If you like Vietnamese food and want to explore Vietnamese cuisine to every corner, you should not miss out the varieties of dishes with glutinous rice. You’ll almost find glutinous rice dishes anywhere, anytime. Even on solemn occasions such as Lunar New Year, full-moons, weddings or funerals, etc. They are also popular as breakfasts. As street foods, or as an indispensable dish at many parties in restaurants, they always hold their important role in Vietnamese cuisine and home cooking.
This dish with glutinous rice is simple, but I love its simplicity. It is its simplicity that makes it attractive. The taste of coconut milk blends with the fragrance of sesame seeds. Black and white in a simple presentation comprise a fine taste.
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I like fresh mushrooms, and king oyster mushroom is one of my best favorites. These mushrooms are not so expensive but they are also not considered cheap as compared with other kinds of fresh mushroom (and with my family’s budget). Sometimes the supermarket offers an acceptable price, I often buy these mushrooms and will cook the most delicious dishes with them.
This stir-fried mushroom with sesame in particular is very flavorful and fragrant. The texture of the mushrooms is just great with their distinctive flavor. Furthermore, the sesame oil and sesame seeds make them so aromatic, which reminds me of other Korean foods that often use sesame oil and seeds in cooking. Olive oil is advised, however I think other cooking oil is also fine. My favorite soy sauce is Kikkoman, I always have one bottle of this soy sauce brand in my kitchen. At the supermarket, this soy sauce might be more expensive than the other brands, but one bottle can be used for a long time and in lots of dishes. In return, the foods smell and taste better with this soy sauce. In the long time I think it is quite economic. For the spices, herbs and sauce, I am often willing to pay more for better quality.
Having this mushroom dish made us totally satisfied while thinking about the good health benefits that this mushroom can bring to us.
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If you are interested in Japanese food, it is less likely that you’ve never seen these cute rice balls. Actually, these are not "balls" but they are shaped in triangles. They can be shaped in oval as well. And of course when you make bento – a meal in box, you can shape the steamed rice in any shape that you like in the way you want to "design" your bento. In Japanese, these rice balls are called "onigiri".
These onigiri are very simple to make. In fact, the moulds for making them are now available widely at specialty stores. I have seen these onigiri a lot in Japanese movies and films, howeve, this is the first time I tried making these rice balls. I don’t have the mould, so I had to shape them with hands. It is better and easier to shape the steamed rice when it is still very warm, so making the rice balls with bare hands is a little hard work though it is very interesting to play with the rice.
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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.
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.
