Tempeh Cakes & Fusion Vegan Burger

Recently kinda indulged with Thai cuisine, here is a healthy vegan recipe, one of my favourite side dishes in my list.

Ingredients:

• lemon grass stalk, remove the outer leaves, finely chopped
• garlic, finely chopped
• green onion, finely chopped
• fresh coriander leaves, finely chopped
• fresh lime juice
• red chillies (cili padi), remove the seed and finely chopped
• ginger, peeled and finely chopped
• tempeh, sliced and roughly chopped
• egg, beaten
• flour, all-purpose
• sugar,salt & pepper powder
• fish sauce (optional)
• cucumber, thinly sliced or any salad veggie (optional)
• oil, for frying

Chopped garlic, green onion, coriander leaves, chilli and ginger

Process them into paste

I prefer the tempeh wrapped with banana leaf, it gives the tempeh  special favour =D

This way:

1. Combine lemon grass, garlic, green onion, coriander leaves, chilli, ginger and process it into paste (by blender or food processor).
2. Add in the tempeh, lime juice, sugar, flour, egg, salt and pepper powder. Blend it until the mixture becomes a sticky paste.
3. You can add a little water to ease the process and can add fish sauce accordingly
4. Heat the oil in a pan and fry the tempeh cakes until both side turns into golden colour.
5. Drain well the excess oil, transfer to dish, garnish with coriander, serve with cucumber or salad along with the dipping sauce.

Mix it up Dipping Sauce:

• white vinegar (but I prefer apple vinegar, it gives the better favour)
• green onion, thinly sliced
• red chilli, remove the seed
• fresh coriander, chopped
• sugar & salt

Additional recipe: Fusion Burger

Other than having it served along with rice and other main dish, you can actually make it as burger as the texture of tempeh cakes kinda similar with real burger. But just a very fusion way of having a burger with Thai taste, mixture of lemon grass and coriander in burger? HAha not a bad idea, check it out!

Stir-fried Spicy Pork Belly and Kimchee 제육(김치)볶음

If you got some old kimchee in fridge, it's the best time to cook this, because the old kimchee are too sour to be eaten directly, I always do this when I got some left over old kimchee. Ingredients are simple, preparations are simple too, and it warm not only your stomach but also your heart during the raining and cold season. = )

Ingredients:

• 250g Pork belly
• 150g Old kimchee
• 1 Medium size Onion
• Roasted sesame seeds (optional, for garnish)

Seasoning for pork belly:

• 2-3 tbs Korean spicy chilli paste (gochujang)
• 1 ts Fine chili powder 
• 1-2 tbs Soy sauce
• 2 tbs Minced garlic
• 2 tbs Ginger juice
• 2 tbs Chopped green onion
• 2 ts Roasted sesame seeds
• 2 ts Sesame oil
• pepper powder to taste

This way: 

1. Cut pork belly into thin slice, about 0.3cm, and marinate with the pork belly seasoning for at least 1 hour.
2. Cut kimchee into bite size. Cut onion into strips.
3. Heat up the pan with some oil, stir fry the onion and kimchee.
4. Add the marinated pork belly into the pan and stir fry until it get soften and a little dried up.
5. You can add a little salt and pepper but usually it is salty enough.
6. Garnish with roasted sesame seeds and ready to serve.

Tips:

• You can use normal kimchee, here I use old kimchee is because I like it turned out a little sour
• You can add some other vegan ingredients, such as carrot and enoki mushroom when stir frying
• You can also prepare some boiled-cook bean curd aside to serve with the dish = )

Home Made PanMee 自製板面

I realized that there has been a lot of restaurant opened for selling Pan Mee, almost everywhere around the town. It reminds me when I was a child, we used to have this delicious Pan Mee in Kepong market, which is the pan mee are traditionally made, tear with hand, piece by piece, and the texture is really tasty and chewy.

But nowadays, seldom I could find a store or restaurant is selling that kind of Pan Mee, most of them are using the grinding tool to make the dough in different size and  shape of noodles.

anyway I still prefer the very old school kind of Pan Mee, so here it is, my very own yet well known recipe.

Stock ingredient:

• anchovies
• oil
• garlic
• onion
• salt & pepper
• fish sauce

Preparing the stock/soup:

1. Wash anchovies (get rid of the head and intestine) and make it dry
2. Heat up oil and stir fry the anchovies
3. Add garlic and onion (both cut into half) to stir fry as well, until yellowish and fragrant but not too brown or burnt
4. Add water and boil for 40 mins
5. Add salt, pepper and fish sauce to taste

 Home made dough ingredient:

• wheat flour
• glutinous rice flour
• salt & pepper
• hot water ( but not boiling water)

Preparing the dough:

1. Mix well the wheat flour (90%) with glutinous rice flour (10%)
2. Add with hot water, salt & pepper 
3. Knead and make a dough until smooth
4. Set aside for 15 mins
5. Make the noodle from the dough, it can be round shape or long shape, the thickness of the noodle is based on your own preference.

 Toppings Ingredients:

• dried anchoives
• spinach
• dried mushroom
• minced pork meat
• Sauce A (light soy sauce, minced garlic, pepper powder)
• Sauce B (light soy sauce, dark soy sauce, fish sauce, minced garlic, sesame oil, pepped powder)

Preparing the toppings:

1. Wash anchovies and drain well (need to be really drained off the excessive water, because it needs to be fried until crispy)
2. Wash spinach and pluck into bite size
3. Wash and soak dried mushroom until it is soft, cut into slice and marinate with Sauce A for at least 30 mins. Heat up frying pan with oil, stir fry it until it goes dried.
4. Marinate minced pork with Sauce B for at least 1  hour.
5. Heat up frying pan with oil, stir fry the minced meat until it breaks into smaller pieces and well cooked.

This way:

1. Bring a pot of water to boil, put in the noodles.
2. Cook until it floats (means it is cooked) and put into a bowl.
3. Add the spinach to the boiling soup/stock, cook until it turns dark green.
4. Move the spinach and soup to the noodles.
5. Add toppings and ready to serve.

Chicken and Mushrooms Steamboat

It's the best having a steamboat dinner with friends and family, during the raining evening

there are many kind of steamboat, but I just simply love steamboat with all fresh ingredient

here are one of my steamboat recipe, simple, fresh and healthy, adopted from korean cuisine xD

Stock:

• chicken bone/anchovies
• garlic
• onion
• fish sauce
• salt
• pepper powder
• water

Main ingredient:

• boneless chicken tight, cut into slices
• marinate with soy sauce, sesame oil, minced garlic, chopped green onion, ginger juice, cinnamon powder, honey

Vegetables:

it's quite random, you can just put whatever veggie during the current season, but make sure it get along with each other veggie = P

• assorted mushroom *use the fresh one*
• round cabbage/chinese cabbage, cut into tiny slices
• raddish/carrot, cut into strip
• pumpkin, cut into tiny piece, so that easily cooked
• green onion, cut into 2 inch length

This way:

1. Prepare the stock, boil for at least 1 hour. Set aside the stock
2. Marinate the chicken about 2 hours or more
3. Prepare and cut the mushroom/vegetables
4. Arrange all the ingredients nicely into the pot
5. Add stock and boil until all the ingredients are cooked
6. Ready to serve

Tips:

• after getting rid of the bone from the chicken tight, don't throw, it can be used for the stock
• you can add more seasoning in marinating the chicken, as it will be cooked with the stock thus the taste might be neutralized. If so, keep you stock less salty then, don't over season the stock, keep the saltiness balance
• serve fried pancake (pa jeon, haemul jeon, kamja jeon etc) as side dish

Homemade Kimchee & Kaktugee

Kimchee, my favarite korean side dish.
Kimchee, a classic korea food.
Kimchee, a very dynamic dish.
Very huge difference usage of ingredients and method varies from different kimchee master
Kimchee, can be the dish that I spend the longest time to master it.

Remember the first time when I made it, I used light soy sauce, and it turned out dark brown kimchee, really like rooten veggie LOL

Anyway it gets better consequently after I have been searching, combinng, experimenting and trying out different recipes available via cook books and from the web.

Have been tried with addtional stuff like asian pear, apple, fresh red chili, cincaro, raw plain sweet rice flour, but now I prefer to go simple by this receipe below!

 Ingredient for kimchee paste:

• fish sauce (doesn't matter made in korea or thailand)
• korean pepper powder
• garlic
• onion
• ginger
• green onion
• leeks, cut in 1 inch (optional)
• shredded raddish or carrot (optional, seasoned with salt for 10 mins, squeezed)
• sweet rice flour
• sugar & water

This way:

1. Mix sweet rice flour and sugar with water and simmer with middle heat, until it turned white color, that means it is cooked. Set aside, let it cold.
2. Meanwhile prepare garlic, onion, ginger, green onion (all minced). If you don't like the fiber texture of ginger, extract and just use its juice.
3. Add all ingredient above in to a mixed bowl when the paste cold off.

Notes: For kaktugee, you can skip leeks, raddish and carrot

Ingredient for Kimchee & Kaktugee:

• Chinese white cabbage (avoid choosing greenie leaf, as it taste a little bitter)
• White raddish
• Salt

This way:

For Cabbage kimchee

1. Wash and pluck cabbage leaf from it stem, remain a whole piece of leaf
2. Sprinkle salt over every single leaf evenly
3. Set for 2 hours, turn it around in between so that the salt soften the cabbage evenly
4. After the cabbage is soften (but not too over marinated, it is best to remain a little crunchy), wash with water and squeeze excessive water
5. Mixed with the kimchee paste that you have ready
6. Spread the paste evenly on the leaf and roll it piece by piece
7. Set them in an airtight jar with room temperature for 2 days
8. In between the fermentation process you can notice bubble in the paste that means it is fermenting (the sweet rice flour and sugar help kick start the fermentation process)
9. Taste and check if it is sour enough. If not up to your Sourness, let it ferment for longer
10. If it taste perfect, keep it in fridge, usually can keep for 1 month

 For Kaktugee

1. Peel off skin
2. Cut radish in cube size
3. Sprinkle salt over it
4. Set for 2 hours, toss it occasionally
5. Wash with water, to reduce the saltiness
6. Squeeze excessive water
7. Mixed with the kimchee paste above
8. Ferment it as step from above =D

Otak-Otak Spaghetti

      Saturday, it always be the the day where I just wanna spend lying on my bed, if there is no any other good plan for weekend.

       At some point, I'm really rotten, or I should put in this way: I'm enjoy to be rotten at home, don't feel like going out for meals and so on...

and here is my rotten recipe of Use-What-is-Available-Style spaghetti or simply call it Lazy Style lol

Otak-Otak Spaghetti

 

For ingredients, just grab whatever you have in the fridge, however for the sake of guidelines, so happen I got this Ingredient:

• Otak-otak (from Becky, she gave it to me and I store it in fridge, for unknown period of time...)
• fresh tomatoes cut in wedges
• garlic, minced
• onion, sliced
• dried rosemary
• black olive, sliced
• Tesco brand spaghetti sauce
• tomato sauce or chili sauce (Optional, just to add on to the taste and liquid, in case the whole spaghetti paste is too dry)
• chili powder (Optional, if you like spicy...)

 This way:

1. Heat 2 tbs of oil in frying pan
2. Add onion, garlic and rosemary, stir fry until they get soften.
3. Add tomatoes, stir fry until the it gets watery.
4. Add a little salt and pepper ( because you are not fully depend on the ready made spaghetti sauce, so need a little spice up)
5. Add your lovely otak-otak, stir fry it until it get melts
6. Add ready made spaghetti sauce, tomato sauce or chili sauce (to taste, it helps to make your paste to be more pasty, and will not become too dry, add a little water if needed)
7. Add black olive and chili powder, cook for 2 minutes so that all the ingredient blend together)
8. Alright, when the paste is done, serve hot with your cooked spaghetti!

p/s: All the portion and measuring above is my to taste measurement aka agak-agak measurement, so kindly adjust to your own preference, try and cook on your own risk lol

Corn Flakes Toast Bread

An innovative and simple recipe of mine =D

Toast bread with corn flakes and kaya spread

I waked up at 10.30am this morning, kinda late and the stuck between breakfast and lunch, usually I won't skip my breakfast even it was late, still I would like to have a little food to kick start my whole holy sunday...

Feel like having some simple and nutritious meal like milk+corn flakes, all I need to do is just pouring, mixing and eating lol anyway, I just found out my fridge is running out of milk,  it served with kaya spread and bread, instead of milk.

Ingredients:

• bread
• corn flakes
• kaya spread, butter (or any other jam etc depends on ur favor)

This way:

1. Toast the bread (if you like toast)
2. Spread the kaya/jam/butter
3. Place some cornflakes and fold the bread.Enjoy~!

p/s: I really like the texture of toast bread (it is crispy when toast, and chewy inside plus corn flakes, crispy again and with kaya sweetness...holy blended!

Lamb burger + Veggie Mixed Rice

Here are another contemporary recipe I have. Homemade lamb burger + veggie mixed rice (which is adopted from Korean Beebimbap.
The story of the recipe was I found a pack of lamb minced meat (going to be expired) and some of the veggie ingredient (I don't know what to cook.....) so I'd be the match maker, combine this two recipe together.....


Lamb Burger

 For the Lamb Burger you'll need:

• minced lamb meat, of course
• minced garlic & ginger
• chopped spring onion, yellow/red onion
• honey & soy sauce
• roasted sesames
• salt & grounded black pepper

This way:
1. Ooo lots of spices, just mix all the ingredients evenly

2. If you have a bottle of Korean ginger honey, you can use that instead of using ordinary honey and skip that fresh ginger, save your time & effort =D

3. Lastly, heat them up in low heat over the non-sticky pan. It doesn't need oil to fry it, it will release oil itself when u heat it~

4. After it has release some oil, turn to medium heat & fry til golden color for both side. Done~

Pan-fried Fish Fillet

I adopt this recipe from Korean cuisine, it is served as part of side dishes in Korean meal, but I think it has the potential to be a main dish. Thus, I modify it a bit, it became Western-Korean style, awesome!

Ingredients:

• fish fillet  (I use frozen dory fish, where available in most of the supermarket^^)
• fresh minced basil  (If you wanna go Korean, use spring onion instead =D)
• minced garlic
• salt & pepper
• ginger juice
• plain flour
• eggs
• cooking oil

Deeping sauce:

• 4 tbsp soy sauce
• 2 tbsp vinegar or you can use lime/lemon instead
• 2 tsp chili powder / chili oil

This way:

1. Cut the fish into bite size....or any size you prefer =P
2. Marinate the fish with salt, pepper, ginger juice, galic & basil for about 30 minutes to 1 hour in the fridge
3. Beat eggs and mix well with flour
4. Coat the fish with flour and dip into the beaten egg
5. Heat oil with medium heat and fry until it turns golden brown
6. Serve with deeping sauce

Soy Sauce Seasoned Spinach

It is one of the Korean common side dishes, they call it sigeumchi namul and there are few different way of preparing it. This is served with soy sauce, which i think less likely you could find in Malaysia Korean restaurant. So I decided to share this recipe~ =D

Ingredients A:

• minced garlic
• soy sauce
• sugar
• sesame oil
• salt
• white pepper powder
• vinegar (optional)

Ingredients B:

• Spinach
• roasted sesame seeds

This way:

1. Combine Ingredients A in bowl, mix well, set aside.
2. Add spinach in boilling water, you can add the stem first and then the leaf separately. This will ensure both get cooked evenly =D or alternatively you can steam it instead of boiling.
3. Boil until it turn bright green, get them out and rinse in cold water.
4. Drain and squeeze out the water of it, the drier the better taste it is.
5. If you find the leaf is kinda large, give them a few cut, make it a bite size.
6. Mix well with the Ingredients A and make sure it is mixed well evenly.
7. Sprinkle sesame seeds and ready to serve~