FRiSECS: Fried Rice with Salted Egg & Choy Sam

I'm sorry for not updating this blog since a few months back. Most days I feel so tired after work that I'd sometimes commit the cardinal sin of all cooks and order take-outs instead of eating my own food.

The recipe below was conjured during a lazy weekend. I had recently discovered how tasty dishes can be when fried or added with salted eggs. Now this isn't exactly an outstanding dish, but just a simple one that's ideal to make when you're hungry and you couldn't be bothered with getting a Michelin star.

If you wish to try this dish, let me know what your experience is like. I look forward to hearing from you!

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1. Ingredients:
a. 2 pieces of garlic, chopped finely
b. 1 shallot, also chopped finely
c. Several choy sam/sawi leaves, chopped into big pieces (leave the last 2cm of the stems out though)
d. 1 tablespoon of cooking oil
e. 1 egg, beaten
f. 1 salted egg, also beaten (the yolk might be hard to mash though, so it's okay if it's a wee bit clumpy)
g. Dried anchovies

h. Cooked rice

i. Salt and pepper to taste

2. Method:
a. Heat a tablespoon of cooking oil in a wok.
b. Once the oil is hot, fry together garlic, shallot and anchovies until they're all brown.
c. Add in rice and stir for 2-3 minutes just to brown it a bit.
d. Stir the rice away from the centre of the wok, in order to create an empty circle. Pour in beaten salted egg onto the circle. Wait for a minute before you stir everything again.
e. After stirring and mixing everything up, repeat step (d), but this time with the (chicken) egg.
f. Throw in the chopped choy sam stems and stir everything for a minute before adding in the leaves.

g. Stir everything for about a minute before adding in salt and pepper to taste. Serve immediately as choy sam leaves can wither quickly when hot.

3. Portion size:
a. If you're hungry, it makes two servings.

b. If you're REALLY hungry, don't share this with anyone else.

4. Cook's Notes:
a. Choy sam can be quite tricky to cook as its leaves wilt really fast when cooked. Normally with leafy vegetables, I'll only cook them for about two minutes over medium fire as I like to keep my greens fresh. With choy sam, about one minute for me is just right.

b. Choy sam also wilts rather fast in the fridge compared to other leafy vegetables. Its leaves can turn yellow even before a week has passed. Ideally you should only buy it if you plan to cook it on that day itself or the day after.

d. When cooking leafy vegetables, always cook the stems first because they take longer to cook compared to the leaves. Also make sure that you cut them in more or less the same size to allow for uniform cooking.

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P/S: I just noticed how FRiSECS sounds so much like free s*x. Sorry! :-p

Cassie's Homemade Mushroom Soup & Croutons

My girlfriend Cassie had started a new food blog right after mine was up. I had been following it ever since and there's one recipe that is so easy-peasy and dummy-proof that I just had to give it a go. I had slightly modified it because I didn't have bay leaves and a blender in my kitchen, so for the original recipe, click here.

If you wish to try this dish, let me know what your experience is like. I look forward to hearing from you!

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Cassie's Homemade Mushroom Soup & Croutons

1. Ingredients:
a. 6 pieces of garlic, chopped finely
b. 1 big shallot, also chopped finely
c. 10 pieces of canned button mushrooms, sliced thinly at first for easy fine chopping afterwards
d. Cooking oil
e. 3 tablespoons of butter
f. 1 tablespoon of chicken stock powder, diluted in 500ml water
g. 1 tablespoon of corn flour, diluted in 150ml water
h. A pinch of chopped dried mixed herbs (optional)
i. 4 pieces of sandwich bread

2 (i). Method for the soup:
a. Heat a tablespoon of cooking oil in a pot to melt 1 tablespoon of butter. The rest of the butter will be used for making croutons later.
b. Once the butter-oil mixture turns brown-ish, add in 3/4 of the garlic and all of the shallot (we're saving a bit of the garlic for the croutons later). Fry till they turn brown too.
c. Add in chopped mushrooms and stir till they're half cooked.
d. Pour in the diluted chicken stock and bring to boil.
e. Add diluted corn flour and bring the soup to boil again before adding salt and pepper.
f. Sprinkle a pinch of mixed herbs and you're done!

2 (ii). Method for the croutons:
i. Slice each piece of bread into 4 vertical strips, then cut 4 rectangular pieces from each strip.
ii. Divide the bread pieces into 2 batches.
iii. Heat a tablespoon of oil to melt 1 tablespoon of butter.
iv. Once the oil-butter combination turns caramel, add in half of the leftover chopped garlic and fry till they're brown. Remember that we are making two batches here, so don't add all the garlic in.
v. Stir in the first batch of croutons, making sure that each piece gets coated with the oil-butter mix. Quick stirring is needed here or you'll end up with some dry croutons and some soggy ones that had soaked up all the mixture.
vi. Once all the pieces are brown, remove them from the pan.
v. Repeat steps iii - vi for the second batch.

3. Portion size:
Makes four small bowls.

4. Cook's Notes:
a. I love using a bit of butter for frying, but I always found myself burning it on the stove as it melted. Then I discovered a trick used by the host of Chef At Home, which is a cooking show on the AFC channel, which requires adding a bit of cooking oil to prevent the butter from getting burnt. Click here for AFC's website, where you can get the recipes shown in the shows.

b. The reason I made croutons was because I didn't know how to make garlic bread. Anyway, croutons are easy to make once you get the hang of it. I used to burn mine when I first started making them, but with each mistake, you learn something new, like how not to repeat the same mistake the next time.

c. Dried mixed herbs can be easily purchased at your local supermarket. Some of the brands I've seen in my supermarket are McCormick's(which is priciest brand of herbs I've seen so far compared to other brands), Masterfoods(which is the one I'm using now) and First Choice (which I think is the cheapest amongst all three). Mine consists of rosemary, oregano and two other herbs that I've forgotten (I'm too lazy to dash into the kitchen for a looksie now).

d. Do remember to dilute the cornflour in water before adding it to soup. Adding it directly to the boiling soup will make it clumpy. Chefs using cornflour for soups usually strain the soup before serving to get rid of the clumpy bits. At least, that's what I read.

And due to *ahem* popular requests from the readers of this blog, I finally dusted up my cam and took some pics while cooking! Sorry for the amateur-ish shots though; I was holding the cam using my left hand because I didn't want to dirty it with my right hand.

Sliced, then chopped finely. Oh the cruel fate of these mushrooms! *wipes away imaginary tears*

Melting the butter for frying.

Frying the garlic and onion once the butter is hot, hot, hot!

In went the chopped mushrooms. They soaked up the melted butter pretty fast.

Mushroom soup post-chicken stock, pre-cornflour.

Prepping the bread for crouton-ising.

Q & Q Fried Rice with Mushrooms and Red Beans

If there's one ground rule that I can have in this blog, it's that I will never post a recipe that I have not tried first.

Below is a simple recipe I came up with a few hours ago, which became my dinner. Only add red beans if you're not in a hurry to eat this, because the chewing takes a lot of time..LOL!

If you wish to try this dish, let me know what your experience is like. I look forward to hearing from you (and that includes you, He-Who-Came-Up-With-The-Idea-For-This-Blog).

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Q & Q Fried Rice with Mushrooms and Red Beans

(Q & Q = Quick & Quirky)

1. Ingredients:

a. A plate of white rice

b. Chopped onions

c. Chopped garlic

d. Anchovies (as much as you like)

e. 4 button mushrooms, sliced thinly (I used only four, but you can use more)

f. 2 chicken franks, sliced thinly (you can use more if you want to)

g. Red beans (soaked the night before and cooked till soft)

h. 1 tbsp of cooking oil

i. Salt

j. Pepper

k. 1/2 tsp of chicken stock

l. 1 tsp of soy sauce

2. Method:

a. Heat oil in a hot wok over medium fire.

b. Once oil is fragrant, add in anchovies, onions and garlic. Fry till brown.

c. Add in the sliced chicken franks and mushroom. Fry till they're brown.

d. Add in the red beans and white rice. Stir for two minutes, then add in salt, pepper, chicken stock and soy sauce.

e. Continue to stir for about two minutes before turning off the heat.

3. Portion size:

Makes two servings.

4. Cook's Notes:

a. Use as much as anchovies as you like. I had used too little (about one tablespoon) and found myself wanting more when I had eaten all of these crispy teasers on my plate.

b. I love eating red beans in desserts and bought a small pack of dried red beans to try at home. My first attempt at cooking them was to boil them for hours and yet they were still hard. I only discovered pre-cooking soaking by accident a few days ago.

c. This dish might not look so appetising because almost each ingredient used are in varying shades of brown. You can try to jazz it a bit by adding sliced tomatoes (I personally love cherry tomatoes) and sprinkling chopped spring onions. I was so hungry when I got home today, so I didn't bother with doing any presentation.