Mango and Potato

Don't get it wrong: I'm not mixing mangoes with potatoes. They're two separate dishes actually; just that I'm bemused by the rhythm of these two ingredients which I happened to be preparing for dinner and supper. Dinner is mango duck salad; it's the signature dish of yours truly (well, kind of).

Ingredients are pretty simple: two big mangoes (I prefer the ones from India as they're juicy and sweet), fresh pack of salad vegetables (I bought it from NTUC), pine nuts (I lightly toast them before mixing), Japanese riken non-oil aojiso lemon and herb taste salad dressing (for healthier choice), and of course, de-boned roast duck.

After mixing and tossing, this is the result (does it look appetizing or what?)...

For supper, I made sweet potato soup using just one big yellow sweet potato, a few stalk of pandan leaves, and a special brown rock sugar that has ginger slices inside (a friend from Taiwan gave these to me during one of my overseas business trip).

Hubby's very pleased with both as he has an affinity for sweet things, but I'll make sure he eats only the healthy sweet stuff, and moderate his intake of candies to a minimum, if I can help it.

And I think he's quite happy with that arrangement too...

DangSheng and DangGui

Erm... the ingredients mentioned in the title may seem foreign to some of you if you're not asian, but not to worry. These are well-known TCM herbs that are sometimes used in making soup or to add some health benefits to an already tasty dish. I prepared pork bone soup with chestnut and fresh wild yam for Wednesday's dinner and added dangsheng to it. This ingredient is considered a poor man's ginseng, and while not as potent, it does help replenish qi, lower blood pressure, strengthen the immune system and cure appetite loss.

Of course, hubby hardly have poor appetite; sometimes he even grab the biscuit tin after his meal for some snack bites, which kinda irritates me because it gives me the impression that he's not satisfied with the meal I prepared. "It's just that my mouth is itching for something to munch," he'll reason with me. That's my boy!

Tonight, I blanched his favourite broccoli with dried scallop pieces, and quietly added slices of danggui to enhance the flavour (and forgot to add some wolfberries). "Strange, how come the broccoli tastes weird today?" he asked. After telling him what was added to give variety to the taste, I asked what he thought about it. "Um... I can still accept the taste, but I still prefer the original broccoli taste, you know?" he said with a 'give-me-back-my-broccoli-taste' look in his eyes. Ah, well...

Anyway, there was an additional steamed grouper fish (garoupa in Portugese) with fermented black bean paste, so that should somehow appeased him a little, I hope. If you want the recipe, click here.

So was he happy with the dinner meal? If you wanna know, let's say he headed for the biscuit tin on top of the fridge just after finishing his food...

Of Tuna and Tofu

Bought a nice yellow capsicum yesterday at the NTUC to prepare this tasty and nuitritious breakfast this morning. First, I halved the capsicum and carved out its seeds and inner linings; next, I filled up the halves with Ayam brand tuna, seasoned it with a little black pepper, then overlaid the top with a slice of cheese, and baked it for about 10 minutes. There you have it, something juicy and crunchy to start your day off:

For dinner, I decided to use tofu as the main ingredient, accompanied by white Japanese shimeiji mushrooms and minced pork meat, and garnished with cut spring onions and red chilli to make it more appealing and appetizing:

I asked hubby, "You like this dish? How'd it taste: delicious, or supremely yummy?" "OK. Not supremely yummy," he replied, and paused to observe my slightly disappointed reaction, then quickly added with a chuckle, "but delicious, very delicious!"

Note: I learnt from my mum that minced pork meat is a very versatile ingredient, mainly because the lean meat is sweet and juicy. When steamed, it yields its flavour into whatever sauce it's in, adding a slight brown tone to the gravy. In the past, not many stalls have meat grinders so mum would buy a whole piece of lean meat, washed it clean and then chopped it relentlessly on a chopping board until it's well shredded.

There're a lot of things you can do with minced meat, but I'll not elaborate it here. Just follow my blog and you'll get to see more anyhow ways it can be cooked...

Blanched or Stewed?

That's the choice to make while preparing today's meal. For lunch, I've decided to make it simple: blanched spinach (hubby would imitate Popeye's laughter whenever I serve this dish) flavoured with a little sesame oil and soy sauce, boiled rice vermicelli, and pork knuckle bones leftover from the soup stock I made a day earlier.

Hubby's been eyeing the pork knuckles ever since we bought it yesterday, and when this dish was finally served up, you could see the glee in his face as he digged in, foraging every nook and cranny for the last bit of soft bones (cartilage and connecting tissues) and the highly prized bone marrow.

For dinner, I decided to stew chicken legs with mushrooms and chestnuts, flavouring with ginger and anistar, in my pressure cooker. Prior to that, I slightly deep fried the chicken legs to give it more flavour and texture. It took only half an hour with the help of the pressure cooker and the chicken legs were already soft to the bone.

Served with brown rice, and that would be just perfect, right hubby? Well, he's too busy eating to answer that anyway...

Back and Cooking Again

Just came back from church retreat last evening, and was it a good getaway! With all the wonderful programmes and sumptuous food every meal, I'd bet my hubby's longing for some simple yet nuitritious home-cooked meal from yours truly.

So this morning, after having our breakfast at the West Coast hawker centre, we walked over to the wet market to do some marketing. Since our fridge is quite empty, we bought assortments of vegetables and meat to fill it up for the next week.

After washing and hanging out the laundry, hubby continued to work on the drawer for the kitchen cabinet, while I busied myself with lunch. Having eaten so much for every meal for the past couple of days, I decided to prepare brown rice porridge with four ingredients: silver fish, fresh huaishan (wild yam), minced meat and Shandong peanuts. Using the pressure cooker, the time to cook is reduced by almost half.

Here's some health tips regarding the use of peanuts in your meal: 1. Peanuts combined with lean pork meat improves the color of your skin and reduces fatigue; 2. With silver fish, it improves calcium absorption and bone growth.

But it's not the kind of peanuts you can eat straight out of the wraps that I'm talking about; those are cooked and either sweetened or salted. You have to get those raw ones, get them soaked and washed, and then cooked together with the other ingredients to reap the benefits I just mentioned.

Side note:
Not long after I was married, I cooked a similar dish except that I used dried chunks of huaishan. I brought some over for my mother-in-law to try. She didn't comment a thing, which I took it to be positive until a couple of days later, while visiting us, she casually remarked that using unbleached huaishan when cooking would be a better choice, and cutting it into smaller pieces would make the porridge tastier. Immediately I got her point!

Taking a Break

This whole week hubby and I will be away in Malaysia for a five day church retreat, so I will not be blogging during our absence. Rest assure, my readers, I'll continue blogging when I'm back from our holiday, so stay tuned... Thanks!

Funky about Fungus

Hubby prefers that I take a break from cooking on weekends, but sometimes I'll still like to prepare a simple nuitritious home-cooked meal. Like today's lunch - white fungus soup with chicken drumstick, black poplar dried mushrooms (cha shu gu), dried chinese yam slices, wolfberries and red dates.

Several ingredients in this soup are known in traditional chinese medicine for building up the kidneys, lungs, liver and spleen. There's a recipe with slight variation that you can find here. White fungus is also an excellent source of collagen, which helps to reduce wrinkles on my pretty face. Hehe...

I asked him what he thought about this dish. As usual, he's fully engrossed in eating and without looking up, remarked, "I'll give it an 8 out of 10... slurp! slurp!"