The Cooking Ninja

We got back to France 12 days ago and I find myself still adjusting to our daily routine and the weather. *sigh* Pierre and Little One don't seems to have any problem at all. Lucky them.

One of my goals when I came home for CNY (besides pigging out big time on local food, catching up with friends etc) is to watch my mom cooks all those delicious food and note them down so that I could redo them in France. Unfortunately my mom whipped up dishes faster than I could catch her doing it: one minute, the ingredients were all layed out on the kitchen counter, the next, they were all in the wok cooking ... or worst ... sometimes I didn't realised she had started cooking ... until the delicious aroma floated to my nose ... I rushed to the kitchen only to see the dishes all whipped up and laid on the table ready to be 'makan' (eaten). Maybe I should install a camera in the kitchen to spy on her cooking Anyway I was lucky to catch my supermom in action cooking up this delicious yet simple dish of hers.

Pineapple is an excellent source of manganese, vitamin C and a good source of B1 & B6. Apparently the juice can also be used as a marinade and tenderizer for meat. Pineapple is actually composed of many flowers whose individual fruitlets fuse together around a central core and each fruitlet is identified as an 'eye'.

How to choose a pineapple?
Choose one that is firm, gold to brown skin, heavy for their size and has a fragrant sweet smell at the base. If the spiky leave gives way with a light tuck, it means it's nicely ripen. Avoid those with soft spots or bruised and darkened eyes - this means that the pineapple is past its prime. Avoid also pineapple that smells musty, sour or fermented.

This is my contribution to this Weekend Herb Blogging hosted by Kel from Green Olive Tree.

Pineapple Prawns

Ingredients

• Prawns (peeled)
• Pineapples (cut into small slices)
• 2 cloves garlic (minced)
• Chili (seedless & chopped - option)
• Light soya sauce
• Sugar

Directions

1. Heat up wok with a bit of oil until hot. Stir-fry the minced garlic with chopped chilli till fragrant.
2. Add in the pineapple pieces and a bit of sugar. Stir-fry it for a few minutes or till the pineapples are almost cooked.
3. Stir in the prawns and season it with light soya sauce to your taste.
4. Serve hot with rice.

The Verdict

We know sweet and shrimp go well together and this dish proves it once again (and is an quick and tasty way to add some fruits to your diet). My mom tends to not salt the dish enough for western taste-buds, but it's easily fixed.

Notes

Instead of prawns, try it with squids. It tastes equally good.

HAPPY NEW YEAR !

GONG XI FA CAI !

Today is Chinese New Year. On the eve, every Chinese family come together to have a reunion dinner and this year we are home for our very first reunion dinner with my family and we are having steamboat as usual. At the stroke of midnight, there's the usual small blast of firecrackers in the streets: although they are illegal in Singapore (like so many other things!), some still managed to obtain some and set them off to welcome the new year. Firecrackers are supposed to scare off evil spirits and attract the god of wealth to people's doorsteps.

Today before we set off for our "new year visits" (visiting relatives and friends), we will first wish our parents a good new year with prosperity and good health with a pair of mandarin oranges, and we will get a red packet from them as usual. Since I'm no longer single, we will also be giving my parents a red packet this year. Little One will get her very first red packet from all my relatives. She won't know the significant of it yet but she will get it in 2 years' time. For now, she would be more interested in checking all the goodies offered during this festive period and giving away her red packets.

Festivities are not over. The 7th day of Chinese New Year is known as 'Renri' (common man's birthday - everyone's birthday) - it is usually celebrated by tossing Yusheng' and make wishes for wealth and prosperity all year round. The 15th day - the last day of Chinese New Year - is celebrated by having a family reunion dinner again.

So I'm leaving my readers yet another simple dish to sample. Hope this will wet your appetite till I blog again.

Stir-fried prawns with shallots

Ingredients

• Prawns (peeled & deveined)
• Shallots (quatered)
• Chillies (sliced)
• light soya sauce

Directions

1. Heat some oil in a pan or wok until hot, sauté the shallots and chillies for one or two minutes.
2. Season it with a bit of light soya sauce, then stir in the prawns.
3. Sprinkle a pinch of sugar over the prawns. Sauté till prawns are cooked and adjust seasoning to your taste.
4. Serve hot with rice. Can be taken as main dish or part of the side dishes

The Verdict

I'm always surprised by how good this dish tastes - the nice aroma and crunchiness of the shallots mixed with the freshness of the prawns. The soya sauce and a dash of sugar heightens the taste and fragrance. This is succulent.

The marvelous thing about living in the house of a great cook is you get delicious meals 365 days (obviously). However the danger is that you risk being spoiled for life regarding food - Asian food in my case - with the permanent tendency of comparing the dishes you eat outside to those at home. Now, who's this great chef I'm talking about? No, no, it's not Pierre - well he is a great chef in certain domain... which I won't tell you. Yes, the great chef of wok: my dear old mom. My friends are so used to hearing me complaining about the plate of chicken curry or chili prawns that I'm eating at the hawker center (aka Singaporean food court) being not as good as my mom's. They would their shake their head and smile... until I invited them over for lunch or dinner for some chili crabs or pineapple prawns. Even till today, whenever we talk about food, they will reminisce about my mom's cooking and will always ask me when am I going to invite them over for lunch again Some of them even offer to buy and pay for the groceries and food if my mom can whip up those delicious prawns and crabs for them again.

I have to admit that I have taken my mom' cooking for granted while I was living with her. To me, from a child's point of view, my mom will live forever (silly thinking isn't it) and she's never old. It's only in my late 20s that I looked at my mom closely one day and realized suddenly that she isn't getting any younger, and if I don't spend quality time with her, one day she might not be there anymore and I'll regret it for the rest of my life. It was then that I got to really appreciate every little things she does for me. My sis and I tried to learn cooking from her and to relieve her of that job so that she can relax and enjoy her old age... but my mom is stubborn: it's her kitchen and she kicks us out of it whenever we try to help her. She always says that we are giving her more work to do (messing up her kitchen) than helping and it would take her twice as long to cook than usual with us around.

But now that I'm living abroad with my own family, I have a chance to try out her recipe in my own kitchen Trying to cook my mom's recipes is not that easy because she's from the "old school" and takes no measurement at all. And being two continents apart doesn't help either, as 'about the size of the small bowl we have in the kitchen' isn't a very helpful information. Over time I still got my way around some recipes, such as the following which I did for my Peruvian and French friends this week.

Mom's Chilli Prawns

Ingredients

• 1 kg prawns (peeled, left with tail)
• light soya sauce

Paste

• 330 g shallots or onions (approximately)
• 4 cloves garlic
• 5 stalks lemon grass (use only the white part, sliced)
• 2 pieces candle nuts
• 4 slices galangal
• 2 to 3 tbsp fish curry powder
• sugar, salt or light soya sauce

Directions

1. Paste: Grind/pound the shallots, garlic, lemon grass, galangal and candle nuts together to a fine paste. Mix the paste with the curry powder and set aside.
2. Heat the wok over a high flame until very hot. Add oil. Stir-fry the paste for about a minute. Lower the flame, then fry for another 2 minutes.
3. Add the prawns and stir-fry for a minute.
4. Sprinkle a bit of water, season it with a bit of sugar and light soya sauce or salt (to your taste) and stir it now and then till prawns are cooked.
5. Serve it hot with steamed rice.

The Conclusion

Mmm...yummy... almost as good as my mom's (that's my own opinion) Pierre loves it so did my friends ... they were quite amazed by the flavour of it, slightly bitter, sweet and spicy at the same time.

Notes

Candlenut can be found in Southeast-Asian markets. You can substitute it with macadamia nuts or Brazil nuts (these are three times as large as candlenuts, so use fewer) or raw cashews (two cashews for every candlenut) or blanched almonds (two almonds for every candlenut).

If you don't have fish curry powder, you can just simply add chili powder (in lesser quantity of course) or grind dried chilis (deseed) together with the paste, it still taste delicious.

Char Kway Teow (translated literally as "fried flat noodles" ), is a popular noodle dish in Singapore and Malaysia. The original version is stir-fried with pork fats and crisp croûtons of pork lard which gives its characteristic taste together with ingredients like cockles, egg, bean sprouts, slices of Chinese sausage and fish cake. Because of its high animal fat content, Char Kway Teow has a reputation of being an unhealthy dish. It began as a poor man's meal, but over time many more ingredients were added, making it one of the most loved dishes in Singapore.

This is my entry for Ruth's Presto Pasta Night. My recipe does away with the pork fat and is easier on the arteries.

Char Kway Teow

Ingredients

• 1 kg thick rice stick noodle or flat rice noodle
• 4 tbsp garlic (chopped)
• 350 g bean sprouts
• 6 stalks spring onions or scallions (cut in big chunks)
• 300 g Chinese mustard greens (chye sim)
• 2 Chinese sausages (thinly sliced) - optional
• 18 medium sized prawns (peeled & cooked)
• 5 eggs, beaten
• 4 tbsp fish sauce
• 5 to 6 tbsp sweet dark soya sauce
• 3 red chili (seeded and sliced) - optional
• 300 g squid (cooked and sliced into 1/2 cm rings)
• 8 oz vegetable oil

Directions

1. Soak the noodles in warm water for about 10 minutes or until they are soft. Drain and set aside.
2. Heat the wok until very hot, then add 3/4 of the oil. Lower the heat slightly, fry garlic and chili until garlic is fragrant and golden brown.
3. Add the thick rice stick noodle and Chinese mustard greens (chye sim), stirring constantly with 2 wooden spatulas for about two minutes.
4. Push the ingredients to the side of the wok, forming a well in the centre. Add the rest of the oil and heat it. Add the beaten egg and fry it together with the noodles.
5. Pour the fish sauce and sweet dark soya sauce over the noodles and fry all ingredients together for another one to two minutes before adding the Chinese sausages, cooked prawns, cooked squid, bean sprouts, and spring onions. Add a bit of water, toss to combine.
6. Taste to see if the seasoning is to your liking. If not, add a bit more fish sauce and dark soya sauce.
7. Serve hot.

Conclusion

This is the 2^nd time I'm cooking this dish. The results this time around is better because I didn't overcooked my noodles. I just realized yesterday night that this dish is so simple and quick to fix. (why? once done, I only had two dishes to wash in the kitchen )

We usually eat this as main course by itself. On the taste side, it is a sweet and salty dish at the same time, and is very typical of the colorful south-east Asian cuisine that is prevalent around Singapore.

Notes

The above quantities serve about 10 people.

If you find that your noodles are a bit under-cooked at the end, add a bit of water and stir the mixture. Let it cook for a minute or two and check the noodles again. If it is still not cooked to your liking, add a bit more water to it and stir it. However do not overcook the noodle or else it will break into small pieces when you stir it.

In preparation of this dish, I omitted the Chinese sausages and squid but added some pork slices and more prawns. You can add beef slices in place of pork if you wish. Or totally leave out the seafood if you are allergic to seafood. And if you find it troublesome or difficult to do the egg part, you can skip it too. The dish will still hold the wonderful flavour.

In some other recipe, fish sauce is replaced by oyster sauce and light soya sauce.

Pierre (who likes cooking too, but not all day) bought this new Indian cookbook because it's 1) simple with short cooking instructions 2) easily obtainable ingredients 3) and requires a limited number of them. This is in contrast to our other main Indian cookbook which has authentic but complicated recipe with authentic - and as such hard to find - ingredients. However as simple the recipes were, the new book ended up like many of those books, sitting on the shelf neglected. But as I was browsing through my little library the other day, it practically jumped out in front of me shouting 'Me! Me! Me!' (the poor little thing ).

Prawns in coconut gravy

(taken from Bôllyfood by Marie-Laure Tombini)

Preparation: 15 minutes
Cooking: 15 minutes
Serves: 2

Ingredients

• 250 g cooked prawns
• 1 onion (sliced thinly)
• ½ yellow or green bell pepper (cut into small cubes)
• ½ tsp fresh ginger (grated)
• 1 clove garlic (pulped)
• 1 tbsp coriander (chopped)
• ½ tbsp turmeric
• 10 cl or 100 ml coconut milk
• 2 tbsp oil
• salt

Directions

1. Peel the prawns, keeping the tail part.
2. Heat oil in a preheated wok or pan, sauté the onions till soft.
3. Add in the garlic, ginger, bell pepper, coriander and turmeric. Let it cook for about 5 minutes.
4. Throw in the prawns and make sure it is well incorporate with the spice mixture before pouring in the coconut milk.
5. Season it with salt and let it cook for about 3 or 4 minutes.
6. Serve it hot with plain rice.

The Verdict

This dish is actually flavourful and tasty. I was pretty much taken by surprised, as I tend to be doubtful of "simplified" cooking. The prawns and the coconut milk give it a tint of sweetness. It's also a nice surprising change from spicy ones we usually have, and as such it's a good recipe for those who can't take spicy food or have young children.

A few years back, I couldn't understand why my mom (who has been cooking for the family for over 40 years) lamented how she was cooking the same old thing every day. She felt as if she had exhausted all the recipes she inherited from my grandmother or had came up by herself. And just when we were expecting her to give in to 'da bao' (take out), she would surprise us with some of her delicious dishes.

Now that I have started cooking for my own little family, I finally understand what my mom was going through. There are days when I'm full of cooking ideas and there are days when my brain just draw a blank and I feel doomed to redo the same stuff over and over. This was one of those days. But here came my prince charming to the rescue once again. Pierre picked up one of our Indian cook book and found this lovely dish.

Grilled (Broiled) Prawns

(taken from Indian - Shehzad Husain & Rafi Fernandez)

Ingredients

• 18 large cooked prawns or shrimp
• 1 fresh green chili (sliced)
• 1 tomato (sliced)
• 1 small onion (cut into rings)
• lemon wedges

Marinate

• 4 tbsp lemon juice
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp chili powder
• 1 tsp garlic pulp
• 1½ tsp soft light brown sugar
• 3 tbsp corn oil
• 2 tbsp fresh coriander/cilantro (chopped)

Directions

1. Peel and rinse the prawns gently under cold water. Slit the back of each prawn to open out into a butterfly shape.
2. In a mixing bowl, combine all the ingredients of the marinate and mix them well together.
3. Add the prawns to the spice mixture, making sure they are well coated and let it marinate for about 1 hour.
4. On a flameproof dish, place the green chili, tomato slices and onion rings. Then add the prawn mixture and cook under a very hot preheated grill (broiler) for about 10 to 15 minutes, basting it frequently with a brush.
5. Serve immediately, garnished with lemon wedges.

The Verdict

I was rather skeptical at first about how this dish would turn out (we didn't have a broiler or a grill) and it didn't look exactly like the picture in the book. Boy, was I very pleasantly surprised by how good it turned out: very aromatic with just the right sourish tint and a slight biting taste lingering in your mouth after each bite. It was neither too spicy nor too sourish. All the spices blended in well with the prawns. Rice and prawns were gone by end of dinner

Note

I've substituted cooked prawns with raw ones, used my frozen green chili and sunflower oil instead of corn. I have poured the whole prawn mixture into the pan as the recipe wasn't clear if I'm supposed to place only the marinated prawns onto the pan or the whole thing including the marinated sauce. In the end, I had to scoop out some of the sauce as it was way too watery.

Don't know what to do with the extra chili or lemon grass you have in hand? Freeze them and just take out whatever quantity you need later. This was the advise from the owner of my local Asian shop.

When you think of France, you think of Paris and old cobblestone streets. Well, France is also many small territories spread out all over the world, from the cold shores of Canada (Saint-Pierre & Miquelon) to the sunny beaches of the pacific ocean (French Polynesia) or the jungle of the Amazonian forest (French Guiana). Two of those most well known territories are the Caribbean islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe, which, besides tourism, also happen to produce such delicacies as rum or bananas. Why this crash-course in geography? Because I happened to stumble by accident on a governmental web site promoting the local banana production with (guess what?) banana recipes. The one I tried is crevettes à l'antillaises (shrimps).

Crevettes à l'antillaise

Preparation: 20 minutes
Cooking: 10 minutes
Serves: 4

Ingredients

• 16 big raw prawns (peeled and deveined)
• 1 banana
• 1 tbsp rum
• 100 ml crème fraîche or sour cream (liquid)
• 1 lime

Directions

1. Cut the banana in cubes. Grill them on a pan and set them aside.
2. Grate some lime zests and extract the juice. Pour the juice over the bananas.
3. Using the same pan, cook the prawns till it turned pink. Add in the bananas and pour the cream and rum over the bananas & prawns. Season it with salt and pepper.
4. Serve it with creole rice (we went for plain rice to save time).

The Verdict

When I first saw the list of ingredients, I found this recipe rather interesting and thought it would taste good (shrimp go well with sweet fruits). Well it certainly didn't disappoint us: it's really delicious, creamy and sweet. The rum certainly gets noticed although it doesn't steal the show from the banana. Best of all, the recipe is simple and quick to prepare and doesn't require a bazillion of different ingredients and spices.

Pierre loves prawns. He would eat them in whichever way or sauce they are cooked in: spicy, baked, in soup, buttered, steamed, with or without sauce, grilled, deep fried, etc. So we get to cook prawns pretty often, and one of my favorite recipe is this Chinese dish. It's so simple, easy and fool proof - it was a success the first time I cooked it.

Szechuan Prawns

Ingredients

• 250 to 300 g raw tiger prawns (shrimps)
• ½ egg white (lightly beaten)
• 1 tsp cornflour (cornstarch) paste (see notes below for preparation)
• 600 ml or 2½ cups vegetable oil
• Fresh coriander (cilantro) leaves, to garnish
• a pinch of salt

Sauce:

• 1 tsp ginger root (chopped finely)
• 2 spring onions (chopped finely)
• 1 garlic clove (chopped finely)
• 3-4 small dried red chillies (seeded and chopped)
• 1 tbsp light soy sauce
• 1 tsp Chinese rice wine (Shaoxing wine) or dry sherry
• 1 tbsp tomato purée (paste)
• 1 tbsp oyster sauce
• 2-3 tbsp Chinese stock or water
• a few drops of sesame oil

Directions

1. Peel the raw prawns, then mix them with salt, egg white and cornflour (cornstarch) paste until well coated.
2. Heat the oil in a preheated wok until it is smoking, then deep-fry the prawns in hot oil for 1 minute. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain them on paper towels.
3. Pour off the oil, leaving only a bit in the wok. Add in all the ingredients for the sauce, bring to the boil and stir until smooth and well blended.
4. Add the prawns to the sauce, stirring to blend. Garnish with coriander leaves and serve it with rice.

Conclusions

This dish never fails me. It is always as delicious as the first time I made it. Not only does it taste great, it's also very aromatic. Pierre, Patrick (my father-in-law) and his uncle love this dish very much and so do my friends. They always ask me when I'm cooking this dish again so that they can come over for dinner.

For preparation of this dish, I use long dried chillies (I think it is called cayenne pepper/finger chili/ginnie pepper) instead and I use only 3, yet Pierre felt it was a bit spicy for him. So if you or your guests are not used to spiciness, reduce it to 2 or even 1. When making the sauce, I usually double the quantity specified because Pierre loves to spread the spicy gravy over his rice. I also lump all the ingredients for the sauce in a small bowl and mix them up before adding them to the wok: it saves time. Sometimes I even prepare the sauce ahead of time and leave it in the refrigerator till I want to cook the meal.

As for cooking the prawns, sometimes I skip step 1 & 2 and just stir-fry my raw prawns with a bit of oil first before adding the sauce in.

Notes

To prepare cornflour paste, mix 1 part cornflour with about 1.5 parts of cold water. Stir until smooth. This paste can be used to thicken sauces.

If raw prawns are not available, then use cooked prawns but omit step 1 & 2 and add the cooked prawns directly before the sauce at step 3.

Take care when handling dried chillies, as chili juice stings; avoid touching your eyes and always wash your hands thoroughly afterwards. Discard the seeds as these are the hottest part.