Poached cod with baby spinach - for babies and tots

This is an extremely easy to prepare dish and it is one of my little one's favourite dishes!

Poaching retains all the sweetness and original flavours and is one of the best ways to cook for children or health-conscious people.

Spinach is one of the ten best foods for babies (above 8 months) - I'm so glad that my children love this vegetable!

Poached Cod with Baby Spinach

Ingredients

• 1 small piece of cod fillet (about 15-20g)
• 1 handful of baby spinach leaves (exclude stems for young children especially babies below 1 year old as they may not be able to handle the stem)
• Stock (any type, amount enough to poach cod)

Method:

1. Wash spinach leaves thoroughly.
2. Place fish in a small saucepan with enough stock to cover the piece of fish. Bring stock to a simmer over medium heat - do not boil or the fish may break apart. It should take about 5 minutes for the small piece of cod to cook.
3. Drizzle spinach with a tablespoon of stock and steam the spinach leaves for about 5 minutes or cook the spinach together with the cod.
4. Remove spinach leaves and cut into small pieces with a food scissors. Place cod on top of the bed of spinach leaves.
5. Drizzle cooked stock over the dish and serve with porridge or rice.

Cooking notes: 

1. For babies, you will need to flake the fish after cooking before feeding.
2. You can replace cod with other types of fish.
3. Cabbage may be used in place of spinach - it's extremely sweet and tasty - but cabbage would require a longer cooking time.

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...

Stir-fried fish slices

I haven't blogged about food in ages! teehee.. well, here's a simple stir-fried fish dish that's healthy and yummy  and one that pleases tots as well! I cooked this some time back... hopefully I got the ingredients right in this recipe... lol. My memory fails me sometimes...

Alright, the real reason why I fried my fish this time was because the slab of red snapper had been sitting in my freezer for ages so I decided I'd better not serve it steamed... :P

Stir-fried fish slices 

 

Ingredients:

• 1 slab of red snapper meat, sliced (not more than 1cm thick)
• a couple of bunches of scallions, washed, cut into 1-2" segments
• thumb-size ginger, shred finely
• 2 cloves garlic, minced

Marinate fish slices with:

• ground white pepper
• light soy sauce
• hua diao jiu
• sesame oil
• 1-2tsp cornflour (so that the fish will not disintegrate when frying)

Sauce:

• oyster sauce
• soy sauce
• sugar (optional)
• ground white pepper
• sesame oil
• water

*Add sauces and condiments according to your own tastes*

Method:

1. Mix all the ingredients needed for the sauce in a bowl and set aside.
2. Heat oil in wok. Add the garlic, ginger and scallion and fry till fragrant.
3. Add the marinated fish slices and stir-fry quickly for a couple of minutes (be gentle with the fish).
4. Add the sauce prepared earlier into the wok and bring to a boil.
5. Add cornflour solution if preferred.
6. Dish and serve hot with rice.

Teriyaki salmon baked rice

I cooked this rather unthinkable dish: teriyaki salmon baked rice.

I bought the usual-sized slab of salmon (costs me about $8-9 at the wet market) the other day and being lazy to whip up a typical Chinese rice-with-dishes-meal on Saturday, I decided to be adventurous and try a 1-dish meal with it.

Well, it turned out ok and hubby gave the green light to cook this again next time. :P

Not marvellous. But it's still quite nice.

What I like about it? It's easy to prepare! :) So if you catch yourself feeling lazy, and not too particular about the food, you can always try this! lol.


Teriyaki salmon baked rice

Ingredients:

• 1 slab of salmon, about 400g (slice thinly and remove skin)
• 2-3 handfuls of frozen mixed veggies
• 1 cup rice grains (the cup comes with the rice cooker - not the usual 'cup' per se)

Teriyaki sauce:

• 2T cooking sake
• 1.5T light soy sauce
• 2T sugar
• 4T mirin

Method:

1. Marinate sliced salmon in the teriyaki sauce. 
2. Cook rice as per normal.
3. Once rice is cooked, add the mixed veggies into the rice cooker and mix evenly.
4. Dish out the rice into a baking dish.
5. Place salmon slices on top of the rice and drizzle the remaining teriyaki sauce evenly over the dish (see pic below)
6. Bake in a preheated oven at 180degC for 10min (the salmon was just cooked and still tender! The rice was still moist, but not soggy and tasted of the teriyaki sauce - phew!)
7. Remove from oven and serve.

That's what I call a quick meal! :)

Sambal Tunis Prawns

Haven't blogged about my cooking for quite awhile now. I was so pre-occupied with my learning aids and I didn't cook anything new. :)

Just the other day when I was waiting for the chicken stall aunty to chop the chicken thighs, I saw that she was selling some pastes so I took a closer look.

This sambal tunis is meant for cooking seafood and since it's instant paste, it appealed to me, well, instantly. :P I used to like to make my own sambal and all and I have been seriously considering making my own sambal tunis ever since I saw it on Ju's site (great food, great photography. Hop over if you've not seen her foodblog). I really mean to make it some day but I've been really bogged down with lots of stuff and so I didn't need any other encouragement to buy this instant paste. After all, I had half a kg of prawns at home that day and I intended to cook them for dinner so why not try something new?

It costs $2 and each packet can be used for cooking 1kg prawns/ seafood.

Was it great?

Well, it was quite nice actually, unless you hate lemongrass - the smell and taste is rather strong.

Photos, you ask.

I've none to show this time, not because it looked terrible or it isn't blog-worthy. The only reason why I've no photos to upload is because I forgot to take photos. Sigh. I was so intent on settling down to eat dinner and continue watching the rented DVD that it totally slipped my mind to take photos after cooking.

Next time yah? :P

Sweet sour prawns

Cooked quite a bit last week but had absolutely no time or energy to blog... not that I'm brimming with energy now... still feel quite drained and easily tired out due to the virus I caught. Keeping everything short and precise... :)

Succulent sweet sour prawns... :)

A whole dish of prawns... just for the two of us...

Sweet sour prawns

Ingredients:

• 1/2kg prawns (cost me $7)
• about 100ml cubed pineapple (fresh or canned)
• 1 chilli
• 1/2 big tomato
• 1 small red onion, sliced
• 4 slices ginger
• 2 bunches scallions
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 100ml water
• 100ml syrup from canned pineapple

Marinate prawns with:

• hua diao jiu
• dash of ground black pepper
• dash of sesame oil

Seasoning:

• 2T tomato sauce
• rice vinegar (optional, if not sour enough)
• sugar to taste

Method:

1. Wash, remove the prawn heads and devein the prawns. Marinate them accordingly.
2. Cut tomato into small chunks.
3. Deseed chilli and cut into strips.
4. Cut scallions into 2" segments and dice some for garnishing.
5. Heat oil in wok. Fry the ginger, chilli, garlic, scallions and onion till fragrant.
6. Add the tomato, pineapple, syrup and water (if not using canned pineapple - hence no syrup - just increase the amount of water).
7. Bring to a boil and let simmer for about 10min.
8. Add the seasoning.
9. When the gravy comes to a boil, add the prawns and simmer till they are cooked (3-5min).
10. Dish and garnish with scallion and more pineapple on the side (optional).

Sardines!!!

Sardines are more often than not overlooked when it comes to menu planning, especially in my home as hubby isn't a great fan of sardines. He's always complaining that sardines have a 'fishy' smell and taste. Come to think of it, I think this is the first time I've cooked sardines for him since we got married! It's only because I said that I think it's good to introduce sardines to Alicia that he relented the other day. :P

Anyway, sardines are jam-packed with goodness so really, there's no reason not to eat them. And with my home-made sauce to go along with the sardines (there's a pathetic amount of sauce that comes together with the sardines so I have to make my own), the sardines aren't 'fishy' at all! :) Even hubby had to agree! :) and he finished up the sauce together with the rice...

Alicia's response?

Well, she ate one whole sardine (including the bones of course) as one of the courses of her dinner that day! *happy mummy* The last time she had sardines was when I made sandwiches for myself and that was a super long time ago!

Goodness of sardines:

• high concentration of omega-3-fatty acid (sardines are considered to be one of the best sources of omega 3’s around, surpassed by only a few other fish such as Salmon).
• a naturally good source of vitamin D
• high in calcium which can work with the vitamin D to help promote stronger bones
• contains Vitamin B12, Vitamin D, Vitamin B3, protein, tryptophan, selenium and phosphorus.
• The fish is considered to be one of the healthiest of the world’s foods, especially with its high concentration of Vitamin D which is found in few foods in such amounts.
• There are no carbohydrates in sardine, yet high in protein

(Sources: healthandnutritiontips.net and healthmad.com)

For more info, you can read this.

Sardines in tomato sauce

Ingredients:

• 1 can of sardines (I use Ayam brand)
• 1 red onion (sliced)
• 3-4 cloves garlic (minced)
• 1 chilli (cut into pieces, deseed)
• about 4 tablespoons tomato sauce (I use Maggi)
• 1 tablespoon assam (mix with a bit of water) or use lime to taste
• 100-200ml water

Method:

1. Heat oil in a wok. Add the onion and chilli and fry till fragrant. Add the garlic.
2. Add the sauce from the can of sardines (but don't place the sardines into the wok just yet).
3. Add some water (gauge for yourself, depends on how thick you want the sauce to be) and the tomato sauce.
4. Add the assam water (without the seeds of course - use a sieve).
5. Let the sauce simmer for at least 10min. (By then, the onions would have softened and the sauce would have been sweetened by the onion so there's no need for extra sugar)
6. Add the sardines and simmer for another 5min or so.
7. Dish and serve with hot fluffy rice.

Steamed Herbal Prawns

At some point in our lives, we must have eaten some form of herbal/ (drunken) prawns. While this may not be the authentic drunken prawn dish, it is definitely herbal (I cut down on the hua diao jiu so the alcohol content is quite minimal). :) Had this for dinner today alongside romaine lettuce and chicken chop topped with barbeque sauce...

Steamed Herbal Prawns

Ingredients:

• 12 prawns
• 3-4 slices dang gui (當 歸)
• 2 pieces huai niu qi (淮牛膝)
• 1 tablespoon wolfberries (枸杞子)
• dash of ground white pepper
• 10-15ml hua diao jiu 
• enough water to cover the prawns
• fish sauce to taste

Method:

1. Rinse the herbs.
2. Clean the prawns. Remove the head, trim the legs and devein.
3. Place the prawns into a bowl for steaming.
4. Add the water, hua diao jiu and white pepper. Mix.
5. Top the prawns with the herbs.
6. Steam (covered) for 8-10min.
7. Add fish sauce to taste.
8. Serve hot.

The not-so-successful salted egg prawns

In my culinary adventures, to be honest, failure to produce the dish I want is rather rare. Unfortunately, yesterday's first attempt at salted egg prawns was one such occasion. Perhaps I didn't read up enough about how to prepare it since it was something that I decided to cook on the spur of the moment. I had invited my mum over on Friday for dinner, wanting to cook cereal prawns for her so since I already thawed the prawns for Wednesday's dinner, I thought that I'd do something different with the prawns and I immediately thought of salted eggs! Anyway, she can't make it for dinner on Friday so cereal prawns for her will have to wait till she's free to come over for dinner. :P

I think I know what went wrong with my prawns and I hope the next time I cook it, it will be successful. I believe it's because steaming the egg and after separating the yolk from the white, I left the mashed yolks out too long before cooking them and so by the time I wanted to put the mashy yolks into the wok to fry, I found that they were no longer moist and in fact almost hardened. Sigh. I had a bad feeling about the dish at that moment but it was all too late.

Well, I'll try again in future when I feel ready again to indulge in a sinful, calorie-packed dinner.

I'd post my recipe here when that happens. :)

Cereal prawns (麦片虾) (and last night's dinner)

Dinner last night:

cereal prawns, black pepper chicken chop and watercress soup

I followed the recipe from this site and the cereal prawns tasted awesome! :) The aroma of the curry leaves combined with the crispy prawns and flavourful cereal bits....mmmph... can you just imagine that? :) Pure indulgence: such a huge plate of prawns just for the two of us. :D

I used the recommended 3-in-1 cereal, added more curry leaves and less white pepper.

I told hubby to leave 1 prawn for alicia but he forgot and ate everything up... oh well. Poor alicia. :D

Steamed sambal cod

Like Alicia, we love cod.

And we love sambal too.

Hence it's no surprise that we both love sambal cod. :D

Steamed sambal cod

Ingredients:

• 2 pieces cod
• 2 bunches of scallions (cut into 2" segments)
• 1 thumb-sized piece of ginger (sliced)
• 2 tablespoons homemade sambal (commercial will do too)

Marinate cod with:

• hua diao jiu
• ground white pepper

Method:

1. Place scallions (save some for garnishing), ginger and cod into a plate for steaming.
2. Steam cod for 5minutes.
3. Top the cod with the sambal and steam for another 2 minutes.
4. Garnish with scallions.
5. Serve hot.

Teriyaki salmon

This was extremely scrumptious! Even my picky Alicia wolved up two pieces of salmon though she's not a fan of salmon at all. And as she ate every mouth of it, she kept 'talking' to me super expressively, as if trying to tell me to cook this more often for her... super cute. lol. I asked her, 'Are you trying to tell mummy to cook this more often?' and she nodded her head and continued with her baby talk. :D

Honestly, if you've made your own teriyaki sauce, you'd never settle for those sold commercially because those don't taste anything like the real stuff!

Teriyaki salmon

Ingredients:

• 340g salmon, skin removed (I bought 1 slab from the fishmonger, costs $8.80 but I got it at $8)
• 1 bunch green onion (slice finely)

Teriyaki sauce:

• 2T cooking sake
• 4T mirin
• 1.5T light soy sauce
• 2T brown sugar

Method:

1. Rinse the slab of salmon and cut into chunks.
2. Marinate the salmon chunks in the teriyaki sauce for about 1/2 hour.
3. Heat up a non-stick pan and sear the salmon chunks, reserve the rest of the teriyaki sauce. The surface of the salmon should turn brownish before you flip it over to the other side for browning. Because the salmon was soaked in the teriyaki marinade, it will brown quite quickly.
4. Once both sides of the salmon are done, remove them from the pan and place on a plate.
5. In a small saucepan, bring the rest of the teriyaki sauce to a boil. By the process of reduction, simmer the teriyaki sauce till it becomes thick.
6. Drizzle the sauce over the salmon.
7. Garnish with finely sliced green onion.

Pan-fried salmon in black pepper sauce

It's been a long time since I cooked this dish so since my mil had bought a slab of salmon for me earlier, I thought this is the dish to cook!

It's really easy, tasty and nutritious!

In the midst of cooking

Done!

Black pepper salmon

Ingredients:

• 1 slab of salmon (not sure how much it weighed) - cut into cubes
• 1 thumb-length ginger - cut into slices
• 1 bunch of spring onions - cut into 1-2inch sections
• 1 tablespoon Lee Kum Kee black pepper sauce
• a bit of water to mix with the black pepper sauce

Marinate salmon with:

• a generous amount of crushed black peppercorns
• hua diao jiu

Method:

1. Heat some oil in a non-stick pan. Fry the ginger and spring onion till fragrant.
2. Add the salmon cubes.
3. Fry till the salmon turns a nice golden brown then flip over the the cubes.
4. Continue frying for a short while till the salmon is cooked through.
5. Combine the black pepper sauce with a bit of water in a bowl. Add the sauce to the pan and fry for a little while more.
6. Add cornflour solution if you prefer a thicker sauce. Otherwise, dish and serve. :)
7. Garnish with more spring onion (optional).

Steamed red snapper

I'm still having that dreaded throat infection so I'm sticking to simple food for the time being. I've been to the doctor for a third time (this time with another doc) and I really hope that the infection will clear and no more relapses! Just in case you're wondering why there's chilli in the dish, the fish didn't turn out spicy at all and it's really meant more for getting rid of the fishy smell and I think it looks great as a garnish. :D

I bought this big slab of red snapper meat from the wet market today and I halved it for today's meal and steamed it. :)

Steamed red snapper

Ingredients

• 350g red snapper meat
• 1/4 red chilli (seeds removed, sliced finely)
• 1 bunch scallions (spring onions)
• 1 preserved plum
• 1/2 fresh chinese mushroom (diced)
• thumb-size ginger
• sesame oil

Marinate the fish with:

• hua diao jiu
• a bit of salt
• ground white pepper

Method:

1. Marinate the fish and set aside in the fridge.
2. Cut the spring onion into 1.5" sections. Cut some of the green segment of the spring onion into smaller pieces for garnishing.
3. Skin the ginger and slice it. Take a few slices of the ginger and slice these very thinly (like shreds).
4. Arrange the white segments of the spring onion and some ginger (not the finely sliced ones) under the slab of fish.
5. Place the remaining slices of the ginger (not the finely sliced ones), diced mushrooms and the sliced chilli on the fish. Top the fish with the preserved plum.
6. Steam the fish for 5-7min.
7. Meanwhile, heat the sesame oil (enough to pour on the whole piece of fish) and fry the thinly sliced ginger till golden brown. Remove the ginger shreds and continue to heat the oil till VERY hot. Once the fish is done, pour the hot oil onto the slab of fish - according to my mil, she said she watched some programme in which the chef said that this step makes the meat of the fish extra smooth.
8. Add some light soy sauce if it's not salty enough. Otherwise, garnish with spring onion bits and ginger shreds and it's done! :)

Note: You may omit the mushrooms but I feel that the mushrooms give the dish an additional texture - which I happen to like :)

Baked garlicky, cheesy salmon

Look at the cheese!!! :D

I'm not a fan of salmon but when baked in this manner, the salmon's fishy smell is, I can say, almost fully eliminated! Most of the time, I force myself to eat salmon because I know it's good for me and also, it is believed that eating oily fish like salmon will improve the quality of breast milk for lactating mummies - so for the sake of my little Alicia, I eat it. :) But really, this baked salmon's so nice that there is no need to force myself to eat it... in fact, today the slice of salmon I bought wasn't enough for hubby and I!

Baked garlicky, cheesy salmon

Ingredients

• 200g salmon (skin removed - you may want to retain the skin if you like it - i know the skin's nutritious but I don't eat fish skin... all types)
• shredded mozarella cheese (amt depending on preference)
• 2-3 cloves garlic (minced)

Seasoning:

• a dash of teriyaki marinade
• hua diao jiu
• ground black pepper
• a dash of sesame oil
• all-purpose unsalted herbs

Method:

1. Slice salmon thinly.
2. Marinate salmon with the seasoning.
3. Mix the minced garlic and mozarella cheese thoroughly with the salmon pieces.
4. Place the marinated salmon mixture onto a piece of aluminium foil and top with more mozarella cheese (as shown below).
5. Wrap the salmon up in the foil.
6. Preheat oven to 180degC.
7. Bake the salmon at 180degC for 15min.
8. Remove the salmon from the oven, unwrap the foil and sprinkle more herbs on top of the cheese.
9. Serve hot.

Baked Squid

I'm definitely not a lover of squid, but my hubby is. So I cook this every now and then for him, but to be honest, I've never tasted it, not even the sauce. He claims it's nice so I just take his word for it. :)

Baked Squid

Ingredients:

• 1 small squid (cost me $1.50 at the wet market)
• cornflour

Seasoning:

• 2 tablespoons BBQ sauce
• a dash of dried basil leaves
• a dash of ground black pepper
• 1 teaspoon light soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon sugar

Method:

1. Clean the squid and remove the inerts.
2. Marinate the squid with the seasoning (I usually do it overnight).
3. Preheat oven to 200degC.
4. Bake squid at 200degC for 10min. Reserve leftover marinade.
5. Turn squid over, pour the marinade over it and bake at 200degC for a further 10min.
6. Take the squid out. Place the squid on a plate and pour the sauce into a small saucepan.
7. Add cornflour solution to thicken the sauce then pour it over the squid.
8. Serve hot.