Steamed Beancurd

Another simple dish! One of my favourites too. Also a good source of protein & easy for kids to eat.

Ingredients:
- 1 box of beancurd (tofu), about 300gm
- minced meat (chicken or pork or beef, whichever you prefer), about 100gm, more is ok too

Marinade sauce (suggested):
- half teaspoon salt
- half teaspoon sugar
- one teaspoon soy sauce
- one teaspoon oyster sauce
- half teaspoon corn flour
- dash of pepper

Method:
- marinate minced meat with suggested sauce for 10 minutes. You can play around with the quantity or type of marinade according to your taste. For example, chopped garlic, ginger, chilli or a little vinegar could be added too
- wash & rinse the whole chunk of beancurd, spread minced meat evenly onto the top
- steam with boiling water for about 10 minutes until cooked

Try it. I like to eat it with cooked rice.

Sweet Potato Porridge

Let's try a basic dish which can be used to complement the dishes introduced earlier. Rice is a staple food & when cooked into porridge, is palatable & light, especially good if you're looking for something simple & refreshing.

Ingredients (serves 2 to 3 persons):
- 1 cup raw white rice
- 9 cups water
- 1 medium sweet potato (either yellow flesh or orange flesh is ok)

Method:
- wash & rinse rice
- cook rice & water in automatic rice cooker or large pot
- while cooking, peel sweet potato & break into small pieces, place into pot to cook together
- when done (about 40 minutes later), add a little salt & sesame oil (optional)

Variation:
- for a healthier version, white rice can be substituted with brown rice or multi-grain mixed rice

It's good eaten as it is or accompanied with any of the easy-to-cook dishes introduced in the previous articles.

Cucumber Stir-fried

The humble cucumber is good eaten raw or cooked. Here I'll share my recipe for simple stir-fried cucumber. If you like, you could make up your own variations, see suggestions below.

Ingredients:
- 1 cucumber
- 1 heaped teaspoon of chopped garlic
- 1 tablespoon oil

Seasoning:
- pinch of salt

Method:
- peel & wash the cucumber, remove the centre, cut into thin strips (maybe about 1cm by 4cm, & about 1 to 2mm thick; or about 2cm by 6cm, 3mm thick)
- heat the oil in a wok, add garlic, stir-fry for a short while until fragrant
- add cucumber & stir-fry until soft & almost transparent (this might take some time, about 5 minutes if you cut the cucumber thin enough & use a fire strong enough)
- add salt & other seasoning according to your preference
- add a little water for a moister dish
- cover & stew, make sure you add enough water if you want to cook a longer time to make the cucumber really soft (trust me, it tastes delicious when thoroughly cooked too, though very different from its raw taste)

Variations:
- if you like, slowly add a beaten egg in a circular motion at the last stage
- or if you prefer prawns instead, you could stir-fry them a short while till they turn pink, ladle out and cook as per above instructions, then add the prawns back to the cucumber during the last part of the process. This gives the dish a nice colour too

Tomato And Egg

These 2 ingredients are rather versatile. You can either cook them in a soup or as a stir-fry.

Ingredients:
- 2 tomatoes (washed & cut)
- 2 eggs (beaten)
- thin slice of ginger (optional)

Seasoning:
- pinch of salt added to the eggs

Method (for stir-fry):
- heat a tablespoon oil in the wok, fry ginger until fragrant
- put in tomatoes & stir-fry for a minute
- add eggs, fry until eggs are cooked
- add a little water or soup stock if you prefer it moist

Method (for soup):
- boil about 450ml of water or soup stock in a pot
- add ginger, tomatoes when water is boiling briskly, cook for 2 minutes
- turn down heat, add beaten eggs while stirring the soup

There you go! 2 recipes for the same ingredients. Choose either one to suit your mood or match other dishes served.

Stewed Chicken Wings

This is one of my favourite & easiest chicken recipes.

Ingredients:
- about 4 whole chicken wings or 6 to 8 mid-joint of the wings

Sauce ingredients (see "tips" below):
- peeled & chopped garlic, about 1 heaped teaspoon
- peeled & chopped ginger, about 1 teaspoon
- 1 tablespoon oyster sauce
- 1 tablespoon soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon honey
- half teaspoon vinegar
- half teaspoon sesame oil
- pinch of salt
- pinch of sugar
- dash of pepper

Method:
- wash & clean chicken wings
- add about 150ml water to the sauce
- put everything into a pot or casserole
- when the contents start to boil, turn heat to medium-low & cook for another 20 minutes, or until chicken is cooked
- during the cooking process, you could turn the chicken to ensure even colouring
- if the sauce is drying out too much while cooking, add a little hot water, not too much as you don't want the dish to turn into a soup, haha

Tips:
- again this is one recipe I devised which allows for a lot of flexibility. You can add other ingredients to the sauce depending on your preference. Or you can simply ignore some of the sauce ingredients if you don't like them or don't have them. Better still, play around with the quantities so you get a taste that you like most.

- there is flexibility in the cooking method too. You could first pan-fry the garlic & ginger with a little oil, then put in the chicken & fry it a bit, before adding water & the sauce ingredients, then continue to cook for about 20 minutes. The taste will turn out a bit different.

Go experiment with it and share with me your variations :-)

Steam Eggs

I've tried steaming eggs for many times and been figuring out what is the best way to do it. The following is the most basic.

Ingredients:
- 2 eggs
- 6 parts of water (see "tips" given below)
- pinch of salt
- dash of pepper (optional)
- a few drops of sesame oil (optional)

Method:
- boil water in steamer
- break the eggs into a bowl
- beat them with fork until whites & yolks are mixed evenly
- stir in the water, salt, sesame oil, pepper
- remove bubbles from surface if you want the surface to turn out nice
- steam over low heat for about 8 minutes or until the eggs set (turn solid)

Tips:
- this is how to decide how much water to add: 1 part = half an eggshell full of water. For every egg, add 3 parts water. Some people prefer to use same quantity of water to egg. You can try either. The less water you use the firmer the end result, & vice versa.
- do not use high heat, otherwise your egg custard will have many bubble "holes" in it when cooked.

This dish is easy to cook & easy to eat, especially for young children or when you don't feel like chewing, haha. However if you want a more sophisticated variation, you could always add other ingredients to this basic recipe, like adding minced meat into the egg mixture before you steam, or sprinkling fried shallot, spring onion & red chilli onto the dish just before it's cooked, etc etc. Again it all depends on your tastes, your moods, your preferences, your creativity!

Simple Way to Cook Steamed Fish

Steaming is a healthy & easy way to cook. I would prefer to use fish fillet, so I don't have to deal with cleaning away the scales & the gut. I prefer to use ikan kurau or cod. As for salmon, I'll talk about it another time. Anyway, here comes the recipe.

Ingredients:
-fish fillet, about 200 gram
-ginger, about size of your thumb, less if you don't like the taste of it

Marinade:
-salt, about a teaspoon
-dash of pepper

Method:
-boil water in the steamer
-clean the fish fillet
-to marinate, coat the fish fillet with salt & pepper for about 10 minutes
-cut the ginger into slices or thin strips
-rinse the fish, though there's no need to get rid of *all* the marinade
-place ginger & fish onto a plate, put it into the steamer when the water is boiling
-continue to steam on high heat for about 8 minutes, until cooked
-if you prefer, you could add a dash of sesame oil or soya sauce to the fish when cooked

This is a simple way of cooking fish. If the fish is fresh, it will taste good too!

Cooking Simple Stir-fry Dish

Today let's try a stir-fry dish, which is rather simple to cook. Any quantity of the ingredients mentioned will be suitable for 2 persons.

Ingredients (basic minimum for now, we can venture into variations or additions later on):
- a tablespoon oil for stir frying
- peeled & chopped garlic, about a heaped teaspoon
- green leafy vegetables, can use any, suggest chye sim or kai lan or spinach
- half a carrot, sliced or diced or cut into strips or shapes of stars, whatever you fancy

Seasoning (suggestion only, you can put some or all, and feel free to plus or minus from the list according to your taste):
- pinch of salt
- pinch of sugar
- a little pepper
- a tablespoon of oyster sauce
- a teaspoon of soy sauce
- a teaspoon of cornflour (best if first dissolved in a little water)

Method:
- prepare vegetables. Wash & pluck or cut into suitable lengths. Drain away water
- prepare garlic & carrot
- heat wok, add some oil
- dump in the garlic, then the carrot, then the vegetables & seasoning, all the while ensuring that you *stir-fry* the contents in the wok, ie don't let them "sit" inside for too long without moving around
- during the process, add some water (preferably hot) if necessary, amount? just enough to moist the vegetables or form a little gravy
- when the vegetables change colour (from raw to cooked), you can dish them out.

Tip:
- how much oil to use? First, use high heat to warm up your wok, then put some oil in it. After that swivel a bit to coat most of the inside of the wok, then pour out all the oil. This way you're left with just enough oil to cook (ie those still stuck in the wok), and the dish will not be too oily. For everyday cooking, I find this method too troublesome. Usually I would put the exact amount of oil I need (usually one tablespoon) into a heated non-stick wok (hard anodized preferred), then swirl to coat the inside.

- use high heat and cook fast to retain the nutrition, texture & colour of the vegetables. So put whatever spices you need in a handy place, prepare them beforehand, or try adding them to the vegetables before stir-frying.

- put the "hard" vegetables or parts of vegetables into the wok first, then the "soft" leafy parts which take shorter time to cook.

- try to cut the ingredients to about the same size so they cook uniformly. Otherwise the smaller pieces would cook faster than the bigger ones. For everyday cooking, I don't really care, because the smaller pieces would be softer & suitable for my son while the larger ones would be "crunchy" or "crispy" & suitable for my husband. The different sizes would cater to their mouth sizes too, haha!

This dish sounds easy? You'll have a clear conscience too, knowing you're eating healthily.

Enjoy your cooking!

Cooking Simple Soups

Soups are one of the easiest dishes to cook, you kind of dump everything into the pot then wait for it to cook, quite easy actually, no multiple steps to follow, haha. This is one of my favourite soup recipes.

Ingredients:
- onion, how many? suggest using 1
- carrot, suggest 1
- potato, suggest 2
- tomato, suggest 2
- pork spare rib, suggest 300 gram

Quantity:
- the above suggested quantities is for 2 to 3 persons. Anyway, it's flexible, depending on how much people you are cooking for, and you can even adjust the quantity of each ingredient according to your preference

Method:
- boil a pot of water for the soup, how much? about 1 bowl per person
- boil water for rinsing spare ribs, how much? enough to cover the ribs in a container
- in the meantime, clean & dice the onions, carrots, potatoes, tomatoes
- wash spare ribs, then rinse them in hot water to get rid of excess oil, or boil the ribs for a short while then remove & rinse
- put everything in the pot of boiling water, cook for 1 to 2 hours, lower the flame when necessary
- add salt to taste

You can add other ingredients for the soup to taste better. But this is a simple version and tastes delicious enough to me. Healthy too!

Happy cooking!

Beginning of Cooking-Simple-Dishes!

Yippee, I made it! Today I finally set up my blog about cooking simple dishes. After toying with the idea for a long time, this step is also the result of encouragement from my husband & friends, especially Nor who nudged me into *really* creating the blog.

Well, this is just the beginning, so what led to this & what's next?

In Singapore, there're many choices of delicious foods for meal-time, whether in price or nationality. There are less-costly hawker food stalls, and higher-end restaurants, and mid-priced ones in between. However, whenever we go out to eat, we would inevitably be asking the question: "what do we eat today?"

If we're not too choosey, maybe a simple meal at a coffee shop will cost about S$12 for the 3 of us. If we go to a simple restaurant, be it chinese, western, indonesian or japanese food, the final bill usually ranges from S$35 to S$55. Whereas the most "luxurious" meal I had costed S$100+, per person! Moreover, the food we get outside may not be as healthy as we would like it to be, whether in terms of ingredients or cooking methods. Plus, my one-of-a-kind son always give me sweet comments like "Mummy's cooking tastes the best", "I prefer home-cooked food" etc, though most of the time I only present very simple dishes, haha.

So I thought cooking at home is an alternative to get simple, delicious, nutritious food, and to cut some costs at the same time! But of course, sometimes I'll feel lazy and prefer to let someone else do the cooking while I sit down to enjoy the food and the time with my family. And I would prefer to leave those exquisite fine cooking to the experienced chefs. That is their expertise, not mine, not yet. Haha.

"You are what you eat". Foods give us energy and help us sustain life. However, inappropriate eating creates problems in our health & life. I hope with easy-to-cook nutritious meals, I would feed myself & my family properly, without "cooking up a storm" in the kitchen or spending too much time. In addition, I hope everyone reading my blog would benefit from it in some way: newbie cooks getting ideas & be inspired to cook, or veteran cooks sharing your comments so we can all improve. So in this blog I'll be sharing my recipes for simple cooking!

Of course, they may not be anything fantastic, but I hope to share those that I feel are easy to cook, nutritious, and at least pass the "taste okay" test with my son. Most of the recipes I share will be those that I myself cook regularly. They are the results from years of poring over cook books, watching cooking programs, asking tips from Mother, Mother-in-law, relatives & friends, etc. They are also the "easy-to-succeed" ones.

I didn't even know how to cook a proper meal before I was married. When I first started cooking after my wedding in 1995, how I wished there was some simple formula for cooking. So you can be sure most of the recipes I share here will be really easy to cook. And though I like to eat & enjoy foods from various nationalities, the majority of my cooking recipes are Chinese / Asian.

But I'm the type of cook who don't follow exact measurements most of the time and usually will not bother with "rigid" details of how much of what to use for how long etc. Haha, I know, I know, I used to follow every instruction to the last letter, coz I started out with zero experience. But after so many years, I feel cooking is kind of an art and sometimes you really have to rely on "gut feeling". Some of my favourite dishes are actually the results of my "experiments". However in this blog I'll try to write down as much details as possible, as it's meant to be a "record & reference" for my future use too. Maybe one day my husband or son could use this blog as a menu to "order" the food they would like to have for dinner! :-)

Hmm...The things we do must have a value in it, otherwise it'll not be easy to continue. In order for me to persevere in cooking simple dishes more frequently and in writing this blog, I shall first list down the benefits:

-know *exactly* what's in the dish I'm feeding to my son
-have full control over what ingredients to use or not to use
-freedom to decide which cooking method to use (simpler & healthier ones of course)
-flexibility to eat as healthily as possible
-easily limit intake of salt, sugar and fats for a healthier meal
-save time from travelling out to eat
-save money by cutting down frequency of eating at expensive restaurants
-cut medical expenses & enjoy better health from eating simple, proper meals
-be happy & contented knowing I'm feeding myself & my family with proper food & nutrition
-bonding with my family in the process of preparing, cooking, eating, & cleaning up
-etc etc... there must be lots more.

That's all I can think of for now. If anyone can think of further benefits or have any comments, do feel free to drop me a note. In the meantime, may everyone enjoy a healthy life!