Steamed Egg Tofu

Another simple home-cooked dish for tonight. I'm still avoiding deep-fried and spicy food for the moment in case there is another sore throat relapse. Just have to be a bit more cautious with CNY coming up... and I'm sick of taking medicine and feeling ill!

Steamed Egg Tofu (serves 4)

Ingredients:

• 2 pieces egg tofus (cut into slices)
• 150-200g minced pork
• 1-2 prawns (shell, devein, mince then combine with the minced pork to marinate) - I usually add these but I ran out of prawns today so I didn't get to use them.
• mixed vegetables
• 3 water chestnuts (minced)
• 1/4 carrot (minced)
• cornflour
• 1T oyster sauce
• about 1/3 - 1/2 bowl of water

Marinade for the minced pork and prawns:

• oyster sauce
• hua diao jiu
• 1 tsp sugar
• ground black pepper

Method:

1. Marinate the minced pork and prawns overnight (or for a few hours).
2. Add the minced carrot and water chestnut to the minced pork and prawns.
3. Arrange the sliced egg tofu on a plate for steaming.
4. Dust the tofu surface with some cornflour so that the minced meat mixture won't slide off after steaming.
5. Place some minced meat mixture on top of each tofu slice.
6. Top each individual tofu with a mixture of the mixed vegetable.
7. Steam on high heat for about 7-8min.
8. Pour the water (from steaming) from the plate of tofu into a wok. Add about 1/3-1/2bowl more of water.
9. Add about 1tablespoon of oyster sauce to the water. Adjust amount according to taste.
10. Add cornflour mixture to thicken the sauce.
11. Pour the sauce over the steamed tofu.
12. Serve hot.

Radish Soup

I know I know. The photo's badly taken. But I didn't notice it when I took it and I only have this one photo of it. So heck... what to do? Just make do for now :D

The taste of the soup however is a far cry from how it looks in the photo. It's wonderfully full-bodied and rich and it was simply delish. Hubby LOVED it!

Radish soup

*Skip the dried scallop and dried cuttlefish for tots below 18mths*

Ingredients

• 1 radish (skinned, chopped into chunks)
• 3 chicken breast bones
• 250g pork ribs
• 1 dried cuttlefish
• 1 dried scallop (placed in small soup bag)
• 1 soup pot water
• salt to taste

Method:

1. Rinse the dried cuttlefish then toast it in the oven for about 4min.
2. Wash and blanch the chicken bones and pork ribs.
3. Add all the ingredients to a soup pot of water (except the radish) and bring to a boil.
4. Simmer the soup for a few hours. (If you notice after a couple of hours of simmering the soup that the soup base is still quite dilute, boil the soup on high heat for awhile till you notice the soup base becoming more concentrated - I do this when I don't have enough time to simmer the soup for many hours.)
5. Add the radish about 1-2hrs before serving (don't add it too early or it will be too soft).
6. Sieve the soup - remove the chicken bones and dried cuttlefish (I personally don't eat this). Return the pork ribs, radish and scallop (take out of the soup bag) to the soup.
7. Add salt to taste.
8. Serve hot.

For toddler's consumption:

• You can cut the radish into smaller pieces or allow the tot to bite off from the adult's portion.

Simple fried rice

It's been very hectic for me lately, with Alicia suddenly falling ill on Tuesday - stuffed and runny nose and a slight cough. Fortunately, she's showing signs of recovery and there's hardly a cough and the mucus is drying up now *cross fingers* And because she's spending more time awake recently so I've had very little time to call my own... but I really enjoy every moment spent with her! She's so responsive and picking up things so quickly now that I'm trying my best to capture every teaching moment.

Anyway, I digress.

This was supposed to be a post about my fried rice. I scheduled to cook it yesterday as I knew I didn't have much time to whip up a 'proper' meal (had arranged an appointment with the insurance agent to come over). I pair this, together with a soup, when I'm very busy and don't have much time to spend in the kitchen.

And so, here it is:

Simple Fried Rice (serves 2 greedy adults)

Ingredients:

• 1.25 cup rice grains (I used the cup that comes with the rice cooker)
• 2-3 handfuls of mixed vegetables
• 2 chicken sausages (sometimes I substitute this with chicken fillet chunks)
• 4-6 crabsticks (depending on your preference)
• 2 pieces of fishcake
• 2-3 shallots (sliced thinly)
• 2 cloves garlic (minced)
• 1 small yellow onion (chopped)
• fish sauce

Method:

1. Cook rice in the rice cooker.
2. Cut the chicken sausages, crabsticks and fishcake into small pieces.
3. Heat oil in a wok and fry the shallots till almost golden brown then add in the garlic and fry till fragrant (be careful not to burn the shallots/garlic) - by then the shallots should be golden brown.
4. Fry the chicken sausages, crabsticks and fishcake pieces in the shallot and garlic oil.
5. Remove from wok.
6. Add oil and fry chopped yellow onion till limp. Return the previously cooked chicken sausages, crabsticks and fischcake pieces to the wok.
7. Add the cooked rice and mix the ingredients well.
8. Add fish sauce to taste.

I like the combi of the sausages, crabsticks and fishcake as these three items have very different textures!

Note: Suitable for toddlers above 24months due to processed foods.

Gel Time!

Today when I went to the wet market, I popped by the pasar malam to see if I could find anything interesting to buy for Alicia. And anyway, she loves to groove to the very retro music (not CNY songs) that's continuously blasting from this stall selling CNY decor stuff. She gets super hyped up every time we're there and so I brought her there again - she just chose her own sticker album yesterday :D

Anyway, I found this gel thingy which the packaging labelled it as 'Window Gel Art' and I thought it'd be great to introduce her to a new texture and at the same time spend some time exploring clean yet sticky substances. Plus it was an opportunity to teach shapes and colours etc... so why not? One pack was going for $1 so I bought two different designs (there were only two designs anyway). Well, as expected, the gel wasn't top grade so some pieces were actually spoilt because they were torn the moment I removed them from the plastic. But it didn't take Alicia long to find out while playing with the gel that these things were easily torn! And so she went into a tearing frenzy despite my chastising. After awhile she stopped her nonsense but by then, she'd destroyed quite a fair bit. I just see it as a learning experience for her - after all, it's a new texture and a new item. And by the way, she did learn to say "heart" (without a very distinctive /t/ sound) and she even attempted to say "crab" (came out as something like /kwæb/) as there was a crab-shaped gello. :D And we did some grouping activity - or at least tried for awhile.

I only took out the videocam much later to record her playing with the gel. Here's a short clip:

I fed her her lunch as we spent the time by the window - time away from "Elmo's World" :D And look how wet and sweaty she got, just by standing there and shifting gellos!: