Christine's Recipes Printable Version: Vegetables

Showing posts with label Vegetables. Show all posts

Baked Eggplant with Miso Sauce

Prep time: 10 mins
Cook time: 40 mins
Yield: 2 to 3 serves

Ingredients:

1 large eggplant (aubergine), about 375 gm
oil, to taste
sea salt, to taste
sesame seeds, roasted for garnish
chopped spring onion, for garnish

Sauce:

100 ml mirin
1½ Tbsp white miso paste
1 Tbsp sugar
1 Tbsp Japanese soy sauce
2 tsp Japanese cooking wine

Method:

Preheat oven to 180C / 356F.
Rinse the eggplant. Cut it in half lengthwise. Score the flesh deeply, yet not cut through to the skin, with the tip of a sharp knife in a cross-hatch pattern (as shown in picture above). Spray the cut side or brush with oil and season with salt.
Transfer the eggplant to a lined baking tray. Cover with a foil and bake in the preheated oven for about 40 minutes, until the eggplant is softened.
In the meantime, combine all the ingredients of sauce in a small sauce pan. Cook over medium heat and stir occasionally. When it starts to boil and the sugar is completely dissolved. Remove from the heat.
Remove the eggplant from the oven. Discard the excess water. Drizzle the sauce over the top. Sprinkle sesame seeds and spring onion for garnish. Serve immediately.

Notes：

Eggplant can soak up a lot of oil. If using oil spray, you can control the amount of fat used without making the dish too heavy.
Mirin is an essential condiment used in Japanese cuisine, available at Asian grocers.
When preparing the sauce, you can use a large spoon to press the miso paste and help it dissolve thoroughly.
It’s better not to over cook the miso paste, or else you’ll lose much of its nutrition.
When the sauce starts to boil, remove the pan from the heat as quickly as possible.
The eggplant I used was quite large and thick. This recipe also works for small narrow ones. The baking time needs to be shortened accordingly.

Steamed Vegetable Dumplings (五彩蔬菜蒸餃)

You might’ve noticed that my family and I are not vegan eaters. But I do love having many different vegetables served on table, sometimes enjoy a no-meat day. These dumplings have got several vegetables in five different colours for fillings, and can be a perfect light lunch, or snacks for tea time.

Steamed Vegetable Dumplings (Printable recipe)
By Christine's Recipes
Prep time: 40 mins
Cook time: 20 mins
Yield: 2 to 3 serves

Pastry Ingredients:

300 gm plain flour
150 ml hot water, 80C/175F
60 ml water, at room temperature

Filling ingredients:

1 to 2 shiitake mushrooms
45 gm corn kernels
25 gm carrot, diced
50 gm chinese chives, finely chopped
34 gm vermicelli/cellophane noodles, soaked, softened and sectioned
3 water chestnuts, about 56 gm, skinned and diced
45 gm spicy tofu (picture shown above), diced
1/2 tsp minced ginger

Seasonings:

1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp chicken bouillon powder
2 Tbsp water
sesame oil, to taste

Method:

Sift flour into a large mixing bowl. Drizzle the hot water evenly into the flour in a circular motion. Use a spatula or chopsticks to quickly mix well, to create little flour crumbs.
Add room-temperature water in three batches and knead into a smooth dough. Place in a greased bowl, covered with a plastic film. Let it rest for 30 minutes.
To make the fillings: Heat oil in a wok or frying pan. Saute ginger over medium-high heat. Add mushrooms, carrot, dried tofu, corn kernels and chives. Stir fry until aromatic. Add vermicelli and water chestnuts. Stir in the seasonings. Set aside. Let cool down.
Roll out the dough into a long tube shape. Cut into 14 to 16 equal portions. Roll each portion into a small disc with a rolling pin, each about 8cm in size. Wrap a heaped tablespoon of filling and pinch the edge. Repeat this step with the remaining pastry and fillings.
Steam the dumplings in a wok or a steamer over high heat, for about 15 minutes, or until cooked through. Serve immediately.

Notes:

The chicken bouillon powder can be replaced with shiitake mushroom powder for vegan eaters, which is available at Asian stores.
The leftover dumplings can be kept in a covered container in fridge up for 3 to 4 days. Frozen can be kept for a month.
Spicy tofu is also available at Asian stores, often placed in chilling section.
The texture of the dumpling skin is made from hot water and flour, produced a soft and springy feel. You might like to refer this video of how to wrap a dumpling. The pastry is very stretchy and tender, thus wrapping the diced fillings inside is quite a challenge for a beginner. It’s nothing wrong if seal tightly without pinching the edge at all. You'll make some beautiful rustic dumplings. Just make sure no fillings would leak out.

Baked Sweet Potato Chips

Ever tried baked sweet potato chips? Do give it a go if you like this delicious vegetable or want your kids to have a healthy alternative to chips. To me and my daughter, it’s absolutely a tasty snack or side dish. When I started to take photos of these freshly baked sweet potatoes chips, my daughter grabbed one from behind. Pretty understand it’s quite a torture for her to wait until I finished all shootings as usual. So this time, I just took one shot, off I went on with my other cooking, then let her have as many chips as she wanted.

Baked Sweet Potato Chips (Printable recipe)

By Christine's Recipes
Prep time: 10 mins
Cook time: 30 mins
Yield: 2 to 3 serves

Ingredients:

360 gm gold sweet potato
1 Tbsp raw sugar
1/4 tsp ginger powder
1/4 tsp ground paprika
1/4 tsp sea salt
1 Tbsp vegetable oil

Method:

Place a baking tray on the middle rack of oven. Preheat the oven at 220C/428F.
Peel the sweet potato, or keep the skin if you like. Cut into strips, about 2 to 2½cm in thickness. Transfer into a large bowl. Add sugar, ginger powder, paprika, salt and oil. Mix well and coat the sweet potato evenly.
Remove the preheated tray from the oven. Quickly arrange the sweet potato onto it. Put it back into the oven and bake for about 30 minutes. After the first 15 minutes, take the tray out and turn the sweet potato to the other side. Continue to bake until cooked through and evenly brown.

Notes：

I didn’t rinse the sweet potato. If you’d like to rinse the sweet potato, make sure to wait until it dries completely before moving onto cooking. Otherwise, the sweet potato chips would become mushy.
Pre-heating the empty baking tray will help the surface of sweet potato chips turn brown and crispy.
The raw sugar will help add a caramelized flavour to the sweet potato after baking. You might skip it if you want.
Ground paprika is not hot after all, just help enrich the taste of the sweet potato.
The ginger powder goes so well with the sweet potato. You might adjust the amount to your liking.

Stir-fried Gai Lan with Fish Cake & Lap Cheong

Chinese broccoli (aka, Gai lan) is widely used in Chinese cuisine, especially Cantonese dishes. Its name in Chinese, (芥蘭 Gai lan) literally means "mustard orchid", and belongs to the same plant family as broccoli and kale. It's high in beta-carotene, and contains folate, vitamin E, iron and calcium.

The most popular way of cooking gai lan is stir-fried with ginger or garlic, or just boiled with water, then served with oyster sauce. Their thick stems are edible, but take longer time to be cooked as compared with their dark green leaves. Sometimes, you might find it’s got a bit bitter in taste. My mum used to add a hint of sugar to balance their mild bitterness and bring out the best of this lovely vegetable. If you’re fed up with the usual way of blanching gai lan or stir-fried it with garlic, here’s my mum’s favourite cooking way. She liked to stir fry it with fish cake or/and Lap Cheong (臘腸 Chinese sausage). This dish is tasty, full of flavours, that the gai lan turns out to be the most enjoyable part, as it absorbs the oil of lap cheong and natural sweetness of fish. My kid likes this vegetable the most when it’s cooked in this way.

Stir-fried Gai Lan with Fish Cake & Lap Cheong (Printable recipe)

By Christine's Recipes
Prep time: 25 mins
Cook time: 15 mins
Yield: serves 3 to 4

Ingredients:

200 gm Gai Lan (Chinese broccoli)
200 gm white fish meat (e.g. Mackeral)
4 to 5 shiitake mushrooms, soaked until soft, diced
1 lap cheong
scallion, to taste
3 to 4 slices ginger
2 tsp Shaoxing wine
salt, to taste
sugar, to taste
4 Tbsp chicken stock

Marinade:

1 tsp light soy sauce
1/2 tsp sugar
1 tsp cornflour
pepper, to taste

Thickening:

2 tsp cornflour
2 Tbsp water

Method:

Rinse and wipe dry gai lan. Cut into 1½ to 2 inches long sections. Separate stems and leaves. Set aside.
Blanch lap cheong in boiling water and remove grease and impurities outside if any. Cut into two halves. Dice one half and slice another half.
Chunk fish meat and place into a food processor. Pulse until smooth. Transfer into a large bowl. Add shiitake mushrooms, diced lap cheong, scallion and marinade. Use chopsticks to blend towards only one direction, either clockwise or anti-clockwise until elastic, about 10 to 15 minutes.
Heat oil in a frying pan. Place fish paste and lightly press to flatten. Cook over medium-low heat until both sides are golden brown. Remove from pan, let cool a bit. Cut into smaller pieces. Set aside.
Add oil in the pan, sauté ginger until fragrant. Toss in the stems of gai lan. Increase heat, and stir fry until they soften. Add leaves, quickly stir fry. Sprinkle wine, pour in chicken stock. Season with salt and sugar. Toss back fish cake and lap cheong slices. Add thickening, cook to preferred consistency. Served hot with steamed rice.

Stir Fried Sugar Snap Peas with chicken

Peas are commonly used in Chinese stir fry. It’s not only because they have green fresh colour, but also they add more texture, and make the whole dish more enjoyable to eat. Sugar snap peas (aka sugar peas or snap peas) look similar to but actually differ from snow peas. They have round pods as opposed to the flat shape of snow peas. We’re not quite into eating them raw for their grassy taste. Stir frying sugar peas briefly over medium-high heat will bring up their natural sweetness, while their crunchy texture can still be maintained perfectly. This Stir Fried Sugar Snap Peas with chicken has a lot to offer in texture, crunchy sugar peas, with smooth cloud ears and crisp baby corns. The authentic Asian taste of this dish will surely win the hearts of those who like healthy, quick Chinese stir fry.

Stir Fried Sugar Snap Peas with chicken (Printable recipe)

By Christine's Recipes
Prep time: 20 mins
Cook time: 10 mins
Yield: serves 3 to 4

Ingredients:

170 gm sugar snap peas
150 gm chicken breast
½ carrot, sliced
6 baby corns, fresh or canned, halved if too long
5 to 6 cloud ears
2 tsp Shaoxing wine
1 tsp minced garlic
3 Tbsp chicken stock

Seasonings:

1½ tsp light soy sauce
½ tsp corn flour
½ tsp sugar
pepper, to taste

Method:

Soak cloud ears until softened. Blanch in boiling water for 2 to 3 minutes. Trim the roots. Cut into smaller pieces. Set aside.
Julienne chicken and mix with marinade. Set aside.
Remove the tissue running along both sides of the peas, from tail to top. Rinse and blanch in salted water for about 2 to 3 minutes, over high heat. Immediately soak in cold water until cold to touch. Drain well.
Heat oil in a wok or deep frying pan over medium-high heat. Add chicken and cook until its colour turns white. Set asid.
Use the same wok. Add more oil. Saute garlic until fragrant. Add carrots, baby corns and stir fry. Toss back peas. Sprinkle wine, pour in stock. Season with salt. Add cloud ears and cook until sauce dries up a bit. Add chicken and stir quickly. Pour in thickening and cook to preferred consistency. Serve hot.

Stir Fried Sugar Snap Peas with chicken02

Lasagna (Beef and Eggplant)

Before moving to Australia, my parents always said to me that the moon was bigger overseas. It seems that they are right. The moon looks brighter and larger due to no high-rise buildings around blocking the view. I found the eggplants here are very big as well. The one I made lasagna was nearly 1 kg. It’s a giant eggplant indeed. My daughter is a big fan of eggplants, big or small ones are on the top list of her favourite vegetables. This lasagna was made the other day to ease her cravings. She nearly finished one whole tray by herself. I guess she was very pleased and satisfied.

I used fresh lasagna sheets made by my pasta machine. To make fresh lasagna sheets by scratch is much easier than I thought, just took a bit longer time to get them ready. No need to cook them in water in advance. What I needed was to roll them in the right size, placed in the baking tray with sauce, then that’s it. If you’d like to try this recipe and are too busy to make lasagna sheets from scratch, you might substitute the dried ones bought from supermarkets. I tried San Remo’s Instant Lasagna sheets, needless to pre-cook, the end results were good. Thus, I keep a packet of it in my pantry to back up for a lazy day.

You might’ve noticed that I used soy sauce to marinate the beef, that’s quite a deviant way of cooking an Italian dish. In response to the trend of making crossed-over, fusion cuisine in Hong Kong, I made a little tweak in preparing the beef. The soy sauce acts like an umami enhancer, bringing up the sauce to another tasty level.

Beef and Eggplant Lasagna (Printable recipe)
By Christine's Recipes
Prep time: 30 minutes
Cook time: 55 minutes
Yield: serves 5 to 6

Ingredients:

3 lasagna sheets (fresh homemade or dried, bought from supermarkets)
1, about 900 gm large eggplant (or 2 to 3 small)
620 gm beef mince
1 onion, diced
1 tsp minced garlic
2 cans Italian diced tomatoes, each 400 gm
1 Tbsp ketchup
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
ground nutmeg, to taste, optional
1/2 cup basil leaves, finely chopped
Mozzarella cheese, to taste, grated
raw sugar, to taste
salt, to taste
pepper, to taste

Marinade:

1 Tbsp light soy sauce
1/2 tsp sugar
2 tsp corn flour
1 egg
pepper, to taste

Thickening:

2 tsp corn flour
2 Tbsp water

Method:

Mix the beef with the marinade. Set aside. Preheat oven to 180C/356F.
Heat oil in frying pan. Add onion and sauté over medium-high heat until translucent. Add the garlic and cook until fragrant.
Add beef and cook until browned, stirring and mashing with a wooden spoon to separate any lumps.
Pour in the two cans of diced tomatoes with juice. Stir in ketchup, Worcestershire sauce. Sprinkle ground nutmeg if desired. Bring it to a boil. Reduce heat to simmer until the sauce thickens, about 15 minutes, with occasional stirring. Season with sugar, salt and pepper. Remember to taste by yourself, adjust seasonings until satisfied. Add the thickening and cook to preferred consistency. Turn off the heat, stir in the basil leaves. Set aside.
While cooking the sauce, rinse the eggplant and wipe dry with paper towels. Slice into about 1cm thickness. Brush oil and season with salt on both sides. Bake in the preheated oven, for about 10 minutes. Turn to another side, and bake for another 10 minutes. Set aside.
Line eggplant slices on the bottom of two baking trays. Spoon about 1/6 of the beef sauce over the eggplant, topped with a lasagna sheet. Repeat layers for both trays, ending up with three layers each. Top with remaining sauce and cheese.
Bake in the preheated 180C/356F oven, for about 20 minutes. Increase heat to 200C/395F, bake for another 8 to 10 minutes, or until cheese is golden. Serve hot.

Notes:

Eggplants go very well with beef. You can adjust the amount of the eggplant if desired.
You might like to turn this dish into a vegan one, just skip the beef. Or add more favourite vegetables if you like. If only vegetables are used, the sauce still tastes wonderful with them.
While baking for the last 10 minutes, don’t leave the lasagna unattended. Watch over the cheese on top as it easily gets burned.
If there’s any leftover, it can be kept for a few days in fridge, three weeks in a freezer.

Other delicious lasagna recipes:

Lasagna from Simply Recipes
Lasagna Tart Recipe from 101 Cookbooks
Gluten-Free Roasted Vegetable Lasagna Recipe from Gluten-Free Recipes
Grilled Zucchini "Lasagna" with Italian Sausage, Tomato, and Basil Sauce from kalyn's ktchen

Stir Fried Bean Sprouts, Carrots & Wood Ear Fungus (Post Chinese New Year)

Stir Fried Bean Sprouts, Carrots & Wood Ear Fungus01

Chinese New Year is a good cause for having plenty of meats and luxury dishes. We had enough for last week's CNY celebration. It’s a time to get back with more vegan dishes to balance our digestive system, even though we’re not vegan eaters. I’m glad that the meat-lover in the family didn’t complain when I served this stir fried dish, 炒三絲 (literally means stir fried three shredded ingredients – vegetables often used). You can easily find this dish from any Chinese restaurants. Different restaurants might offer different combinations of vegetables though. Some might even add a kind of meat into their own version. So, feel free to tweak the recipe here, pick any kinds of vegetables to your liking. This dish is simple, inexpensive, with high fiber and very refreshing.

As for my version, there are some eye-catching black strips mixing with the white bean sprouts and red carrots. They are cut from a very special ingredient, often used in Chinese cooking, called wood ear – a kind of black fungus. Many people overlook its nutritional value because wood ear hasn’t got an attractive looking, sold at a cheap price, and in black. Actually, wood ear has more protein, iron and vitamins than white fungus. Due to their tasteless flesh, it’s seldom cooked or eaten on its own. If they are cooked with meats or stir fried with other vegetables, they’d absorb all the flavours and tastes in sauce, then become a highlight in that dish, giving you an amazingly surprise.

Stir Fried Bean Sprouts, Carrots & Wood Ear Fungus (Printable recipe)

Ingredients:

200 gm bean sprouts, trimmed
½ carrots, shredded
6 dried wood ear fungus, available at Asian stores
4 Tbsp chicken stock
shredded ginger, to taste
salt, to taste

Wood Ears

Seasonings:

1 tsp light soy sauce
½ tsp cornflour
1 Tbsp water
1 Tbsp oyster sauce
½ tsp sugar
a dash sesame oil
a pinch pepper

Method:

Trim off the heads and tails of bean sprouts. (You might like to skip this step if you run out of time. The whole bean sprout is edible. Trimming is just for making the dish more good looking.) Soak the wood ears in water until softened. Rinse off and remove any dirts. Blanch in boiling water for 2 minutes. Drain well and cut into thin strips.
Heat oil in a wok. Add shredded ginger and sauté until fragrant. Toss in the carrot and cook until softened. Add the bean sprouts and wood ears. Add chicken stock and continue to cook for a while. Season with salt. Pour in the seasonings. Continue to cook until the sauce dries up a bit. The vegetables should retain a bit crunchy in texture, so don’t overcook. Dish up. Serve hot.

Stir Fried Bean Sprouts, Carrots & Wood Ear Fungus02

Luke Nguyen's Crisp Tofu in Tomato Pepper Sauce

It seems that I was born with an interest in having fried tofu with tomato, yet only realized this not long ago.

Last week, as usual I watched Luke Nguyen’s Vietnam Season 2 on SBS. A side note, Luke Nguyen’s latest released cookbook "The Songs of Sapa" was crowned amongst one of the winners of 2010 Australian Food Media Awards. In the minute I finished watching the show, that he cooked the Crisp tofu in tomato-pepper sauce on a hill top in Vietnam, my urge inside to try his dish was immediately confirmed by my daughter’s suggestion, “Would you cook this, mum? It looks tasty.” This plain, simple question uttered from a meat lover said it all. Without a second thought, I jumped on the bandwagon. The two main ingredients, tofu and tomato are always sitting in my fridge, even when the nearby supermarkets were running short of food supplies during the floods hit our state. Everything is ready and this dish is simple and easy to prepare. The end result was satisfied, fresh with lots of flavour. The crisp tofu was so good in the balanced savoury, sour and sweet sauce.

Recipe from Crisp tofu cooked in tomato-pepper sauce by Luke Nguyen (Printable recipe)

Ingredients

200ml (7 fl oz) vegetable oil
500g (1 lb 2 oz) silken tofu, drained and cut into 3cm (11/4 inch) cubes
1 tbsp minced garlic
1 tbsp minced red Asian shallots
1 birdseye chilli, finely sliced
4 ripe tomatoes, roughly chopped
1/2 tsp sea salt
2 tsp sugar
2 tbsp fish sauce
3 spring onions (scallions), cut into 5cm (2 inch) lengths
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
2 coriander (cilantro) sprigs, to garnish (I didn't use.)

Method:

Pour the oil into a wok and heat to 180°C (350°F), or until a cube of bread dropped into the oil browns in 15 seconds.
Add the tofu, cooking it in two batches to ensure the oil stays hot, and deep-fry until crisp. Remove the tofu with a slotted spoon and transfer to kitchen paper to drain.
Transfer the deep-frying oil into a deep bowl, leaving about 1 tablespoon of oil in the wok.
Add the garlic, Asian shallots and chilli to the wok, and stir-fry for 1 minute or until fragrant.
Add the tomatoes, salt, sugar and fish sauce. Stir and allow the tomatoes to break down.
Add 100ml (31/2 fl oz) water to the wok, bring to the boil, then reduce the heat to a low simmer for 10 minutes.
Add the crisp tofu, spring onions and black pepper, folding it all together, and simmer for no longer than 1 minute as you want to keep the crisp texture of the tofu.
Garnish with coriander.

Green Beans with Sesame Dressing

I love sesame dressing for meats or vegetables. The aroma, texture and colour of sesame seeds enrich the whole dish and bring it up to another level. When it comes to using sesame seeds, I often toast them before use, or I can say, I let the sesame seeds dry pan-fry over medium-low heat (that’s stir-frying without any oil on a frying pan). The heat would bring up the fragrance of the seeds and make it much easier to mash. For making the sesame dressing, I used a kind of naturally brewed Japanese soy sauce, that brings in rich soy flavour, yet not too salty. This dish can be served as a side or salad.

Green Beans with Sesame Dressing (Printable recipe)

Ingredients:

300 gm green beans
35 gm toasted sesame seeds
2 Tbsp sugar
100 ml Yamasa soy sauce (or any kind of Japanese you like)
2 tsp mirin
salt, to taste

Method:

Rinse green beans and drain well. Trim both ends. Blanch in salted boiling water for 3 minutes. The beans should be cooked and still crunchy. Drain and immediately rinse in cold water. Pat dry.
To make the sesame dressing: Place the sesame seeds into a mortar (or use a food processor to process briefly, and make sure not to overprocess.) Grind the seeds until almost a paste, then add the sugar, mirin, and soy sauce. Mix well. Season with salt if needed.
Put green beans in a large bowl. Mix the sesame dressing with the green beans. Arrange in a serving bowl or a serving plate. Sprinkle more toasted sesame seeds if desired.

Tips:

I used Yamasa soy sauce, that is naturally brewed and not too salty.
It's better to toast sesame seeds before grinding. I often dry fry them in a pan. When you smell the aroma, it’s done. Beware not to burn them.

Braised Beef Cheek in Pedro Ximenez on Cauliflower Puree

I heart beef, but seldom thought of making any dish with beef cheeks. The recipe of the slowly braised beef cheek that Trissa found in the Movida Rustica cookbook really got me thinking, “Hm…I should give it a go.” When I asked my daughter, “Do you want to try beef cheeks?” she instantly raised her eyebrows. “Beef cheeks? How to cook?” I know her very much. The two words “beef cheek” absolutely got her interest. With a bit concern, I didn’t promise her to make this dish because I was worrying that I couldn’t get all the ingredients, as I hadn’t seen any beef cheek here before. Well, I might haven’t noticed if there’s any.

To my surprise, I found three packets of beef cheek at Woolworths the following day. No need for second thought, I took two of them. I, myself, felt the end result was very satisfied. My daughter asked me to save a big portion for her next day’s lunch. The super tender, melt-in-mouth beef cheek on the creamy cauliflower puree was really a big hit in my family.

Movida’s Braised Beef Cheek in Pedro Ximenez on Cauliflower Puree

Recipe from Richard Cornish and Frank Camorra's Movida Rustica (via: Trissalicious) (Printable recipe)

Ingredients:

1.5 kg beef cheeks
125 ml olive oil
3 carrots, roughly chopped
1 garlic bulb, halved
1 brown onion, sliced
500 ml Pedro Ximenez Sherry
500 ml red wine
3 bay leaves
3 tablespoons fresh thyme leaves
1 teaspoon salt
1 head cauliflower, broken into florets
185 ml cream
40 grams butter

Braised Beef Cheek in Pedro Ximenez on Cauliflower Puree Ingredients

Method:

Trim the beef cheeks to neaten them up and remove any new sinew and silver skin. Season well.
Heat half the olive oil in a large heavy-based saucepan over high heat. Brown the beef cheeks for 2 minutes on each side, or until golden, then remove from the pan.
Add the remaining olive oil, then add the carrot, garlic, onion and saute over high heat for 12 to 15 minutes, or until well browned. Stir in the sherry, wine, bay leaves, thyme, sea salt and 500 ml water. Reduce the heat as low as possible, add the beef cheeks, then cover and cook for 3 to 4 hours, or until the cheeks are beginning to fall apart.
Meanwhile, put the cauliflower, cream and butter in a saucepan, season to taste with salt, then cover and cook over low heat for 35 minutes, or until very tender. Place the cauliflower mixture in a blender and process until smooth. Keep the puree warm.
The sauce from the beef cheeks should by now be reduced and glaze like. It if needs further reducing, remove the cheeks from the pan, cover with foil to keep them warm, and simmer the sauce over high heat until nicely reduced. Strain the sauce through a fine sieve and return to the pan; gently reheat the cheeks in the sauce if necessary.
Serve the cheeks and their sauce on warm plates with the cauliflower puree.

Sukiyaki (Japanese Hot Pot)

There are times to cook, times to eat. Would there be times that you just want to eat good foods but don’t want to do too much cooking? For whatever reasons, be it busyness, or tiredness, there could be some reason you don’t want to stand in the kitchen for long hours, still love staying at home and enjoying a good meal. Sukiyaki (Japanese hot pot) is on the list of my favourite dishes for a day as such.

Making this dish is far easier than you might imagine. What I need is to get a packet of thinly sliced Shabu-shabu beef from a Korean shop nearby first. Quickly grab some vegetables out from fridge, rinse and roughly cut them into pieces. Put all the ingredients in a pan and cook with the delicious Sukiyaki sauce. Another way of enjoying this dish is like having Chinese steamboat (fondue). Just set up a stove and pot on the table and let everyone pick anything they like and cook by themselves. You can sit back and relax, as well as eating of course.

Browsing the ingredient list, you might notice I added one special thing, Konjac threads (see picture shown below). Konjac is commonly used in Japanese cuisine, including sukiyaki and oden. Konjac has almost no calories but is very high in fiber, often used as a diet food too. The preparation of Konjac is minimal. Discard the water in the packet and drain out the Konjac. Give them a good rinse, then they are ready to cook with the sauce.

Sukiyaki (Japanese Hot Pot) (Printable recipe)

Makes 2 to 3 serves
Ingredients:

200 gm beef, thinly sliced
1/2 onion, shredded
4 slices tofu
150 gm Chinese cabbage, cut into sections
1 carrot, sliced
3 bunches Konjac thread, optional, available at Asian grocery stores
6 fresh shiitake mushrooms
100 gm enoki mushrooms
1 stalk spring onion

Sauce:

100 ml Japanese soy sauce
100 ml mirin
100 ml rice wine
50 gm sugar

Shabu-shabu beef

Konjac threads

Method:

Mix all ingredients of sauce in a saucepan. Heat over low heat until sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat. Set aside.
Use a pot or frying pan, heat up 2 tablespoon of oil. Add onion and cook until soften. Push to the side of pan, add beef and cook until both sides lightly brown. Pour sauce over the beef and onion to taste. Then add other ingredients, cabbages, tofu, carrot, Konjac, shiitake and enoki, one by one and cook for a while, season with sauce. Cook until all ingredients through. Served hot.

Notes:

You can adjust the amount of all ingredients to your liking.
Traditionally, Japanese people like dipping the cooked meat and vegetables into whisked egg before eating, similar to the way of Hong Kong people enjoying steam boat (hot pot) .
I bought the Shabu-shabu beef to cook this dish, that is usually used for Japanese hot pot. The texture is still very soft after cooking in the sauce. The reason of cooking beef first is that all other ingredients, especially the vegetables would release some water. If the sauce dilutes, keep cooking to reduce the sauce to your preference.
I used Yamasa soy sauce, that's naturally brewed, not too salty but balanced with savoury taste and soy fragrance, adding a great flavour to this dish.

Pumpkin & Sweet Potato Feta Pie

You can use either frozen, ready made or homemade shortcrust pastry for this recipe. The caramelized onion was cooked with a well-balanced sweet and tangy taste, going so well with the pumpkin and sweet potato.

Ingredients:

500 gm butternut squash, diced
200 gm red sweet potato, diced
4 to 5 cloves garlic, unpeeled
2 Tbsp olive oil
50 gm feta cheese, broken into small pieces
2 small red onion, sliced
1 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 Tbsp brown sugar
2 tsp finely chopped rosemary leaves,
salt, to taste
freshly ground black pepper, to taste
whisked egg, for egg wash
1 shortcurst pastry, frozen or homemade (see recipe below)

Method:

Preheat oven to 200C (395F). Place pumpkin, sweet potato and garlic cloves in a baking pan and mix well with olive oil. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until the pumpkin and sweet potato are tender. Remove from the oven. Let cool.
Meanwhile, heat oil in a frying pan, add the onion and cook for 10 to 12 minutes. Pour in the vinegar and sugar and cook for another 12 minutes, or until the onion is caramelized. Remove from the heat and add to the pumpkin. Let cool completely. Squeeze out the garlic flesh. Mix in feta cheese and rosemary to the vegetables. Season with salt and pepper.
Roll out the pastry to a 24cm (9½inch) circle. Place onto a baking tray lined with baking paper. Spoon the vegetables in the middle of the pastry, leaving 4cm（1½inch）border. Fold over the edges, pleating as you fold. Brush whisked egg on the edge. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, or until golden. Served hot.

To make shortcrust pastry
Ingredients (makes a 9½inch circle ):

200 gm plain flour
100 gm chilled unsalted butter, cut into cubes
2 Tbsp chilled water

Method:

Put flour and butter into a food processor and blend for about 1 minute. Add 2 tablespoons chilled water and process until the mixture comes together.
Knead into a circle or disc with hands. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and chill for 30 minutes. It’s ready to use.
If the dough chills longer and becomes hard, not easy to roll out, you can leave it at room temperature for a while, until it becomes soft again.

Stir Fried Spinach with Salted Egg

Having made a few salted eggs at home, I couldn’t wait to try how they tasted like and made several traditional Chinese dishes with them. My dear readers, when you read this post, please don’t take the said sentence word by word literally, even though I intended to cook some traditional Chinese dishes. Truly, the dish I share today came from a very popular traditional one, yet I changed a lot in the way of using ingredients and cooking.

When it comes to stir frying spinach, both century egg (皮蛋) and salted egg（鹹蛋）are widely used in order to create a combination of silver-like and golden colours mingled with jade-like spinach. On top of that, the dish has a very beautiful title, 金銀蛋菠菜 (literally means “Silver and Golden Eggs with Spinach”). The dish itself is quite humble, yet both the taste and name of the dish are very appealing. Well, when I cooked this dish again, I deliberately omitted the century egg. That said, many imprudent producers incorporate more poisonous lead into the curing process than before, that really puts me off. Since then, I haven’t eaten any century eggs for ages. Here comes my version, Golden Egg with Spinach.

Stir Fried Spinach with Salted Egg (Printable recipe)

Ingredients:

500 gm spinach
1 salted egg, white and yolk separated
2 tsp minced garlic
4 Tbsp chicken stock

Thickening:

1/4 tsp sugar
2 tsp cornflour
2 Tbsp water

Method:

Rinse spinach and drain well. Separate stems and leaves. Set aside.
Use a wok or a steamer, steam salted egg yolk over medium-high heat for about 10 to 12 minutes. Set aside.
Heat oil over medium-high heat in a frying pan. Saute garlic until aromatic. Make sure not to burn it, it gets bitter otherwise. Toss in spinach stems first and stir fry for a while, followed by leaves and cook until you get your preferred doneness. Set aside. Add some water if necessary while stir frying. If too much water releases after stir frying more than you need, discard the excess water.
In a small saucepan, pour in the chicken stock. Bring it to a boil. Add thickening and cook to your preferred consistency. Quickly stir in salted egg whites. When it turns opaque in colour, remove from heat, pour over the spinach. Cut salted egg yolk into small pieces. Sprinkle over spinach. Served hot.

Notes:

You don’t need to add any salt when stir frying spinach because the salted egg has enough salty flavour. You still can add more if you need.
You can blanch spinach in boiling water instead of stir frying.

Homemade Salted Mustard Greens (雪菜/雪裡紅)

Salted mustard greens (雪菜/雪裡紅) are very popular in stir-fry with meats, tofu and noodle soup in traditional Chinese cooking. I often keep some in my fridge, and throw a bit of it whenever I like to enhance the flavour in my Chinese dishes, like green beans stir fry, shredded pork rice noodle soup.

It’s pretty easy to make salted mustard greens at home, simply add a small amount of salt. After a few days, you can enjoy the aromatic pickled vegetables. Compared with those canned ones, you're 100% sure it's healthy without any preservatives at all.

Homemade Salted Mustard Greens (Printable recipe)

Ingredients:

800gm mustard greens, available at Asian grocery stores
2 tbsp sea salt (rock salt)

Method:

Rinse mustard greens thoroughly. Drain well. If there’s still some water left and the mustard greens still wet, it’s fine.
Place mustard greens in single layer one by one, then rub some salt evenly onto the vegetables from stem to leaves. Rest in room temperature for about 30 minutes, rub the vegetable again. Repeat this process for three times. Cover and chill in fridge. Some water will release in the process. After two to three days, you’ll get aromatic, healthy salted mustard greens. It can be kept in fridge for up to one week.

Notes:

If you don’t have a big glass container, you might use a plastic bag to preserve the mustard greens.
After marinated with salt, the vegetables would turn soft in texture, fresh green in colour and release some water. You might keep the water as it is or discard it. Beware that any part of the vegetable that doesn’t touch with salt properly, it might turn yellow. So you might want to rub salt evenly onto the surface of vegetables, and combine them very well to get the best results.
When you’re ready to cook, soak the salted mustard greens in water for 20 minutes. Rinse with water three times and squeeze out excess water. Then you can cut them into smaller pieces and cook with other ingredients.

Sweet and Sour Cucumber (酸甜青瓜)

This dish, Sweet and Sour Cucumber is always served in Chinese restaurants as an appetizer, or a side dish, very refreshing and healthy.

When you eat cucumbers raw, sometimes you might taste bitterness in the skin.
The bitterness seems to vary from type to type of cucumbers, with different degree of bitterness from time to time. I learned a small trick from my mother-in-law to reduce or remove the unpleasant bitterness. The secret trick is pretty simple, just cut out both ends and use them to rub the cucumber. This method helps remove the white jelly-like substance from the skin. The more you rub, the more white substance you get, the better the cucumber tastes.

This time I tried the Taiwanese cucumber (小黃瓜 Xiao Huanggua). The flesh is firmer with less water and seeds inside. It’s the best kind of cucumber to make this dish. If you can’t find any Taiwanese cucumbers, try Lebanese cucumbers. It’s also a good choice.

Sweet and Sour Cucumber (Printable recipe)

Ingredients:

2 cucumbers, about 360 gm
1 cup white rice vinegar
1 cup white sugar
1 tsp salt

Method:

Rinse cucumbers. Cut out both ends about 1cm. Use the two ends to rub the cucumber as the picture shown. Wipe clean. Cut the cucumber lengthwise. Spoon out the seeds, then cut into 3.5cmx0.5cm strips.
Mix 1 teaspoon of salt with the cucumber for 10 to 15 minutes. Rinse thoroughly for 2 to 3 times. The last time, use cooled boiled water to rinse. Drain well and wipe dry with kitchen papers. Chill in fridge for about 20 minutes.
Meanwhile, add vinegar and sugar in a stainless steel saucepan. Cook over medium-low heat, until sugar is completely dissolved. Remove from heat and let cool completely.
Pour the vinegar and sugar mixture in a glass container, like Pyrex. Remove the cucumber from fridge and transfer into the mixture, mix well. Chill in fridge for about 1 to 2 hours, covered. Served cold.

Notes:

Basically, the ratio of the vinegar and sugar used for making this dish is 1:1. Yet you can adjust the amount of vinegar or sugar to suit your personal taste.
You might like to add sliced red chilli to add a kick when served.