Fried Bee Hoon

My hubby absolutely loves this fried bee hoon I make and I must say I love it too. It's so simple to prepare and cook and since it's a one-dish meal, it's great for those days that you're strapped for time.

Fried Bee Hoon

Ingredients:

• 1 can of stewed pork - don't consume this too often though! (leave this out if you want vegetarian bee hoon) 

• 1/3 large carrot, julienned
• 1 packet xiao bai cai, washed and plucked
• 4 handfuls beansprouts, washed and plucked
• garlic and shallot oil (made by frying minced garlic and thinly sliced shallots in oil on stovetop or microwaving for about 3 min) - this has to be omitted if you're on a strict vegetarian diet
• 1/2 big packet bee hoon

Seasoning:

• oyster sauce
• dark soy sauce
• water

Method:

1. Soak bee hoon in water till softened.
2. Remove stewed pork from can. Remove all bones and shred the meat (not too finely). Set aside.
3. Strain the gravy from the canned stewed pork with an oil filter paper. You will get a clear brown broth.
4. Heat some garlic and shallot oil in wok. Add the carrots first as they take longest to cook. Fry for a couple of minutes then add in the rest of the vegetables, beansprouts last.
5. Then add the shredded stewed pork and mix evenly (beansprouts should still be crunchy so keep a close watch on them in case you overcook them)
6. Dish out the ingredients.
7. Add garlic and shallot oil into wok and fry the bee hoon. When it gets too dry, add the strained gravy.
8. Fry till bee hoon is cooked and add the seasoning to taste. If you want the bee hoon to be whitish, leave the dark soy sauce out.
9. Add the ingredients fried earlier and mix thoroughly.
10. Dish and top with more garlic and shallot crispy bits and oil if desired.

Tip: If your wok is too small or the amount is too much for you to mix thoroughly, you can mix the bee hoon and the ingredients in two batches.

Hongkong style steamed fish

I must really thank homeladychef for sharing her recipe for this Hongkong style steamed fish. It really tastes like what we get at restaurants and I was sooo over the moon for being able to replicate that!

I'd wanted to get seabass to cook this dish but I wasn't able to get it at the market the other day so I got this other fish called boon tong. I have no idea what's that called in English or Mandarin since the fishmonger wasn't able to provide me with the chinese name of the fish. :)

It's quite cheap - I got these three fishes for a mere $6! ok, it was supposed to be $6.50 but the uncle was nice and gave me a discount since I'm always buying seafood from him.

I modified the way I prepared the oil for drizzling over the fish and the ginger that's served together with the fish. I didn't measure the amount of seasoning and ingredients used either... hee.

Hongkong style steamed fish

Ingredients:

• 500-600g fish
• ginger, skinned, slice some and julien some
• a couple bunches of scallions
• sesame oil
• olive oil

Sauce:

• light soy sauce
• rock sugar
• water/ stock

Method:

1. Clean the fish.
2. Place some sliced ginger and scallions on the plate used for steaming. Place the fish on top and top it with more ginger and scallions. 
3. When the water is boiling hot, place the fish into the steamer and steam for about 10min. (Max 10min for 600g fish, add 1min for every 100g more)
4. Meanwhile, prepare the sauce and heat it up using the microwave or on stovetop.
5. When fish is steamed, transfer the fish carefully to a serving plate (only the fish!) and discard all the ginger, scallion and water from the steaming plate.
6. Pour the prepared sauce over the fish.
7. Heat some oil (olive and sesame oil mixed) in the wok and fry the julienned ginger till golden brown. Remove the ginger and scatter it on top of the fish together with scallions.
8. Continue to heat the oil left in the wok till it's smoking hot. Pour this oil over the fish and you're done! :)

Steamed Tofu with Prawns and Glass Noodles

I was inspired to cook this dish after looking at the beautiful pictures at Foodie's Kitchen. My dish turned out yummy but my photos are far from hers though. :P 

It was perfect timing the day I decided to cook this dish because the night before I came to the decision, I happened to have bought silken tofu from Meidi-ya - this special silken tofu was kept in shelves of ice cold water to retain optimum freshness... and it is almost double the price of normal tofu brands. 

This block of tofu costs about S$1.90!

Steaming this tofu was ideal as we could really savour the texture and flavour. :)

I had a lot more prawns than tofu and my prawns were larger than each tofu cube... but everything still worked out well. Hahaha...

I especially loved the look of the curly scallions and it's all thanks to homeladychef for sharing the tip! :)

Steamed Tofu with Prawns and Glass Noodles

Ingredients:

• almost half kg of prawns
• a few cloves of garlic, minced
• olive oil
• 1 bunch scallions (for garnishing - optional)
• 1 block silken tofu
• 1 small bunch of tang hoon 

Sauce:

• light soy sauce mixed with rock sugar to taste

Method:

1. Soak tang hoon in water till softened.
2. Remove tofu from packaging and cut into blocks (best to have 1 prawn per cube of tofu)
3. Remove head and shell of prawns (retail the tail) and devein. 
4. Prepare garlic oil by either frying the garlic with oil on stovetop or popping it into the microwave for 2-3min.
5. Arrange glass noodles on plate for steaming.
6. Carefully place the tofu on the glass noodles and top each tofu block with a prawn.
7. Once water in the steamer is boiling hot, place the dish in and steam for about 6 min.
8. Meanwhile, prepare the sauce. Add some water if necessary, depending on your preferences. Heat this sauce on stovetop or pop it into the microwave to warm it.
9. Drizzle this sauce over the cooked dish and top with garlic oil and the crispy garlic bits.
10. Garnish with curly scallions.

Such a simple dish to cook and soooo presentable! :)


Here's our dinner the other day - 

• Steamed tofu with prawns and glass noodles
• Hongkong style steamed fish
• Stir-fried baby spinach with crispy whitebait
• Mixed brown rice

Ok, I know that's way too much food for 2 but we still finished it all... hahaha...