Cheaters' pasta sauce

Right, as the name suggests, this pasta sauce is gonna be real easy to prepare. Heck, I even used a jar of pasta sauce for it - I did say it's a cheater's pasta sauce!

So what I did was merely to make the sauce taste even better, and I must say this was so convenient and definitely more time-saving than my other pasta sauces done from scratch.

Here's the recipe:

Ingredients:

• 200g minced beef
• 1 small yellow onion (slice)
• 2 bay leaves
• 3/4 Knorr beef stock cube (dissolve in a bowl of hot water)
• plain flour
• 1 bottle of ready-made pasta sauce
• 1 tsp sugar (optional)
• mushrooms of your choice (optional)

Marinate beef with:

• oyster sauce
• worcestershire sauce
• ground black pepper
• garlic powder

Method:

1. Marinate beef prior to cooking.
2. Add oil to the saucepan and brown the beef. Remove when done.
3. Add oil and sweat the onions. Add the bay leaves, beef stock, mushrooms (if adding) and return the browned beef to the saucepan. Let it simmer till it's not too watery.
4. Add the pasta sauce and plain flour (and sugar).
5. Toss cooked pasta in the sauce and dinner's done!

Btw, my fussypot loved the sauce! :)

Homemade pasta sauce with pumpkin

Saw this pasta sauce recipe over at The Little Teochew some time back and I knew I just had to give it a try and I must say that both hubby and Alicia loved the sauce!

It's a really sneaky way of adding pumpkin into Alicia's diet coz she doesn't like pumpkin... but she doesn't know that in that delicious sauce, pumpkin is a key ingredient! hee.... *evil laughter* Then again, I don't like pumpkin much either... I like pumpkin soup though!

I modified the recipe as the recipe does not contain any meat so since I wanted to make it a one-dish meal for the family, I added in the usual minced beef and mushrooms... and I made a much bigger batch of sauce to freeze the remainder in small portions for Alicia. :)

Homemade pasta sauce with pumpkin

Ingredients:

• 500-600g pumpkin (skinned and cut into chunks)
• a bottle of passata (you can view the photo of the actual product over at The Little Teochew's post)
• 1 small yellow/ white onion, minced
• 2 cloves garlic minced
• 250g minced beef
• 10 white button mushrooms, sliced
• salt to taste
• basil flakes to taste - I added a generous portion :)

Method:

1. Steam the pumpkin till fork tender, press the pumpkin through a sieve (truly reminds me of the days I pureed food for Alicia!). Set aside.
2. Heat wok and add some oil.
3. Fry the onion and garlic till fragrant and the onions have softened.
4. Add the minced beef and some water if necessary to make sure that the minced beef does not become lumpy.
5. Add the mushrooms. Saute for awhile.
6. After the beef is browned, remove all the ingredients from the wok.
7. Add passata and the pureed pumpkin to the wok. Let it simmer for about a minute.
8. Return the ingredients that you fried earlier back into the wok and mix well.
9. Let the sauce simmer for about 10-20min (to ensure that the mushrooms are cooked and have released their sweetness into the sauce) and meanwhile you can add the salt and basil to taste. :)
10. Pour sauce over cooked pasta or put the cooked pasta into the wok and mix well before dishing onto the plate. (I chose to pour the sauce over the pasta as I wanted to save the remaining sauce to freeze in baby cubes for Alicia)
11. Top with grated cheese of your choice (optional).

Notes:
Passata can be easily obtained from NTUC or Giant.
You can substitute beef with chicken.
Omit the basil if you do not like it or you can add other herbs of your choice. I have a bottle of basil in my kitchen so I just used it... :)

Japanese Hamburger

I've been wanting to make Japanese Hamburger for a long long time and I finally went to Meidi-ya to pick up the hamburger sauce which is well, the sauce that goes with this dish.

Japanese hamburgers are served (usually) with rice alongside other dishes rather than between buns (the way we usually consume burgers). :)

We had ours with brown rice porridge :)

Japanese Hamburger

Source of recipe (I modified it slightly)

Ingredients:

• 200g minced beef
• 100g minced pork
• 1 egg
• 1 cup white breadcrumbs
• 3-4 tbsp milk
• 1/2 medium yellow onion, diced finely
• 3/4 tsp salt
• a few dashes ground black pepper

Sauce:

• Hamburger sauce - estimate amt enough for 4 patties

Method:

1. Saute onion in some oil till translucent. Let cool.
2. Moisten the breadcrumbs with milk.
3. Combine the beef, pork, egg, moistened breadcrumbs, salt, black pepper and sauted onions. Mix well - your hand is the best tool for this task.
4. Divide into four portions and shape them into patties, slapping each with your palms till the surface is smooth.
5. Indent the middle of each pattie with your thumb - this ensures that the middle gets cooked evenly.
6. Heat a large frying pan with some oil on high heat. Brown the patties then turn them over to the other side.
7. Put a tight-fitting lid on the pan and steam-cook the hamburgers on low heat for 10min, until the middle of the pattie bounces back when u press it. Remove from pan to serving plate.
8. Pour out excess oil from the pan and heat the hamburger sauce.
9. Dish hamburger sauce on each pattie.
10. Garnish with steamed vegetables and serve.

 Alicia's portion (not too much sauce for hers):

ok, she didn't eat that much of the hamburger, and before I knew it, hubby ate it all up. Fortunately, I made her favourite fried minced pork with egg, which she ate happily too. :)

Here's my little gal eating and watching Sesame Street on okto. Haha....

Mini Cottage Pies (II)

Ooh, look at the golden brown pies! :)

This time I used red potatoes instead of purple ones so no purple pies! haha... and yes, these brown nicely as you can see from the pic. :)

Waiting to be baked...

Close-up! Look at the smooth texture of the potato prior to baking! :P

Cottage pies usually require the use of ground beef (and in the case of of the English, they use lamb or mutton). In my previous recipe, I used minced chicken because I didn't have ground beef on hand. This time, I had extra ground beef (leftover from the making of spaghetti sauce) and so I immediately thought of making some cottage pies since Alicia had finished the last lot quite a while ago.

If you or your child do not consume beef for religious reasons or simply detest the taste of beef, you can always give my previous recipe a try instead - not as authentic but nevertheless yummy! :)

Mini Cottage Pies (II)

Ingredients:

• 3 egg-sized red potatoes
• 3 tablespoons minced beef
• 1/3 yellow onion (minced) - I ran out of onion yesterday but would have added it if I had some
• 1/2 small carrot (minced)
• 2 tablespoons frozen green peas
• unsalted all-purpose herbs
• unsalted butter

Marinate beef with:

• 1 tsp worcestershire sauce
• 1-2tsp oyster sauce
• 1 tsp sugar (optional)
• dash of black pepper

Method:

1. Marinate minced beef.
2. Peel potatoes and cube them. Boil them till they are soft.
3. Mash the potatoes with about 1 tablespoon butter, herbs and a pinch of salt.
4. Heat wok and melt butter.
5. Fry the minced onion and carrot till onion is soft.
6. Add the minced beef. Continue frying so that the chicken doesn't clump together.
7. Add the peas when beef is almost cooked.
8. Dish up the filling.
9. Fill the silicon mini muffin cups with the filling to about the half-way mark.
10. Add the mashed potato on top and shape them like little muffins.
11. Preheat oven to 200degC.
12. Bake mini pies for 20-25min at 200degC. (Usually 20min will do for mine)

These mini pies can be frozen and defrosted in the fridge.

Because of the mini size, these can serve well as snacks or even breakfast. Just give more for lunch or dinner! :) Or pair them up with another western dish such as spaghetti - that's what I do sometimes!

Crockpot (aka slow cooker) beef stew... finally...

I know the above photo wasn't very well-taken, but I was hungry and I couldn't wait to try out the beef stew that I had been wanting sooo long to try cooking! Besides, it was so hot it kept fogging up the camera lens... :D

Anyway, it's really simple and convenient coz it's a crockpot dish and all you need to do is to serve it with rice or toasted bread, whichever you prefer (my hubby prefers rice, so rice it was...) and if you like, you can pair it with a salad to make the meal a healthier one! I thought the amount was too much for us so I didn't prepare the veggies but it was so tasty we felt that it wasn't enough! :) Should have cooked more rice.... lol.

Anyway, Alicia had this for dinner too! This is hers... I shredded the beef and lightly mashed the potato and carrot chunks... quite a heavy dinner since there's quite a lot of rice and stew... she managed to eat about half of everything... btw, this is a toddler-sized bowl in case you're wondering... :)

Beef Stew (serves 2 adults + 1 toddler) (edited on 27 May 2011)

Ingredients:

• 1 packet of beef (the packaging indicates it's for stewing) bought from Cold Storage (about S$10)
• 1 white/ yellow onion (minced)
• 8-10 white button mushrooms
• 1 big carrot (cut into chunks)
• 4 small potatoes (peeled, cut into chunks)
• 2-3 sticks celery (sliced)
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 Knorr Beef cube
• 400ml water

Marinade for beef:

• 2 tablespoons cornflour
• all-purpose salt-free herbs (enough to coat the beef cubes nicely)
• ground black pepper (as desired)
• 1-2 tablespoons oyster sauce
• 1/2 tablespoon worcestershire sauce

Method:

1. Rinse the beef cubes and cut into appropriate sizes.
2. Marinate the beef cubes.
3. Dissolve the Knorr beef cube in 400ml hot water to make the beef stock. You may use other types of beef stock if preferred.
4. Add some oil/ butter and brown the beef briefly in a non-stick pan.
5. Remove and set aside.
6. Add a bit more oil/ butter to the pan and fry the onion till soft then add the mushrooms. 
7. After frying the mushrooms and onion for a couple of minutes, add the beef back to the pan together with the beef stock and bay leaves and let it come to a boil.
8. Place the potatoes, celery and carrot chunks in the slowcooker.
9. Pour the ingredients from the pan into the slowcooker and cook on high heat for 4 hours (or low heat for 6hrs) and resist the temptation to open the lid to taste the stew before the time is up! - opening the cover before the cooking's done adds another 15min to cooking time (each time u open it!): so unless you're prepared to wait longer for this stew, do not open the cover unnecessarily.

Here it is, served with rice.. Tuck in!

I'm really starting to love my slow cooker... Because dinner was fixed so easily and so quickly, I had time to iron the laundry today! Yay!!!! :D