Monday, September 08, 2008

Rice Wrapper with Nori and Stir-fried Jicama


Experiment with wrapping my stir-fry jicama (Mung Kuan Char) with Vietnamese rice roll and nori sheet.


Resulted a delicious wrapped rice rolls! I served this kind of rice roll with Thai sweet chili sauce. What a good match and we couldn't get enough of this rice rolls. The nori sheet acts as a barrier so that the rice roll won't be too wet from the stir-fry jicama filling. In addition to that, it also acts as a bonus favor to the rice roll. Got my thumb up!

This is definitely a great appertizer to serve in a party since it is served as a cold wraps and great eaten cold.

Click here for my estimated "mung kuan char" recipe.

Sunday, September 07, 2008

Lettuce Cups


Mung Kuan Char (Stir-fry Jicama) on lettuce = Lettuce Wrap Malaysian Chinese way!


This is what I enjoyed tremendously during Chinese New Year Eve reunion dinner. Top with some homemade sweet and sour chili and I'm in heaven! The crunchiness and juices from the jicama pair with the fresh and crunchy lettuce (I used iceberg lettuce here), how can it not be delicious? Of course during Chinese New Year, I top mine with slices of baked chicken too, oh man, I'm salivating just thinking about it.



I used minced shrimps, carrot, Chinese mushroom, jicama and garlic for this stir-fry jicama (mung kuan char).
Seasoned with salt, sugar and chicken granules.

Friday, September 05, 2008

Black Pepper Pork



Another one of my easy home cook dishes: Black pepper pork with onion and red bell pepper.

Ingredients:

1 boneless pork chop, sliced thinly
1/2 red bell pepper, sliced thinly

1/2 yellow onion, sliced thinly

2 tsp. LKK black pepper sauce

1/2 tsp. black soy sauce

1/2 tsp. sugar

A little water


Method:

1. First, marinate the pork with a little salt, chinese cooking wine, white pepper and cornstarch.

2. Heat up wok with oil. When smoking, add in pork slices, stir-fry until pork is no longer pink. Add in onion and bell pepper. Stir-fry for 2 mins. Add in sauces and sugar and a little water. Stir to blend well and serve hot.

Note:
Of course you can substitute red bell pepper with other colors bell pepper. I like red because it's sweeter.


I am sharing this dish with Culinarty's Original Recipe blog event. Check it out every month on the week of 15th for the round up.

Thursday, September 04, 2008

Beautiful Site Award



Oh wow, I was given this Beautiful Site Award by Noob Cook. I would love to say thank you Noobcook for awarding me this. Now I would love to pass it to the fellow blogging friends below:

My Kitchen Snippets
Kedai Hamburg
More than Words
Rainbows
Beachlover's Kitchen

Wednesday, September 03, 2008

Barley Drink


While blog visiting, noobcook's Lemon Barley Drink post reminded me to make some barley drink for my family. She made her version of barley drink and photographed it beautifully with the added lemon slice. Usually barley drink is fairly easy to make, you can make one with just water, barley and rock sugar. However since I have the sweet dates and sweet winter melons, I decided to add it into my barley drink.


I used slow cooker to make this. I added all the ingredients with the amount of water I like and turned it on High. Should be ready in 4-6 hours. I used 2 Chinese sweet dried dates, about 1 cup dried sweet winter melons, 3/4 cup barley and 3 quarts water. At 5 hours, before turning off the electric, I added yellow rock sugar to taste. If too sweet, add more water until it reaches your desired sweetness. Actually the resulted barley drink is quite sweet, so only little bit of rock sugar is required.

Monday, September 01, 2008

Stir-fried Zucchini with Minced Shrimps/Prawns



Is stir-fry zucchini a popular dish in China? As I only had this dish at my Chinese friends house. At first I was not used to it but I grow to like them cooked in this way. They usually cook it plain but I added minced shrimps into my variation. I tried to recreate this dish at home as in slicing the zucchini in the similar way. Slicing it thinly really makes it nicer to eat.



This dish is easy as well, only three main ingredients needed, minced shrimps (made from 6 jumbo shrimps), 2 zucchinis and 2 cloves of garlic, chopped. As for the sauces for this, I used LKK hot bean paste, dash of salt and chicken stock granules (optional). This dish would be as good without the hot bean paste too, keep it simple. My stir-fry dishes tend to be fairly easy, only the slicing and preparing part took a while.

Here, I presented you with a new dish to cook for your family (if you never have zucchini cook in this way before) and I hope you enjoy this dish just like we did.