Kimchi Meat Soup

Kimchi soup using minced meat with taukwa and mushroom

Kimchi soup with pork sabu sabu and glass noodle

Homemade kimchi.

Ingredients:
2 cups of water
1 clove garlic - minced
1/2 yellow onion - sliced
1 tbsp salted soya bean(豆鼓)
1/2 tbsp korean chilli paste
Kimchi - any amount ( I used homemade)
3 tablespoon minced meat or beef shabu shabu
1 pc of tau kwa(hard beancurd) -cut into pieces
1 pkt Enoki mushroom
2 stalks spring onion -  cut inch length
1 stalk chinese celery - cut  inch length
1 tbsp fish sauce


Method:
1. Put water into a pot and bring to boil. Add sliced yellow onion , garlic, salted soya bean and korean chilli paste.

2. Seasoned minced meat with 1-2 tsp light soy sauce, dash of pepper, 1 tsp sesame oil and 1 tsp cornflour. No seasoning required if use beef shabu shabu.

3. Use spoon to scoop minced meat into small balls and add into the boiling mixture. Add kimchi.

4. Remove the "root" part of Enoki mushroom. Rinse. Then add the Enoki mushroom and tua kwa into soup.

5. Add 1/2 - 1 tbsp of fish sauce and light soy sauce into soup or your desired taste.

6. Sprinkle cut spring onion and chinese celery. Remove from fire and place soup into a bowl and serve with rice.

P.s. : you may add tanghoon /glass noodle in above 4.

You may replaced pork with beef sabu sabu or sliced chicken.

You may like to view also my other post:
1. kimchi
2. kimchi-pancake

How to fry rice without sticking on stainless steel wok

My family love eating fried rice. Recently I switched from hard anodised wok to stainless steel wok. From many reviews learnt that stainless steel wok stick easily. Many find stainlese steel wok stick more than other wok, so how to use little oil to fry rice yet rice doesn't stick on wok?
In the past, when i was using hard anodized wok,  after heat up wok, i will lower the heat first then crack an egg onto the wok then i put in the rice.
I find stainless steel wok is more hot than other wok when it is heated up. When i do the same hard anodised wok method on stainless steel wok,  before i could even put in the rice, the egg cooked immediately.

So how to solve this problem?
I did these 2 methods and both work.

1. Put 1- 2 spoons of oil in the stainless steel wok. Let the wok heat up a while, oil the wok. off the fire then crack an egg into the wok so that the egg will not cook too fast. You need runny egg. Quickly add in the cooked rice when egg is still runny. With very quick "action" stir the rice in the wok to coat every grains of rice with the egg. Then on the fire again. With high fire fry the rice. When rice is coated with egg, it will not stick on wok.

2. Crack an egg onto cooled cooked rice. And mixed them together. Do this process just before frying. Make sure every grains is coated with egg. Put 1-2 spoons of oil into cleaned and dry stainless steel wok then on the fire. Pour in the egg coated cooked rice. With high heat fry them.
This method give a very egg fragranced rice. Taste very good as every grains had been coated with egg.

Suggestion rice vs egg:
1) 2-3 cups of rice (measure before cooked). Cooked then cool down at room temperature or overnight rice is the best for doing fried rice.
2) 1-2 eggs

You may like to try these egg recipes
1) pan-fry-prawn-omelette
2) rice-omelette-pancake

All Times Favorite Deep Fried Meat Balls

Ingredients:
550g minced pork
1 egg
4 stalks spring onion - chopped
1 carrot -chopped
2 tbsp light soy sauce
1 tbsp oyster sauce
1/2 tsp pepper
1 tbsp sesame oil
2 tbsp cornflour
1 tbsp breadcrumb

Some oil for deep fry

Method:
Combine all ingredients. Let it seasoned for at least 20mins.
Heat up oil. Using 2 spoons to scoop the meat and make it into small meat balls. Deep fry  the meat until golden brown.
Remove from oil and place them on a plate lay with thick kitchen paper towel to absorb extra oil from the meat.
Serve.

You may be interested in my Homemade Fried Meat Balls. For healthier choice, you may want to try Steam Minced Meat and also this Char Siew/BBQ pork

Black Pepper Stir Fry Meat

Ingredients:
300-400g pork fillets thinly sliced ( can replace with beef)
1 tbsp black pepper sauce
1 tbsp dark soy sauce
1/2 tbsp mushroom sauce
1/2 tbsp oyster sauce
1 tbsp sesame oil
1 tbsp corn flour (can substitute wt potatoes flour, but reduce to half tbsp)
1 tbsp water

Ingredients for stir fry:
1 tbsp sesame oil
1/2 tbsp olive oil
2 cloves of garlic -minced
1 small red onion/shallots  - minced
Thumb size old ginger thinly shredded

Garnish:
2 stalks of spring onion cut into 1 inch length
1 red chilli padi cut into slices (optional)

Method:
1. Place sliced meat into a bowl or plate, add all the ingredients together and mix them well. Set it a side to let the meat season for at least 20min. Seasoning of meat can be done earlier the day and use clingwrap to cover and leave it in refrigerator to keep fresh.

2. In a wok over a medium fire, i use a stainless steel chinese wok but sometime I do use non-stick, put in all the stir-fry ingredients and fry until the garlic and red onion turn light golden brown.

3. Put in the seasoned sliced meat  and stir fry until the colour of meat turn pale colour. If the fire is too strong, it will dry up the sauce, so add about 1-2 tablespoon of water and continue to stirfry 2-3min or until meat is tender and cooked. Put in the garnish and stir fry for another few sec when the spring onion turn a little darker tone. Off fire and dish up the meat into a plate and serve with white rice.

Enjoy cooking. Do leave your comments. 😊

You may be interseted in Steam Minced Meat

No Knead Sandwich Buns

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups lukewarm water
1 1/2 tsp instant yeast
1 tsp sea salt
1 tbsp fine sugar
2 1/2 cups bread flour
1/2 cup plain flour

Glazing :
1 egg beaten
Some white sesame

Method :
In a big bowl , add flour, salt, sugar and yeast. Use a spoon to simply mix them together.  Pour in the water and use a pair of chopstick or a rubber spatula to mix all wet and dry ingredients well. This whole process take about 5min.
The dough should be wet and loose.

Use cling wrap to cover the bowl. Allow the mixture to rise at room temperature until it is double in size( or at least flattens on top and dough has  many small holes),  take about two hours. Longer rising times will not hurt the dough.
Allow the dough proof for minimum 3hours. I proof it for 6hours. You may allow dough to proof overnight in the refrigerator and then shape it in the morning.

Shape the buns
After 6 hours proof in room temperature, shape the dough into desire shape.
Prepare a piece of baking parchment paper on a aluminum baking tray. Sprinkle  about 2 spoons of flour on a working surface. Pour out the dough from the bowl onto the floured surface using a rubber spatula. Using a pastry cutter divide dough into 6 portions. DO NOT KNEAD. Dust hands with flour and shape dough into oval shape with the help of the pastry cutter. Then place them on the tray lay with parchment paper.
Cover the shaped dough with a dry towel or clingwrap. Let the dough proof for another 1 - 1.5hours.

Preheat oven at 210°C and the rack placed in the middle.

After 1.5 hours proofing, eggwash the uncook bun with brush. Sprinkle some sesame on top of the dough.  Use a kitchen scissor to cut the top of the uncook bun. Put into preheated oven to bake to 20 minutes.

For this same recipe without the sugar, you may use it to make No Knead Artisan Bread and for pizza base

No Knead Artisan Bread

Recently saw a few post Artisan bread. Google and found a recipe from The Italian Dish that looks easy without kneading require and done within 5 minutes.  Decided to give it a try. It is really easy and no hassle and save time.
Needed only 4 ingredients and it taste very good. What we need is just a big plastic container with a lid to allow the dough proof inside the container. According to this blogger dough can be kept in refrigerator for 14days.
Today, mix the flour that is plain flour with bread flour. Original recipe called for 100% plain/all purpose flour.
I will try the next round using just plain flour. Today I believe because of the bread flour, the dough was very sticky and make shaping the dough become very difficult. After few attempts trying to shape the dough as I used to shape, the dough stuck on my fingers. In the end I can only shape it into something round  and placed it on the parchment paper. The surface was not smooth. But the result after further proofing and after baking it was satisfying.

Ingredients:
1.5 cups lukewarm water
2 tsp instant yeast
2 tsp sea salt
3 1/4 cups unsifted, all purpose flour( i used 60% bread flour & 40% plain)

Method :
Prepare a big plastic container with lid. Pour in the water. Add instant yeast and salt. Use a spoon stir a few strokes to get the yeast well mixed.

Add all of the flour at once, measuring the flour by scooping it and leveling it off with a knife. Mix with a spoon - do not knead.  Mix until everything is uniformly moist, without dry patches.  This step is done in a matter of a few minutes.  The dough should be wet and loose. Do not over mixed. Less stiring the dough the softer the bread will be

Put on the lid but not airtight. You want the gases to be able to escape a little. I used a lock and lock container but did not tighten. Just leave the lid on top to cover the opening. Allow the mixture to rise at room temperature until it begins to collapse (or at least flattens on top), about two hours. Longer rising times will not hurt your dough. This dough can be kept in fridge for 14days According to the blogger, the longer it leave to proof the easier to handle the dough. Recommended first time making this should allow the dough proof overnight in the refrigerator so that it will be easier to shape. However, i let it proof in room temperature for 3hours and then shape.

Shape your loaf.  Place a piece of baking parchment paper on a aluminum baking sheet.    Sprinkle the surface of your dough in the container with flour.  Pull up the dough. Gently stretch the surface of the dough around to the bottom on all four sides, rotating the ball as you go.  Dust your hands with flour if you need to.  This is just to prevent sticking - you don't want to incorporate the flour into the dough.  The top of the dough should be smooth - the object here is to create a "gluten cloak" or "surface tension".  It doesn't matter what the bottom looks like, but you need to have a smooth, tight top.  This whole step should take about 30 seconds!  Place the dough onto your parchment paper.

Let the loaf rise for about 30 - 40 minutes (it does not need to be covered).  If it doesn't look like it has risen much, don't worry - it will in the oven.  This is called "oven spring".

Preheat a baking tray on the middle rack in the oven for at least 20 minutes at 225°C. If you have a cast iron pot, use a cast iron pot. However, as i do not have it, so this is the part that I have modified.

Dust the loaf with a little flour and slash the top with a knife.  This slashing is necessary to release some of the trapped gas, which can deform your bread.  It also makes the top of your bread look pretty - you can slash the bread in a tic tac toe pattern, a cross, or just parallel slashes.  You need a very sharp knife or a razor blade - you don't want the blade to drag across the dough and pull it.  As the bread bakes, this area opens and is known as "the bloom". Remember to score(make a cut/slash the surface)the loaves right before baking.

Bring out the preheat baking tray and place the dough including the parchment paper onto the preheat tray. And return the tray into the oven and bake for 30-35minutes depend on the size of your dough. The blogger place a cup of water in the oven during the baking process to get a crispy crust. I omitted this process.

You may also want to try using no knead dough for buns. See my post No Knead Sandwich Buns

Toaster Oven Crispy Roasted Pork(Siew Yuk)

Have you cook your food in a toaster oven before?
I do it all the time. I do not own a microwave oven. So my toaster oven become very handly. I reheat food in it. I cook char siew in it. I bake chicken wings and chicken thighs and chicken chops  in my toaster oven. My neighbour was amazed when she saw me grilling the chicken wings and chicken chops in the toaster oven. So whenever I make small portion of otah, I will prefer to use toaster oven. Just set to the time
 that I want and go do my housekeeping and doesn't need to worry that kitchen get burn down. That is how I was able to cook simple meal with toaster oven and keep the house and coaching my children when my children were young. Toaster oven is my "good friend" in my kitchen. I use toaster oven to roast cashew nuts and almond if the quantity is small. I do have a big oven which I use for normal cake and bread baking and grills.
For small portion, I would prefer using toaster oven as it save energy and easy cleaning. So, my toaster oven is quite heavily utilised. Currently I am using a toaster oven with top and bottom grill function. And it has up to 60min timer. The only thing it doesn't has is the temperature setting. Once, the timer is set to the desire time, it will start to heat up and the heating up is very fast within a few seconds. Unlike those big oven which require preheat.

As I tried alot of different kind of food in the toaster oven, the only one i have not try is the crispy pork belly. Decided to give it a try..and I am very satisfied with the result. It was crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside. Few years ago, have tried using my big oven to do this dish. The roast pork was nice, but was "horrified" by the cleaning...the whole oven was very dirty and oily after roasting the belly pork. Tried once and never want to try again. It took me a long time cleaning the oven and a few days to get rid of the smell.
Through the previous experience, this time using toaster oven, I did some "precaution" to minimise cleanning job. I wrapped the pork with aluminim foil before putting it into toaster oven.

This is a successful crispy roaster pork which is yummy and easy to make. Will do this more often from now on..

You may find me in facebook page Catherine's Cooking Journal

Ingredients :
Belly pork with skin on
Coarse sea salt

Marinate:
1 tsp Salt
1/2 tsp pepper
2 tsp Five spies powder
1 tsp Shaoxin wine

Directions :
Boil a pot of water, blanch the pork belly in the boiling water for 1-2min.

Remove from water. Use kitchen paper towel to dry the pork belly

Place the pork belly skin down, rub the wine the all over the meat except the skin, that is the sides & the bottom of the meat.

Combine salt , pepper and five spices powder and rub all over the meat including the skin. No need to finish the amount of marinate seasoning. Just make sure every part is rub with this seasoning.

Turn over to have the pork belly skin up, poke the skin with a small knife sharp tip or any pricking tool you have. I used a special pins to do this job. Poke alot of time..the more the better. Leave the pork belly in a plate, do not cover and leave it in the fridge one day if you can. However, due to time constraint, I left it in fridge for 2hours. Purpose is to let the pork be dry to get the crispy effect.

Wrap the pork belly with a piece of aluminum foil & have the skin exposed,  then, cover the skin with a thick layer of coarse sea salt.

Place the pork belly with skin which is covered with coarse salt facing up laying on a baking tray.

Put the tray of pork belly into the toaster oven and  with setting top and bottom grill and set toaster oven timer to 60mins to "roast" the pork belly.

After 60min, remove from toaster oven. Remove the layer of coarse salt first then remove the aluminium foil. Careful there may be some hot liquid oil. Discard liquid or keep it to make sauce. Place the pork belly with skin facing up back into tray and return it into toaster oven again. Set toaster oven timer 30min. Let the pork belly continue to roast until the skin turn golden brown and crispy.

Remove from toaster oven. Cut and serve.

Note: my toaster oven temperature is approximate 220°C~250°C

You may like to try a different recipe using the belly pork to cook in different style Braised Pork / Kong Bak

Apple Cinnamon Scones

16Jul2015
Bought a scones recipe book for many years. It was left in my book shelf for many years and has yet try any of the recipe in it. Today I wanted to try making cinnamon with scones.  After searching through my recipes books, found this easy recipe. The result was very good. Most importantly the scones taste very yummy. Soft inside and a little crispy on the outside while it is hot.   After dinner, my husband took one and continue to take another 2 more.  He loved it. He complimented that it tasted very good. So, this is considered a good and easy recipe.

Ingredients
2 cups self-raising flour (250g)
30g butter
1/3 cup caster sugar(65g)
1/3 cup milk
1 egg
1tsp ground cinnamon
1 red apple -grated

Extra 1 tablespoon of milk for glazing

Method
Rub flour with butter until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs, then stir in the sugar and cinnamon and apple.  Mix egg and milk and pour into the dry mixtures and make into a soft dough.

Turn onto a lightly floured surface, knead very gently (do not over knead) then roll out to a 2 cm thickness. Cut into 5cm rounds and place on a baking sheet. Brush with milk and bake in a preheat hot oven , traditional oven 220° C for 10 min -12min or when it is slight brown on the top. Cool on a wire rack.