Paella

It's Friday! This is a friday dish for the family. Everything in one pot....Simplified Paella. Whenever I want to cook simple, this will be one of the dish in the list. Family love paella. 

In this dish, I find the most expensive ingredients is saffron.  Find fairprice selling one small tiny box for $10.90. Few months ago, passed by Mustafa. Grabed 2 big packets from the store. If you are using it often, it is more economical to buy bigger packet.

If you couldn't get saffron, you may try using tumeric powder to substitute the colour. Using tumeric powder is more economical than using saffron. However, it may taste a little different.  But it should be nice. As I do use tumeric powder for frying pineapple rice. And it taste wonderful. Cooking is an art! You can try with different ingredients and usually you make your own family signature dish because of the unique way you cook and ingredients added. I do that all the time and also I like to modify dish to my desire taste. For instance for this round I had used long grains rice instead of short grains rice.

Present to you Simplified Paella. I hope you will like it. 

Ingredients

2 cups long grain rice*

3 cups ready stock/water(See note)

200g sabu sabu pork cut into small ppieces

1/2 yellow big onion chopped

3 cloves of garlic minced

1/2 cup frozen green pea

8 prawns removed shell

4 middle size squids cut into ring

1/2 lemon cut into wedges

1tbsp fish sauce

1 large pinch of saffron

1/2 tsp paprika power (optional)

2tbsp olive oil/ any cooking oil

Methods

1. Prepare a 28cm or 32cm non-stick wok with lid

2. Season pork with 1tbsp of light soy sauce and pepper and corn flour. Set a sie.

Season prawns and squids with 1/2 tsp of salt and pepper. Set a side. 

3. Wash rice once with water. Pour away water. set a side.

4. Heat up wok. Pour in olive oil. Add chopped onion and minced garlic. Stir fry until onion turn translucent and garlic turn light brown, add pork and continue to stir fry for few more seconds.

5. Add washed rice into wok. Add a bunch of saffron and paprika. Stir fry for another few seconds. Then add stock. Add fish sauce. Cover the wok with lid. Bring the rice to boil then lower to medium fire to continue cooking the rice. Approximate 15min.

6. When the rice is about to dry ( app 15min later), open lid and add green pea andlay the prawn and squids on top of rice. Then cover and continue to cook for another 5min or until prawns and squids are fully cooked. Off fire and lay lemon on the rice. Serve!

Note: If use water instead of ready stock, you may need to add seasoning to your desire taste. Usually if using water, this is my seasoning:

1tsb chicken stock powder

1tsb salt

1 tbsp light soy sauce

1/2 tbsp fish sauce

* Note2: Usually I used short grains rice. 

Homemade Oyster Omelette 蠔煎(prawn version). 蚵仔煎

Was crazy over Taiwan food. Came back from Taiwan, started to try cooking new dish on my own. I like Oyster Omelette, however,  I do not have oyster in my fridge, so I replaced oyster with prawn which I found in my fridge. It tastes equally good.

For Oyster Omelette, I prefer the Singapore style. Which is without the brown sweet sauce. I prefer eating this dish with my mum-in-law sambal chilli. This goes very well with chilli sauce. 

Ingredients:

2 big prawns. 

1/2 cup sweet potato flour(next time substitute 1/2 with corn/tapioca flour)

1/2 cup water

1 tsp fish sauce(can add to 2tsp)*

1/4 chicken powder

1 tsp fish sauce

Dash of pepper

1 egg

2-3 leaves of endives

Some oil for frying

Method:

1. Remove prawn shell and remove "waste" at the back of prawn. Rinse. Cut into small pieces.  Season with some salt and pepper. Set aside.

2. Rinse and cut endives into small pieces and set aside.

3. Sift flour to get rid of some dirt in the flour. You may omit this step.

4. Pour flour in a medium size bowl. Add water,chicken powder, fish sauce and pepper.  Mix it well.

5. Use a non-stick pan on medium fire. Let the pan heat up a bit(few sec).  Add about 1 tablespoon of oil. I used olive oil. Pour in above step 4. Let it fry for a while (30 sec) like you fry sunny side up. When there is lesser liquid,  add egg. Follow by prawns. Top with endives.  Pan fry for another 30sec - a min or when the base turn translucent and light brown. Flip the pancake and fry the other side.  The pancake is a little soft compare to western pancake. Do it slowly,  you will be able to flip it. Pan fry for another 30sec to a minute or until flour mixture turn translucent and light brown. Flip again. Off fire. Remove from frying pan. Serve with sambal chilli. 

You may like this too:

1) rice-omelette-pancake

2) pan-fry-prawn-omelette



Pan Fry Black Pepper Udon(Taiwan Fried Noodle)

Was in Taiwan few days ago. Wanted to try their local food. Went around to look for breakfast and saw this place called 红橘子 near华阴街 .  I ordered their fried noodles and it looked like this noodle in the picture. I am not sure what kind of noodle did they used. But it tasted like udon and it was very nice.  I was inspired and add this to my list of cooking. Each time when I have a new list, my first thought is to cook for my loved ones.

I have no recipe how they do it. But I based on my taste buds and also "vision".. haha....
Before I forget the taste, I woke up early Tuesday  morning to cook for my children for breakfast. They love it.
Ingredients:
2 packets of Udon - 400g
150g minced meat
1/4 of carrots, cut into strips
1/4 big onion, sliced.
1 tbsp black pepper sauce
1 tbsp oyster sauce
1 tsp light soy sauce
3 leaves of endives

Seasoning for meat:
1 tsp light soy sauce
Dash of pepper
1/2 tsp of corn/potato flour

2 eggs
Oil for frying

Method:
1.Season the minced meat with above seasoning.  Set a side.

2. In a nonstick wok on medium fire. Add 1 tsp oil. Pan fry the 2 eggs individually. Remove from frying wok. Set a side.

3. Add about 1/2 tablespoon of oil into the wok. Add sliced big onion. Fry until it turn a little translucent.  Add carrots and minced meat. Stir fry until meat is cooked. Add black pepper sauce , oyster sauce and light soy sauce. Stir another few seconds.  Add 1/4 cup of water. Mix it well. Add udon and endives.  Stir fry until udon is soft, approximately 1-2 minutes.
Off fire. Serve

Orange Butter Cake

 

Last CNY our relative made us a very nice orange cake. After tasted such good orange cake, I just want to bake one myself. She told me she took recipe from Google. So I did the same and after much searching I found this recipe from eatapieceofcake. The cake posted in the blog looks like the one my relative made. I mean the colour and texture. Therefore, I baked it! To my surprise, the result was very good and family loved it so much that we finished within few minutes.
Visit also my facebook page Catherine's Cooking Journal

Ingredients:
227gram/2 sticks butter – room temperature( I used 250g)
200 gram sugar (I used 170g)
220 gram flour
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
4 large eggs
Zest of an orange (I used the zest of 2 oranges)
5 tbsp orange juice (freshly squeezed)

Method
Grease and line an 8” round baking pan. Preheat oven to 350 degree F (175 degree C).
Sieve flour, baking powder and salt and set it aside.
Cream butter and sugar until light and creamy.
Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition until mixture is light and fluffy.
Add in the orange zest.Slow down the mixer and slowly add in the flour. Finally stir in orange juice. Mix until well combined.
Turn out mixture into prepared tin. Level out mixture at the sides but allow a shallow well in the centre. This is to enable the cake to level up evenly during baking.
Bake for 50-55 minutes or until cooked through when tested with a skewer.Ingredients:

You may like this too :
Orange Muffins

Butternut Pizza Crust

Today my princess and I were like "Master Chef" playing in the kitchen. ..We wanted to have a healthier choice of lunch.. Searching through Google and reading up others blogs. With the butternut pumpkin that I bought yesterday. We decided to make butternut crust pizza. There are some recipes which uses butternut and ground almond, that is totally gluten free pizza. However, we do not have ground almond at home, so we chosen the recipes with wheat flour.

First attempt using butternut for pizza crust. Surprisingly, it taste very good, especially the crust. We loved it! The crust turned out very beautiful - golden brown. The aroma is fantastic. Yes! we love it. We are going to do this more often.

After reading through few recipes, this is our ways of doing. I usually do not follow through the recipes. Only see how others do it and then I will do it my way. haha!!!

In case some do not know how butternut looks like, this is the picture

Ingredients

2¼ tsp Instant Yeast
½ Tbsp sugar
1 cup warm water
3½ - 4 cups bread flour ( I replaced with 1 cup wholemeal flour and 1 cup fine corn polent)
2 Tbsp olive oil
1½ tsp salt
1 cup butternut squash, cooked, and mashed

Method
Pour all the above ingredients into a big bowl to form dough. Usually 3 to 3.5 cups of flour in total is sufficient. The exact amount will vary with the water content in the butternut. Add flour slowly until a moist but not sticky dough forms. Cover the bowl with cling wrap and place in a warm location. The dough will rise to double the initial volume.
Turn the dough out on a floured surface and knead the dough and roll out on a lightly greased pizza pan.
Spread your favorite toppings on the pizza. Bake at 200 degree C for 15-18 minutes. Thicken crusts may require you to turn the oven down after baking 12minutes to 180 degrees C to complete the baking without burning the crust.

Topping:
Top with pizza sauce, cheese, minced beef, tomatoes, sliced mushrooms and olives.

or any of your choice of toppings. This is what we did.

My princess help to spread the pizza sauce , follow by cheese, minced beef, cut cherry tomatoes, sliced swiss brown and black olives.

Enjoy! God bless.

Orange Muffins

The very first time that I tried baking orange muffin was early this year.  In every Chinese New Year we bought lots of mandarin oranges. This is year we bought extra and we were having problem consuming them. So, to consume them, I tried to make mandarin oranges jam and also blending it to drink and also blending it to bake muffin. This is one of the muffin that turn out very moist and soft and nice and very fragrance. It was a "try and error", however, it turned out good! I went into several blogs and read up their posts. I am glad that I tried and I must said it is worth the time baking it. My daughter loves it so much because of the orange aroma.  Personally, I love it too. Since then, I have been baking orange muffins. My family have broke the record! We used to like only chocolate muffin which  you can also find my post on  double-chocolate-chips-muffins .But now we also like orange muffin. After CNY, I am using Sunkist oranges instead of mandarin orange to bake my muffins. I bought those 3 for $3.45 from Fairprice , big and juicy. As we are going to use the skin of the orange, so I will rub the orange skin with salt to remove the pesticides on the surface as much as I could and then rinse it with water. Using a grater to grate the outer orange skin of the entire of orange. After that  blend the whole orange with skin removed.  This is what I do, let get started!

Ingredients
2 1/2 cup self-raising flour
1/2 cup caster sugar(*see note)
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs lightly beaten
125g melted butter
1/3 cup milk
1 cup fresh orange blend
Zest of an orange

*Note : My family prefer things that are less sweet. So this is a less sugar recipe. If you refer sweet and very sweet, you may want to increase sugar to 3/4cup or 1cup.

Method:
1. Preheat the oven to 190°C. Place 12 paper cups in a muffin tray.

2. To get the zest of an orange. Wash the skin of the orange clean by gently rub the skin of orange with salt and then rinse.
With a grater, maintain enough pressure to remove the top layer of the rind. Take off only the rind of the orange's skin, and not the white pith, which tastes bitter. Set it aside.

3. Remove orange skin and seed. Put whole orange into blender or food proccessor and blend it into orange puree and set aside. (Orange puree is juice with the fibre.)

4. Place butter in a small pot  over low fire and melt it. Be careful not to burn it.

5. Place flour in a large  bowl.

6. Place lightly beaten egg, melted butter, milk, orange puree, orange zest, sugar and  salt into a separate bowl and mix.

7. Then pour the wet ingredients into the flour. Quickly combine the mixture. Do not over mixed.

8.. Spoon the mixture into paper cups to 3/4 full. Then place into the preheated oven and bake for 20-25 minutes or until the muffin turn golden brown or when skewer tested.

You may like to try these other muffins recipe
1. Blueberry Yoghurt Muffins
2. Blueberry and Bananas Muffins
3. Orange Butter Cake

Homemade Meat Ball

This is  a dish that  no matter how much I have prepared, it is always not enough. My family love it.  Once, my neighbour's kids came over when I was cooking this. They ate some. After eating, they went home and requested their grandma to make this fried meat balls.  So my neighbour grandma came to me to understand what did I cooked for their grandchildren that they found it so delicious and request for it.

This is a very simple dish. Easy to make. You can always prepare ahead of time. That is , prepare in the morning. Season it then chill it. Take it out from fridge only when you are ready to deep fry.

To prepare this dish, you need a very sharp knife for slicing the meat. One way to cut the meat very thin slices is by freezing the meat for a few hours until it is a little frozen/hard but still able to cut.
The thinner the meat is, the better the result will be and of course taste nicer when meat is thinly sliced.

Ingredients:
800g Fresh Shoulder Meat 五花肉
1 egg
1/2 tsp pepper
3 tbsp light sauce
1/2 tbsp oyster sauce
1 tbsp sesame oil
4 tbsp potatoes flour/cornflour

oil for deep frying

Method:
1. Slice shoulder meat into thin slices  like shabu shabu and put them into a big bowl.
2. Add all the rest of ingredients and mix it well. Cling wrap and set it a side in the fridge for about minimum 30min. Let the meat be seasoned.This can be prepared earlier in the morning too.
3. Heat up a wok. Pour in oil enough for deep frying. With 2 spoons or gloved hand shape the meat into 2cm balls. When the oil is hot enough, put in the meat balls by batch to deep fry until golden brown. Remove from wok and place them into a plate lay with kitchen paper to absorb excess oil. Continue to deep fry the rest of the meat balls until all completed. 
4. Transfer into another place, serve.

Note1 : to achieve thin sliced meat, freeze the fresh meat for about 2hours or until it is a little hard then slice it with a very sharp knife. Make sure knife is sharpened.

Note2 : you may also use those frozen  shabu shabu shoulder meat to replace this cutting process.

You may also be interested in my All Times Favorites Deep Fried Meat Balls