move into our new rental.

Baked Finger-licking Ribs (Recipe adapted from Cooks.com)
Serves 2

Ingredients:

• 1 small pack of orange marmalade (the type they give at hotel buffets)
• 1 tsp. soy sauce
• 2 sprigs of fresh rosemary
• 3/4 tsp. salt
• 1 clove of garlic (minced)
• 2 springs of fresh thyme
• Lean pork ribs or Pork Chops

Directions:

1. In small bowl, combine orange marmalade, soy sauce, rosemary, garlic, thyme and 1/4 teaspoon salt; mix well.
2. Rub salt into both sides of ribs or pork chops.
3. Pan-fry ribs or pork chops till slightly brown.
4. Place the ribs or chops onto a baking tray and pour sauce over the meat.
5. Pop the meat into the oven (200degrees) for about 15 minutes or until meat is pink inside.

As for the sides, I whipped up some asparagus using a recipe that I found on Noobcook – btw, fantastic blog that I stumbled upon and will be blog-marking for future reference.

Roasted Asparagus with Garlic, Lemon & Thyme (Recipe from NoobCook)

Serves 2

Ingredients:

• 20 medium to thick stalk asparagus (do not use pencil-thin types) – I used about 12 stalks of asparagus for this recipe
• 5 garlic cloves, peeled & finely chopped
• 5 garlic cloves, slightly mashed
• 3 thin slices lemon
• Lemon juice
• 2 sprigs of fresh thyme (for better results, dip them in hot water for 30 seconds before use)
• 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• Sea salt and freshly cracked black pepper

Directions:

1. Prepare the asparagus by trimming & discarding the bottom ends and removing the outer skin on the stalks.
2. Coat asparagus with extra virgin olive oil. Season with sea salt and black pepper. Arrange asparagus spears one layer on a roasting tray. For convenience of cleaning, you can line the tray with aluminium foil.
3. Top asparagus with chopped garlic, lemon slices, thyme, bay leaves and garlic cloves. Squeeze a bit of lemon juice (not too much – you want a mild citrus flavour but not sour taste).
4. Roast the asparagus in pre-heated oven of 200C for about 20 minutes, or until the tips start to brown slightly.

Much happier with the results for last night’s dinner!  These recipes are a keeper and I look forward to perfecting them further.