Liver & Onions

The good kind. My dad loves this dish so I decided for a kick why not make it? It was also because I saw some real good looking frozen beef livers he he ... However, you should get fresh ones for the ultimate taste. For people on a budget, frozen is the way to go.

Serves 2
3 Yellow Onions
4 calf livers
3 cups milk (whole milk works best, but you aren't going to drink it)
3 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp Worchestershire sauce
Kosher salt
Ground black pepper
Vegetable oil

Secret Ingredient - Red wine (I used Merlot)

Flour dressing for livers (can also be used to fry fish and chicken!)
2 cups All purpose flour
2 tbsp garlic powder
2 tbsp onion powder
2 tsp paprika
1 tbsp Kosher salt
1 tbsp black pepper
1 tsbp oregano
1 tbsp basil

1. Before you start cooking, thaw the livers and then place in a large bowl and cover with milk. Soak for at least an hour or two to remove the bitterness from the liver. You do not have to wash it afterwards either!

2. Slice up the onions and separate into rings, toss with sugar and a pinch of salt. Heat pan to medium high and add 1 tbsp vegetable oil. Sautee until slightly transparent. At this point, you can add the red wine and cook for another 10 minutes or until onions are browned all over and softened. Remove from heat and transfer into a bowl.

3. Drain milk from liver and coat lightly with flour dressing. In the same onion pan, dribble some vegetable oil (about 2 tbsp) or butter and melt until hot. Reduce heat to medium and lay livers in like this.

4. This is what it looks like browned. Cook until the other side is browned as well. What you want to achieve is a pinkness in the middle when cut. You do NOT want to overcook livers ^_^

5. This is what you should strive for. Slightly more underdone is okay too, as long as it isn't dripping blood ha ha!

Customer enjoying my dish heheheheh!!! The darn flash on the camera made him shut his eyes, poor dear.

Gizzard Stir Fry

Serves 2
1 pack of chicken gizzards (hearts work too) cut up into bite sized pieces
6 whole baby bok choy
2 tbsp soy sauce
4 cloves of garlic (chopped)
Sesame oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Sautee garlic on medium heat in butter or vegetable oil until fragrant, then add the gizzards and soy sauce. Cover with lid and cook on medium for 5 minutes, until red parts are gone. Add bok choy and cook for another 2 minutes, drizzle on sesame oil to taste. Season with salt and pepper, toss and serve with warm white rice.

Kebobs

They were killer on the tastebuds! Especially since the succulent savory beef combined so well with the sweet pieces of vegetables.

You would need a variety of non-break-apartable vegetables, like what I used. You really want the vegetables to be the star of the show, especially for college students who don't get enough veggies in their diet! This works as well for parents of children who rarely eat veggies. Eating them off a stick would provide some fun! However for this, make the pieces smaller and more children bite size friendly.

Bell peppers, green yellow and red for variety and if you have a little more money to spend
Squash and zucchini
Yellow onions or red, depending on what you have
Eggplant, Chinese, Japanese or American it doesn't matter
Carrots if you would like
Artichokes are good too
Bamboo shoots if you like the taste
You can also put skewarable fruit like pear and apples ... mmm or pineapple!~

For the meat part you can either put lamb pieces or chicken cubes of breast and thigh, but I really much prefer beef. For beef I tend to pick up the packs that say "roast" because these are the parts of the beef that can take high heats for extended periods of time. Remember, you want the vegetables to cook through, and a meat that cooks fast and loses all its juices relatively early is not going to make a great kebab. Cut up the roast into cubes, and marinate in a mix of 2 tbsp Worchestershire sauce, 1 tsp olive oil, a pinch of pepper. A splash of hickory smoke (obtainable from the marinade section of your grocery store) adds a wonderful smoke taste but is optional.

I clean and cut the vegetables into half inch pieces, then toss them all with some olive oil and dried oregano (about 1 tsp per 4 skewers). Skewer your vegetables and meat, for households with children or an adult (like mine) who don't eat vegetables, place the meat in the middle areas of the skewer, making it difficult to just eat the meat and leave the vegetables. Trust me, working for the meat makes the food taste a whole lot better!

Set your oven to 360 deg. and place your skewers on a rack that exposes most of the kebabs to some heat. Then cook for 30 minutes depending on the size of your beef cubes. When your vegetables start to shrivel or blacken, it is about time to take it out. Enjoy.

Siu Mai

Actually, I used the same recipe for wonton to put into siumai, except the skin is different and there is actually more shrimp than pork which gives it a "bouncy" feel in the mouth. I also used har gau skins instead of the wonton skins.

Dough:
3/4 cup wheat starch
2 teaspoons tapioca starch
1/2 cup boiling water, or as needed

6 ounces raw shrimp
2 ounces ground pork
1 tablespoon oyster sauce (optional)
1 teaspoon granulated sugar
1 tablespoon finely chopped green onion (optional)
1/4 teaspoon sesame oil

Blend the dough until it becomes a little stiff, then roll out thinly. For this I used the pinch method and took just a little ball then rolled that out with a plastic wrap covered rolling pin to avoid sticking. I used oil on the rolling surface rather than starch, but you can use either really.

Mince up the shrimp and pork together, add the green onions if you'd like. Then roll out circular pieces of the dough as thinly as possible, place a dollop of the meat mixture into the dough and form a "cup". Then place in the steamer until cooked.

Some people sprinkle bits of cooked preserve duck egg on the top. Yech. Hehe ... I served it with the SriRacha chili sauce.

Chinese Again!

Baby Bok Choy (Easy!)

8 bunches of baby bok choy
2 tbsp sesame oil
Oyster sauce (best is Lee Kum Kee)
2 tbsp chopped garlic

Pour some corn oil to coat a frying pan, omit if using non-stick ware.

Throw in chopped garlic and fry until aromatic. Toss in the bok choy and turn down heat to medium. Cover and cook for about 3 minutes or until "blanched". Mix in sesame oil, drain and arrange on plate. Then drizzle oyster sauce on top. Serve with steamed long-grain rice.

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The next dish is something my mom used to cook for us, and I enjoyed it thoroughly not only because of the taste and texture but the experience while making it. You see, it is scallions that make this dish so delicious, but scallions also attract flies due to its sharp pungent smell. Sean said it smelled like rotten stuff, but I disagree. Everytime my mum would chop up the scallions, big bulbous flies would come into the house and I would hone my skills in fly swatting with a wet rag. I did it again tonight when we had a huge one zooming about, and as usual, stunned it dead on. Then it was sent packing to the trash bin.

I must note that scallions are not spring onions, they are usually found in Asian grocers and mildly difficult to locate in a majority of nationwide grocery stores. I think you can substitute it with chives but it would not taste the same. The pancake might look like a Japanese pizza (okonomiyaki) but I can assure you, it is not.

Scallion Pancakes

3 eggs (one egg per person)
20 stalks of scallions (less if you prefer less, more if you like it stronger, the pancake is supposed to be covered in the stuff and thick)
6 pieces raw shrimp, deveined and shelled (optional)
Dash of salt and pepper to taste

Grind or mash up the raw shrimp until it becomes a rough paste.

In a large mixing bowl, break the eggs and mix in the shrimp paste. Add the scallions last and mix together until well blended. It should look somewhat like green batter, and be slightly thicker than just plain beaten eggs.

Put some oil in a pan and heat at high. At this point I debate if I want to make mini pancakes or just a huge one. I used a 20 inch skillet tonight and made a large sized omelette by pouring everything in, cooking it at medium heat on the underside and covering it with a lid to cook the top. Then after the top of the pancake is solidified, I flipped the pancake to brown the other side. When fully cooked through, remove from heat and serve with plain long-grain rice.

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These two dishes are very simple and delicious to eat. Hope some of you give it a try! :) I know when I bit into the first piece of the pancake, my eyes almost misted up from the memories. This is just good comfort Chinese food!

Steak and Sushi

The other day I tried my hand at cooking prime rib. It came out uber tasty, except slightly more done than I was expecting. I like my meat medium rare to rare. This came out medium well. The au jus was delicious with Merlot, but a little too salty. We also had olive oil roasted asparagus and roast garlic (that I spread on toast!) My parents would have enjoyed this meal at home.

The next day we had fried rice for dinner. I think I basically just threw in whatever I had, hot dogs, spam but this time I put a Japanese flair to it by adding umeboshi (pickled plum) to enhance the flavor. It tasted better than I thought it would have.

Next up is what I made for dinner today ... again. So purdy! California maki with crab stick. avocado and tobikko (capelin roe), and the other is kampyo (marinated root) crab stick and sakura denbu (which gives it the gorgeous pink color!) Everyone needs to eat more neon colored foods!

Sushi Nigiri

The fish was not half bad, although I was quite angry at the cut. I guess getting sushi grade fish from the store was too much to hope for! I marinated them in vinegar and shoyu and they tasted just great! We had tuna and salmon, and after divvying up the pieces, I was actually full. The rice was really perfectly sticky and made really nice nigiri. They did not break apart or anything when picked up and dipped in soy sauce. I forgot about the tobikko though. Oh and this is the photo of the maki sushi from the potluck:

From left: Kappamaki (cucumber), futomaki two kinds - one with kani (imitation crab), kampyo and tamagoyaki (sweet egg roll) one with cucumber, sweet egg, kampyo and kamoi sakura denbu - and oshinko maki (pickled radish)

PohPoh's Fried Rice

PohPoh's Fried Rice (Poh Poh is grandma in Cantonese)
1 can of Spam/Luncheon meat, cut into 1 cm cubes (optional)
1 cup cooked day old rice (the long grained Jasmine or Basmati rice works, why day old? Because it's drier and soaks up more flavor while cooking and doesn't become mush in the pan)
1 stalk of fresh chives, chopped coarsely (optional)
4 pieces of garlic, chopped finely
1 egg (optional, some people don't like egg)
2 tbsp soy sauce
Salt and Pepper to taste

1. Fry the Spam cubes in a pan until crispy, scoop out the cubes and lay them on a paper towel to soak up the extra oil. Don't toss the oil in the pan out!.
2. In a wok or large, deep frying pan, heat the Spam oil (and if the oil isn't enough, add 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil) at high heat and the chopped garlic. This part gets tricky as you have to do everything very fast or it overcooks!
3. When the garlic is browned (gives out an aroma) add the cooked rice and mess it all up with the garlic and oil, then push it aside in the pan to make a space for the egg.
4. Add the egg, and into it, the soy sauce, and some pepper. Scramble it until it's almost all cooked, then mix the rice into it and mess everything up together.
5. Toss in your Spam cubes at this point, and fry mix for another 3 minutes (you can also add more soy sauce here if you want it more salty!) until your rice is light and fluffy. Then last but not least, toss in your chopped chives and mix that up into the rice. Serve and enjoy~!

Notice that most ingredients I put as optional, this is because the rice, soy sauce and garlic are the essential basic ingredients to any fried rice dish. You can add cooked chicken in place of Spam, and omit the egg, or chives. However, this is my grandma's recipe and to follow it to a T ends up delicious :) Tell me if you try it!

Cocktail and Pork Katsudon

On The Menu

Appetizer ~*~*~ Seafood Mango Cocktail (Serves 5)

1/2 lbs of cooked, cleaned and de-tailed shrimp (cocktail shrimp may be substituted but I like the juicier tender large shrimp)
1 pack (about 1 lbs) of frozen or fresh cleaned squid or calamari
1 medium sized mango cut into cubes (use half for the salad, half for dressing)
3 pieces of fine chopped garlic
1 lemon or substitute lemon juice
S&P

For the dressing:
1 tbsp curry powder
2 tbsp dijon or honey mustard
1/2 cup mayonnaise or Miracle Whip
Half the mango, mashed

Slice calamari body into 1/2 inch pieces so they form rings when cooked. Heat pan on medium heat with 2 teaspoons vegetable oil or butter, add chopped garlic. Then when aroma is released, toss in your calamari pieces, stir fry until slightly cooked about 5 minutes, then toss the shrimp in as well. Fry for another 2 minutes while seasoning with some salt and a little pepper.

Remove from heat and ladle the contents into a dish while draining off excess liquid. Squeeze entire lemon over the seafood, place in the chopped mango and mix well. Place into refridgerator while you make the dressing. Serve very chilled.

Blend all the ingredients together, chill and layer dressing and seafood before serving. Top with eiter mint leaves, a sprinkle of tumeric or a wedge of lemon. Enjoy.

I first ran into this dish at the restaurant called Out Of Africa in PJ about 8 years ago. I have since then tried to reinvent the cocktail using my own measurements, ingredients, from taste and from memory! This is probably the best tasting result I have had and Sean loves it! We need cocktail glasses pronto.

Main Course ~*~*~ Pork Katsudon with Miso Soup

1/2 inch pork cutlets dipped in tempura batter and rolled in panko breadcrumbs, deep fried until tender. Serve with rice and instant miso soup. It is THAT simple. Heh.

If you try these let me know what you think! I know a few of you have emailed me for some recipes for food. Well, I will keep it up :) The dishes are 100% cooked from scratch in my own kitchen and I enjoy reinventing or reintroducing oldtime dishes with newer twists. "How can I make it better?" is a common thought in my mind when I cook, and I do it mostly by taste and smell.

Campbell's Chicken Casserole

3 pc chicken thighs
1 can cream of chicken soup
1 tsp each salt, pepper, dried oregano

Preheat oven to 375 F.

Mix salt, pepper and oregano with chicken pieces. Place the chicken in a deep dish for baking. Top with the cream of chicken soup, spread to smother chicken thighs. Cover entire dish with foil, and pierce some holes for "breathing". Bake at 375 F for 45 minutes or until done. Serve hot with rice, mashed potatoes, or any side. Rice is my preference only because I am Asian and the soup gravy goes lovely with it! Tada, yummy meal.

Macha-Mint Frappucino

1 peppermint tea bag
1 green tea bag
Vanilla ice cream
Sugar or honey (optional)
Milk
Ice
Blender that can crush ice

Infuse both tea bags with 8oz water. Add ice cream depending on how creamy you want it to be. Add 5 oz milk and several ice cubes. Add honey or sugar to taste. Blend until smooth. Top with a sprig of fresh mint leaves, serve and enjoy. To reduce the overpowering mint taste, infuse bags separately and mix mint tea to green tea by a 1:3 ratio. Lowering the mint taste will bring out the green tea, and make your frappucino taste like macha ice cream ... yum!

Chicken Curry

MALAYSIAN CHICKEN CURRY
(again!?! but Sean was so happy when I told him what I planned to cook tonight)

You need:
Onion / shallots (chopped fine)
Garlic (chopped fine)

Curry powder (my mom sent me Baba's Meat Curry Powder so I used that)
Chicken pieces (I usually use dark meat - drumsticks / thighs)
Potato (baking potato or red potato works)
Coconut milk (I used canned because it is more convenient and tastes the same anyway)
Butter / lard / oil
Salt and pepper

You want to rub some salt and curry powder all over the chicken pieces, and let sit in your fridge for about 30 minutes minimum.

Then while you wait, you can chop the onions and garlic, as well as cube up the potatoes.

Next, you drop the butter into a heated pot and add the onion-garlic mix. Fry that on medium heat until the aroma is released, and have them slightly browned.

That being done, this is where the potato cubes come into the game. Fry them for a few minutes, until they are coated in the base mixture too. Then add a bowl of water (we are talking chinese rice bowl size here, or equivalent - 1 cup water), cover and cook on medium heat until the potatoes soften slightly.

When potatoes are softened and cooked, lower the heat and then add your chicken pieces and another cup / bowl of water, so that it just slightly covers most of the contents. Here you might want to add more curry powder as well
(and start cooking your rice!)

Simmering it at medium low heat about 15-20 minutes it should look like this:

Or at least simmer until your chicken pieces are fully cooked. I do not recommend boiling on high heat because the chicken meat falls off the bones and disappears into the void! Ha ha

Top off on your rice and DONE! Oh and if you like it more spicy, just add some ground up chili paste, or dried chilis. I always forget :(

Kushi Dango

KUSHI DANGO (Recipe courtesy of About.com)

1 cup rice flour
3/4 cup warm water

For Sauce:
1 cup water
1/2 cup sugar
2 tbsps soy sauce
1 1/2 tbsp potatostarch/cornstarch
1 1/2tbsp water

*Bamboo skewers

PREPARATION:

Put rice flour in a bowl and add warm water. Knead the dough well. Make small round dumplings. Place the dumplings in a steamer and steam them on high heat for 10 min. Cool the dumplings and skewer them in bamboo sticks. (3-4 dumplings each stick.)

Mix water, sugar, and soysauce in a pan and put it on medium heat. Mix the water and potatostarch in a cup and set aside. When the sauce boils, add the starch mixture and mix quickly. Slightly grill the skewered dumplings and brush the sauce over them.

Marbled Pound Cake

Had a craving for it last night before we went to bed, but I was all snuggled up and warm under the blankets, so I waited until morning instead.

MARBLED POUND CAKE

Ingredients:
1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (1 stick/4 oz/113g) unsalted butter
1 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 large eggs
1/2 cup milk
1 cup miniature semisweet chocolate chips (I substituted it with cocoa powder mixed in 2 cups of batter)

Instructions:
1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (160 C). Grease and flour a 9 x 5 x 3-inch or a 8 x 4 x 2-inch loaf pan; set aside.

2. In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder and salt; set aside.

3. In a large mixing bowl, beat butter with electric mixer on medium to high speed for 30 seconds. Add sugar and vanilla; beat until fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.

4. Add flour mixture and milk alternately to butter mixture, beating on low speed after each addition until just combined. Spread 3/4 of the batter in prepared pan. Mix cocoa powder into the remaining batter (about 2 cups of batter) and drop it in batches over the vanilla batter. Using a spatula, swirl until a pattern is achieved as in the picture. (I thought I swirled mine enough but apparently not as the chocolate lingered only at the top and did not swirl to the center of the cake, oh well).

5. Bake the cake in preheated 325 degree F (160 C) oven for 55 to 60 minutes for the 9 x 5 x 3-inch loaf or 65 to 75 minutes for the 8 x 4 x 2-inch loaf or 45 minutes for the flat pan I used or until a toothpick (in my case, a satay skewer) inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool in pan for 15 minutes. Loosen the edges of the cake. Remove from pan and cool completely on wire rack.

6. EAT!

Grilled Squid

We started the barbecue early because um ... pfft, I do not need a reason.

Spent most of last night cleaning, deheading and deboning the squid. Very icky, something in my head was telling me that I really should have been icked out, but I was not. Sacrifices must be made so that we can enjoy this delicious food!

The smell was divine!

Sean polished off most of them as fast as I could pull them off the grill! It was goooooooooooooooooooood! I -still- smell of grilled squid right now. LOL

We got to the hot dogs, Sean and I had one each then almost fell over from the sheer amount of food. So the kebabs go into the microwave for storage until later tonight. Ha ha ...

Stew Recipe III

STEW RECIPE NUMBER III

(1 and 2 are fired due to the fact that this recipe beats the rest so far)

Sean turned a whole slab of beef roast into this:

So, now what to do with it?

First we cut up some potatoes and carrots as well as chop up some garlic and onions. A tablespoon of olive oil / cooking butter in a medium-high heated pot, then add the onions and brown them. Place two slices of bacon in (optional but I like the smokey base smell) and stir that around until the fat is rendered into oil. Add the garlic, and brown that too. Toss in your vegetables and 2 tsp of herbs (basil and thyme), fry that until they are coated in the onion mixture. Pour in some sherry or red wine, about half a cup and stir. Add 1 cup of water, stir again and cover to cook on medium heat.

Meanwhile, in a bowl, mix one cup of all purpose flour, 2/3 cup of cornstarch, and 2 pieces beef bouillon, mix it up. Then add 3 cups water, 1 cup sherry / wine and blend that well.

When the vegetables are cooked (you can tell when the potato turns opaque around the middle) add the beef cubes. Cook the beef by continously mixing over a medium heat until browned all over, then cover and cook with lid on for 5 minutes.

When the meat is sufficiently cooked (no oozing blood), add some salt and pepper to taste. Then turn the heat to medium-low, add your flour-bouillon mixture and stir it into the stew until everything is coated or the sauce has turned into a thick gravy.

Serve individually in a medium deep dish with dinner rolls, rice or just plain bread! For those who are entertaining, you might want to decorate with fresh sprigs or dried parsley on top and around the dish. GOOD STUFF!

Wan Tan Mee w/ Pork Wontons

WAN TAN MEE (or er won tons as it is known here in the States)

Meat mix has:
*** Deveined and deshelled prawns / shrimp
*** Ground pork
*** Ginger, Chopped spring onions
*** Sherry (or Chinese cooking wine)
*** Pepper, Salt, Soy Sauce, Garlic Powder

Blended the shrimp to a paste together with the ginger and spring onions. Place in a large bowl, and mix it with the ground pork. Add the sherry and soy sauce, mix that. Add the rest of the ingredients. It smelled sooooooo good!

Whip out your wonton wrappers. Place a small amount in each wrapper so that you can actually close the top so the meat does not spill out.

Like this.

Stock:
*** Pork bones
*** Water and salt

Simmer stock for an hour on low heat so you get all the juice out of the pork bones, easier to do before you start wrapping the wan tan so you do not have to wait.

When the wan tan are ready, remove the bones, skim off the top of the stock where the brown stuff is (it looks gross in soup) and then turn up the heat to a boil. Add your wan tan and boil for 5 to 10 minutes until cooked.

Get some Cantonese style egg noodles (if like me, fresh wantan noodles are not available to you ;~;) soak them in cold water until they come apart. Then drop them in boiling water for 5 minutes. Drain. In a plate, put some vegetable oil, dark soy sauce, pepper and soysauce about a half tablespoon each. This was my grandma's recipe heh heh ...

Then put the drained noodles into the sauce mix and stir it around. Arrange your wan tan and tada~!!!

Dinner is served ^_^

Pandan Kaya

PANDAN KAYA

(Tto make normal brown kaya, replace sugar with palm sugar and omit the pandan leave paste, but include 2 strips of pandan leaf into the mixture while it is cooking. Remove these later.)

500g SUGAR
10 PANDAN LEAVES
1 CAN COCONUT MILK (400ml)
4 EGGS
CHEESECLOTH

Actually, I did not really follow a set recipe, I modified someone else's, these are just the basic ingredients. I forgot to take pictures of the pandan leaves cut up into inch pieces and put into a processor. Blend it well with the coconut milk until it becomes almost paste.

In another bowl (preferable stainless steel) break the eggs and mix it well with the sugar. Then strain the pandan paste mixture over the eggs with the cheesecloth or a strainer. Mix that up well until the sugar is dissolved. It should look like this:

Meanwhile, fill a pot with water to act as a double boiler for the steel bowl. When it boils, turn down the heat to low and place the metal bowl over the pot. Stir occassionally for about 30 minutes or until it thickens. One of the recipes called for straining again before putting to the boiler, I did not but you see I had a back up plan. It turned out lumpy like this because I did not double strain.

After the mixture cooks, it turns into custard-like consistency and looks like that. To make it smooth like store-restaurant type kaya, I put it in my blender and pressed "Whip" or aka. highest speed available. The texture became like this:

Then you put it on bread (toasted or untoasted) and butter and YUM!

PANDAN KAYA! Happy tummy~