Ingredients:
1. A handful of cauliflower florets
2. 2 cloves garlic chopped
3. 1 TBS cooking oil
4. Salt & pepper to taste
Directions:
1. Heat skillet with cooking oil.
2. Add cauliflower florets.
3. After 1 min until it is a little charred, turn over and fry the other side until a little charred.
4. Season with salt & pepper and serve :-)
Additional Information:
I made this for dinner this evening together with the beef steaks. After frying the cauliflowers, I pushed it to the side, add oil, fry some garlic and add the beef steaks. When the beef steaks are done, I moved the steaks to the side of the skillet, and moved the cauliflowers to the middle to absorb the sauce from the beef steaks. I served this with sweet potato sauce, a raw cauliflower salad on the side and cauliflower cream soup. It's surely a cauliflower theme dinner!!! So that was my experiment with the different way of eating cauliflowers all in a day. Mr. FECS enjoyed the dinner, and didn't complained that it was too much cauliflowers :-)
That's our dinner tonight: Pan-grilled cauliflower served with beef steaks and sweet potato sauce, raw cauliflower salad on the side and cauliflower cream soup.
Directions:
1. Heat canola cooking oil on wok, add garlic and fry until golden.
2. Add mushrooms and fry until golden.
3. Add caixin and quickly stir-fry for a short while until it is no longer raw and well mixed.
4. Add salt & pepper to taste.
5. Add oyster sauce and mix well.
6. Dish up and serve immediately with rice. Do not overcook, otherwise it will not be crunchy.
Additional Information:
This is a 家常便饭 - a classic dish my mum used to serve for dinner during my childhood. Typically in her 3-course dinner, which consists of a vegetable, meat and soup served with rice, the vegetable would be caixin. Caixin is a Chinese green-leaf vegetable readily available in Singapore. It used to be very cheap, but a very nutritious green vegetables.
Although without much education, my mum is very good with food and nutrition. She continued to teach herself to read after primary school and she would be reading and gaining knowledge from reading the Chinese newspaper. Even though we were poor, my mum was very good in picking out those food that are nutritious and yet cheap, like this vegetables. While the rich Chinese kids in Singapore were having Chinese tonics such as ginseng, goji berries, bird nest, black chicken soup, we gained our nutrition from these humble vegetables which are packed with nutrition and cooked freshly daily by my mum. All of us three children grew up well, I think a large part was due to my mum always making fresh, nutritious, healthy and tasty food everyday.
Even then, I didn't always appreciate it as a child. I used to be very fussy and picky about food. Like most children, I disliked green leafy vegetables. As I was cooking this dish with J, I could literally hear my mum telling me, "Ah girl, this is very good for you, lots of vitamins and very nutritious. You should learn to eat it."
As I grew up, I fell in love eating this dish. Moving away from home to Copenhagen, this is one of the dishes that I miss most
"Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it." - Proverbs 22:6.
This was true with me with regards to this dish. The healthy eating habits I have today, I have picked it up from my mother, although I didn't appreciate so much as a child.
It is available from the "Chinatown" here, costing 20 DKK per packet, which was 10 times more expensive than Singapore when I first moved to Denmark 14 years ago. It was such a delicacy for me to eat this in Copenhagen, but no longer so over the years. This is because, over the years, the price has come down over the years in Chinatown, while it is getting more expensive in Singapore.
I made this dish with J today. I am passing down the baton to J, for him to know his heritage. I am recording this dish for the future generations of our family.
This post is also tribute to my mother. To be able to manage a small household budget and yet to take care of the nutrition of your family is not easy, but she did such an amazing job.
Cut off the end of each stalk.
Cut into 2 inch pieces. Here is a video demonstration:
Wash, rinse and drain caixin.
Cut oyster mushrooms into strips.
Cut garlic lengthwise.
Cut garlic breadth-wise.
Heat 1 TBS canola cooking oil on pan on high heat.
Add garlic and fry until golden.
Add mushrooms.
Fry until fragrant.
Add caixin.
Stir well until it is no longer raw.
Add 1 pinch salt and stir.
Add 1 TBS oyster sauce and mix well (optional).
Sprinkle some ground pepper.
Off the heat and dish up so that the Caixin remains crunchy. Do not overcook.
Serves 3-4 Ingredients:
1. 3 servings wholemeal organic spaghetti cooked according to packet instructions
2. 400g fresh pork belly sliced in strips
3. 4 oyster mushrooms sliced in strips
4. 10 broccoli florets blanched
5. 2 cloves garlic minced
6. 1 large onion minced
7. 1 can of organic tomatoes in juice
8. 1 TBS olive oil
9. 1 TBS Japanese mirin
10. 1 TBS canola cooking oil
11. Salt & pepper to taste
12. 1 bunch parsley chopped
13. Sprinkling of grated Parmesan cheese (optional)
Directions:
1. Cook pasta separately according to package instructions.
2. Heat pan with Canola cooking oil, fry garlic until golden.
3. Add onion and fry until golden.
4. Add meat and fry until brown.
5. Add oyster mushrooms and fry until golden.
6. Add 1 salt and 1 TBS mirin, reduce heat to prevent burn, stir well.
7. Add canned tomatoes, salt and pepper, stir well.
8. Add pasta and mix well.
9. Add broccoli and mix well.
10. Add 1 TBS olive oil and stir well.
11. Sprinkle parsley and stir well.
12. Dish and serve with grated Parmesan cheese :-)
Additional Information:
Our Little FECS and Mr. FECS are requesting for pasta, so I am making pasta dishes this week. I normally don't like any tomato-based or meat sauce pasta. I used to make them using store-bought ready to use pasta sauce, and it just didn't taste good. They tasted boring, but after making this Japanese inspired recipe, I am persuaded. It tasted really good and fresh. I think the reason is because real tomatoes are used. The canned tomatoes tasted more real than bottled pasta sauce. I am falling in love with tomato-based pasta now :-)
After our first full cooking class with our Little FECS during the fall school holidays, I am more confident of cooking more with him. Today is my day off from work (I work half-time). So I fetched our Little FECS home early from school, and we made dinner together :-) I must say, he had done most of the preparation and cooking himself. I am just at the side supervising :-)
After reading the recent report from WHO about eating bacon and other processed meat increases the risk of cancer significantly, I use the fresh pork breast, which are used to make bacon, for this dish.
