Stir-fry Asparagus with Cloud Ear Fungus

This is one of my family favorite stir-fry I would like to share with you. The original recipe from my cookbook collection uses white fungus, since I am out of the white, I replaced it with the cloud ear fungus.


Ingredients:

• 1 cup cloud ear fungus ( pre soaked and cleaned)
  
• 1/2 lb Pork
• 1/2 tbsp soy sauce
• 1/2 tbsp cooking wine
• 1 tbsp corn starch
• 1/2 lb Asparagus
• 1 tbsp Ginger (julienne)

Sauce:

• 1/3 tsp salt
• 1/3 tsp sugar
• 1 tsp sesame oil
• 1 tsp corn starch
• 3 tbsp water
  

Method:

• Marinate pork with soy sauce, wine and corn starch
• Cut Asparagus in about 1.5 inch long
• On a stir fry pan, heat about 1 tbsp oil, stir in ginger until fragrant.
• Add in asparagus and 2 tbsp water and stir for about 2-3 minutes until steamy. Removed and set aside.
• Heat 2 tbsp oil and stir fry pork until turn cooked.
• Add in fungus, asparagus and sauce. Stir to mix well.
  

Ham Roll

Very simple but quite time consuming dish that I don't usually prepare. It's ham roll with asparagus. All you need are some asparagus and ham. This is quite a tasty dish where you get the saltiness taste from the ham blend with the natural sweetness from the asparagus. I enjoy it very much.
Here's how I prepared.

• Cut asparagus into 3 pieces long
• Slice the ham and blanch the ham in boiling water to reduce the saltness
  
• Blanch asparagus in boiling water and oil
• Roll and seal the edge with corn flour
• Steam ham roll for about 8 -10 mins
• In a bowl mix in some soy sauce, salt, sugar, water and corn starch.
  
• Bring the mixture to boil and pour on the roll
• Ready to serve.
  

Braised Tofu in Vinegar

A simple tofu stir-fry I like to prepare for my family. The provided recipe is a rough estimate amount I used, if you interested to try please adjust the flavor according to your personal preference :)

Ingredients

• 1 cube of tofu
• 200gm minced meat
  
• 4 tbsp chopper scallion
  
• 2 tsp minced ginger
• 2 tsp minced garlic
• 2 tsp hot bean paste
• 1 1/2 cup water
• 3 tbsp dark( black) vinegar
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 2 tsp sesame oil
• corn starch and water as thickening agent
• 3 tbsp oil
  

Method:

• Heat pan with oil, and stir fry and break the meat into pieces for about 3 minutes.
• Add in ginger, garlic, scallion, hot bean paste and bean curd stir fry for another minute.
• Add in water, vinegar, sugar and sesame oil, cover the pan with lid and let it simmer for 3 mins.
  
• Add the corn starch mixture
• Garnish with some scallion and ready to serve.
  

Simple Mixed Veggies Stir-fry with Fishball

I have some left over napa cabbage, bean sprout and carrot sitting in my fridge for almost 1 week now, don't know what to do with them. While hubby was preparing the napa cabbage for his dish, suddenly though of the idea of combining all the left over with some cellophane noodle and fish ball. The outcome was quite delicious in my opinion. I really like veggie combination of this dish. Some crunchiness from the bean spout and the natural sweetness from the cabbage, carrot and fish ball. Yum yum.. definitely a keeper.

Korean Bean Sprout (Sukju-Namul)

While I was looking for other way to prepare the bean spout, suddenly thought of this Korean side dish we ate few months back from the Chosun Korean BBQ restaurant. I like this dish very much because it taste very light and refreshing especially when they serve it cold. So after some recipes hunting online, I found this recipe and decided to give it a shot.

Ingredients:

• 250g green bean sprouts
  
• ½ tsp salt
• 1 tsp sesame oil
  
• 1/8 tsp minced garlic
• 2 tsp chopped green onion
  
• 1/8 tsp white sesame

Method:

• Boil some water in a pot
• Add in bean sprouts when the water boiling. and let them boil for 2 mins
• Drain the water. let them cool.
• Sprinkle the salt on top, mix well and let it sit for about 3 mins.
• Squeeze the green bean sprouts with your hands to discard the water
• Add the remaining the seasoning sauce, and mix them well.
  

Verdict: Lighter than the one we had from the restaurant but overall I like it. Probably will add a little more salt or soy sauce next time to enhance the flavor a little bit.

Ok..here's how the next picture was taken. It was weekday night I prepare the dish. As you know I broke my camera few weeks ago, so I asked hubby to take a picture of the dish before he eat since I need to feed Aidan. Instead of taking the picture of the spout on the serving plate, he took the picture below. The bean sprout on his rice bowl before he took his first taste... duh! luckily got caught, other wise this will be my only picture to show off the dish hmm...

Stir Fry Chinese Spinach with Dried Shrimp

Chinese Spinach also known as Red Amaranth is one of my favorite vegetable I like to buy every time I saw this available in the Asian store. This veggie not only taste good but also good source of vitamins and minerals to your body.Click here to learn more about Amaranth.

Usually there are only couple way that my family love to cook this veggie. One is to cook this with Anchovies soup based with some fish ball and fish cake. Another is to stir fry it with dried or fresh shrimps. Here's the stir fry version and it's very simple.. all you need are some chopped garlic, dried shrimp, Chinese Spinach, a little mixture of corn starch and water as the thickening agent and some salt to taste. I like the veggie to be soft..so i usually let the dish simmer for a minute or 2 before adding the cornstarch mixture.

Stir Fry Bitter Melon with Chicken

Bitter melon is not something you want to eat everything, but if you are looking for something different, you might want to give it a try. The melon has quite intense bitter taste if the fruit is unripe, but they tend to get less bitter if they are fully ripe. More info can be found from here.

Ingredients

• 10 oz chicken
• 1 tsp garlic
• 1 tsp ginger
• 14 oz bitter melon remove all the pith and seed, cut into strip
• 1 tbsp brown bean paste
• 8 tbsp water
• 1/4 tsp sugar
• salt to taste

Method

• Heat oil in a pan, stir fry garlic,ginger and brown bean paste for a minute.
• Add chicken and stir fry for another 2 minutes
• Add butter melon and mix well.
• Add water and bring the pan to boil.
• Cover the pan with lid and turn the heat to medium high and let it simmer for 3 - 4 minutes.

Stir fry Broccoli with Mushroom

Back home, we don't eat broccoli as often but here, what vegetables can you gets if you don't to the Asian food store. one of our favorite veggie we get from the regular groceries store is broccoli. I like broccoli a lot especially steamed broccoli with some mushroom seacucumer sauce where people serve in the Chinese banquet. I remember when I was young, I was told that broccoli is good for you brain development.. hmm is it true? Here my simple quick stir fry broccoli with dried shitake mushroom.

Ingredients:

• *Broccoli Crown
• *Shitake Mushroom
• *Garlic, chopped
• *Cooking Oil
  
• *Cormstarch
• *water
• Salt to taste

Method:

• Clean and cut broccoli into bite size
• Soak shitake mushroom until soft and cut into thin strip
• Mix 1/2 tsp of cornstarch and 2-3 tsp of water and set aside. This is use as the thicken agent.
• Heat pan with cooking oil, add in garlic and stir fry until brown.
• Add in mushroom and stir fry for another 2-3 minutes
• Add Broccoli and mix well in the pan. Add in water and cover the pan with lid and let it simmer until soften.
• Add salt to taste, and finally add in the thickening agent to thicken the sauce.

Steam Chinese Eggplant

A friend of mine send me a Chinese Toddler Cookbook from Singapore last month when she was looking for some food recipes for her daughter who are 2 months older than Aidan. I was so excited when I received this book and can't stop myself glancing everything in the book.
Besides all the delicious pictures and the recipes, it also provide nutrition information, notes and tip about the dish that parent needs to be aware. In addition, it also contain guidance on how to wean toddler from milk and feeding schedule. However, I think the feeding guideline provided in this book are quite aggressive where it said we should start the feeding the baby with the cup sometime in the 4th month and stop the bottle complete by 9th month and start the cow milk before one which is quite contradict with most if the advice you found from the pediatric in the state. All in all, Hubby and I think we should try the recipes for the family rather than just for Aidan as he is enjoying adult food more than a baby food except milk.
The first recipe from this mini cookbook is steam Chinese eggplant. Since the target audience for this recipe are toddlers, the flavor is very light and don't require a lot of ingredients. Here's the modified adult recipe.

Ingredient:

• 2 medium size chinese egg plant
• 2 clove of garlic chopped
  
• 3 shallots thinly slice
  
• enough oil to fry the shallot
  
• some light soy sauce
• some olive oil for frying the garlic

Method:

• Heat oil in a pan, add shallot the pan and fry until golden brown. Remove shallot from the pan and set aside
  
• Remove the skin of eggplant and cut the eggplant into strip
• Steam the eggplant in the steaming pan for 10 minutes. Remove eggplant from the plan and place it on the service plate
• Heat olive oil in pan and add in chopped garlic. Fry until golden brown. Remove from heat and pour the garlic and oil on the eggplant.
• Add in some light soy sauce to taste
• Topped with fry shallot
  

This is Aidan's version. Remove the shallot and soy sauce and replace with some salt and water for the sauce. He loves it. Adding the garlic give the whole dish a richer flavor.

Alternative Way to Cook Yu Choy

Not sure this is because I am living in the mid west or what, every weekend before heading to oriental groceries store, I already know what to expect from there in terms of Chinese vegetables selection. The basic selections that are always available all year long are: baby bak choy, yu choy, gai lan and bak choy. Once a while you can get some decent quality kangkung, Gai Choy, Chinese celery, etc.

Getting tired of stir frying green vegetables with oyster sauce but can’t think of any other best way to cook. So this week, the new experiment was stir fry chinese mustard green with canned vegetarian abalone. This is very simple dish; all you need is a can of canned vegetarian selection and some green leafy vegetables.

Stir fry Smooth Loofah (水瓜, 絲瓜) with Shrimp

This is my all time favorite vegetable. In fact, my family loves except my mom because she is allergy to shell fish. Last week, while I was looking for some vegetable to cook, I spotted this loofah, they looks ok. So I picked up 2 of them for my stir fry. I never know what the western name is for this plant is as we always speak the hokkien name for the veggie and they call it differently in Cantonese. When I was googling the name, interestingly I found there are variations of name for this type of veggie. Even for Chinese itself, some people call it 水瓜, other called it 絲瓜. Anyway, you should able to find this veggie in any of the oriental store especially Indian store.

Ingredients

• 2 Smooth Loofah, removed all the skin and cut it into pieces.
• 1 tbsp of dried shrimp ( I prefer fresh shrimp but since I don’t have any at home, I substitute with dried shrimp)
• 1 glove of garlic, minced
• ½ cup of water
• 3 tsp oil
• Salt to taste

Method:

• Heat oil in a pan, add garlic to the pan and stir fry until it turn yellow.
• Add shrimp and stir fry for another minute or until the fresh shrimp turn pink.
• Add loofah and mix well with the shrimp.
• Add water and bring to boil. Cover the pan with lid and let it cook until loofah get soften.
• Add salt to taste.

While I was searching for the loofah, iI came across this picture that show how you cut the loofah. Not sure if this is the standard way how Chinese cut this veggie, but my family always slice the loofah in this method. Picture below show how they look before it cook. Picture and another recipe provide by POCO Chinese Food Forum.

Vinegared cucumber salad

I find this salad is very refreshing especially accompany with some spicy meaty main dish. I never added shallot or red onion to this dish when I made this in the past. This week, I decided to try this recipe from Green Mangoes and Lemon Grass. Since I ran out of shallot, I substitute the shallot with red onion. They turned out quite good. I was surprise that with a little addition of red onion made quite an impact to the flavor for the whole dish.

Ingredient

• 4 tbsp rice vinegar
• 3 tbsp water ( optional)
• 3 tbsp castor sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 medium size cucumber
• 3 dried chilies (the recipe call 1 large red chili)
• 1/4 red onion (the recipe call for 2 shallots) thinly slice
• Crush peanut ( optional)
  

Method:

• Mix vinegar, sugar and water in a bowl and stir until dissolved.
• Cut cucumber in half lengthways and scrape out the puply only if seeds are well formed.
• Cut across 1/2 in slice and toss in the vinegar mixture
• Add chilies and red onion.
• Cover the salad and refrigerate for at least 30 min before serving.
• Serve with crushed peanut. ( optional)
  

Spicy Water Spinach (balancan Kangkung)

I believe that Balancan Kangkung is one Malaysia specialty. There are so many way to cook balancan kangkung. Some people will make the balance mixture from scratch where they pound all the garlic, shallot, chilies and etc with a mortar. Other simple versions include chopping the garlic and chillies with knife, and mix the cube balancan with water and stir fry all ingredient together. For me, I always use the Hup Loong pre-mix balancan powder for the heat and add more some dried shrimp and balance powder.

Last week, I wanted to try something new. I saw this recipe from a cookbook call The Food of Asia and decided to give it a try. The only I omitted from the original recipe is the sesame oil. I don't recall my family adds sesame oil when they cook this dish in so many versions and I think this dish will taste great without it.

Ingredients:

• 2 lb Kangkung (water spinach)
• 3 tbsp dried shrimp, soak soften
• 6 cloves of garlic
• 6 shallots
• 2 tsp sambal olek
• 1 inch ginger
• 2 tsp dried shrimp paste powder (Balancan)
• 3 tbsp oil
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• Salt to taste

Method:

• Blend dried shrimp until fine.
• Blend garlic, ginger and shallot until fine.
• Heat oil in a pan, add garlic mixture and dried shrimp. Cook over low heat. Stir frequently for 5 minutes until fragrant.
• Add sugar, soy sauce and mix well.
• Add kangkung and stir well.
• Turn up the heat to high and cover pan with lid until kangkung is tender.
• Seasoned with salt to taste.

The dish does taste great but I prefer the my shotcut version.

Vegetarian Stir Fry

This is a traditional Chinese New Year dish my family prepared during the first day of Chinese New Year. My mom doesn't cook this very often because preparation work is quite lengthy. Therefore, she will usually prepare everything ahead of time before the actually cooking.

Ingredient:

• 1/4 cup of black moss (fat choy)
• 1/4 cup of black fungus (cloud ear)
• 7 dried mushroom
• 1 sheet of dried bean curd skin
• 1 bunch of cellophane noodles
• 1/4 cup of julienne carrot
• 1/4 cup bamboo shoot
• Some Napa cabbage
• 1 1/2 piece fermented red bean curd (Nam Yee)
• 1 tbsp oil
• 1/2 tsp garlic
• 1 tsp soy sauce
• MSG to taste
  
• 1 cup vegetable stock or water

Preparation:

• Soak mushrooms in water until soft then cut into think strip. Keep the water.
• Soak black moss (Fat choy) and divide into smaller portion, discard the liquid.
• Soak black fungus and cut into bite pieces, discard the liquid.
• Soak cellophane noodles until soft, discard the liquid.
• Mix 2 tbsp of water into the fermented red bean curd and mash it with fork until become paste consistency.
• Heat 2 tbsp oil to fry the dried bean curd skin until turning light brown.

Method:

• Heat pan with 1 tbsp of oil and sauté garlic until fragrant.
• Add mushrooms, carrot, black fungus and bamboo shoot and continue stir fry for another 2 minutes.
• Then add napa cabbage and 1 cup of liquid from the mushroom.
• Cover with lid and bring to boil.
• Add the remaining ingredient: black moss and cellophane noodles, and stir fry for another 2 minutes. Add more water if the sauce gets dry out.
• Add soy sauce and pinch of chicken bouillon to taste.

Silk Tofu in Brown Sauce

Another simple recipe from old my recipe collection. All you need is a block of silk tofu and 30 minutes to spare.

Ingredients:

• 1 block Soft Silk Tofu
• 1 clove of garlic - chopped
• 1/4 tbsp soy bean paste
• 1/2 tbsp light soy sauce
• 1/4 tbsp dark soy sauce
• 1/2 cup of water
• 1/2 tsp corn starch diluted with 1 tbsp of water
• Salt and sugar to taste

Method:

• Place Tofu in the steamer and steam for approx. 3 minutes
• Remove Tofu from the steamer and cut into cube size
  
• Mix all soy sauces and water in the bowl
• Heat 1 1/2 tbsp of oil and sauté garlic and bean paste until fragrant
• Add tofu and soy sauce mixture
• Let is simmer for 20 minute or until the sauce reduces
  
• Add in cornstarch mixture to thicken
• Garnish with some scallion and coriander