Live prawns – those which are still swimming in the tank – were on promotion last week when I was shopping at the supermarket. I could not miss the opportunity to buy some live prawns home to make a really fresh dish of steamed prawns. Those live prawns always get my attention each time I go shopping since I like looking at live and fresh food a lot. But live and fresh foods, for the most part, are kind of luxurious stuffs in a country where most of the foods are imported from other countries. 

These steamed prawns are very simple to make and very flavorful. It is a good way to make the best taste and texture out of live prawns. My mom often prepared this dish each time I visited home because I hardly could afford cooking this food here.  

Ingredients for this dish are simple and typical in Vietnamese cuisine. You need live prawns, lemon grass stalks, lime leaves (or pomelo leaves are also possible), and fresh ginger root. For two of us, 15 medium-large prawns is enough. I recommend only live prawns for this steaming dish, otherwise the food is not goot any more and you may feel fishy taste out of the chilled / frozen prawns. 

In the photo below are the prawns – which were still able to jump out of the steamer. Just combine the prawns together with shredded ginger, some lime leaves and shreded lemon grass. Remember to put some lemon grass into the water as well, so that during steaming time, the boiling water brings lemon grass fragrance into the prawns as well. 

Prawns are very fast to cook, and make sure you do not overcook the prawns. 

Serving these prawns with chili sauce – very simple but very tasty. 

This was my first time baking savory muffins. It has been very hot these days and I have no appetite for sweet stuffs. Instead, I always want to eat fresh fruits and juice, or drink water. In my menu these days summer soups also appear in every meal. 

However, I started to miss my oven and baking ingredients. So the idea of making savory desserts flashed in my head. I started browsing my books first and I got this muffin recipe from my Taste of Home recipe collection. It was very simple to make these muffins and I had them for my dinner. Freshly baked foods are always so good. What I only needed more is a glass of cold water, and so I really enjoyed my meal. 

Ingredients: (12 muffins)

- 2 cups (250g) all-purpose flour

- 1 tbs sugar

- 3 tsp baking powder

- 1/2 tsp coarsely ground pepper

- 1 egg

- 1 1/4 cup milk

- 2 tbs vegetable oil

- 110g shredded cheddar cheese

Methods:

- Preheat the oven to 375F (190C). Grease the muffin pan or line with paper cases. 

- In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder and pepper.

- In another bowl, whisk the egg, milk and oil. Stir into the dry ingredients just until moistened. Fold in cheese.

- Fill the muffin cups two-thirds full. 

- Bake for about 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

- Cool for 5 minutes before removing from pan to a wire rack. 

- Serve warm. 

I was curious after I read the recipe and found out that this creamed tuna could go well with steamed rice. Of course this way of cooking is not typical at all in Asian cuisines. However, using milk, flour and cream is quite popular in Western food. But when the author recommended to serve this tuna dish with steamed rice, I really wanted to try its taste. 

And I was not dissapointed by this dish. This creamed tuna is so creamy (of course!). It is quite light with the mild sourness of the sour cream. The toasted almond flakes go perfect with the creamed tuna. The parsley adds more flavor to the dish. I have to agree that this one really goes well with rice. 

Ingredients (serves 3-4)

- 2 tbs finely chopped onion

- 3 tbs butter

- 3 tbs plain flour

- 1/4 tsp salt

- 1/8 tsp ground black pepper

- 300ml milk

- 120ml sour cream

- 200g cooked tuna or canned tuna, break into small chunks

- 2tbs sherry or red wine 

- 3tbs chopped parsley

- 2 tbs roasted almond flakes

Cooking:

- In a saucepan over low heat, melt the butter and cook the onion until softened. Add the flour, salt and pepper, stir to smoothen. Gradually pour in the milk, stir constantly until the mixture thickens. 

- Stir in the sour cream. Add tuna, sherry and parsley, cook until heated through, do not boil.  

- Spoon into serving bowl, sprinkle with almond flakes. Serve with hot steamed rice. 

I am still feeling afraid each time I hear of curry. One of the most typical flavors and tastes of these tandoori chicken is curry. But tandoori chicken is so popular that I was very curious to know how the taste would be like. Since I never dare eat any curried-foods in Singapore for their very strong smells and tastes, but I am willing to cook at home so that I can at least control the amount of spicy ingredients I need to put into the food. For this chicken in particular, because of yogurt is used in the marinating sauce, I felt relieved with the thought that yogurt would make the curry milder.

This tandoori chicken needs to be marinated for a long time, even overnight. So I needed to prepare the chicken on the previous day. It is not troublesome at all because it took just a few minutes to prepare all the ingredients before chilling everything in the fridge. The next day we only need to heat the oven and bake the chicken. 

The curry taste was still very obvious in this chicken, but it is much milder. The chicken was very tender and moist. The recipe uses whole chicken legs, but I had only chicken thighs, so again I cooked with chicken thighs only. 

Ingredients: 

- 4 chicken legs

- 125g natural yogurt, stirred until smooth

- 1 garlic clove, minced

- 1/2 tsp salt

- 1 1/2 tsp paprika

- 1/2 tsp curry powder 

- 1/2 tsp cinnamon powder

- 1/8 tsp cayenne powder

- 1/8 tsp cloves

- white sesame seeds, as needed

Cooking:

- Rinse the chicken well and pat dry with kitchen papers. 

- Combine all the other ingredients except for the sesame seeds. Add the chicken to the marinating mixture, soak well to coat the chicken evenly. Cover and place the chicken in the fridge to marinate for at least 2 hours or over night. 

- Preheat the oven to 350F (180C) for fan oven / or 300F (200C) for convention oven. 

- Place the chicken on baking pan and bake for about 45 minutes. About 15 minutes before the chicken is done, sprinkle the sesame seeds over the chicken. 

I made this pumpkin cream by accident. I had a small pumpkin which I intended to make a popular Thai custard with pumpkin. However, I didn’t have enough eggs and I only had a little coconut milk left. Not bothering going to the super market to shop for just a few ingredients, I decided to go ahead with making the custard and I didn’t expect the custard to really set inside the pumpkin because I knew the mixture would be quite thin. 

I still wanted to try. Not only the eggs and the coconut milk were reduced, the coconut milk was also thinner and the sugar was reduced as well. After I steamed the pumpkin, I removed the skin and place everything in the blender to make a very smooth and thick cream. Then after being chilled in the fridge, the creamed pumpkin turned out a very pleasant dessert. It was very creamy in the mouth with gentle sweetness plus distinctive flavor of the palm sugar. Less coconut milk was used also made this creamed pumpkin healthier and more suitable to our liking. 

I was so delighted at this trial and the outcome really pleased me. 

Ingredients: 

- 1 small pumpkin (about 200g)

- 3 eggs

- 135ml coconut milk

- 50g palm sugar, grated

- 1 bunch of pandan leaves (optional), rinsed well

Methods:

- Clean the pumpkin well. Use a knife to cut off around the stem to make a lid. Scoop out the seeds and membrane. Clean both inside and outside thorougly and drain. 

- Add eggs, coconut milk, palm sugar in a large bowl. Crumple the mixture with pandan leaves until sugar is dissolved. (If you don’t use pandan leaves, just whisk the mixture until well combined). Remove the leaves and set the mixture aside. 

- Place the pumpkin in a bowl or deep plate, fill with the egg mixture and cover with the lid. Place the pumpkin in a large steamer with boiling water over medium heat. Cook for about 25-30 minutes or until the pumpkin flesh is very softened. 

- Let the pumpkin cool completely. 

- Remove the skin of the pumpkin and transfer all the pumpkin to a blender. Process until the mixture is very smooth. Refridgerate the pumpkin cream until it is chilled thoroughly. 

I learned this dish from one of my Japanese cookbook. This stewed pork is applicable but it is quite troublesome. I actually didn’t understand the cooking process and the purpose of some required techniques applied in making this dish. 

The result was quite pleasant to the taste but I didn’t see much outstanding taste or flavor after all those cooking procedures. Maybe I didn’t cook well enough to get the best from this dish. 

Pan-roasted beef without using extra oil or fat is really a healthy dish. The thin beef slices, after being marinated, are coated with white sesame seeds and placed over hot heavy skillet. The strong heat will cook the beef very quickly. So, it is crucial that the beef is not over-cooked or it will become very chewy and will not feel good in the mouth. 

As a tip to make the beef more tender, I used very little oil when marinating the beef. When being roasted, the thin oil coating will prevent the beef from getting dry too fast. It is better to use a heavy one so that the heat can be more concentrated while the beef is cooked fast without being burned. 

These beef with sesame seeds can be served with chili sauce and a kind of lettuces as an appertizer. 

Ingredients: (serves 2)

- 200g lean beef, thinly sliced

- 1 tsp grated fresh ginger

 - 1 tsp minced garlic

- 1 tbs fish sauce

- 1/2 tsp vegetable oil

- 1/8 tsp ground black or white pepper

- sesame seeds, as needed

Cooking:

- Combine all the ingredents except the sesame seeds. Marinate for about 15-20 minutes. 

- Place the sesame seeds on a flat dish.

- Heat a heavy non-stick skillet over medium high heat until the skillet is very hot. 

- Place beef slices one by one on the sesame seed plate to coat both sides. Then immediately transfer to the hot skillet and quickly roast both sides until the beef is just cooked and the sesame seeds turn lightly brown. Roasting time is very short about 30-45 seconds. 

- Serve with hot chili sauce and lettuce. 

This soup is one of my favorites. It contains a very tender pork, which is slowly stewed for a long time and a lot of vegetables. These veggies are almost available all time and, as compared with other kinds of veggies, they are much more affordable.

Stewing requires cooking for hours, however, sometimes it is actually not time consuming as it sounds. I mean, while placing a pot for stewing,  we can always do other things and return to the kitchen occasionally to check the food. In the process we don’t have to stay in the kitchen all the time. Prep for this soup is quite fast too. Putting the veggies together is quite flexible as well. We can alter the quantity of each item according to our favor and what we have on hand. 

So, what I normally put into this soup is pork ribs or the meat around the ribs, potato, carrot, celery, snow peas. To finish the soup, I add some cilantro leaves to enhance the flavor of the soup. 

Each veggie has a different time of cooking welldone. So during the cooking progress, each goes to the pot at different moment. Snow peas are added last and of course, the cilantro leaves are sprinkled over the soup when it is ready and removed from the heat. 

My family can have this soup in any season, but we most prefer it in winter.