Dinners on the road - Part 1

Simple and fast dinners on the run

We celebrated 2011 with our grand finale tour to New Zealand South Island on 1^st Jan 2011. Together with auntie Ah Lan, we hit the road with our first stop at Lake Taupo. This was a 3 weeks long vacation so you could imagine how many things we packed in our car boot to go along with us.

Other than clothes, one of the important items that we had packed in was our rice cooker! Yes, you read me right, it was rice cooker. Hubby was a typical Chinese who couldn't do away with a meal of rice at all. But, in actual fact rice cooker was very useful to us on the road as traveling in New Zealand it was wise to do your own cooking, as you wouldn't want to eat fast food or fish and chips all the time especially in smaller towns where there were not many options of Asian food.

Below were some of the meals which we had for the first few nights at Lake Taupo and KaiKoura.

Home cooked dinner @ Birchland Taupo Motel

Assam Snapper Curry



Fried Udon using electric pan @ Comfort Inn Kaikoura



Fried Udon with Chorizo n Prawns

Home Grown Dwarf French Beans

Garden to table - Dwarf French Beans

This spring, my landlord decided to redo the backyard landscape which affected my little garden that I had cultivated since last year. I was forced to do dig out all my old plants and started off a new garden. Now, I was so pleased to see my new garden growing so well again. All the vegetables lettuces, herbs and beans seeds that I sowed in spring have grown healthily.

The various dwarf French beans seeds we got free from Ambury Farm, finally flowered and fruited. Other than yellow beans, this time there are two new types of beans that successfully grown in my garden, one of them is dark purple bean (Dwarf Bean – Amethyst) and also flat green reddish beans (Shell Cranberry bean 'Lingua di Fuoco' (Tongue of Fire).

Shell Cranberry bean 'Lingua di Fuoco' (Tongue of Fire)

Yesterday, I harvested some of them. I knew they were still young to pluck but since we are going for a long vacation to South Island, so I couldn't wait to try them thinking they might be too old for us to eat when we return. Regardless their original beans color once they were cooked they all turned into green color, nonetheless they were really crunchy and tasty to eat.

Since only a small bunch of beans being harvested which not enough to make into one dish, I mixed them with broccoli and carrots and came out with this simple fast stir fried mix vegetables dish for our dinner.

Stir fry Shell Cranberry beans n broccoli

Stir fry Shell Cranberry beans & broccoli

INGREDIENTS: (Serves 3)

1 head of Broccoli -Discard broccoli stalks; thinly slice florets vertically
Shell Cranberry beans - slice into 1/3 length
1/4 Carrots - sliced
1 tbsp chopped garlic
6-9 pc prawns cutlets
100ml stock/plain water
3 tbsp Cooking/Vegetable oil
Cornstarch mixture (about ½ tbsp cornstarch mixed with 2 tbsp water)

Seasoning:

1 tsp salt (to your taste)

½ tsp sugar (to your taste)

Chicken stock powder (optional)

METHOD:

1. Give prawns a rinse, then brine (just enough to cover) 5 minutes before cook, drain.
2. Wash broccoli, carrots, beans and sliced.
3. Heat oil on high and sauté garlic till fragrant, add in broccoli, toss a while then followed by Shell Cranberry beans and carrots. Stir to coat all with oil.
4. Stir fry for 2 minutes until beans turn vibrant green; add in seasoning then stock/plain water.
5. Toss in prawn, give a few quick stir about another 2 minutes or until prawns turn pink.
6. Taste test before thicken with corn starch and serve

Hakka Rice Cooker Salt Baked Chicken 客家盐焗鸡

Asian Style Christmas Bird?

Few months ago my eldest brother sent me an email introducing the Salted Chicken which was a trademark of Hakka Cuisine. This dish reminded him of the salted steamed rice wine chicken (客家盐酒鸡) our mum used to cook for the Chinese New Year eve dinner when we were kids. Ever since our mum suffered from Alzheimer's and was admitted to a nursery care, we no longer had the chance to taste this dish. We missed that unique home brewed sweet rice wine flavored chicken. The sticky rice wine (自酿米酒) was home brewed by our mum. Her rice wine was popular among our relatives and friends for use in home cooking, especially well sought after in the Chinese after birth confinement diet。But it is sad I no longer have the chance to learn from my mother L

Seeing me getting interested in cooking and started off this food blog, my brother suggested me to learn up our Hakka cuisine and shared in this blog too. I reckoned this was a good idea and started to surf for related Hakka recipes, and then I came across this creative and modern way of making Hakka salted chicken.

The traditional Hakka cooking method used parchment paper to wrap up a whole chicken, then buried it in a wok full of fried coarse salt and simmered till it was cooked; very arduous. This one however requires only a rice cooker to do the magic. This lazy people way of salt baking may not show the true flavor of Hakka Salted Chicken but it is surely a simple and healthy way to cook a chicken without compromising much on the taste.

Because I had a small rice cooker, I could only cook size 9, chicken. Instead of the whole chicken you can also opt for parts such as drumsticks or wings. I had attempted using chicken, wings and drumsticks. They all tasted flavorsome and not greasy. I served this chicken with Hainanese chicken rice. Of course no chicken rice is complete without the special chicken rice chilies, isn't it? J

Hakka Salt Baked Chicken 客家盐焗鸡 - Featured in Group Recipes 30/12/2010

This year, we celebrated our Christmas at Hahei Camp site with limited utensil and a very basic kitchen; I had used this recipe to make our very own Asian style Christmas birds for our Christmas dinner. J

Tang Yuan (Sweet Glutinous dumplings) 汤圆

Yesterday 22^nd December was what we Chinese call 冬 至which is translated in Englih as Winter Solstice. On this day in Northern hemisphere is the shortest day and longest night but we over in the Southern hemisphere experience the longest day and the shortest night of the year instead. Chinese believe after today the day will get longer and longer and this generates"Yang qi" a.ka. Positive forces so it should be celebrated. Hence, to some Chinese especially those in the mainland China, celebration for this day is even more important than the Chinese New Year (冬至大过年). If you are keen to find out more on the history, I will leave it to the experts to do the explanation, here's the link.

Frankly I didn't understand the reason of celebration until I wrote this post. What in my memory since I was a small kid was on this day my mum would make Tang Yuan (glutinous dumplings) and asked us to eat. She said once we ate the Tang Yuan then we would get older by a year. I couldn't believe I did buy her saying when I was small and ate as many as I could so I could grow up faster. But I doubt I would want to eat any now if the saying is true! J

Tang Yuan (Sweet Glutinous dumplings)  汤圆

There are mainly two types of Tang Yuan one with filling and another without, which was the one I used to eat since I was small. Tang Yuan is not difficult to make at all, in fact it is the easiest Chinese dessert to make. Still, we got it wrong for the first time when I made this with hubby.

The first year when we were married, we did not go back to home town to celebrate with our parents. Hence, he suggested making Tang Yuan on our own as he is a Tang Yuan fan. At that time I had little knowledge about cooking. I wasn't sure what flour to use for the Tang Yuan and suggested to ask mother-in-law for advice, but JS said he knew how to make it. I still could recall we spent whole night kneading the dough, added coloring to the dough and kneaded into many nice colorful round balls, but when we boiled them, the rice balls could not float even after being boiled for a long time (cooked Tang Yuan would float). In the end we realized we had produced a whole pot of bouncy rice balls instead of sticky chewy Tang Yuan, but why?

Then we decided to give my mother-in-law a call to find out why. Only then we realized we had used the wrong flour to make Tang Yuan! We had used rice flour instead of glutinous flour! This is the biggest joke that I always tease him all the time. How bouncy the rice balls we had you might ask? If you run out of ping pong balls then you can try to make this as replacement J

Well, this time with Auntie Ah Lan around, we won't end up with bouncy rice balls, in fact we get to enjoy the real authentic Malaysian style Tang Yuan, nice round glutinous dumplings in sweet rock sugar soup. This recipe that I'm sharing is without filling, which is very basic and can be prepared anytime of the year not necessarily on winter solstice.

Actually to the Chinese, Tang Yuan with its round shape symbolizes reunion which is why it is also one of the main desserts served during Chinese New Year when all family members get together in a family reunion. Besides, it is also served on wedding day. The groom and bride customarily must feed each other Tang Yuan and they are not allowed to chew the dumplings, instead they are asked to shallow whole so the rice balls would remain intact to symbolize togetherness.

 For firmer and chewy texture of Tang Yuan, best knead the Tang Yuan in advance and left overnight to rest.

Making Tang Yuan is also a great bonding time, the kids especially love the idea of kneading the rice dough because kneading the glutinous rice dough is similar to play-doh, and you can see how Ming Ray enjoyed his Tang Yuan play-doh with his auntie.

Kuih Sago( Steamed Tapioca Pearls Cakes) 椰丝西米糕 - Featured in Group Recipes

Wanna a slice of gluten free sweet and chewy Nyonya kuih?

This is another blissfully easy and delicious Nyonya kuih recipe, Kuih Sago. Sago, also known as Tapioca Pearls, is made of tapioca. Tapioca Pearls is one of the common South East Asian dessert ingredients, widely used in Malay, Nyonya and Thai desserts.

This recipe was verbally taught by a Malaysian cashier whom I met at my regular Asian grocery store. It happened that one day she showed me the kuih which she made for her colleague as birthday treat and asked me what the proper name was for the kuih in Malaysia which she couldn't recall. I was of no help to her as I had no idea what the name for that kuih was. But since she said the main ingredient was sago, I guessed it must be Kuih Sago. She mentioned that the kuih was super easy to make, just "mix and steam", so it prompted me to give it a trial.

I made this last Saturday and brought over as dessert to our regular Penang families dinner gathering. I used green Pandan flavor sago. Alternatively you can use white sago added with some coloring.

These snowballs like of luscious gluten free kuih , can be a unique Christmas dessert recipe too.

Kuih Sago 椰丝西米糕 - Featured in Group Recipes 21/12/2010

Yum Hoi Mang-Pu (Thai Mussel Salad) 泰式青口沙拉 - Featured in Group Recipes

Spice up with this healthy fresh flavor with a snap of fingers!

"Yum" is a type of salad in Thai cuisine. Speaking of Yum, I would never forget this super hot and spicy Thai signature appetizer, which I had in Phucket, Thailand some years ago. To Malaysian standard, I'm considered highly tolerant with spicy food. However, the explosive taste of the yum talay (Seafood salad) we got from the street vendor had incredibly blew my head off; it was so spicy it made my eyes water, my nose run and my head sweat! Well, I guess this is the true Thai way of serving Yum, to feature the bold Thai flavors J

Only 3 main steps to prepare this no fuss starter, merely toss in all cooked seafood, seasoned with salty fish sauce, zested up with sour lime juice and topped with fresh herbs of coriander, mints, shallots, sliced onions, tomatoes and last but not least the main gem that spices up the whole dish, the bird eyes chilies. With all these ingredients mixed well , just dish and serves! :-)

There are many variations of Yum Talay, you can make any combination of seafood that you have on hands like poached squids, shrimps, scallops and other shellfish.

Yum Hoi Mang-Pu (Thai Mussel Salad) 泰式青口沙拉 - featured 17/12/2010

Even though Yum was generally served as starter but we made it into a sumptuous main dish for our dinner. For this recipe, I used mussels and squids.  As for the herbs, fresh from my garden to table J

Fresh coriander and mints from my garden

Stir Fry Water Spinach (Pak Bung Fai Daeng) 酱炒蕹菜 - Featured in Group Recipes

Flying Water spinach?

Water spinach a.k.a. Morning Glory is known as Kangkung in Malay. This vegetable is easily available in South East Asia (SEA) and is considered one of the cheapest vegetables as it thrives naturally with little care. I was surprised to find this vegetable here in Auckland. Recently, the price for this vegetable dropped drastically; I suppose the warm weather of summer is the main factor for the abundance supply of this veggie.

There are a few renowned street foods in SEA which feature this vegetable. Malay Cuisine has a dish called Sambal Belacan Kangkung (Chili Shrimp paste stir fried water spinach). As for Thai the signature dish for water spinach is Pak Bung Fai Daeng (Stir-Fried Red Fire Water Spinach), which is Thai's most popular way of stir frying the water spinach. I reckon the dish must be so ordinary and simple that inspires some of the Thai street vendors to come out with more entertaining idea in stir frying the dish in an acrobatic way by literally "flying" it in the process of serving the dish. You can check out this Flying Morning Glory in YouTube.

 Well, with the electric coil stove in my kitchen, I couldn't fire up my wok in red flame and the kitchen was too small for me to demonstrate the flying dish, yet it still tasted delectable nevertheless. J

Stir Fry Water Spinach (Pak Bung Fai Daeng) 酱炒蕹菜 - Featured for Dec 15th