Creamy Tomato pasta

I sort of made up this recipes when I bought the wrong pot of cream. I wanted to get those really yummy thickened cream, but instead I grabbed the cream cheese for cooking! So I thought why not add it to this bolognaise sauce I was making and Voila!! I think it tasted like Lasagne with out the layers and the cream it was soo good!

What you need:

500 g of mince beef
a bag of pasta (this time I used macaroni)
1 large onions
1 can of Watties Tomato and garlic
3 cloves of garlic
Salt and pepper
sugar
mix herbs
chicken stock (for extra oomph)
a chunk of Butter

Boil the pasta with a little oil and salt, I think the oil help so that the pasta won't stick together. Once the pasta is Al Dente, strain and rinse with cold water and set aside.

Heat a pan or pot or what ever you prefer to cook the meat in, as long as you make sure there is enough room to mix the pasta in. I like to use butter to cook the garlic and the onions because it smells so good!


So after the onions and the garlic are fragrant, fried the mince and add the salt and pepper, chicken stock and mix herb. When the mince is half cook, you can add the canned tomatoes and the sugar.



Cook through and then add the pasta. Simmer for a few minutes to make sure that all the taste are absorbed by the pasta.Stir in the Cream cheese just before you turn off the heat.

Zoe's Pork and prawn Shumai

Zoe is a girl who works at this Yum cha place in Taiwan. Her job is to make those yummy yummy dim sum. She happened to visit her cousin in NZ who happens to be a good friend of mine. So here is it! It is actually very very simple, and its nice.

What you need:

Thin Wonton wrapper
200 g Skinless prawn
150 g Pork mince
150 g Fatty pork mince
1 Tbs Sesame oil
1 Tbs fish sauce
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp chicken stock
1/2 tsp pepper

What to do:

Roughly chop the prawn into chunks and combine all the ingredient above. You can also add some finely chopped chinese mushroom if you wish. I didn't put any this time because I was lazy.

Once they are mixed well, use a table spoon to measure a scoop of shumai mix and place them on a piece of wonton skin and wrap it into small shumai parcels.

While you were doing all the mixing and the wrapping, you can actually start preparing the steamer. What I mean by that is boiling the water. So when your shumai is ready, the steamer will be nice and hot! You can use this steamer or any other steamer you have at home. I was very happy with my $6 steamer I bought in this chinese shop on dominion Road.

Arrange the shumai in the steamer like this

And steam for about 10 minutes. and TADAAAAAA.... enjoy them with chili and soy sauce

Lia's Mapo Tofu

I love love love Mapo Tofu.. I think that would be one of my Fave Chinese dish that I actually cook on a regular basis. Not only that its easy, it is also very fast to do.. As long as you have your rice then you are all good to go. Its really super easy.. almost everything you need is in this photo.

Ingredient:
150 g of lean mince pork (you can use chicken or beef if you like)
1 box of firm Tofu (not too hard but the one in water)
1 Tbs of starch (you can use corn flour too)
2 Tbs of fish sauce
2 cloves of garlic
4Tbs of sesame oil
1 Tbs of Gulilin chili sauce
1 ts of Chili oil (I like the chicken flavour)
1 C Water
Salt, pepper and a bit of sugar to taste
spring onions

What to do:

I like to marinade the mince first with fish sauce and pepper before I do anything else. Then mix it well with the starch. Be generous with the 1 table spoon, as long as it looked like a dough then its all good.

While the meat is marinated, chop the garlic into tiny pieces. and cut your tofu into squares. I cut them into decent squares so they don't go completely mushed when you cook them.

Heat your pot and fry the garlic with the sesame oil. Once they become fragrant, and slightly coloured add the gulilin chili sauce and the chili oil in the pot and fried for a little while. Add some soy sauce and let it simmer for a few second before you add the mince. Cook the mince well and add your tofu cube. DO NOT stir too much. Add the water and let it simmer.

At this stage all the juice and the sauce should be incorporated well in the tofu. Add salt and sugar and taste. If need be, you can add extra fish sauce at this stage. Turn down the heat and let it simmer for a few minutes. Mix one and a half tea spoon of starch with 3 table spoon of water in a small bowl. Add it to the simmering tofu and stir gently. add slice spring onions before serving.

Creamy Chicken pasta

I pinched this recipes of Claire, I am not sure where she got this one from. One day Charu and I were invited to come over for diner at Claire's place. We had this for dinner with a glass of Riesling... they go really well together I thought or Sav if you like Sav





1 bag of pasta
2 cloves of garlic
1medium onions
a bag of silver beet or spinach
4 slices of shoulder bacon
2 boneless and skinless chicken thigh
500ml of cream
Salt and pepper
Parmesan cheese
70g of silvered Almond

Boil water in a big pot with some salt and olive oil. I put olive oil in so that when you rinse your pasta afterward they won't stick together so much. you don't have to do it if you don't want to that's fine too. Boil your pasta until its cook but a little harder than Al-dante ( I don't know how to spell this sorry). Rinse with cold water and set aside.

While the pasta was boiling, I started cutting out the white bits form the silver beets. I like to remove most of the white bits on the silver beet, I don't really like it so that why i cut it out. Cut the leaf, wash and set aside.


Chop the garlic and slice the onions. I was being good today that I trimmed the fat off the bacon! *yay for me!* and cut the chicken into chunks. Actually you can do what ever you want here.


Heat a big pot or big wok or pan and add some Olive oil just enough to fry the garlic and onions until they are fragrant. Then add the bacon and the chicken. At this point i added a bit of salt and pepper and a little bit of chicken stock powder to season the meat. Once they look half cooked you can add the sliver beet and close the lid.


Cook in low heat for a few minutes. Add the pasta in and mix well.


Once the pasta is mixed thoroughly, you can then add the cream let it simmer for a bit. This is why I suggest to under cook the pasta at the beginning.

Once its almost ready you can add some cheese or if you have Parmesan the go wild with the Parmesan. I was lucky to have a friend that work at fontera, She gave me a block of Parmesan cheese.. nom nom nom!

Hamburg steak Lia's style

Nia (my ex flat mate) and I were randomly watching you-tube one night and found this "How to" channel and one of the video was how to make a Japanese hamburg steak . I can't remember which video it was I would have modified it anyway to make it simple and quick.

Ingredients:

500g premium mince beef (I like it because it's lean)
2 -3 cloves of garlic (depending on the size)
1 medium onion
1 large egg
1/2 cup of bread crumbs
a good squirt of Japanese mayo
2 tbs of soy sauce (kikoman style soy sauce)
1/2 ts of sugar
a little pinch of Dashi (japanese bonito stock)
a little pinch of pepper

What to do:

I actually baked these hamburg steak in the oven.. they became a little dry, but its not bad... you can of course bake them covered to keep them moist or pan-fried them would be another option and in summer... they are great on the BBQ.

Chopped the garlic and the onions (fine) and combine all the ingredients in a large bowl except for the bread crumbs. You might want to wear swimming goggle, I personally hate chopping onions, it always makes me cry, You can always use those fancy blender like magic bullet or something.

Add the bread crumbs. You don't have to add all of your bread crumbs at this stage, you can also add more, it depends on the softness of your mince, the size of your egg, how big if you mayo squirt etc. So as long as you can make them in to a round firm dough, then its all good! If you find that you add too much bread crumbs and your dough feels abit too hard, you can always add extra mayo to soften it up a little.

Then make it into hamburger patties, just like this and bake, or fried or what ever you want to do with them really.. you can also freeze them for rainy days :)

Broccoli and Blue cheese soup

I came up with this recipes when was sick with the flu. I think it was last winter sometimes... that day I was wondering around the supermarket cold isle looking for those ready made soup in a bag. I was originally looking for those creamy country chicken soup but there was none! I was rather disappointed actually,then I saw this bag of broccoli and blue cheese soup and i thought to my self "YUUUUUUUUUUUUUUMMMMMMMMM" So I proceed to read the ingredient written on the bag, as I do because I am a compulsive reader and I read anything when I realised that "oh its simple and I have most of the stuff at home, apart from the blue cheese" So instead of buying the bag I went home with a thing of blue cheese and a thing of French stick!

What you need:

1 small leek
4 medium potatoes
2 clove of garlic
5 florets of broccoli (i used frozen ones today)
a dash of butter
a small wedge of blue cheese
a can of evaporated milk (you can use 250 ml cream)
Salt and black pepper to taste

What to do:

Chopped garlic and slice the leek and potatoes thinly (you might want to leave the cut potatoes in salt water to prevent it going brown). I only used the white stuff, I didn't really want to inclube the green stuff because it looked a bit yucky. Melt some butter in a pot and fried the chopped garlic until it goes golden and fragrant. Then add the sliced leek. Once they look cooked and smell nice, you can add a little bit of water to the pot and add the thinly sliced potato and broccoli. Boil for a few minutes.

Once they are soft add the blue cheese and let it melt. At this stage if the pot is getting dry due to liquid evaporation then add the milk/cream. Simmer in low heat for a few minutes until the blue cheese melted. I then used a hand blender to destroy all the chunky bits in the soup ( I turned off the heat during this demolition procedure). Once everything is not so chunky anymore, add a pinch of salt and black pepper to taste. TADAAAAAAA its done!! Its a good winter soup!

Lia's Style Hainaneese Chicken Rice

I love this dish! For some reason this is one of my fave home cooked dish! When I was flatting with Nia she used to cook this chicken heaps! I think she learned this recipes form her mom. I won't say its quick and easy but Its not bad! It took me about an hour to cook this food for lunch today. which is not bad.. considering how many things you need to prepare for it aye. I am puting down the recipes for 1 whole chicken, that was what I did today. If you don't want to use whole chicken its fine too, you can totally use chicken pieces. The reason why I used whole chicken today was that a size 16 chicken was on special in count down only $10 and I can't resist. LOL Anyway now I am sort of still having a temporary flatmate, I can cook for 2! yay! So you can adjust the rest for smaller portion :)

Ingredient:

1 x Size 16 whole chicken
a thumb size garlic
1.5 Liter of water
1 ts of salt

Chicken seasoning
1.5 bulbs of garlic (~ 10 cloves)
10 cm ginger
10 Tbs Sesame oil
4 Tbs cooking oil
6 Tbs fish sauce (please adjust according to your liking)

Rice Seasoning
1 packet of Prima taste Hainaneese chicken rice pouch
2 cups of rice
6 Shiitake mushroom (I used fresh ones, you can use the dried ones if you like)
1 ts sugar
3 Tbs of fish sauce

What to do:

Add water in a big pot and the chicken. Peel and slice your ginger and add it together with the salt. Boil on high with open lid until water is boil, then lower the heat and close the lid and boil for another 20 minutes. Turn it off and close the lid, leave to settle for another 20 minutes. the heat of the water will cook the chicken thoroughly.

Chop garlic (extra fine) and grate the ginger. If you prefer you can put them together in a blender. Heat a pan with 4 Tbs of cooking oil and fry the garlic ginger mix on low heat. Add the sesame oil gradually. Once they turn golden brown add the fish sauce. Make sure to remove from the heat straight away after the addition of the fish sauce, because it will burn the mixture faster.

Cooking the rice is the easiest bit. Cut the shiitake mushroom as desired. then mix 1 pouch of the prima taste fragrant hainaneese rice seasoning, sugar and fish sauce with the rice. Instead of using water to cook the rice, use the Chicken stock from the boiled chicken. Cook in the rice cooker as per normal.

So once the chicken seasoning is cooked, I de-boned the chicken and add the seasoning to the chicken and mix it well. At this stage if you think you need abit more taste, you can always add extra sesame oil, fish sauce or sugar.


This is what the rice looked like after cooking... at this point i like to mix the rice so the yummy mushroom are evenly distributed in the rice. Serve the rice with the chicken and any asian vegies, such as Bok choi, Choi sam or Gai lan. Anyway.. below are my left over for lunch tomorrow! YAY!