Essential Cooking Tips

Hi guys, it is with a heavy heart that I have to come to the following decision: I have to stop all the cooking from today onwards - well, at least for the next few months. And this is because my fingers are blistering badly! It's not that I enjoyed the painful itches and the nightly bandaging ritual (ouch!) but really, cooking for my loved ones brings me so much blissfulness. But still... long sigh...

For those who know, I just blogged about my signature dish in my previous post and I think that it represents a great milestone in my culinary journey. On a military ranking scale, it felt like I've just passed my BMT [Basic Military Training - with all the sweat and pain] and has turned from a recruit to a corporal or a 3rd Sergeant. Yap, it literally felt like that :). And with that, I think it is now a good time to draw up a beautiful line under my culinary chapter with this post on cooking tips that I've picked up over the past three years.

Don't worry though, I won't disappear yet. This just means that I am going to divert and then focus all my energy onto the other topics and continue to grind out useful notes and lists. So stay tuned :)

Before I go on, let me say a soft goodbye to my kitchen comrades.

Dear fellow soldiers, thank you all for your heroic contribution in all the kitchen wars that we have fought together. Your service is greatly appreciated. You are all great men condiments! A little farewell for now. But we shall unite again. One day!

Essential Cooking Tips

1. If there is not enough noodles to make a meal, add in bee hoon (soaked). Especially for laksa, mee goreng, hokkien mee, char kway teow, etc. 

2. Add 1 tsp sugar to your dish while cooking if it's too saltly. You can also add sweetened water of any kind, e.g. milk or syrup, if you like. Yes, basically, you flatten out saltiness with sweetness.

3. Add milk powder into your curry, laksa or other spicy dishes if you find them too spicy. (Dissolve about 1 heap Tbsp milk powder with some warm water before adding in). Yes again, you flatten out spiciness/hotness with sweetness. 

4. Actually, you can also even out sourness with sweetness and also the other way round - even out sweetness with sourness. E.g. you can add lemon/lime juice to drinks/dishes that are too sweet or you can add sugar to drinks/dishes that are too sour.

5. Do not cook leafly vegetables for more than 4 minutes in high heat. This will ensure vegetables remain crunchy and that its nutrients are retained. Soggy and yellowish vegetables are signs of overcooking and have not much nutrients left. Basically, you can cook vegetables within 4 minutes in these 3 easy steps:

• 1st minute: Put vegetable into heated oil on medium-high heat and stir to mix well. You can fry onion, garlic or ginger with the oil first.

• 2-3 minutes: Add a little water, if you like, and cover the wok completely. This will bring out the sweetness of the vegetables, esp. Kailan. [Note: if cooking softer vegetables like spinach, reduce wok covering time or just fry till vegetables turn dark green without covering the wok.]

• Final 1 minute: Remove wok cover, add in seasoning (e.g. oyster sauce, salt, sugar) and stir fry quickly and dish out.

6. When cooking shallots and garlic together, fry the shallots for about half a minute first before putting in garlic. This is because garlic cooks faster and is therefore easier to get charred.

7. For many chinese dishes, the first thing to do is to fry shallot, onion, garlic or ginger in the oil. Basically, this is to season the oil and make it tasty. After seasoning the oil, you should ensure that it coats the ingredients evenly.

8. If recipe calls for fish sauce, you can replace it with soya sauce or just use salt.

9. If your dish is tasteless, and it's troublesome to cook again, mix in a little soya sauce and sesame oil.

10. Use only chinese honey, or chinese wine/vinegar in chinese dishes for it to taste 'right'.

11.. Add in 1 tsp of cornstarch dissolved well with 1 Tbsp of cool water and add into your dishes while cooking. This will result in a thickened sauce which will better stick onto the food thus, making the dish tastier.

12. Cook red or green bean soup in pressure cooker or rice cooker for a softer bite. Traditional cooking in pot takes too long. Add orange zest (thinly scrape the orange skin avoiding the white bitter part!) to red bean soup and pandan leaves to both red and green bean soup. Some people like to add sago for the extra bite.

13. When cooking chinese desserts, use only rock sugar for an authentic taste. E.g. Red/green bean soup, pearl barley drink and chrysanthemum tea. Basically, red bean soup is heaty; but green bean soup, barley and chrysanthemum drink is cooling and is thus suitable to consume in hot weather. Sometimes, I add in sweetened melon strips (dong gua) and lessen the amount of rock sugar used when cooking pearl barley drink.

14. Evenness is very important when cooking chinese food. Therefore, all ingredients should be 'loosen up' before cooking them. Example, overnight fridged white rice, noodles and beehoon should be well separated (not stuck together) before you begin your cooking. But, you can ignore this tip if you have the skills of a typical chinese chef who has no problem achieving 'even' cooking by sending food flying above the wok and then swishing them in circles on the wok! 

Pineapple Fried Rice (My Signature Dish!)

This Thai dish has now become one of my family's perennial favourites. We will have it for dinner just about every other week. At least, whenever I serve this, my hubby will go "wahhh" and my son did not say "it's not nice". So, this is now officially my signature dish, as my hubby dubbed so. 

The golden fried rice - flavoursome, aromatic and delicious!

I never thought that one day I'll have my own 'signature dish', but more than 3 years down my culinary journey, it happened. And I am greatly humbled, although it's nothing like a remarkable accomplishment, but still... Today, I have a roof over my head and food in the kitchen for all those cooking experiments... I mean, there are people elsewhere who are starving and with only a few dollars to their name and I know exactly how that feels.... so how can I not be grateful for all the things that I have now? 

Pardon me, while I bathe in my reflective thoughts. 

Anyway, on a lighter note, the best part about this dish is, it's one of the easiest dish to churn out, in terms of ingredients used, preparation and cooking method. You just have to cut all the ingredients that you have in your fridge into bite sizes, cook all of them in one pan and serve immediately with toppings. It's actually a perfect quick-and-easy, 'clear-fridge', one-dish meal.

So, this is almost like a cooking-day off for the mummy especially when her hands are blistering from all the house chores! 

As easy as it sounds, the end product will not disappoint. In three words, this dish is flavoursome, aromatic and delicious! [delicious = aroi mak mak in Thai]

Recipe

Serves 2. Adapted from here with my own changes.

2 Tbsp oil (use canola/sunflower oil for a healthier version)

2 tsp minced shallot

2 tsp minced garlic

Rice, chilled overnight (cooked from 1 cup raw rice)

1 or 2 beaten eggs

Meat/protein that you have, 100-150g in total, all cut into bite size 

Vegetables, cut into bite size, about 2-3 cups in total, more, if you love veggies

Roasted cashew nuts and dried raisins/cranberries - just a handful, this is optional

100g pineapple cubes (I used canned pineapples)

Pork/chicken floss 2-3 Tbsp for each person

Chopped spring onion, 1 Tbsp for each person or as much as you can handle! (It's filled with vitamin A and C)

For the sauce (mix all well in a cup)

1 tsp Turmeric powder

1 tsp Fish sauce

2 tsp Oyster sauce 

1 Tbsp Butter

1 Tbsp Pineapple juice (I used the syrup that comes with the canned pineapples)

1 Tbsp Concentrated liquid soup base (or replace with 1 tsp soup base in powder form)

1. In a deep pan on medium fire, scramble the beaten eggs in some heated oil. Set aside.

2. In the same pan, heat remaining oil and fry shallot and garlic till fragrant.

3. Next, fry the meats till almost cooked and then fry the vegetables follow by the pineapples.

4. Add in the rice and mix well. Then pour in the sauce and mix well. Add in nuts and dried fruits, if using. 

5. Finally, mix in the scrambled eggs and dish out onto 2 serving plates. Sprinkle dish with pork/chicken floss and spring onion and serve!

*NOTE*: Lightly wash away the sweet syrup if using canned pineapples or it will be too sweet. Loosen up the chilled rice with fork before you start cooking to prevent them from sticking together - doing this makes cooking easier. Examples of meat/protein can include: marinated chicken cubes, prawn, crabmeat, luncheon meat and/or tofu. Examples of vegetables can include: caixin, spinach, frozen mixed vegetables, onion, cucumber, bell peppers, chilli and even button/shiitake mushrooms.