Baked Mashed Potato

Hubby loves mashed potato, and I love pasta sauce, so I paired them up to make our favorite baked mashed potato. This is a good choice when you are bored with rice or noodle for main course. Furthermore potato contains lower carbohydrates compared to rice.

Baked Mashed Potato
Serves 3 to 4
Ingredients
570gm US potato, peeled and sliced
150gm White button mushroom
150gm minced pork
2 hard-boiled egg shelled and sliced
1 onion, peeled and chopped
6 long beans, chopped
200gm of pasta sauce
cooking oil

Marinades:
1 tbsp of light so sauce
dashes of white pepper powder

Steps:
1. Marinate the minced pork with dashes of pepper and a tbsp of light soy sauce.
2. Steam potato for 20 minutes or until soft. Mash it and put in a big ramekin. Press to form a layer of base to the ramekin.
3. Heat up enough oil in a wok. Sauté onion for 2 minutes. Add minced pork to fry. Ensure the minced pork separated and not stick together.
4. Add mushrooms to stir fry for 2 minutes. Pour the ingredients on top of the mashed potato. Sprinkle chopped long bean on top of it.
5. Pour the pasta sauce over the top. Cover the ramekin with Aluminum sheet, and bake for 12 minutes under 180 deg C preheated oven.
6. When it's done, garnish it with hard-boiled egg slices.

Fish In Soy Bean Sauce

I cooked this dish to serve with porridge. Whenever I'm having porridge, I have basic requirement of at least 3 dishes. Fish is one of them, follow by egg and green veggies. I learned this cooking method from my mum. I twisted it a little bit to make it into my version. For example, my mum uses ginger strips, but I just use grated ginger instead. The rest of ingredients are roughly prepared based on my memory on this dish. 

Fish In Soy Bean Sauce

Ingredients:
Fish fillets, rub with salt
1 tbsp of chopped garlic
a thumb-sized ginger, peeled and grated
1 red chili, seeded and chopped
1 tbsp of fermented soy bean sauce
light soy sauce to taste
sugar to taste
cooking oil
200ml of water

Steps:
1. Heat oil in a wok. Shallow fry the fish fillets till brown. Drain and set aside.
2. Clean the wok. Heat 2 tbsp of oil. Saute garlic,  ginger, chili and soy bean sauce till fragrant.
3. Pour in water and bring to a boil.
4. Add fish fillets and leave it simmers for 5 minutes.
5. Add light soy sauce and sugar to taste.
6. Dish out and serve hot with rice.

5 Recipes To Celebrate Easter

Shirley's Luxury Heaven Tagged me on 5 Recipes to Celebrate Easter. Although I don't celebrate Easter, but it's fun to join the virtual Easter party with the fellow bloggers.

So, here's my pick for the celebration:

Strawberry Smoothies as beverage

Mushroom Soup

Egg Rolls as appetizer

Chicken Schnitzel as main course

Dragon Fruit Jelly as dessert.

Happy Easter and have fun!

Chinese Steamed Bun - Mantou 馒头

I bought a packet of pao flour a couple of weeks back. Initially I thought of making vegetarian steamed bun with jicama filling. However, I made excuses to delay the pao making. Later on, an idea popped up in my mind to make mantou with the help of the bread maker. Hence, the mantou making process starts...

As you can see, there's room for improvement of my skill in rolling up the 2-color dough sheets. The 2 dough failed to stick together and resulted gaps between it. So, I got the swirled bun, instead of mantou, hehe...

Chinese Steamed Bun - Mantou (Pandan Flavor)

Makes 16 mantou

Ingredients:

500gm pao flour

240ml warm water

6gm dried yeast

50gm sunflower oil

3 tbsp fine sugar

pandan essence

parchment paper, cut into 5cmx5cm pieces

Steps:

1. Prepare the dough in bread maker. Add warm water, sunflower oil, pao flour, sugar and dried yeast in sequence.

2. When the dough is ready, divide it into 2 equal portions.

3. Flour the tabletop, knead one portion with pandan essence.

4. Flatten the original flavored dough into rectangle sheet. Do the same to the pandan flavored dough.

5. Top the pandan dough sheet on top of the original flavored dough sheet. Roll it up tightly.

6. Cut into pieces and allocate each on a piece of parchment paper.

7. Leave it proof for another 50 minutes.

8. Steam over high heat for 15 minutes.

Coffee Flavoured Butter Cake

This is an ad-hoc baking. I don’t have self-raising flour on hand, so I just mixed the plain flour with baking powder into self-raising flour. Although the cake looks ugly, but it is moist and aromatic. I'm not satisfied with its texture and marble pattern. The texture is rough, and the marble effect proved that I'm not a good baker. To improve the texture, I will try the egg separated method for the next attempt. :)

Coffee Flavoured Butter Cake
Makes a 8" square cake

Ingredients:
250gm butter
200gm castor sugar
220gm plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp double action baking powder
4 eggs
18gm 2 in 1 coffee mixed with 1 tbsp water
8 tbsp evaporated milk
1 tsp vanilla essence

Steps:
1. Preheat oven to 180°C. Line the cake pan with baking paper.
2. Beat butter & sugar until light and fluffy.
3. Add eggs one at a time beating well after addition.
4. Fold in the sifted flour, baking powder and baking soda to mix.
5. Pour in milk, vanilla essence and stir to mix.
6. Take half of the batter to mix with coffee.
7. Pour the coffee batter to mix with the rest of the batter.
8. Bake in the preheat oven for 50 minutes.

Steamed Chicken with Mushroom and Black Fungus

I’ve seen and tried several versions of steamed chicken. One of my recipe is to have the chicken steamed on its own with very minimal seasonings. The other kind of cooking is to have it steamed together with other ingredients and seasoned with wine. I experimented the latter with DOM. It tasted more towards sweet side due to the DOM flavour. Probably I added too much of DOM :). This time, I substituted DOM with Shao Xing Hua Diao Jiu, that is glutinous rice wine. I did this simply for comparison purpose. As a result, I prefer the one with glutinous rice wine. It suits my taste buds better.

Steamed Chicken With Mushroom and Black Fungus
Serves 3

Ingredients:
Half of free range chicken, skinned and chopped into pieces
5 slices of ginger
2 dried mushroom, dehydrated, stalk removed and sliced
1 piece of black fungus, dehydrated and sliced thinly

Seasonings:
1 tbsp of light soy sauce
1.5 tbsp of glutinous rice wine
1 tbsp of sesame oil

Garnishing:
1 tbsp of wolfberries, dehydrated
Some chopped spring onion

Steps:
1. Arrange ginger slices on a heat-proof porcelain plate.
2. Arrange chicken on top on the ginger slices.
3. Top it with mushroom and black fungus.
4. Steam over high heat for 20-25 minutes. If you are using normal chicken, you can reduce the time accordingly.
5. Garnish it with wolfberries and spring onion. Serve hot with rice.

Sui Kow Dumpling 水饺

I left a packet of dumpling wrapper in the freezer unintentionally until I forgotten on its existence.

I found it when I was trying to search for some other thing. Since it was not expired, so I just use it up to wrap a batch of sui kow.

This is my first attempt to make sui kow. I’ve been seeing a lot version of nicely wrapped sui kow. So, I just roughly follow the way how people wrap and seal it.

Marinated prawn paste, minced meat and vegetable that is wrapped up in flour sheet. The "Sui Kow" is then boiled until floated. Best to serve in soup or with noodle.

Sui Kow Dumpling 水饺
Makes 15 dumplings

Ingredients:
Dumpling wrapper
1 liter water
(A)
150gm minced pork
100gm prawns, shelled ( put in a plastic bag and flatten by meat tenderizer)
1 dried shiitake mushroom, dehydrated and chopped
20gm of carrot, peeled and grated
1 stalk of spring onion, chopped
(B)
1 tbsp of light soy sauce
1 tbsp of Shao Xin wine
1tsp of oyster sauce
dashes of pepper
1 tsp of sesame oil

Steps:
1. Add (A) in a big missing bowl.
2. Marinate (A) with (B) and let in stand for 30 minutes in fridge.
3. On a clean chopping board, put a dumpling wrapper. Add 3/4 tbsp of fillings to the center of the wrapper. Apply water to the half-circle edge of wrapper, and fold it into half. Seal up the edge. Continue to make other sui kow dumpling until you finish up the fillings.
4. Bring a pot of water to a boil. Throw all the dumplings in the boiling water. Once it floated, considers it's cooked.
5. Serve it in soup or with noodle.

Eryngii Mushroom Stir-Fry

The other day, I saw eryngii mushroom on sale. I tried the stir-fried eryngii mushroom prepared by the promoter and was instantly hooked to it. So I asked how she cooked it. She told me the ingredients and the seasonings she used in her recipe. I happily grabbed a packet of the mushroom for my home-cooking.

So, here is the recipe shared by the promoter. It takes less that 15 minutes to prepare the dish. It's another quick and easy  recipe that suits my hectic life.

  
Eryngii Mushroom Stir-Fry

Ingredients:
200gm of eryngii mushroom, clean under running water and sliced
3 cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped
1 tbsp of oyster sauce
generous amount of white pepper powder
2 tbsp of oil

Steps:
1. Heat oil in the wok. Saute garlic till fragrant.
2. Stir in eryngii mushrooms and saute for 3 minutes.
3. Add oyster sauce and white pepper powder to mix well.
4. Stir-fry till you observe liquid released from the mushroom.
5. Dish out and serve hot with rice.

Steamed Orange Cake

My another attempt of making a steamed cake. This cake is specially made for my mum as she doesn't take dairy products. She is allergic to cow's milk, butter, cream, ice-cream and everything related to cow. Oh, my poor mum.

I tried to use superfine flour in this cake. The texture is different than my earlier steamed cake that was made with normal plain flour. I like its springy texture.  It's definitely the healthier type of sugar-reduced cake, with very little vegetable oil. I can gobbled down 4 pieces in one go without feeling guilty. :P

Steamed Orange Cake
Make one 8”x8” square cake

Ingredients:
(A) – prepare in a big mixing bowl
5 eggs
160gm Castor sugar

(B) – sifted
190gm super fine flour
¾ tsp baking powder

(C) – mixed
zest of 1 orange
4tbsp orange juice
3tbsp sunflower oil

Steps:
1. Line the baking pan with baking paper.
2. Using electric mixer, beat (A) under high speed until fluffy.
3. Add (B) and beat under low speed until well mixed. Pour in (C) to mix.
4. Using a spatula, transfer the batter to the pre-lined cake pan. Loosely cover the top with aluminum foil.
5. Steam over high flame for 25 minutes.