The mid-autumn festival is round the corner. This jelly “mooncake” was given by a friend. She said it’s “very nice”. OK, here it is. The “yolk” is a drop of yellow agar agar. The red bean paste is real red bean paste, not too sweet, but overall, it just doesn’t taste like a mooncake at all. Not my cup of mooncake.
Many people can’t resist the taste and aroma of chicken rice, so much so that the chicken has become secondary. I hate to chop up a whole chicken, so instead of roasting or poaching the chicken, I stew it. This way, the chicken is soft, juicy and comes off very easily from the bone. To prepare the chicken, you’d just need to boil up some water with five spice powder and soya sauce. I’ve also included a few cloves of crushed garlic.
Bring to a boil, simmer for 1.5 to 2 hours and you’ve have nice, soft and juicy chicken like what you see here. Even after skin removal, the chicken broth can still look a bit greasy.
While the chicken is cooking, you can prepare the rice, but don’t cook too early as the chicken takes much longer. Here, I’ve used Thai fragrant rice and pandan leaves. Cook the rice in chicken stock. If you don’t have that, just add a cube of chicken stock readily available at your local supermarket. You’d also need to prepare the oil. I normally microwave sliced ginger and garlic in oil to prepare that. Pour the flavoured oil into the rice along with some sesame oil.
The rice should look nice and shiny. It should also give off a wonderful aroma. This is my homecooked chicken rice. It definitely tastes better than that sold at the food court in Punggol.
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There are many ways to cook a cod steak. Steaming is one of them. To begin, you would need to marinate your cod steak with soya sauce, green onion and ginger slices. Make sure you cut a few ginger cubes to elevate the fish from the floor of the plate. I’m not sure if it’s significant, but the experts advise it.
Into the steamer it goes. The experts advise us to pop in the fish only when the water in the steamer is boiling, but I don’t think I can manage that without scalding my fingers. So the fish goes in before I even light the stove. I know you need to seal in the juices when you’re frying, but I doubt that it makes that much difference in steaming.
Anyway, my fish was beautifully cooked after 10 mins and it tasted heavenly. My kids definitely loved it.
© Chan Joon Yee
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Do you like to go on holidays?
Do you want an additional stream of income?
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