Bite On It!

Gosh! It has certainly been a loooong while since my last post here. I hardly go into the kitchen when my morning sickness started to kick in in early May. It was so bad that my hubby has to take over the cooking for almost 4 months. In those months we only have simple meals with steamed fish and soup only. The rest of the time I only munch on bread and dry biscuits as anything that has weird taste/smell made me feel like throwing up.

Now I am 32 weeks along and things has certainly got better. In fact I have been feasting quite a bit about 2 months… yeah, getting back! I’ve also took back the kitchen for a while but due to some traveling the past 2 months, I did not cook as much but rather enjoying all the unhealthy outside food…

Though I took back the kitchen, I did not do much new dishes or have the interest to experiment with new ingredients. And my Darrius is also not so cooperative and has been a little pain as he refused to eat by himself. Thus, I have to feed him almost every meal. So, to make life easier, I only can think of doing all the simple yet healthy dishes.

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Ingredients

• 200-300g Pork meat (use pork belly) - minced
• 3-4 Water chestnuts - coarsely chopped
• 2″ strip of Dried cuttlefish - coarsely chopped
• 3 Chinese mushrooms- coarsely chopped
• 1tsp Oil
• 1tbsp Corn flour
• 1.5tbsp Light soy sauce
• Dash of pepper
• Water

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Method

1. Mix minced meat with water chestnuts, dried cuttlefish and Chinese mushrooms  together with corn flour, oil, soy sauce and pepper. When well mixed, put it in a light curve dish and flatten the surface.
2. Pour some some water to nicely cover the top, add some light soy sauce to give some color and put into the steamer on medium heat for about 12-15 minutes or till cooked.

I know that many people prefers to have fruity cakes than some plain ones as they like the extra fruity bites. Personally I like fruity cakes especially those contain fresh fruits. However, it is not easy for us to get suitable fresh fruits here to bake anytime we want. So, we have to make do with canned ones… most of the time.

Here is another of my favorite… peachy cake/cupcakes. I have been using this recipe for a long time. Before the cupcakes fad, I used it to bake full cakes. This recipe is also perfect for a 7″ or 8″ cake. The wonder is, the tangy taste from the peach helped to diffuse the sweetness from the sugar.

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Ingedients

• 180g Butter
• 120g Sugar
• 180g Plain white flour
• 1tsp Baking powder
• 1tsp Baking soda
• 3 Eggs
• 1tsp Vanilla essence (optional)

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Methods

1. Cream butter and sugar till white and creamy.
2. Add in eggs, one at a time till well mixed. Add vanilla essence.
3. Sieve flour, baking powder and baking soda and fold into the batter slowly.
4. Pipe batter into muffin tray lined with cases.
5. Bake at 160 degree Celsius till cooked or when inserted toothpick comes out clean.

I have been looking for a good recipe for meat balls for quite sometime. I found many recipes using breadcrumbs but I’ve never bought any before so was quite hesitant to buy a big packet only for making meat balls. Since I am into bento now, it will be another good finger food to store and  pack!

While I was flipping one of the many recipe books in my collection, I discovered one recipe which is quite easy. Though it has a lot of ingredients but I decided to do without most of them except some core ones. The recipes asked for water chestnuts, dried prawns and spring onions but I don’t have those with me so I omitted them. Instead I added shallots and breadcrumbs.

I was truly surprised with the results. It tasted better than I’ve anticipated! I guess what is more important is, they don’t disintegrate when I fry them… which was what happened to some of those I did in the past. Finally, I discovered the masking ingredient, which is the good ole white bread!

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Ingredients

• 200g Lean meat (I used pork loin)
• 2 Shallots (finely chopped)
• 1.5pcs White bread (removed crust & cut into mini squares)
• 1tbsp Sunflower or Olive oil (original recipe asked for sesame oil)
• 2tbsp Corn flour
• 2 Egg yolks
• 2tbsp Breadcrumbs
• Salt and pepper for taste

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Methods

1. Clean and minced the meat until very fine and mix with all the other ingredients.
2. Use a spoon and scoop wanted amount and roll into balls. Compact the meat balls by throwing the balls into your palm a few times (this will help hold all the ingredients together).
3. Heat up a medium pan with half filled oil and deep fry the meat balls till cook and turned golden brown. Lift up and place them onto paper towel to absorb excess oil.

We had steamed fish at least 2-3 times a week, at the very least. Sometimes we had it like 5 times! My PiggyBeng feels that steamed fish is better as the juice from the fish will not ‘evaporate’ away so the nutritional value will be in the sauce. Well, I’m not too sure about that but I kinda get sick of steamed fish if we have it too often.

Another reason for steaming food is that our kitchen will stay grease free for a longer period. Therefore, there will be less cleaning up to do.

So, to get away from the ordinary, I decided to do some pan-fried fish for a change. Something simple and something my Darrius will like. Which is something with ketchup!

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Ingredients

• 1 slice Fish fillet (I used Barramundi/Siakap)
• 1/4 cup Frozen mixed vegetables
• 1 Bombay onion (the purplish type) - sliced
• 2tbsp Ketchup
• 1tsp Corn flour
• 1/2 cup Water
• 1tsp Light soy sauce
• Dash of pepper

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Methods

1. Wash the fish fillet and dry it with a paper towel. Sprinkle some corn flour all over both surfaces (this will avoid the fish from sticking to the frying pan)
2. Heat up frying pan with some oil. Make sure the oil in the pan is hot (you can see steam coming up) before you lie the fish on the pan. Fty till both sides turned golden brown. Lift up and set aside.
3. Using the same pan, saute the sliced onion and then the mixed vegetables until 80% cooked.  Pour in the ketchup mixed together with corn flour, light soy sauce, water and a dash of pepper and cook till boil.
4. Put the fish fillet onto the sauce and let it boil for a while before lifting it up and serve.

I have been doing quite a lot of kids bento for Darrius lately which prompted me to come out with a lot of finger food recipes.  Though Darrius is pretty receptive to what ever I served him but there are still food that he will refuse. Therefore I will try to create different recipes using the same few ingredients.

Darrius is a huge fan of the pan-fried soy sauce chicken so I used that recipe to make drumlets which is very convenient to be packed into bento box as compared to chicken drumsticks. Today I am using oyster sauce instead.

Previously I never keep any oyster sauce at home simply because PiggyBeng believed that oyster sauce was made of left over water from fish in the market. o_O Yeah, apparently my BIL who used to operate a Chinese restaurant in Europe and he was told that this was how oyster sauce derived from.

Luckily I do watch TV and I’ve learned from a Master Chef (Tho-tho) from Hong Kong that oyster sauce actually came from boiling the fresh oysters with some ingredients.

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Ingredients

• 6 Chicken drumlets
• 1tbsp Oyster sauce
• 1tsp Brown sugar
• 1/2tsp Dark soy sauce
• Dash of pepper

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Methods

1. Wash and dry the chicken drumlets with a paper towel. Marinade the chicken drumlets with all the ingredients and best leave over night.
2. Heat up the wok with little oil (the skin from the chicken will release oil) and pan fried all the drumlets on low heat.
3. When the drumlets are about 90% cooked, pour in the remaining sauce from the marinade and cook till all the drumlets are fully glazed with the sauce.