Pan-Fried Meatballs 炸肉丸

I always spend my Sunday morning preparing big quantity of food that can be frozen for our weekdays' consumption. For example, home made pasta sauce and meat sauce. Today, I prepare a batch of meatballs. Later it can be used to make meatball spaghetti bolognese, meatballs in tomato sauce and others.

That's how I work out to cut down my cooking time on working days.

Pan-Fried Meatballs 炸肉丸
Makes 25 meatballs


Ingredients:
500gm minced pork
1/2 onion, peeled and chopped
cooking oil


Marinades:
2 tbsp light soy sauce
1 tsp sesame oil
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
dashes of white pepper powder
1 egg yolk
1 tbsp corn flour

Steps:
1. Mix up he minced pork with chopped onion and marinades. Leave it for half an hour.
2. Shape the marinated minced pork into meatballs. Allocate the meat balls on a baking tray. Rub the surface with little bit of water for a smoother look.
3. Heat up oil in a non-stick pan. Pan-fry the meatballs in batches until golden brown.
4. Put in on kitchen towel to remove excess oil.
5. Serve it on its own, cook it into dishes or fridge it up for later use.

Vegetable and Prawns Fried Rice

Nowadays, I used to cook something simple for dinner, and prepare extra portion for the next day's bento. This is one of the example. Basically I just fry rice with whatever ingredients I have in the fridge. Not only that, the seasonings is pretty versatile too. It can be adjusted to suit your own taste buds.

Vegetable and Prawns Fried Rice
Serves 5


Ingredients:
2.5 cups of rice, rinsed, cooked and cooled
300gm long bean, chopped
2 sweet corn, use only the kernels
100gm oyster mushroom, tear into strips
30 small prawns, shelled, deveined and cut into pieces
2 tbsp of chopped garlic
cooking oil

Seasonings:
Light soy sauce
Dark soy sauce (optional)
Chili paste (optional)

Steps:
1. Heat up oil in a wok. Saute garlic till fragrant. Add prawns, corns and long beans. Stir-fry till half cook.
2. Add a tbsp of light soy sauce to mix well.
3. Add cooled steamed rice and oyster mushroom. Add light soy sauce, dark soy sauce and chili paste to fry till fragrant. You can see the rice is "jumping" in the wok. That's perfect!

Potato Bread Loaf

I'm glad that I can spend some time to make a potato bread today. This is supposed to be potato sweet bun recipe, but due to my laziness, I made it into bread loaf instead. :)

After tasting it, I realized that potato is a good ingredient to replace portion of the wheat flour. With the mashed potato added, the bread has mild fragrant of potato that is not overpowering. Also, the bread is a little bit moist compared to 100% high Protein flour bread. 

Potato Bread Loaf (Use Basic Programme of Tesco Bread Maker BM07)

Ingredients:
80gm fresh milk at room temp
40gm butter
10gm Sunflower oil
1/2 egg, beaten
1 potato (about 140gm), peeled, steamed and mashed
1/4 tsp of salt
50gm of fine sugar
300gm bread flour
1 tsp dried yeast

Steps:
1. Add milk follow by beaten egg, oil and butter.
2. Add flour, salt, sugar and mashed potato.
3. Tap the pan lightly to settle the flour.
4. Add the yeast in small heap in the center of the pan.
5. Lock the pan in the bread maker. Set the program to "Basic" follow by loaf size (1.5lb) and select the crust color.
6. The bread maker will complete the task in 3 hours.

Air-Fried Wanton

For my 3rd experiment of cooking fresh food with air-fryer, I made an attempt to fry wanton. This is not a satisfying result that I'm looking for. The wonton skin is not as crispy as the deep-fried version. It's little bit hard but turns soft very fast. The filling also turned dry after the air-frying.
I'll figure out the correct method of making crispy wanton in air-fryer. Stay tuned!

Durian Popsicles

We got some left-over durian last night. I hate the odor if I had to fridge up the fresh durian. So, I kept thinking of what can I do with the balance durian. Then I thought of the durian ice that my mom used to make during every durian season. My mom’s durian ice consists of durian flesh, sugar and water. No dairy product is used as she is allergic to it. She has no recipe, as she mix it up the ingredients to form the desired concentration.

As for my version, I added some condensed milk. So the outcome is creamy durian popsicles that is not as hard as the version without milk. You can taste the durian flesh, the ice and the milk that are well blended in a popsicle.

Durian Popsicles


Ingredients:
200gm durian flesh (just an estimation)
4 tbsp sugar
4 tbsp condense milk
350ml water

Steps:
1. In a mixer, beat durian flesh, sugar and condense milk to form thick liquid base.
2. Slowly add water and mix well.
3. Pour into popsicle moulds. Froze it over night.
4. Just before serving, put the popsicle moulds under running water for few seconds. Then the popsicles are ready to be removed from the mould. Enjoy!