I have no taste for strong Indian curry but I rather like Thai curry for the usage of ingredients and herbs that are familiar to Vietnamese cooking. I have observed this way of making curry before when my Indonesian friends came over to my home and cooked us some traditional Indonesian dishes, one of which was a curry dish. Some herbal and root ingredients are processed into paste – which is the curry paste itself. The way of using coconut milk instead of water to make the slightly thick soup is very authentic and typical to this kind of curry. Coconut milk makes the curry more flavorful though the soup is also fatter, but this is crucial to bring out the genuine taste.
Some prefer the soup to be thick but I’d rather cook it just slightly thick by using thinner coconut milk, which I feel more pleasant to eat. I also use fewer chilies to reduce the spiciness. Besides, I also cook with less oil. It is great to have this curry with hot steamed rice on cold days.
Read the rest of this post >>
This is the first time I cooked and tasted this kind of cocktail. I am still not sure why this dish is called "cocktail", but finding that the dish seems to be refreshing, I thought: it’s quite simple, why not make a try?
There’s no way I got dissappointed at this dish. It was really great to serve as an appertizer. The colors of the whole cocktail cup were eye-catching with the red and green in harmony with the fine color of the "dressing" or "cocktail sauce"? It had a tangy taste that impressed me right at the first bite. It’s better that you use live prawns (now in Vietnam, I can easily buy live prawns right at wet markets) as they are fresher and the texture is firmer.
Read the rest of this post >>
Wonton soup can be served with or without noodles. I often choose to have wonton soup when I have to eat out, as it is one of the few dishes that are at least more healthy and less oily than the others. I don’t know whether it is the fact in China but most Chinese foods in Singapore are oily, especially the stir-fried dishes. My body would react with those foods so it is safe to eat wonton soup when I happen not to be at home to cook the meal.
As I make this shrimp wonton with fresh shrimps, I often make use of the shells and heads removed from the shrimps. These shells and heads are good to make the broth, which I would add to the soup and make it more flavorful. That’s why the soup I cook appears lightly orangish.
Read the rest of this post >>
I do not often cook with salted eggs, but some I’ve cooked so far all impressed me. This is to introduce a Vietnamese food made with salted eggs. Salted eggs can be found easily at Asian supermarkets, however I wonder whether they are easy to get from other Western countries.
Salted eggs are not my frequently used ingredients, so I have little information about them. Just know how to cook them in certain dishes. This dish has a mild flavor, not very salty as I didn’t use extra salt to season. The only saltiness was of the salted eggs. I could enjoy the dish just like this, but of course you can season more salt to your taste. Or you can prepare a small dish containing a little salt mixed with a few drops of lime juice to serve with the prawns.
The dish is best to serve while hot.
Read the rest of this post >>
Marinara is quite a classic and very popular pasta. However, so far I hadn’t made it since this pasta requires several kinds of seafood. Cooking for two people only, sometimes it is troublesome if I cook something too complicated with many ingredients. Buying a lot of ingredients in small quantity does not really worth the effort. So when intending to make this pasta for the first time, I needed to plan a head what other dishes I would cook with the left-over ingredients.
Anyway, this pasta really worths the time and effort. I like seafoods of all kinds. My fiance is always eager for having seafood in his meals. In this pasta, we can enjoy the various kinds of seafood with different textures and tastes. Though some ingredients were not as fresh as I wished for, wine and herbs made the final sauce really fragrant and tasty.
Read the rest of this post >>
Bitter gourd is my favorite choice for summer soup. Though the name indicates bitterness, when you are familiar with the taste and like that bitterness, you don’t feel it bitter at all because what you feel is a sweet bitterness.
The soup made with bitter gourd is often very mild and fresh. Small ones are our preference. I do not often cook with the large bitter gourd. The prawns in these soup not only add flavor to the soup but also the firm crisp texture as well. I do not use any fat in this soup, so the broth is very clear and gentle. During hot summer days eating too greasy food is not so pleasant to the mouths. Actually, I can have this soup several times a week without getting bored.
Read the rest of this post >>
In Vietnamese, this egg roll is called five-colored egg because there are actually five ingredients coming together in this roll. The egg therefore is not boring as the normal simple pan-fried egg or omelet. It not only has more texture: the crunchiness and juiciness of the pepper in three colors, the firmness of the prawns and the tenderness of the egg but also has a good presentation witg bright colors.
I myself do not often cook the dishes with egg. Since I started my baking hobby, I have consumed a large quantity of eggs each week. So I often avoid using eggs in other food. However, after quite a long time not making any dish with eggs, I really miss the taste of the simple pan-fried egg. So I made this egg roll to enjoy the fresh veggies added to it as well.
Read the rest of this post >>
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.
