Bite On It!

I’ve always love noodles. In fact when I have nothing better to eat I will first think of cooking a packet of instant noodles to nurse my hunger. That means, I have a huge stock of instant noodles nestling in my kitchen. :mrgree:

Besides instant noodles, I will buy other types of noodles occasionally. One of my latest craze is Korean and Japanese noodles. I bought a packet of Soba sometimes back from Daiso during my last trip to Singapore. I have wanted to cook the cold version but my hubby is not a fan of cold noodles so I decided to make it hot instead.

During a visit to the afternoon market near my place, I found some baby octopus and bought a kilo. At home I found some frozen prawns my hubby bought and the idea hit me… why not some seafood Soba? This is definitely a healthier choice! My boy love his bowl of Soba too. Without the baby octopus of course…

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Ingredients

• 2/3 packet Buckwheat Soba
• 200g Prawns (shelled and leave tail unshelled)
• 200g Baby octopus (clean and cut into 4 sections)
• 150g Hong Kong choy sum
• 2tbsp Wakame (Japanese seaweed)
• 1.5L Water
• Fish sauce + pepper for taste

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Methods

1. Boil water in a medium large pot. Throw in the prawn shells and let it boil for 20 minutes so the soup will have a good aroma.
2. While waiting for the soup to be ready, heat up another pot of water in a medium saucepan. Add a little oil and sugar. When the water boil, blanch the Hong Kong choy sum till 90% cook and remove from pot. Using the same pot of boiling water, blanch the Soba till springy soft and set aside. Do the same to the Wakame.
3. Remove the shell from the soup.
4. While the soup continue to boil, toss in the prawns and the baby octopus till they are cook. Remove them from the soup and put aside. Add fish sauce and pepper
5. In a bowl, place some Soba and top with Hong Kong choy sum, prawns, baby octopus and Wakame. Pour enough soup to cover Soba before serving.

When one cooks with a toddler in mind, there will always be pasta dishes as these are one of the kids’ all time favorite. Like any other toddler, Darrius has also started asking for pasta or any noodles dishes. As compared to rice vermicelli or rice sticks, pasta or spaghetti are the healthier choice.

Though preparing such dishes can be time consuming sometimes, but when you see your kids gobble them down, the work are all worth it!

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Ingredients

• 100g Spaghetti (I used the wheat based)
• 120g Chicken pieces (use the thigh part as they will be more tender)
• Small section of Red and Green Capsicum (coarsely chopped)
• 1 Red onion
• 1 Chinese mushroom (soaked and cut into small cubes)
• 5tbsp Pasta Sauce (I used the one with olives)
• Salt and pepper for seasoning
• Some oil

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Methods

1. In a medium stock pot, boil half a pot of water with some salt (1tsp). When it boiling, put in your spaghetti and cook until desired softness.
2. Mince the chicken pieces and put in a bowl. Add in the chopped capsicums, mushroom and onions and mix with some salt and pepper and oil. Stir till they are well mixed. Then roll them into small balls.
3. In a frying pan or sauce pan, heat up with some oil and pan fried the chicken meat balls till golden brown. Lift them up when all are cooked.
4. In another sauce pan, heat up some oil and pour in the pasta sauce and stir till it is cook.
5. In a dish, put some of the cook pasta with the chicken meatballs on top. Then pour some of the pasta sauce over and garnish with some chopped capsicums.

I apologize for the long and extended silence in this blog! There were so man things going on with the Lunar New Year, Valentine’s and birthdays. Finally I got some time to give everyone some more ideas in the kitchen.

Can’t remember when it started but my first encounter with Mee Siam was quite accidental. It was during an outing with some of m dad’s colleagues in Port Dickson. I was not even 10 then! Gosh! How time flies! Since then I have been a great fan of Mee Siam ala Malaysia style. Why?

Well, I’ve lived in Singapore for more than 8 year and I can swear their Mee Siam and ours are quite different. First of all, we don’t normally drench our Mee Siam with gravy or sauces. Though the gravy can be nice sometimes, I still prefer the dried version.

This recipe was adapted from Kuali but I made some modifications to suit our taste.

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Ingredients

(Serves 2)

• Half packet rice vermicelli or meehoon, soaked for five minutes and drained
• 200g beansprouts, remove root tips
• 250g medium-size prawns, shelled and remove dirt
• 6 pieces tau pok (tofu puff), sliced (tau kua is preffered)
• 100g chives, cut into 4cm-5cm lengths
• 1/4 cup oil
• 1 cup stock or water

Pound

• 3 cloves garlic
• 6 shallots
• 50g dried prawns
• 12 dried chillies, soaked

Seasoning

• 1 tbsp fish sauce

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Side dish

Grilled Turmeric Chicken

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Method

1. Heat oil in a wok and stir-fry ground ingredients until fragrant. Add prawns and stock, then bring to a boil and simmer for five minutes.
2. Add meehoon, chives and beansprouts. Stir for a while before mixing in the tau pok slices and toss the meehoon so it mixed well. Add in seasoning and a squeeze of lime juice and toss again.
3. Served with sambal belacan is highly recommended.

Sometime back while I was shopping at Sunshine Far Lim (a local grown supermarket in Penang) I found some udon noodles which is not chilled. This was the first time I found unchilled udon as most of the time they have to be chilled or it will get bad very fast. I guess this unchilled version might have higher portion of preservatives hence it can be kept on regular shelves. I used to cook this dish very often when I was a still a single in Singapore.
Out of curiosity, I bought a packet home and try. The taste was the same as the regular udon in the chilled section. Good that it don’t take up space in my fridge and it has a longer expiry date. Within the packet has 3 smaller packets.

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Ingredients

• 2  packets of Udon
• 1/4 of Red capsicum
• 1/4 of Green capsicum
• 1 Onion
• 150g Chicken breast meat (marinate with light soy sauce, corn flour and pepper)
• 2 cups Water
• Salt or light soy sauce or chicken cube or fish sauce for taste
• Wakame (seaweed) for garnishing

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Methods

1. Heat up wok with some oil and saute the onion (cut half ring) till soft before adding in the sliced red and green capsicum. Stir for a few minutes.
2. Add in the chicken strips and continue to stir till half cooked before putting in the noodles.
3. Add water and mix well before cover it and simmer for a few minutes stirring occasionally.
4. The noodles will turn a little sticky after a while. Add in seasoning and stir till sauce appeared thicken.
5. Serve with boiled wakame while hot.

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With Darrius having his molars appearing now, I will be dishing out more kids friendly dishes in the coming days. In fact, I’ve purchased a few books on kids’ menus which are really interesting! Will try them out and share with all of you who has small kids at home.

My little boy loves pasta in all shapes and sizes. He has been a huge fan of tomato ketchup/pasta sauce since the day I introduced pasta/spaghetti to him. He would ask for his pasta dish almost everyday!

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Ingredients

• 80-100g Fusilli (enough for 2 meals)
• 60g Minced meat (you can use pork/beef/chicken)
• 1/2 Onion (medium size) - sliced
• 2 sections Garlic - chopped
• 2″ Carrot - cubed
• 4tbsp Pasta sauce (I used mushroom with herbs)
• 1 slice Cheddar cheese (half for each meal)
• 1/2 cup Water
• 1/4 tsp Corn flour
• Salt for taste
• Olive oil (optional)

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Methods

1. In a medium saucepan, boil some water with 2 drops of oil. Add in fusilli and boil till very soft (takes about 15-20 minutes on low heat). When about to remove from stove, add in the diced carrot and boil for 3 minutes. Drained and leave aside.
2. Marinade the minced meat with corn flour and a sprinkle of salt for 5-10 minutes. Then roll them up and keep throwing it back to the bowl to make it compact before roll them into small meat balls. Fry them lightly till cooked, lift up.
3. Heat up wok with 1 tbsp oil, saute the onion slices, then the chopped garlic.
4. When onion and garlic soften, add in the drained fusilli and carrot. Stir, add in pasta sauce, water and continue to stir till it thicken a little. Add in the meat balls and stir till everything are well mixed.
5. Put one portion on a plate, add a drop or two of olive oil, cut cheddar cheese into tiny strips and placed it on top of the hot pasta to allow it to melt.
6. Keep the other portion in a bowl and cover to avoid it getting all dried up.

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