Chicken, tofu and kangkong (water / swamp spinach) with chili garlic sauce
Yes, chili garlic sauce. Again. I can’t seem to get enough of the stuff. And I’m not even fond of spicy dishes. No, correction — I am not fond of overly spicy dishes. And that’s what makes the chili garlic sauce perfect for me so long as I use it for cooking rather than for dipping.
Yesterday’s lunch was a stir fry made with chicken strips, firm tofu and kangkong. So unbelievable simple, so amazingly easy to cook and so utterly tasty that I had to stop myself from having a third helping…
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Chicken and cabbage stir fry with chili garlic sauce
There are two things about this dish that make it memorable. First, it is a lesson that chicken fillets are not essential for delicious stir fried dishes. Even chicken pieces with bones are good so long as they are chopped into small pieces. How small? By Asian standards, that means small enough to be picked up with chopsticks.
The second lesson is that chili garlic sauce, the kind you find on the table in most Chinese restaurants, is not only good for dipping. It is an excellent seasoning as well.
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Aromatic (and tastier!) spring roll wrappers
I used to cook my spring roll wrappers on medium-low heat. Yesterday, I realized that if the batter is poured into a very hot pan and the wrapper is cooked over medium-high heat, the bubbles create a better texture and pattern. The wrapper browns better too. But that wasn’t the only thing I learned yesterday. I also discovered that adding finely sliced herbs to the batter makes the wrappers aromatic and tastier. Those are bits of fresh tarragon peeping through the spring roll wrappers. Next time, I’ll experiment with some other herb.
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Teriyaki udon
The name of the dish sounds very Japanese but I doubt if you’ll find teriyaki soba listed in the menu of Japanese restaurants. I sort of invented it last night because I wanted a low-fat meal with meat in it. You know, like making a statement that low-fat means neither meatless nor a total abstention from red meat. I bought lean pork meat a few days ago, sliced it thinly then marinated the sliced pork in teriyaki sauce overnight in the fridge. Twenty-four hours later, I used the marinated pork to make this noodle dish.
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Oriental noodles with peanut sauce
If you’re a fan of Vietnamese food, then you should be familiar with the peanut sauce that goes with the spring rolls. It’s a mixture of tamarind paste, peanut butter and hoisin sauce, thinned down a bit with hot water. I love that peanut sauce. I can dip steamed dimsum and lumpiang togue (fried bean sprout spring rolls) in it and not think about how weird it is. I love the Vietnamese peanut sauce so much that I decided to find out if it would work as the sauce base for show mein. The result became yesterday’s lunch.
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Fresh herbs in my lamb curry
We had lamb curry for lunch yesterday and I used only the freshest herbs to go with it. By fresh I mean herbs I picked from my garden. I can’t claim that this is Thai, Malaysian, Indonesian or Indian lamb curry but it is most definitely my lamb curry.
I am posting this entry as a photo gallery to expedite the explanations about the herbs I used. A picture is worth a thousand words as they say and I took the time to photograph the ingredients for my lamb curry.
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When tofu met pesto
It was a whim. A last-minute whim and a decision that took all of a split-second to make. What I really intended was to saute the spinach leaves with a little Kacep Manis then use them as a bed for the fried tofu and fish fillets. I was already taking out the bottle of Kecap Manis from the fridge when my eyes went past the small jar of pesto that I made a couple of days ago. I said, “Why not?” And because pesto is much milder than Kacap Manis, I decided that a little more kick was in order — two pieces of chili picante. That was how I discovered that pesto is not an enemy of tofu.
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Beef, ginger and pineapple stew
This is the day when I vow never to pay attention when I see the “Buy 1, Take 1″ signs all over Shopwise. Not that the cooked dish turned out badly. On the contrary, what a salvage operation it was. The problem was the beef. The meat must have come from a hundred-year-old cow. I’ve been buying meat for over two decades and I didn’t notice? The beef was pre-sliced nicely across the grain and packed in styrofoam trays. You can’t see the grain anymore when the meat has been cut that way. Sneaky way to get rid of inferior meat, eh?
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