Cook the stress away!

Everyone has bad days for sure, those days when you're stressed at work, frustrated with friends, in a fight with someone, full of anger for some reasons. Try to deal with it by cooking! Okay, unless cooking frustrates you even more, then that's another story. You don't have to be good, you just have to cook! Cook away all the frustrations mixed with the stresses and eat them up. At one point, you'll forget everything and start cooking with love.

I cook. During bad days and good days. And here's what I got on one of the days. =P

Steamed Pomfret

What you need:
Pomfrets, Sliced Tomatoes, Sliced Mushrooms, Sliced ginger, Chilli Padi, Parsley, Soya sauce, Fish sauce

How to cook:

• Marinate & massage pomfrets with salt.
  
• Arrange in a container. Top it with sliced tomatoes, mushrooms, gingers & cut chilli padi.
• Spread evenly 2 spoons of fish sauce and 1-2 spoon of soya sauce
• Top it with parsley
• Steam for 5-6 minutes at medium-high heat in microwave-oven which can be used for steaming.
  

Sambal Goreng (Sambal prawns cooked with fried tofu & petai beans)

This was easy as my mom happened to bring us very delicious sambal with petai beans. All I need to do was just to buy shrimps, fried some cube tofu, added them to frying pan and tossed with salt & sugar.

Ingredients: Chicken fillets, Capsicums (green & red), tomatoes, mushrooms, garlic, onion, olive oil, pepper, salt, sugar, basil

Chicken cooked with Thai style

How to cook:

• Fry the garlic with olive oil over medium heat until fragrant, not brownish. Add onion and stir for 20 sec. Toss them up with tomatoes and capsicums.
  
• Now, add all the chicken fillets in until 70% cooked.
  
• Add 2 spoons of fish sauce, add salt, sugar and pepper. Continue cooking.
• Add basil, stir and cover it for a while.
  

Disclaimer: Recipes are my own inventions, I cook just for fun.

Quick Dinner -- Korean Ramyeon

Brother, sis and I just started calling ourselves "The Three Musketeers" this weekend because we spent almost the whole of it together, and of course gathering always involved food and everything fun about it. We're at Cheng's apartment and there's this random show on TV we're watching very mouth-wateringly (i know there's no such word) at, about Korean Ramyeon which was cooked in so many different ways. Just imagine, tthe noodle was used to make Pizza, Spring Rolls even a plate! Who thought of that? Very creative indeed!

Let's zoom in and talk about instant Korean Ramyeon which for sure, is one of the Korean daily favorites. I still recall how happy my Korean friend was when her mom sent her a box of instant Korean Ramyeon to Denmark and 5 of us celebrated it by cooking 6 packs of Ramyeon in one big saucepan, broke 6 eggs in and added some veggies. Really, it was fun. And that's not done yet, don't forget to eat the leftover soup with plain rice, that's how the Koreans do it.

So, our brilliant idea yesterday was to have a very simple Korean Ramyeon dinner.....

What we bought:

• Korean Ramyeon
  
• Prawns
  
• Squids
• Japanese Xiao Bai Cai
• Eggs
• Pepper
• A lot of Chilli Padi (and napkins of course)
  

How to cook:

Do I even have to tell you? =P

Turned out, this brand tasted really good ;)

Spicy Soup Ramyeon with seafood and some veggies added

It's delicious, hot and quick!

Home-made Watercress Soup

Watercress Soup

My mom used to cook at least 3 dishes for every of our meal. One of them had to be soup, any kinds of soups; spinach soup, fishball, chicken, beef, mutton, lotus pork ribs etc. Now, if you live in Spore and working, chances are, you take away your food or dine out every night (perhaps every meal to be exact =P) and somehow I don't really drink soups that often anymore nowadays unless I go to Chinese restaurants in the weekend.

I promised to cook soups at least once in a week when I first stayed with my siblings like a year back (i used to stay in NUS dormitory for 4 years). This promise is just to myself and of course has also been falling and failing apart =(. I am not a very discipline person to begin with, and that's just my biggest problem I suppose. =(

To cut the story short, last week when I saw watercress in the supermarket I decided to cook watercress soup for my siblings, which was a pretty good start.

Ingredients:

• Watercress -- I bought 2 packs for 3 big servings.
  
• Chicken wings
• Chinese wolfberries
• Salt
• Sugar
• Pepper
• Chicken Block (1/4 or 1/2 pc only)

How to cook:

Boil water

Wash 8 pcs of chicken wings.
Cook them in the boiled water and spoon away the oil at the water surface after chicken wings are almost cooked.

Wash watercress a few times.
Cook together with chicken wings.
Add Chinese Wolfberries (good for eyes and organs) and cover for at least 5-10 minutes
Open the cover, add salt, sugar, pepper (if necessary) and half or a quarter piece of chicken block. Stir it.
Taste the soup. Boil for as long as you want. Some like it crunchy, some like it soft.

Ham & Egg

Two things I should always have in my fridge: eggs and ham. Okay even though nowadays honestly, i dont stock up as much and as often as i used to anymore because well, i'm not supposed to eat eggs that much for cholesterol reason (I still can't believe how hard it was for my mom to beg me to eat eggs when i was a kid!) and secondly processed meat, I heard, is very unhealthy =P.

Let's see how easy it is to make this:

Ingredients:

• Eggs
• Ham
  
• Salt
• Frying oil/margarine
• Pepper

How to make it:

• Heat oil in frying pan for 30 seconds. Arrange the ham nicely.
• Break the eggs on top
• Cover it with pan cover for 30 secs
• Open it and take a pinch of salt and spread it
• Pepper it.
  
• Cover for 15 secs and done.

Olionized !!

My piece - Seafood Aglio Olio Pasta

Garlic is definitely a must!

• Spaghetti Pasta
• Garlic (chopped and a lot)
• Olive oil
• Seafood (clam meat/prawns/squids/mussels)
• Salt
• Chilli padi
• Capsicum
• Italian herbs
  
• Sugar (if desired and in small amount)

Just toss them!

Fyi, I've got praises for this dish! =)

Chap Jae [Stir Fried Korean Glass Noodle]

Introduced to the dish by a Korean friend of mine whose mom was some award winning chef in Korea, and who has made cooking as a hobby. She shared this recipe to me during our trip to Florence, Italy while chit chatting in the train. Well, yea, such a procrastinator I am! only tried it out a few days ago at a dinner potluck, which means almost two years later! Here's the recipe with a little bit of improvisation.

What I needed:

• Korean Glass Noodle (the difference is, it's thicker and gives more springy feel)
• Korean bean paste (i used Korean red hot pepper paste)
• Chopped garlic, small/red onion
  
• Red capsicum (improvised) - julienned
  
• Chilli padi (improvised) - cut small
  
• Vegetables: Big onion, Carrot - julienned, Bok Choy or any green veg suitable for noodle
  
• Mushrooms, thin-sliced
  
• Minced meat (i used beef)
• Olive oil
• Sesame oil
• Sesame seeds (i didn't use)
• Soy sauce
• Salt, sugar
  

How to cook:

• Boil water and cook the glass noodle for 2-3 minutes
  
• Heat up olive oil, stir in the garlic and small onion until fragrant
• Add the minced meat and cook til brown color. Stir in the mushrooms. Add bean/hot paste.
  
• Next, add in all vegetables i.e. capsicum, bok choy, carrot, big onion. Add soya sauce while stirring. Add sugar. Add salt if desired.
• Stir in the glass noodle, mix well. Add a little water and olive oil if it's too dry.
• Add sesame oil, stir well.
• Add sesame seeds and the cut chilli padi if desired.

Where to buy ingredients:

• Korean Glass noodle & Red pepper paste: Seoul Mart, Parkway Parade
• Other ingredients: NTUC FairPrice / Cold Storage

I received quite positive feedback on this dish recently. So, I hope you'll like it too.

Fun N' Easy: Home-Made Sushi

Soya Sauce & Wasabi from Asian mart in Odense Denmark

Home-made Sushi. They actually tasted pretty decent =P

The sushi here was made for a bunch of friends during my stay in Denmark. We were having potluck dinner and everyone supposedly brought a dish representing our culture. Since I was the only Asian there, they requested me to make them Sushi as they're very curious about this famous food. Don't be confused if the toppings are a little bit twisted because it's not easy to find all the things I wanted to use in Odense (a small city in Denmark).

What I needed:

• Makisu or Bamboo mat to roll sushi in
• Sushi rice (Sticky rice)
  
• Sushi vinegar (which contains sugar and salt)
  
• Toppings (I prepared crab meat, omelet, cucumber, mayo & thousand island)
• Nori or Seaweed Sheet
  
• Soya sauce and wasabi
• Sharp knife
  

How I made them:

• Wash a few times and cook the sushi rice
• Cool the cooked rice
• Mix the cooked rice with sushi vinegar. Taste it.
  
• Prepare toppings, slice the crab meat, omelet and cucumber, slice them thin and long.
  
• Open bamboo mat and place on the table
• Place the seaweed sheet on top of the bamboo mat
• Spread the rice thinly and evenly, leaving 2 cm top edge untouched
• Place a long thin strip of topping at about 2-3 cm from bottom rice edge
• Spread some mayo, thousand island and wasabi
• Slightly wet the 2 cm top edge, so that this edge can easily stick when rolling the sushi
  
• Roll from bottom to top.
• Warm the knife with warm water
• Cut sushi into pieces
• Dip into soya sauce before eating it (depends on preferences)
  

Don't you agree that everytime you cook, you actually cook all your stresses away?