Steamed Minced Meat and Egg

In need of a quick small filler dish? This is an easy way to get an extra dish in with almost no effort at all.
This is almost like the egg custard dish but with meat so it honestly doesn't look as smooth since the meat underneath will affect how the egg on top looks.

I normally cook this with pork, but it can be done with chicken as well.
If the meat is too lean, it will be dry and tough. So it's good to go with a medium fat meat which is why pork is so good to use.
If using chicken, I would only use dark meat.

You can make this any size you want. This is perfect for steaming in your rice cooker when you're cooking rice if your plate fits.

Steamed Minced Meat and Egg

Ingredients

• 300g Minced Pork/chicken
• 5 Eggs
• 5 Egg Shells of Water
• Soy Sauce
• Sugar

Directions

1. Mix the chicken with the soy sauce and sugar.
2. Pour the meat into the bottom of the steaming plate and flatten.
   
3. In a small bowl, mix together 5 eggs with 5 egg shells full of water so it's a 1 to 1 ratio. When I crack the egg, I save half and use that as my measuring cup and add 10 of those egg shell of water. Almost the same ratio as egg custard but a little less water because meat juice will flow out as you cook!
4. If you want the top to be smoother, run the egg through a sieve. Can't have bubbles if you want that very smooth surface. If you really don't care, just gently pour on top of your meat.
   
5. Wrap the dish with cling wrap.
6. Pop it on top of your steaming device and bring water to a boil. Lower the heat to a gentle boil for 10 to 15 mins depending on how big your plate is. If it's in the rice cooker it'll be a little bit more cooked then it needs to be but it's definitely the easier way to cook this dish.
   
7. And you're done. Feel free to garnish with chopped green onion and a little bit of fish soy sauce.

Chinese New Year - "Cakes"

New Year is full of traditional food. How the food sounds like makes it key to have at new years.
For example, seeds is important because it sounds like you're raking in money.

"Cakes" is an other important items to have at new years.
Now, when I say cake, I don't mine the fluffy cakes you normally buy for birthdays.
I'm talking about the type of food that you will eat at a restaurant for Yum Cha (some of you may call it Dim Sum).


Once again, this tradition stems from how the name of the cake sounds like.


The Chinese New Year Cake is called 年糕 (Nian Gao)

It's made of glutinous rice flour and sugar....

So what's in a name?
The name is suppose to imply being preposterous year after year. 
年 is year
糕 is cake but it sounds similar to the word high. 
So you want to be "higher" this year then you were last year and you want to keep on going "higher" every year.

3 typical "cakes" that are commonly sold during New Years and often given as gifts. They are New Year Cake, Taro Cake and my favourite Daikon (White Radish) cake. 

How to eat a 年糕: 
Don't just cut into it and eat it like you would a piece of cake.
Yes it's sweet but it's made of glutinous rice flour so it's sticky and can be very stiff when it's cold in the pan!
All 年糕 is made up of us, glutinous rice flour, rice flour, sugar, coconut milk and water. It's not a light cake.

Directions

1. First, cut your cake into square pieces. 
2. Do not go beyond a 1 cm thickness or else it might be a little too thick and too chewy.
3. Scramble an egg to dip the pieces of cake in.
4. Heat your pan to medium-low heat.
5. Dip the pieces of cake into the egg, coat all sides and put it onto the hot pan.
6. Medium-low heat is important because you want to be able to warm the piece of cake all the way to the middle without burning the egg coating it.
7. Once the piece is warmed up and your egg is nicely cooked, it's ready to eat :)

Best served warm so it's soft and chewy instead of hard and chewy.

(PS it's a bit of an acquired taste, so best to try it either at a restaurant so you don't have to waste a whole pan if you don't like it!)

Singapore Style Fried Turnip Cake (星州炒蘿蔔糕)

New years is time where I get a lot of 蘿蔔糕. My dad makes batches every year and I make sure I get a batch or 2.
As much as I love 蘿蔔糕, I would like to eat it in a different way then just pan frying it. (I don't do the steam option myself but some people like it)

One dish I really like eating is Singapore Style Fried Turnip Cake (星州炒蘿蔔糕)
It's awesome and can be a full meal, although it lacks the veggies you should always eat....

It's actually really easy to make and and great for lunch.

Singapore Style Fried Turnip Cake (星州炒蘿蔔糕)

This makes 1 plate Prep Time: 5 mins Cook Time: 10 mins

Ingredients

• Half a boneless Chicken Thigh Meat (cooked or uncooked will add to cooking time), can be replaced by pork if you like pork but I would not recommend Beef as it's a bit too chewy
• 4-6 "squares" of Turnip cakes 
• 1 Green Onion
• 1 Egg
• 1 TSP of Chili Garlic Sauce

Directions

1. Cut up your turnip cake into bite size pieces. I make mine into about 3/4 inch cubes.
2. Heat up a pan to medium heat and toss it in. Add the Chili Garlic Sauce
3. If your turnip cake is not pan fried yet and you like a crispy exterior, start cooking it first.
4. While your cake is slowly cooking, cut up the meat into bite size pieces.
5. If the meat is already cooked and just needs to be reheated, throw it in the cake that are still crisping up
6. If the meat is raw, plate the cake when it's cooked nice and crispy and then cook the meat.
7. Dice your Green onion
8. Scramble your egg and add it in.
9. Add in the green onion when the egg is almost done cooking.
10. Plate the dish when the egg is cooked

Very fast if your meat is already cooked or if your cakes are pre-pan fried :)

Tip: to get nice solid egg pieces, before you add in the egg, dig a whole in the middle of your pan, then pour the egg in there. Give is half a min to start firming up on the underside then mix in the other ingredients with the egg.

Quick and Easy Fried Rice with Sausage

This is a super easy to make fried rice. Usually done in 15 mins, about the time it takes to cook the sausage. I like to use sweet sausages for this particular recipe but honestly you can use any meat when you make fried rice. I just find sweet sausage to be very easy to use as it's full of flavour so there's less things you need to do when you need to cook something fast.

Trick to cooking good fried rice is using day old rice. After the rice has been cooked and been in the fridge for a day, it's at a good dry level that makes it perfect for fried rice.

Quick and Easy Fried Rice with Sausage

Makes about 7 bowls of rice Prep time: 10 mins cook time: 10 mins

Ingredients

• cooked rice - 3 rice cooker cups when uncooked rice
• 400g of Sausage (I use Chinese Red Sausage or Sweet Longaniza)
• 2-3 Green Onions
• 2 Eggs
• Soy Sauce
• 1 tsp minced garlic
• 1/2 tbsp oil

Directions

1. Start to heat up the pan
2. While the wok is heating, cut the sausage into bite size pieces.
3. The pan should be hot by the time you're done cutting, add the oil and the garlic to the wok. Then add the sausage you just cut up.
4. While the sausage is cooking, dice up the green onion
5. Stir the sausage around so it cooks evenly and scramble the eggs in a bowl.
6. When the sausage is done cooking, mix in the rice and stir around. The rice will change colour due to the sausage. Add a touch of Soy Sauce. I usually pour straight from the bottle and make a circle around the pan.
7. Once it's well mixed and the rice is all warmed up, mix in the green onion.
8. Make a hole in the middle and pour in the scrambled egg.
9. Let it cook a little bit before mixing the rice into egg

And you're done :)

Simple, fast and tasty.

Fish Paste and Egg "pancakes"

I love eating fish balls, squid balls, beef balls etc, but I was never very fond of eating fish paste by just cooking it as is.
Even though fish balls is made from the paste, when the manufacturing companies make the balls, they add more things into it to make it springy rather then soft.
So if we have fish paste lying around, I would cook it with something rather then eat it on it's own.

This "pancake" is a nice way to change the texture of the paste and adds flavour to it.

Ingredients
Half a tub of Fish Paste
3 Eggs
1/2 tsp to 1 tsp of white pepper powder (to taste)
1/8 tsp of salt



Directions
1. Use a fork and stir the fish paste to mix it up and break it loose
2. Scramble the eggs, add the white pepper and salt to it
3. Add the egg very very little at a time to the fish paste in it's container. Mix well after every addition.
You'll probably want to add about half an egg every time you add and mix or else it'll be very hard to mix.
If you find that it's not mixing very well because you poured too much egg, do a folding motion to help incorporate some of the egg and keep folding until you're at a point that you can stir to mix well.

4. Once all the Egg is incorporated, heat up your pan to medium heat.
I used my cast iron griddle and I was able to cook everything at once.
5. Oil the pan and pour the mixture like you're cooking pancakes onto the pan.
They should be able 3 bite sizes.
6. Cook them like you would pancakes, wait for 1 side to set (you can tell by the edge), then flip it over
7. They will expand when you cook, brown both sides nicely and you're done!
:)

Tip: I like using the container to mix as I find it easier, if you start with a full container and need to use a bowl, find one that is similar size to the container. If you use a big bowl it's actually harder to mix.

Cast Iron Skillet Baked Eggs

One of my favourite meals of the day is Brunch :)
I love breakfast food and making big breakfasts

One time for a school project, my group mate made an awesome brunch for us to eat while we were working.
One of the brunch items was baked eggs with asparagus, peppers and some other veggies.
She baked them in muffin pans so they were nice bite size treats.

They were so good I had to try making it myself and it turned out to be really simple to make!
Honestly, it is basically an omelette but you bake it instead so the ingredients in it is very flexible.

Since I was only cooking for myself, I decided to try mine in the small Cast Iron Skillet I had and it turns out very nicely every time (make sure your cast iron is well seasoned before you try this!!)

This particular one I made was for a full meal. There was a side of baked homemade frieds :)

Bacon
Green Onion
Mushrooms
Celery
2 eggs (you can probably do 1 for 1 person but it'll depend on your pan size and you'll want to add some milk)
Shredded Cheddar Cheese

Cut all your ingredients into smaller pieces and cook them.
Preheat small conventional oven to 350 degree F
~Alternatively you can cook on stove top at slow heat so you do not burn the bottom~
Whip your eggs and add a pinch of salt and pepper to the eggs.
Pour eggs into your skillet
Top with Cheese

Honestly when I make these, I use any breakfast type of ingredients I find in my fridge that I would put in an omelette.

If you want to use muffin pan because you're making several of them for multiple people, it's the same process except you pour the eggs into the pan and then drop in the meat/veggie mixture.
Don't forget the cheese! Even if you're only going to put in a little bit, it is the secret ingredient that makes it so yummy! :)

Have a good brunch