Stir Fried Kailan with Beef

Stir fry kailan with beef is a good dinner dish. You get both the meat and vegies in one dish. This is always a combination that is not so easy to cook. Kailan needs to be crispy and crunchy yet well cooked. Beef needs to be tender and tasty. I personally just use beef with either the sukiyaki or the shabu-shabu cut, so that saves the cutting.


200 to 300 gm of sirloin or tenderloin beef, thinly cut seasoned with
1 tbsp of light soya
1 teasp of sesame oil
1/2 teasp of salt and pepper
1 heaped teasp of corn flour

1 bunch of kailan, washed and cut
1 tbsp of shallot, sliced and roughly minced
3 - 4 pcs of ginger
2 tbsp of shaoxin cooking wine
salt to taste

1) With a pot of boiling water with 2 tbsp of cooking oil and 1 teasp of salt added, blanch the kailan very quickly. Don't cook through the veg at this stage. Drain and set aside.

2) In a wok, with 2 tbsp of cooking oil, stir fry the ginger and shallot til fragrant. Bring to high heat, add seasoned beef, stir fry and loosen the meat if they are sticking together. Add 2-3 tbsp of water.

3) When the meat turns 80% pale, add pre-blanched kailan, stir fry till both meat and veg are well mixed. Add salt or oyster sauce (optional) and cooking wine. Dish out and serve.

Something for Chap Goh Meh: Mushroom & Brocolli Platter

Greg and I have been trying to eat healthy and that means good stuff and lots of vegies after all those CNY binging and over eating of junk and junk and more junk. So we're trying to do more stir fries, soup and fishes at home.

One of the dishes I cooked in the last few days was this ~ the Mushroom Platter with Brocolli. I think it will make a very good dish for parties, chap goh meh and other festivities. Normally I would include fresh oyster and shitake on top of the abalone mushrooms. You can also add champignon as well. But this one was just plain abalone mushrooms with some pacific clams.

Serve 5-6

350-400 ml of good healthy chicken stock. Dried scallops or dried oysters can be added to chicken stock to enhance flavour.

1-2 stalks of abalone mushrooms, sliced

1 packet or approximately 8-10 pieces of oyster mushrooms

6-8 pieces of nice, big juicy shitake mushrooms, soaked in room temperature water till soft.

1 can of pacific clams (optional)

1 stalk of brocolli, cut into smaller stalks

2 tbsp of light soya

1 tbsp of oyster sauce

2 tbsp of hua tiaw wine

add salt & pepper to taste**

1) Chicken stock can be prepared well in advanced. In a wok, heat up the stock. Add all the above seasoning except hua tiaw cooking wine, salt and pepper. When boiling, add mushrooms, one type at a time, to blanch them in the stock. Starting with oyster mushrooms, dish out and place them in the centre of your plate. Then the abalone mushrooms, to be placed around or on top of the oyster mushrooms. Shitake can go around or if you have really nice big ones, they can cover the entire top of the platter.

2) Blanch pacific clams in the stock next and finally the brocolli. Dish out and place them around the mushrooms.

3) With one tbsp of potato or corn starch, thicken the stock. Add hua tiaw wine. Pour sauce on top of platter and serve.

** Add extra salt and pepper if you wish but we like it on the light side.

Fresh Fruits Salad with Prawns

After reading Terri's blog on her Rock Melon Prawn Salad, I had a very bad craving for something like that. And since Mom and Dad were away in Melbourne, thus leaving me with the task of feeding my wittle brother Raymond, the thought making this dish became much more pleasureable.

This is a recipe which I grew up with because Aunty Selina and Aunty Linda would do something like this at Grandma and Grandpa's gatherings in the older days. I made some modifications to theirs, using different fruits, and I added prawns (inspired by Terri). For a different version, please visit her at hungerhunger.

I used fresh fruits for this salad.

1 no of mango

1/2 no of small-med honeydew/rockmelon, just riped

1/2 no of small papaya, just riped

1/2 no of medium pineapple

optional fruits ~ 1 small can of longan, 1 small green apples, 1 small pear

Note: You can either use mango or honeydew/rock melon as the main fruit as both are quite strong in taste. If mango is the main fruit, use 2-3 nos. If honeydew/rockmelon is the main, use 1/2 + 1/4. I did not use mango because I could not find it anywhere in Kuching last week, so i used the formula for honeydew.

1 jar of 230ml Kraft mayonaise

3 tbsp of sweetened condensed milk

3-4 no of local limau/lemons

600-800 gm of unshelled medium prawns

1-2 tbsp of chopped parsley

1) Cut all the fruits into small cubes of 1 cm X 1 cm. Keep them refridgerated.

2) Mix the mayonaise, sweeted condensed milk and limau in a bowl. Mix well and store in refridgerator.

3) Prepare a pot of water enough to cover prawns. Clean and devein prawns. Boil for 3 min or so until the prawns are cooked. Don't overcook though. Peel the shells off and keep it in refridgerator.

4) Prepare 1 to 3 way ahead so that you can chill them. Before serving, mix mayonaise mixture and fruit mixture. Mix some mayonaise mixture with prawns and place onto top of fruit mixture. Sprinkle parsley on top.

Excellent for hot days or with fried/bbqed dishes.

Another Porridge Detox Project

We have really really have been overindulging ourselves. After two nights of meats, we could not take the third round. And it is back to good old porridge.

This time plain porridge with some simple side dishes that can be whipped out within one hour.


Here are some our favourite porridge side dishes ideas:

a) Perserved Salted eggs, Century eggs with some soy sauce, bottled chai sim

b) Steamed pork mince with egg

This is an absolute must-have with porridge especially when you are sick, or have a bad toothache, or no teeth. Otherwise, it's a simple & yet tasty dish on a lazy day.

150 to 200 gm of pork mince
1 tbsp of onion, minced
1 teasp of salt
1 tbsp of light soya sauce
1 tbsp of huatiaw wine
2 tbsp of water
2 no of eggs

1) Mix all ingredients together till even and steam on high heat for 12 min or so. Doneness can be tested by poking the dish and if the juice run out is still pink, steam for another 3-5 min.

c) Perserved radish (chai po) omelette

Another porridge good friend. Depending on the radish, it should be washed slightly. If really salty, soak and wash.

50 gm of perserved radish, chopped finely
1/2 no of medium onion, chopped
3-4 no of eggs
2 tbsp of oil

1) Heat oil in wok till hot. Stir fry onion till fragrant. Add radish and fry till radish is cooked. Add whisked eggs. Cook for 3-4 min on one side and flip to the other side and continue cooking for another 2-4 min. Dish out and serve.

Another similar dish is Luncheon Meat Omelette. Replace perserved radish with 1 small can of luncheon meat sliced to small strips.

d) Ribs with black bean sauce

This one is yummy. Top the sauce onto the porridge.

300-400 gm of pork ribs
1 1/2 tbsp of sweet bean sauce (tau chuo)
2 tbsp of huatiaw
1 1/2 tbsp of sugar
1 tbsp of minced ginger
1 tbsp of dark soy

1) Marinade everything together and add a little cornflour. Season for an hour or so. Steam on high for 15 min.

e) Stir fry vegies such as chai xin, little cabbage.

f) Sardines

1 small can of sardines
1/2 no of medium onion chopped
2 tbsp of sugar
2-3 local lemon (limau), squeezed out the juice

1) Stir fry onion til fragrant. Add sardines, then the sugar. When mixture starts to bubble and right before serving, add the juice. Dish out and serve.

Pickled Chillis

Greg has been bugging me for this thing. Every time we have Kolo Mee or Kuey Tiaw at home, he would go on and on about how nice it is if there was Red Chilli Padi sauce. I have a bottle of Green Pepper Chillis from Yi Po but he still wants his red. So, yesterday I could not take it anymore and decided to do up a bottle and shut him up.

Anyway, Chillis are going for RM6/kg, really fresh as well. Pickled chillis are very nice with fried and soupy noodles, rice noodles and rice sticks. It's always handy to keep a bottle at home. Here's the recipe.

40 gm of chilli padi
220gm of red pepper chillis
1/2 bottle of white vineger
40 gm of sugar
3/4 tbsp of salt
A clean glass jar with tight lid

1) Clean red pepper chillis well and cut to round slices. Put them on a metal strainer and shake so that seeds can loosen from the chillis. Clean chilli padis and leave them as they are.

2) Boil white vinegar with sugar and salt. Let it cool slightly.

3) Place some chillis into the jar, top with some chilli padis and pour some vinegar on top. Alternate till all ingredients finish. Let it cool before covering with lid and store a few days in the fridge before eating.

Tip: Dont pour hot boiling vinegar mixture straight into chillis as you do not want to cook the chillis. Cooked ones will turn soft after storing for a while.
Use warm ones as you just want to kill the bacteria and the chillis will retain the crunch.