scallops

Stir Fry Chicken with Scallops, Celery and Cashews

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Stir Fry Chicken with Scallops, Celery and Cashews

It’s a mouthful I must admit, but there is just no two ways of naming this amazing dish. The Stir Fry Chicken with Japanese Scallops, Australian Celery and American Cashews is just as multinational as the number of ingredients in it.

Of course the chicken is 100% local. Or at least I think it is. Or maybe it is Malaysian. *shrugged*

One thing is for certain. I cooked it in a very Singaporean kitchen. 100% home cooked. Okay so what you may say. And you are right. No big deal.

The only thing to shout about is really how well these ingredients all come together to make a delicious dish accompaniment to a perfect meal. The roasted cashews, seared to an uneven edgy char. The marinated chicken bits and pieces seasoned with the troika of marinates – white pepper, soya sauce and oyster sauce – three basic differences that brings such confluence of taste to simple poultry.

I love the roasted cashews and how the celery just added that unique flavour to the dish. Truly I was amazed that I realised to cook this dish only now. This is the stuff legends are made of.

Recipe

Ingredients

2 Chicken Drum (deboned)
Handful of Baked Cashews
3 stalks of Celery (chopped)
6 pieces of Scallops (halved)
White Pepper
Oyster Sauce
Light Soya Sauce
Olive Oil

Method

1. Marinate the chicken pieces in white pepper (about 1 tsp), 1 tbsp soya sauce and 1 tbsp oyster sauce. Leave it to marinate for about 5 minutes.

2. In a wok/pan heat about 3 tbsp oil. Then stir fry the cashews until they start to brown. Once the cashews are browning, add the marinated chicken pieces to stir fry. Ensuring that they change colour to a light brown.

3. Add the scallops and turn the heat up to high. Keep stirring to ensure evenness of cooking. Then throw in the chopped celery and cover the lid to steam the vegetables and softened them.

4. Steaming cooks the vegetables and the meats and allows the flavours to come together cohesively. Remove the lid and stir fry until you can smell the dish. Do a taste test and you can serve.

Bon Appetit!

Seafood Spaghetti in Tomato Sauce

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Seafood Spaghetti in Tomato Sauce

A quick and dirty recipe that I love to use whenever I am short of time to cook, is none other than spaghetti. There are so many permutation of recipes that I could think of with just so few ingredients. It is the technique that is most important when cooking pasta, not so much the choice of ingredients. Of course, if you have fresh ingredients, then that makes for an even better pasta experience.

I usually do this lovely Italian styled recipe with a little Singaporean twist to it. It is not al dente but you could make it that if you wanted to. I cook for my family, and that means my toddler needs to be able to eat it and enjoy it. So I do the Singaporean thing which is to make the pasta softer than usual, and very soupy with lots of sauce. You may not like my style of pasta. But my family loves it and that’s all that matters.

So I got home really late this evening, and it didn’t help that the taxi driver tried to be a know-it-all race car driver. He was speeding, taking sharp turns and slamming the brakes all throughout the journey back. By the time I got back, I was near exhausted and almost collapsed. It was really tough.

Plus I promised the family that I would make the most fantabulous pasta in the world. But I was really zoned out and feeling like crap. It doesn’t help that I have motion sickness and that basically worsened my dizziness. It took me longer than usual to recover this time around, but when I managed to overcome the sickness, I jumped straight into the kitchen.

I like my pasta in a certain way, so this recipe had a moderate difficulty rating as compared to my even quicker and dirtier soups that I make every morning. So if you’re ready, let’s get down to it.

 

Recipe

Ingredients

half a packet of Barilla brand Spaghetti (cooks in about 8 minutes al dente, but I usually cook them in about 11 minutes)

8 large Prawns (these are slightly greenish in colour)

8 large Scallops (defrosted)

a can of Narcissus Button Mushrooms (small can will do)

a can of Hunt’s Whole Tomato Sauce

a bottle of Leggos’ Tomato Paste (you can use any brand of sauce or paste, it doesn’t really matter)

Salted Butter

Olive Oil

Sea Salt

Black Pepper

 

Method

1. Firstly boil the pasta in a pot of water with a dash of olive oil and a pinch of sea salt. Boil for about 11 minutes (or longer if you are cooking for kids). After cooking, drain and add some olive oil to prevent it from becoming dry and clumpy. You may wish to douse it in ice cold water to stop the cooking so that the noodles are still firm.

2. Then add butter into the frying pan, with a little olive oil and sauté the button mushrooms. Add a little black pepper and sea salt. Stir fry until the mushrooms sear and shrink down in size. Then add the prawns to cook together with the mushrooms. Keep the heat moderate, and when the prawns start to curl up into the shape of a letter “C”, that is the sign that the prawns are “cooked”. If you don’t watch over this process carefully, what will happen is the prawns will continue curling and will eventually form an “O” shape. That basically means the prawns are now “Overcooked”. Simple tip.

3. Reserve the prawns and mushrooms into their individual plates. Now to cook the scallops. Add some butter, and olive oil to a new pan (if need be, wash the pan that you’re using) and turn the heat to a moderate level. Stir fry the scallops and also allow them to sear on both sides. You want to add a little salt so that they will taste a little better. Now with the scallops, it can be a little tricky, if you fry too long, it dries up too quickly. If you don’t cook it well enough, it may not taste as fantastic. This one requires some skill, and there are not many visible cues like “C” or “O” to help you along. So I will say – use the force.

4. After the scallops are done, place them in their plates and you can now add the pasta into the pan. By now they would be a little dry, and so you would need some water. You may add whatever water that you reserve before pouring out the pot (that you cooked the pasta in). Now the part that I like the most, preparing the tomato sauce.

5.  I use a combination of tomato paste and tomato sauce (I don’t mean Maggi Tomato Sauce, but the real tomato sauce with real tomatoes in the can). Pour the sauce into the pasta, and add two tablespoons of tomato paste and stir. Add a little salt and black pepper and continue to cook. Break up the whole tomatoes and combine the paste into the sauce. Mix well.

6. Once it is ready, using a pair of food tongs, serve the pasta onto the plates with the rest of the ingredients. Typically I wouldn’t cook it this way, but it is my quick and dirty recipe. I usually would use a lot of garlic in my cooking, but I used up all my garlic making the Bak Kut Teh yesterday. Sprinkle a little thyme or basil leaves if you have them. Delicious.

Bon Appetit!

Scallops and Asparagus

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Scallops and Asparagus

I love this dish, especially at the Chinese restaurant whenever we have birthdays with grandma and grandpa. We would go to Tai San restaurant at this undisclosed location. We often go there at night and I would mostly be sleeping in the car due to motion sickness. And when I open my eyes, we would always just be driving into Tai San.

Come to think of it, people must have been richer then. We have cars and big houses. These days I can’t even afford a car or landed property. Have we improved or really become the new poor? We are more educated than our parents, but it seems we have lesser opportunities to break out of the poverty trap.

Anyway, the food at Tai San was always good. And we would always have our fill and family dinners were always about feasting and celebration. So this dish was always something that I would refer to as the menu filler. Scallops and Asparagus never really look like a main dish but more like a dish to make up the space in between great dishes. It was like a transitional dish to help make up the number.

It didn’t matter to me because I loved the dish as if it was a main. It was technically just as difficult as any of the other famous dishes to cook. If the scallops are not prepared properly, they would either be too raw or overcooked, and handling seafood is an art just like estimating the doneness in premium fillet mignon.

Here is my recipe for a very simple but delicious Scallops and Asparagus, hope you like it too.

Recipe

Ingredients

8-9 large stalks of Asparagus
6 large Japanese Scallops
2-3 Garlic (minced)
Drizzle of Light Soya Sauce
2-3 tbsp Olive Oil

Method

1. Shave the skin off the asparagus and sliced diagonally. Heat oil in wok, and fry the garlic until fragrant. Then throw in the asparagus pieces and fry at high heat. You want to create some gloss and be able to sear the vegetable.

2. Reserve the semi cooked asparagus and add oil again to fry the scallops. For this part, there is not much advice I can offer except that scallops cook rather quickly. Depending on the size you would want to moderate the heat in the pan. The end result you want to achieve is for the scallops to sear a little and to cook through.

3. Once the scallops are cooked through (most difficult part), add the asparagus back into the pan and continue to fry at high heat, add soya sauce and it should be just nice.

Bon Appetit!

Simple Black Chicken Soup

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Simple Black Chicken Soup

The wifey broke my sleep and woke me up to the new dawn. She mumbled some words to which I had to say a “har?”. Maybe my brain is slow at processing slur words. So I asked her again, and it was then that I realized that she wanted me to cook one of my fabulous soups *shines fingernails*.

Alright, that shouldn’t be a problem, I thought to myself, making soups in the wee hours of the morning has now become my specialty. The only hurdle between me and making soup these days is probably the waking up part. It has been been a challenge since I got rid of that ridiculous cock-crowing ringtone which apparently irritated the entire population in my cluster; it also irritated my wife as well. So the ringtone had to go. Now in its place is this very zen and space-like ringtone named neon.

It’s not the John Mayer kind of neon with his signature slap and pluck style of guitar playing. But it was more like a vibrating double-stringed instrument sounding more like a cricket’s mating call. Very alien. Unfortunately it was also quite soft and good for if you wanted to continue to sleep.

“I already placed the black chicken in the sink.” came the voice in my semi-state of galactical subconsciousness. It was as if the voice transcended space and time to speak to me. “wake up lah.” My wife slapped my shoulder. Just as quickly my subconscious mind returned to full consciousness albeit my eyes still glued-closed due to excessive secretion of the tear duct (heaty?).

I peered into my mobile phone and it was just nice, one minute before neon; one minute before the new dawn. Now my quest can begin.

So to make black chicken soup the quick and dirty way, you really need a packet of dun ji tang herbs from the supermarket. This is the proven method of making the delicious soup. But the problem now is I am all out of the herbs! Jialat!

I really need to quickly summon my creative culinary powers in order to make sense of this newfound dilemma. Thankfully I always keep a stash of my favorite generic condiments somewhere, always ready to be deployed in any crisis of a lack of dun ji tang herbs.

Recipe

Ingredients

2 bottles of Brand’s Essence of Chicken
5 pieces of Japanese dried scallops
5 pieces of dried red dates
25 pieces of wolfberry seeds

Method

1. Par boil the chicken pieces to get rid of the scum.

2. Add in new water (not newater) and begin boiling. Add the chicken essence. Dump the condiments into the pot and close the lid.

3. After boiling for 10 minutes, place the pot into the thermal cooker and walk away. Serve at night when you return from work.

Bon Appetit!

Black Bean, Radish and Pork Ribs Soup

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Black Bean, Radish and Pork Ribs Soup

Day two of the new dawn. Still no twilight vampires or werewolves. I got up early to make my soup of the day. The very Chinese Black Bean, Radish and Pork Ribs Soup. This should be good. I can already imagine how it would and should taste like by tonight. The tenderising effect of the thermal cooker is not to be discounted. I mean what goes on within the pot is just simply amazing. The pork ribs will be tender, the vegetables soft and everyone just so delicious.

I usually don’t salt my soup when cooking them, just so as not to complicate the natural flavours of the ingredients. There must always be clarity in whatever soup we do. So when the soup is ready to be consumed, I must be able to tell the ingredients apart upon tasting, most importantly I must be able to enjoy my soup. Salt tends to confuse our tastebuds. That said, I usually add a pinch of sea salt just before serving for that little bit of taste. Like her friend garlic, salt can only be servant to the dish, but never a master – that’s only if you aren’t making salt-baked chicken.

So I decided that I would try out my own rendition of this classic soup. I tried searching for a video on YouTube using the keywords “black beans and pork ribs” – but to no avail. It seems that Asian cooks aren’t so keen on taking videos of their cooking as compared to some really awful videos of cooking processes. Those are not cooking demonstrations IMHO – they are more like sanctifying rituals of epic proportions. One moment is do this, set apart that, next is remove this, reserve that. I mean, how is anyone going to learn how to cook anything if the ingredient list is so technical and most of them sound as if we have to climb a mountain to pluck it.

Practicality and simplicity should be what cooking is all about. Soups should be simple three to four ingredients – that’s it!

Anyway, before I get carried away, my version of the black bean soup is nothing short of simple. Try it!

Recipe

Ingredients

250 grams Black Beans
250 grams Pork Ribs
1 large White Radish
4 Dried Scallops

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Method

1. Par boil the pork ribs to remove scum. Slice radish into quarts and dump them into the pot. Then dump all the black beans into the pot as well. Drop 3-4 dried scallops to flavour the soup.

2. Fill the pot with water until all ingredients are covered. Turn on high heat for about 15 minutes. Once the soup is boiling and bubbling, turn off the fire and place the pot in the thermal cooker.

Note:

If you are unsure of how the thermal cooker looks like, I have a photo appended.

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Bon Appetit!

Creamy Salmon Pasta with Portobello and Scallops

Ho Sim Lang

Creamy Salmon Pasta with Portobello and Scallops

I got home slightly later today because of an Excel test that I had to sit for. Managed to get a good grade which was nice. Anyway, so I realised the value of rushing back home during peak hour traffic. I can’t imagine having to fight with the same bunch of people day in day out for space at the MRT station. It can be quite a terrible thing especially if you have to do a long commute to get to work.

Thankfully I managed to get out of class at about 5.55pm which I reckon is the thin line between being caught in the rush at 6 pm or the calm before the storm. People in the city go back home on time surprisingly.

So the wife asked me what I would cook for her tonight, and I couldn’t decide, we had already run out of ingredients at home, so she said why not cook a cream based Salmon Pasta. I replied, “Yuck.” and just nice my phone ran out of battery. So maybe the message didn’t manage to get through.

So it came as no surprise when a packet of fresh salmon landed on the kitchen table-top and a packet of glorious Portobellos. Surprisingly she bought Scallops as well. It was a gathering of all my favourite friends.

Recipe – Serving for Two

Ingredients

Fresh Salmon – a fillet for me and a fillet for you.

Fresh Scallops – I like at least 5 pieces for my plate. You can have lesser if you like.

Portobello Mushrooms

Fresh Rosemary – 2 sprigs 

Lime

Garlic

Cooking Cream – 1 small packet will do.

Milk – 1 cup is sufficient.

Mixed Italian Herbs

Black Pepper

Cayenne Pepper

Sea Salt

Olive Oil

 

Method

1. In a pot, cook about 200 grams (dried) Fusilli Pasta (this type of pasta is fantastic for cream-based sauces). I use Barilla Brand because it is one of the better ones. Cook the Fusilli Pasta for 11 minutes in hot boiling water mixed with a generous helping of salt and a tablespoon of olive oil. Once pasta is cooked, strain it immediately and douse it in cold water to stop cooking. Pasta should be just nice.

2. Heat a saucepan of two tablespoons of olive oil until slightly smoking, then add in minced garlic (3 wedges) and stir-fry gently until the garlic is fragrant. Meanwhile, de-bone and slice the salmon against the grain and add to the saucepan once garlic starts to brown a little. Fry the salmon until flesh turns pinkish. Do not fry the salmon too long as it tends to become dry. Once all the salmon turns pinkish (which is about 3-4 minutes) remove from saucepan and set aside.

3. In a frying pan, heat a tablespoon of olive oil (you can use butter if you like, but be careful as it burns easily) and place the Scallops to allow it to sear and burn on each side. My wife bought 4 pieces! Remove the Scallops after a few minutes of frying over medium heat.

4. In the same frying pan, fry the sliced Portobello Mushrooms and rosemary leaves with a sprinkle of sea salt. Stir-fry the mushrooms, sea salt and rosemary until it starts to burn a little, then add a tablespoon of olive oil and sauté until the portobellos turn soft (and delicious).

5. Assemble the Pasta (weigh about 180 grams per portion, 200 grams if you prefer a heavier meal) with Salmon on top, scallops on the side, and the rosemary-infused portobellos. If you have some leftover baby spinach or rocket from yesterday it would be great!

6. Now in the saucepan, cooking about 200 grams of cooking cream and about a half a cup of fresh milk. Add black pepper, mixed Italian herbs and a little salt to taste. Allow the cream to cook until it bubbles and forms a thin layer. The cream sauce is ready at this point. Ladle the cream sauce onto the pasta and serve with a wedge of lime (I ran out of the lemon!). I like my Salmon with a light sprinkle of cayenne pepper.

Bon Appetit!

So you may ask, why go through all that effort for a simple meal – as in cooking everything separately and then assembling it later? Well, I like to taste my food, so that’s why I cooked them separately, it just tastes better that way don’t you think so? Furthermore, different ingredients have different cooking temperatures and I have to respect that. Seafood tends to be a little more temperamental and less tolerant of mistakes.

It was a good decision to cook it this way. The wife loves it, and I must say it’s not too bad either.