Fried Pork Balls in Mushroom Broth

Simple ingredients :

Pork Balls
1 lb of minced pork
1 big onion or 3-4 shallots. (diced fine)
Some diced water chestnut (as desired)
1 TSP of salt and 1/2 tsp of pepper, 1 TSP of soy sauce, 1 TSP of rice wine
2 TSP Corn starch to bind the meat and ingredients together

Other ingredients
8 pcs of big Chinese mushroom - (Soak in water till tender) - Cut half or quarters depending on mushroom size.
2-3 cloves of garlic
2 TSP of soy sauce
1 TSP of oyster sauce
1 cup of water
Salt and sugar to taste
Corn Starch to thicken the broth
Spring onion as garnishing.

Simple Steps :

1. Pork Balls
Combine all ingredient and mix well. Take a spoonful onto wet palm annd roll into a ball. Put on dry plate and ensure each ball don't stick to another. When rolling the pork balls, sprinkle some water on palms always to avoid meat from sticking to hand.

Heat up oil and fry the pork balls till golden brown. Set aside.

2. In a wok with 2 TSP of oil, saute the chopped garlic till fragrant and then put in the mushroom. Please make sure that you have rinse and squeeze water from the mushrooms.

3. Stir fry the mushroom for 5 mins and then add water. Put in the fried pork balls. Add the soy sauce, oyster sauce, salt and pepper to taste.

4. Let it boil in medium fire for 10 mins. If it is too watery, you can add some corn starch mix to thicken the broth.

5. This dish is ready to served.

Homemade Meat Balls with Water Chestnut

Homemade meat balls. Ahhh!! For as long as I can remember, since young I only had homemade meat balls. My family do not eat out very often and even if we ate out it would be mostly Chinese food. Therefore, I have always had the impression that meat balls are made at home. Of course now, you can get pre-packed meatballs from supermarkets easily.

I will share with you my simple recipe of homemade meatballs. I am sure there are many variations of this in terms of ingredients that you can use but this is a very basic recipe that is fast and simple. I would be adding water chestnut for extra crunch in this recipe.

Simple ingredients -
Base meat ingredients -
1) 500 gram minced pork
2) 1 medium sized onion or 3 pieces of shallots- chopped fine.
3) 2 cloves of garlic - chopped fine.
4) Seasoning - salt, soy sauce, cornstarch, pepper.

5) Special add-on - Water chestnut - I just used half of the can below. I did not buy fresh ones cos it was just too tedious to peel and cut so I opted for the easy way out. However, fresh ones are definitely sweeter so do use fresh ones if you get to buy them in the supermarkets.



Simple steps -
1. Remove half of the sliced water chestnut from the can. Chopped it fine. I will leave the size up to you. Some prefer it smaller but I have opted for slightly larger pieces so that I can taste the crunch.

2. Mix and marinade all the ingredients of the base meat mix. Add the water chest nut last.

3. Mix it well. Actually my water chestnut bits are a bit chunky. I should have made the bits smaller as it was a bit difficult to make it stick together when I roll it into small sized balls.

4. Shape the meat mix into small round shaped balls. Use a average sized table spoon, scoop up the meat, wet your fingers a bit and shape into balls on your palms.

5. Last step - heat wok with oil for frying. Fry the meat balls till golden brown. Voila! Ready to eat! Trust me...it is YUMMY!!

Claypot Chicken Rice

I should call my recipe Rice Cooker Chicken Rice as I don't have a claypot and I just use the easy way out of a rice cooker. Since it is home cooking, I think the rice cooker is the easiest way to bluff my way through for this rendition of claypot chicken rice.

Simple ingredients -
1) Chicken Thighs (2 pieces) - cut up to smaller pieces. You can opt for just chicken breast too. Marinade with dark and light soy sauce, ginger juice, salt, pepper, sesame oil.
2) 2-3 mushroom soaked and cut in slices
3) 1 chinese sausage (lap cheong) - cut in slices
4) Shallots - fried
5) green onions - chopped for garnishing
6) Rice - enough for 3-4 person.

Simple steps -

1) I start with frying the shallots till fragant and scoop aside. Then I add the chinese sausages and mushroom and stir fry till fragant. Remove and keep aside.

2) Then cook the chicken. Add a water for gravy. Add salt and dark soy sauce for taste. No need to cook the chicken for too long. The chicken can be removed even though just 3/4 ready.

3) Now for the rice. The easy way is to put everything into the rice-cooker all at the same time. This means after washing the rice and putting enough water to cook, you add the cooked chicken, mushroom and sausage at the same time and just wait for it to cook. That's easy and you can opt for this option too.

I decided to do a little more work, which is to wait for the rice to boil in rice cooker, until it is 3/4 ready (before the click), rice at this time is usually still wet. I put in all the cooked ingredients including the fried shallots. Mix the ingredients and rice quickly to prevent sticking and put the cover back on to continue the cooking process.

4) Just wait for another 5-10 minutes and the rice will be ready and fragrant. Garnish with some chopped green onions. Loosen the rice in rice cooker to prevent it from sticking to the pot.

5) It's simple and fast and this can be the one complete meal for dinner. Voila! Ready to Eat! This is really yummy!!

Roast Pork

Ahhhhh.....siew yoke (Cantonese for roast pork) is really one of my favourite pork dish. I just love the texture (of fat and thin meat) and the crunchiness of the crust. After consulting many recipes, I decided to go ahead and put them all to good use. Let's see how my "siew yoke" turned out.

Step 1- Prepare 3 long slices of pork belly. Washed and dried. Just rub with some salt, pepper and five spice powder. Dry the surface of the skin and take a knife to slice XXX on the surface. My knide was not sharp enough so you can't really see the creases.


Step 2 - Place in oven. Make sure you have a pan at the bottom as the oil or lard from the pork belly would trickle down. As usual, since it is only 3 pieces, I am using my multi friendly oven toaster. Roast at 350'F.

Steps 3 - After baking for about 30 minutes, I took the meat out. The top skin layer is not ready yet. To add additional crisp and crunch, this is what I did. In a pan, I heat up some oil. Then I put the meat in, skin layer facing down. Fry for 10 minutes. You may want to protect yourself incase the oil splashes out.

Step 4 - This is how ths skin looks. It is now crispy and yummy. I put it back into the oven for another 5 minutes.

Step 5 - Chop, Chop Chop....Voila! Ready to eat! And savour the juicy meat with a crispy crunchy topping.

Fried Chicken

Inspiration - I hardly ever fry chicken at home. Few reasons - 1) KFC taste must better 2) So much easier to buy outside vs frying myself 3) I feel really guilty when I see the amount of oil I need to use to fry chicken. So for taste, convenience and price and less guilt, buying fried chicken from outside works just fine for me.

However, I decided not to bake or roast chicken today and my mouth was itching for some fried chicken. So since, I was have 4 chicken drumsticks, I decided to do some frying on my own. As you can see below, I used a small pot (to nicely fit my 4 pcs of chicken) and less oil - just enough to half cover the chicken. I will have to flip the chicken to fry it evenly but that's ok. It is home-cooked and I feel less guilty about the oil :)


I used salt, pepper, a dash of soy sauce and oyster sauce as marinade for chicken.
For the batter, I used 2 TBSP of flour, 1 tsp of corn starch mixed with 1 egg and 1 cup of water. Add salt and pepper too.

After I marinade the chicken for at least 1/2 hr, I heat up the oil in pot. Make sure oil is really hot before putting in the chicken. I dip the chicken in batter and put into oil. No matter how tempting, do not turn the chicken first. Let it fry for 5-8 minutes before turning.

My fried chicken is no KFC but it was fast and simple and I can have fried chicken within minutes!

My USA Porky Pork recipe

This is totally non-halal and delicious....

My favourite porky pork! This was my recipe and how I made it back in Malaysia. See Link.

BUT now here is US, I somehow feel the need to be healthier or maybe since I cook inside ( windows are not opened at my house) , I prefer less deep frying. My kitchen can't take it.

So I discovered that you can kinda get the nearly the same effect with an oven. Since I only cook for myself and Hubby-D, I am using the toaster oven but I think mine quite "powderful" wan cos I can adjust heat up to 450 degrees.

It's so simple to make -

1) Pork Belly - 2 strips.

2) Marinade - soy sauce, salt, pepper and five spice powder and a bit of oyster sauce.

That's all. Marinade for at least 30 mins or longer. Lay it on a sheet pan. Take a sharp knife and poke the skin on top of the pork belly. You can also draw criss-cross. This is so that the skin will end up crispy. The piece of pork I have below looks a bit fat right??! But it's ok, after you bake it, the oil will come out and it won't look so fatty. But it will taste fantastic.

Bake in oven for 30 mins. It would look like below. This is not a great picture due to poor lighting. Also I should have left it in oven a bit longer cos I prefer it more brown but I was hungry. Cannot "tahan" already!

So, I chopped, chopped it up.

Hmmm...making my stomach growl, growl.

I am ready to munch it down. Voila! Ready to eat! Super super super YUMMY!

This is the super fast and simple version. I have since experimented, looked at how some experts do it, taken the tips and improved to make "Siew Yoke" or Chinese roasted pork. Stay tuned for the recipe.

Beef Bulgogi

Inspiration - In Malaysia, I hardly ever go to a Korean restaurant, just a few times to Korean BBQ in Ampang but that was many years ago. Here in Dallas, Korean restaurants are pretty popular and the food is really good too. So this is a Korean Bulgogi dish and it turned out really yummy too. Very simple cos I had some help with the marinade. :)

Bulgogi Meat Marinade from Asian Home Gourmet.


1) It's very simple. Just get some beef fillets..err do you call them fillets..anyway, beef meat, whatever!? Slice them into thin strips.

2) Just pour the packet of seasoning on the meat and let it marinade for at least 30 mins.

3) You can actually smell the aroma of the Bulgogi sauce. Pretty yummy. This is looking good.

4) In a non stick pan, with a bit a olive oil, place the beef strips on the pan. This should cook really fast like 1-2 mins on each side.

5) Once it turn a bit brown you can remove from pan. Of course, if you like your beef really cooked, you can leave it longer in the pan.

6) I sauteed some quartered onions in the same pan.


7) Ready to be served with some crispy fried garlic as garnishing. Voila! Ready to eat! Yummy!

Ginger Chicken

Inspiration - This is a really simple dish. Somehow, ginger and chicken go really well together! I like mine with lots of gravy to just pour over my rice. Try it.

Simple ingredients -

1) Chicken Breast. You can also use whole leg of chicken (chopped to mid size pieces) - Marinade with salt, pepper, ginger juice, sesame oil, soy sauce and cornstarch

2) Loads of sliced ginger

3) Garlic and some scallions for garnishing

Simple preparation -

1) In a wok, 2 TBSP of oil, put in the garlic and ginger. Stir fry till fragrant.

2) Then add the chicken and continue to stir till half cooked.

3) Add water to form gravy. Close the wok lit and let it boil. After 5 mins, remove the lid, add some cornstarch (mixed in water). This is to thicken the gravy. Add salt to taste.

4) That's it! Voila! Ready to Eat! Yummy....

Salted Fish with Pork Belly

Inspiration - Hmmmm, this dish is to die for. Famously known in Cantonese as "Ham Yee Fa Lam Po" literal translation - Salted Fish Pork Belly Claypot. The combination of salted fish with the succulent pork belly stirfried in claypot over blazing fire....ohhh! I am getting hungry just thinking about it. I can eat two bowls of rice just with this dish. Whatmore, it is pretty simple to make and I don't even have the claypot, just normal pan or wok will do.

Simple ingredients -
1) Pork belly - cut into think slices - marinade with light soy sauce, oyster sauce, salt pepper and a small dash of dark soy sauce.




2) Salted Fish - cut in thin slices or small cubes
3) Onion - Quartered
4) Dried chilies
5) Garlic


Simple preparation

1) Stirfry the garlic and salted fish till fragant. Remember to open your windows cos the wonderful smell of salted fish can envelope your whole kitchen. Once fragrant, put in the pork belly and continue to stirfry.

2) Put the onion and dried chillies. Make sure your wok is on big fire to get the aroma all blended in together. This dish need the "wok hei" (The heat of the wok) for it to taste yummylicious.

3) Add some water to simmer it down. At this point, add salt or even a bit of dark soy sauce as desired. You have to gauge how salty you want (remember this dish is already salty due to the fish) and also how dark you want your dish to look like.

4) Voila! Ready to Eat and it is Yum-Yummylicious! Where's my 2 bowls of rice??