Chai Por Fried Eggs

Inspiration - nothing really, kinda tired of fried eggs or the onion fried eggs and I think Chai por (pronounced in hokkien) eggs are a nice twist to ordinary fried eggs. Now, I need to find out exactly what "chai por" is in English - hmmm could be some sort of radish or I really am not sure. Do help if any of you knows.

Simple ingredients -
1. Chai Por - you can buy the chopped ones or they do come in strips inwhich you will have to chop chop yourself.
2. 2-3 eggs
3. some sliced garlic

Simple Steps -

1. Get all the ingredients ready. It is so simple, 2 main ingredients and garlic is just to make it more fragrant, hopefully.

2. Put oil in pan (non stick pan) and stir fry garlic till fragant, And then add in the chopped chai por and continue to stir fry.

3. Add the egg into pan and spread it flat. Make sure fire is medium, just incase it burns the bottom too fast and the egg is still not cooked.

4. Try to flip over the egg without breaking them up. Sometimes you'll get it, sometimes you won't. No matter it's still tasty. Voila! Ready to eat! Yum Yum.

Bak Kut Teh

Inspiration - It was a cold Sunday in March here in Dallas and I was craving for some hot steaming bak kut teh. B-boy was coming over for lunch and he is on a "NO-carbo" diet so loads of pork would suit him just fine. And I have packed different packets of ready made bak kut teh seasoning from Malaysia. So the menu for today - Sichuan Bak Kut Teh. Essentially it just has more pepper for the spice in the soup.


Simple Steps-
1) Get the ingrediant ready - you will notice the pkt of pepper and 2 pkts of bak kut teh spices.

For the meat, I am using some pork ribs, lean pork and pork belly...best combination!

2) Marinate the meat all together with some salt, pepper, soy sauce and dark soy sauce.

3) Get the rest of the ingredients ready too. These were some that I picked.

Keizhi (I may be wrong on the name) - it goes well with herbal soup

Garlic - use the whole clove in the soup

Mushrooms - wash and soak

Enoki Mushroom - soak in hot water or boiling water

4) In a big pot of boiling water (around 1500ml-2000ml), put inthe pkt of bak kut teh spices, keizhi, garlic and mushrooms.

5) When the water starts boiling again and you can smell the aroma of the spices, put in all the marinated pork. Let it boil in high fire for 10 mins and then simmer for another 1 hour. Try the texture of meat, if you want it softer, you can simmer for a longer time.

6) Ok, last step, add in some salt for taste. And dark soy if preferred. Voila! Ready to eat! Yum yum!

I love my BKT with yaw char kwai! I bought some from the dimsum restaurant. Just pop it in the oven for 5 mins and it will be fresh and crispy.

Garnishing - Green onions, and for dip hmmm I love fresh chilli padi and garlic in soy sauce and for those who can't take spicy err like my Hubby-D, use the bigger red chillies are fine.

Simple ingredient -

1) 1 pkt of BKT spices

2) 1kg of pork - combination of ribs, lean and belly.

3) Soup - keizhi, mushroom(6-8 pcs), 2 whole garlic

4) Garnishing - enoki mushroom, green onions

5) Dip - Garlic, chillies, soy sauce
6) Water for boiling BKT soup - 1500ml-200ml

Green Curry Chicken

Inspiration - My sis-law Lynn was so nice to give me a bunch of different quick recipe seasoning from Asian Home Gourmet (which I later realised it is sold here in US too). So I decided to try the Thai Green Curry. It looked simple enough.


Simple Steps :-
1) All you need is some chicken breast (cut in cubes). I only had some carrots in fridge so I used that plus one big onion.




2) Remove the seasoning packet and place the seasoning ingredients in wok with some oil. Stirfry till fragrant. Watch the fire (medium prefer) so that it does not burn easily.




3) Then put in the chicken, carrot and onions. Mix around well with the ingredients.



4) I was a little dissappointed but this recipe required some coconut milk. Luckily I had some so I added in. Usually the Brahims seasoning is all in one and does not require anything else excpet the meat and veges of course. Anyway, I added some water too and let it simmer for 10 mins.

5) Voila! Ready to eat, Yum yum!. Thai Green Curry Chicken.

Simple Ingredients

1) 350gm Chicken breast (cut in cubes)

2) Vegetables - Carrot and Onions

3) 300ml Coconut milk

4) 1 pkt of Asian Home Gourmet Thai Green Curry Spicepaste

5) Optional - you can add basil leaves, green chilli or coriander as garnish.

Radish Cake (Lobak Kueh)

Inspiration - My contribution to Chinese New Year cooking. This year is the first year I have to spend New Year's eve away (the reality of being married) but I got to come home on 1st day of CNY and I decided to make radish cake. This is my 2nd attempt - thanks for my Auntie Judy's recipe!

Simple Steps :-

1) Get all ingredients ready. This is the most tedious part of the work. All the chopping and mincing.

Garlic and Shallots

Dried Shrimp
Minced Pork
Mushroom and some Leeks
Radish (grated)

Rice Flour (1 pkt- 500gm)

2) Now for all the frying. Stir fry ingredients separately.

Stirfry shallots and garlic till golden brown

Stirfry dried shrimp till crunchy

Stirfry minced pork till cook (add some soysauce and salt)

Stirfry mushroom and leeks till cook

For the radish, stirfry in wok for a while after taking out the earlier ingredients.

4) For the dough, in a large tray, add water and rice flour together and stir well. Put in all stir-fried ingredients and mix well. Ensure sufficient water so that the dough and ingredients mix well. Add salt and pepper.

5) Place tray on top of boiling water and steam for 2 hours.

6) Garnish with fried shallots and onion. Voila! Ready to eat! Yum Yum!

Simple Ingredients :-

1) Rice flour (1 pkt - 500gm)

2) Minced meat. Minced mushroom, Minced dried shrimp, minced shallots, garlic, leeks

3) One whole medium sized radish - grated

4) Salt / Pepper to taste.

Verdict - You may have noticed that my dough is a little thick. Actually the dough turned out too hard. It tasted great but just that it was a bit hard. So it just needed a bit more water in the dough.

Herbal Wrapped Chicken

Inspiration - Oh well, it was few days before CNY in Feb 2008 and I was feeling particularly festive and wanted to impress my mom with a Chinese infused dish for dinner. As usual she was like....don't mess up the kitchen!! I said, don't worry you will be impressed with me. Actually I was at Soos's house during her hse warming and she made this and I was really impressed and have been meaning to try it since. So, this is the special pack of ingredient. What a name - Golden Phoenix Herbal Wrapped Chicken!

Simple Steps :-

1) Get one whole chicken and also some ingredients that u want to stuff into the chicken (I decided to use some red dates, mushroom, onion and mandarin orange) hmmm...why mandarin orange, well the instructions required an orange (probably due to the Golden Phoenix theme) and so I improvise with mandarin orange since it was CNY and I had loads of them at home.

2) Open the packet, you will find the packet of spices and another packet containing an aluminium foil and plastic wrapper. Place chicken on top of plastic wrapper with the aluminium foil under.

3) Pour the packet of ingredients onto chicken and massage on whole of chicken including the stomach. Put the mushroom, dates and onion and peeled mandarin orange into stomach.

4) Wrapped whole chicken tightly. Ensure that there is no gap to prevent juice from spilling. Fold with aluminium foil and put on plate on top of boiling water to steam.

5) Steam for 2-3 hours (depending size of chic). Check occasionally to ensure steamer has enough water. Voila! Ready to eat. Yum Yum!

Simple ingredients -

1) 1 packet of Herbal chicken spices

2) 1 whole chicken

3) Red dates, mushroom, onion, orange (in the above I used mandarin orange)

Verdict - I think the mandarin orange was a mistake. It turned out a bit bitter...how silly of me, I should have realized it. Should have used an orange as instructed. There are other packet ingredients that may not require orange eg Emperor Wrapped Herbal Chicken.