School Holidays Pig Out!

On the last day of the 2 week school holidays... some of us SAHMs managed to get together after much postponement due to clash in schedules or illness (the haze is here).



We had 9 course lunch including soup. I sort of over did it but we had mostly veggies. Fried Chuin Quin (Seafood & Meat Minced with veggies wrapped in Fu Chok Skin), Steamed Taufu, Char Siew, Bittergourd, Long Beans & Sweet Corn Omellete, Chap Chai, Salmon Fish , Baby Choi Sum and Lotus Root Soup.

My home made char siew, tasted better this time round I think due to a better cut in pork belly. Kids loved this

My all time favourite is Bittergourd. This time I fried it with basic rempah & Onions.

This is a new entry. Grilled Salmon bites. Initially grilled it with salt & pepper but it turned out to be too "fishy" in smell... not appetising at all. So fried it in the wok with my spur of the moment creation of sauce made up of Maggi Abalone Sauce + HP Sauce + Pepper. Turned out to be quite nice afterall :p

Sweet & Sour Dory Fish

With a new kitchen available, I've been motivated a bit more to prepare fresh & nutritous meals for my kids after they come back from Kindy.

So off I went to Carrefour to get some groceries & ended up with frozen Dory Fish Fillet. My son in particular LOVEs Sweet & Sour sauce... so here was one of his enjoyable moments of lunch food :)

Fried the Dory Fish Fillet - cut up to bite size bits. I added cornflour & 1 egg to fry them. I should have used just the egg yolk / whites as the whole egg resulted with fish fried in egg.

Tried this with Maggie's Sweet & Sour packet ~ powdered form sauce (add water). Taste was nice though I added Maggie Tomato Ketchup for more thickness & colour. I added Red Onions ~ quartered, Yello Capsicum ~ chopped & Red Chilli ~ sliced

I also prepared a simple soup to accompany our lunch that day. Used Miso base (unsalted), 1 Tbsp Fried Ikan Billis (anchiovies), 2 small potatoes, 1 tomato, and 1 medium red onion & salt to taste.

Ox-tail soup

One of my personal favourites of my Mama's cooking.

Recipe is courtesy of Little Chef's Mama of course ~ Thanks Ma.

Ingredients:

1 large ox-tail chopped

2 big onions quartered

2 big ripe tomatoes

2 carrots or 3 potatoes, cut into chunks

1 bulb of garlic3

thick slices of ginger

1 teasp. (or less) pepper corns
6 cloves(bunga cingkeh)

2 whole star anise(bunga lawang or pak kok)

2" piece cinnamon bark( kayu manis)

Water *( Quantity depends on method of boiling the soup)

Salt to taste

Garnishing: Chopped spring onions and coriander ( yuen sai) & Fried shallots

Method :

1. Remove as much fat as possible from ox-tail pieces.

2. Put everything into pot and add sufficient water to bring to a boil.

3. Remove the scum and oil floating in the pot by ladling gently. This will give a clear appearance to the soup.

4. Lower the heat and simmer until oxtail is soft and tender.

5. Garnish.* If the soup is cooked in a pressure cooker or slow cooker or a thermo cooker, less water is required as it is not reduced due to long simmering.

Pressure cooker : 15-20 minutes or so ( long time since I last used a pressure cooker to cook)

Thermo cooker : more than 4 hours after pot is removed from stove and kept in the thermos. Electric Slow cooker : 4-5 hours