Fried Fish Bee Hoon Soup

Before this, I never knew I could reproduce this dish at home. It is one of my favourite dishes at the food courts and I always thought that it was a difficult dish to prepare. The first thing being the soup stock, and second being the fried fish. Thanks to a friend, I now know that it is actually very simple to do. Best of all, girl and hubby gave the thumbs up! Dear princess even requested it for her lunch tomorrow. :D

Here's the recipe. Thanks M, for sharing it.


For fried fish -

Use Ang Kor Li

Seasoning:

Salt

Pepper

Spring Onions

2-3 slices of ginger

1 tbsp each of cornflour and potato starch to coat fish before frying

For fresh fish -

Use Bak Tang Fish

Seasoning:

Salt

2 tbsp of potato flour

Mix potato flour in water and put fish inside. Put in fridge for 20mins to season.

Ingredients for fish stock:

1 inch of ginger (bruised)

4 to 5 garlic (bruised)

Fish bone

1 tomato cut into wedges

Evaporated milk

Hua Teow Chiew (or Chinese cooking wine)

Method:

1. Fry in oil the fish bone, ginger and garlic till fragrant.

2. When fragrant, add water.

3. Add 2 cubes of chicken stock.

4. Salt to taste.

5. Add about 2 tbsp evaporated milk or slightly more if preferred.

6. Add 1/3 tbsp cooking wine and turn off the flame immediately.


For the noodles, I used laksa noodles or thick bee hoon. Garnishes include seaweed, spring onions and fried shallots. You might like to add Szechuan vegetable to the soup if you prefer a slightly tangy flavour. Tofu is sometimes added to this dish as well.

Steamed Fish

This has been in my 'drafts' folder for a week now, so time to clear it. I love steamed ngoh hee tail. I can't find the English name for it. Anyone can confirm that it is known as threadfin or ikan kurau? I'm bad with fish names other than cod and salmon which I know the names of as well as what they look like. The rest are a blur. Hahah. Ok, I know pomfret, selar, and that's about it.

This simple seasoning is something I came up with. It's a nice balance of sweet and salty.

Ingredients -

Your choice of fish
few slices of ginger
one clove of garlic, sliced
a tbsp of fried garlic in oil (optional) - I spied this in the supermarket and decided to try it. Was nice.

Seasoning - again as with most of my seasoning recipes, this is an estimation.

1 dsp crushed salted soya beans
2 tsp sugar
sesame oil
3 tbsp water
Mix this up and pour over fish which has been placed in a steam-proof plate. Remember that it cannot be done on a flat plate as more fish juice will flow out during steaming. Use a plate with sides that turn up as I have done.

Method -

1. This is how I normally steam my food. Demonstration purpose only. Remember to put in water. Let water come to a boil in wok before placing fish on steaming stand.

2. Once water boils, put fish in and steam for approximately 10-20mins depending on size of fish. Mine took 20mins as it was a big tail. Can't tell you the exact weight but it was in an estimated 400-500gm range.

3. I added the fried garlic bits over the fish prior to removing it from steamer. You can also garnish with some spring onions, etc. I like mine plain.

4. The fish is ready when you stick a chopstick in and the flesh falls apart easily. Keep an eye on steamed fish at all times and check after the first 10mins to ensure that you do not over steam it.

Part-time mum

We had a little guest with us in our home yesterday. Princess' little friend, C, had gone for her P1 registration at a school near my place. She currently lives in Woodlands and it's unusual for her to be in our area. But they are looking to move closer to school. While I was messaging her mum in the morning, I thought why not see if little C wants to spend the day with us while her mum went back to work. Her mum said to do it another time as C had speech and drama classes yesterday. So I took it as that. After like 5 minutes, she rings me up and says C refused to go to school and was asking when she was coming over to me. Her mum had told her that princess was in school and there was only me at home. That didn't deter her. Anyhow, I told her it wasn't a problem, that I would take her for the day and the girls could have fun together. So it was settled, and while they were on the way, like only 15mins away, I ran around doing all the little things to get the house tidied up a bit. By the time they arrived, it was slightly more presentable.

The girls played very well together and not a quarrel between them (phew). They made crafts with Hama beads, played on the PSP and DS, and made more crafts. Meanwhile, in the kitchen I had some ready cupcake mix which I made up real quickly and after frosting them, gave two little bowls of decoration for them to decorate the tops with. Here's what they did...

I fried some fish fillet with breadcrumbs, which I had picked up a couple of days earlier. Love the crispiness on them when freshly fried.

This is what they had for dinner. Hey Al, do those plastic containers look familiar? ;) Ooops, yes, I also made some blueberry konnyaku jelly with my new moulds but they are mostly gone now so this is all that is left. Can you spy the heart, flower, pineapple and cat?

For lovers of Hello Kitty, Daiso has new stocks of HK merchandise just on the shelves on Tuesday this week. Don't miss them.

Wednesday's dinner

Our dinner dishes two nights' ago. Used the leftover soup from day before that and added some seaweed meatballs and spinach. We had an outing with KY in the afternoon and didn't have much time to prepare dinner, so I had to plan simple things that I could whip up in a jiffy. I think I'm getting good at this - preparing for dinner in the morning haha. I did that twice last week, as was busy and out mostly, so only had minimum time to put together a quick dinner.

Fish was easy too as it was just a matter of putting the seasoning and garnishes and leaving the steamer to do all the work. Vegetables were soaked and prepared before I left the house, and there were these cheese fishcakes to be fried, and voila, dinner was ready. :) I love the fishcakes as they have cheese oozing out when you bite into them.

Some meals

Meal 1 -

Baked salmon in Teriyaki sauce.

Broccolini and Mushrooms in Oyster sauce. These were cute as princess said they were like flowers as they had a long stem. She'd bite off the flowers, then slowly chewed off the stems. Personally I prefer normal broccoli. I boiled mine in water and made the sauce separate to pour over. Garnished it with fried shallots to serve. Coincidentally, little corner of mine cooked this dish as well, on the same day.

Baked Chicken Wings by special request of the princess.

Seaweed Usahana on a mound of rice.

Black pepper sauce which I used to bake other piece of salmon with.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Meal 2 -

From this... (I wanted to take a photo of the vegetables before they were cooked to show the beautiful flowers on them.)

... to this. (I'm not sure of the name of this vegetable but I believe it belongs to the Kai Lan family. It's really crunchy and sweet, I believe it's also because of the oyster sauce used.)

Fried some Thai fishcakes which were nice but too spicy for the little one. Packet for my reference.

It was basically an instant meal with seaweed wrapped chicken and ready chicken rice mix. I somehow am 'off' this seaweed chicken as I find over the years that they have added more fat to it. It does get pretty disgusting biting into them. I stopped buying them for a while but princess asked for them as she recently had them at the CNY party in school. Have to look for another brand unless they cut off the fat on these.

Tada! The meal is ready.

Note - The vegetables were bought at the vegetable and fruits stall in the basement of Tangs Departmental Store. I used to love to buy from the lady whenever I made a trip downtown. Her produce is very fresh but I noticed they have kind of downsized the stall as the other half of it is taken up by a new vendor. She has unusual veggies and that was how I came about the broccolini and the other veg. I should have asked her the name of it though. So, if you are ever in that part of town, do check it out.

Chap Gor Mi or Yuan Xiao Jie

Thursday was the last or 15th day of the Chinese New Year celebrations. How fast times flies. First we were all busy baking, cooking, feasting and in just a blink of an eye, it's gone. Till next year rolls along. I feel so free and light since all festivities have come to a standstill for me, and also having stopped all enrichment classes in preparation for the ballet exams in approximately 2-1/2 weeks' time. Yikes! Shudder!

Before long, it'll be time for the Primary One Registration. Thank goodness that one is not a headache.

For sis - we had dinner in KB and this is what pa cooked up. This fish has C's (LCOM) name on it. Hahaha!

Prawns in black sauce. Hey sis, notice he didn't peel them for us? You are the special one.

There's another dish of chicken, from the nasi padang stall, which he bought for your (sis') birthday dinner so I won't show it again here.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Princess and I had dinner at Swensen's last evening and this is what she ordered. Ham & cheese burgers with alphabet hash browns and corn. She polished off everything on the plate. The burgers were tiny and for an adult, maybe gone in 2-3 bites. Haha. I got the kitchen to not grill the buns as they usually do. I don't like all the grease on them so they baked them instead, which is a much healthier choice.

I wasn't impressed with my dinner which was some grilled fish with yellow rice and raisins so I didn't bother even taking a photo of it. :P

Do most people celebrate the end of CNY? I know not many people do.

Dinner, etc

My offering for dinner this evening... finally tried the deep fried prawns in the netted wrap as recommended by Jo. It was lovely and tasty, and best of all, so easy to do. I just seasoned the prawns with a light sprinkling of salt and black pepper before frying. It is served with Thai sweet chilli sauce. Unfortunately I couldn't get the mango to go with it. Hope I spy some mangoes in the supermarket soon. It'll make this dish splendid! I loved it, since I love prawns and anything to do with them. The black dish in the foreground is fish flakes. I remember when I was young, my Ah Ma used to take the flesh off fried fish which we didn't finish the night before, flaked them, and stir fried with black sauce and some sugar. What I used was fresh fish though. Princess is not into fish. She refuses to eat them now, so I either force her to (in the case of cod), or else I 'camouflage' it this way. ;)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A Princess Party

We were invited to little Princess Anna's party yesterday. She turned 3. Can't believe that her mum and I have known each other since we were 7. Wow, sure is amazing considering how we lost contact for a couple of years. I treasure old friendships from way back when...

The kids had a great time. There was the magician from one of our previous birthday parties (couldn't believe that he still remembers my girl by name!) and also the tattoo artist from our last birthday party. I even managed to get a flower drawn on one arm. :)

There was a good mix of spicy as well as non-spicy food. Needless to say, I veered towards all the curry and chilli. :) The fish was very very good. I'm so in love with it, although I doubt I can re-create it. The hosts had catered the buffet from a Nonya restaurant called Baba King.

Anna's mum gave me this gift from Hokkaido which her lovely hubby picked up specially on his recent trip to Japan. She said it was very good and I totally agree with her. It's sort of like rice krispies coated in chocolate but a hundred times better. Very light and tasty as the wrapper proclaims it to be. Look out for it next time you are in Japan. You won't be disappointed.

Xia Jiang Ji

Choo, I finally tried the recipe. I added some sesame seeds to batter too and it gave it some fragrance. However, I wasn't too keen on the smell when the bottle containing the shrimp paste was first opened. The pungent smell just hits you. If anyone thinks durian is bad, you should try smelling this. :D I was keeping my fingers crossed that it will turn out well as I had already marinated the lot, or else we'd have no dinner. Eeeks! However, upon frying, the flavours just fused together - sugar, sesame oil, etc.. And hubby loved it. Princess had no complaints so she must like it and I think it was lovely too.

I also steamed a piece of cod and stir-fried some vegetables. That was our meal last evening. :)