It takes time to prepare the squid, but takes only a few minutes to cook. We like eating squids but only when squids look fresh, I will buy some and they often take me longer time to wash them thoroughly, inside and outside, removing all the membrance and dirties, until the squid’s body is very white and clean.
Stir-frying is a fast way of cooking squid and you’ll get a flavorful dish. Try this dish with pineapple, green ones preferred, and you will se how pineapples can go well with seafoods and reduce the fishiness smell of them.
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The more I eat bell peppers, the more I like their flavor and juiciness. Previously I didn’t know how to cook bell peppers properly. Since I started discovering various pasta dishes, where many delicious recipes call for bell peppers, I’ve been used to cooking bell peppers not only in pasta but in other dishes too.
These peppers are very rich in Vitamins, and their juiciness and crispiness always remind me of freshness and healthiness. When used in some stewed sauces for pasta, the taste and flavor created by bell peppers are great and deep. These colorful peppers are used quite popularly in Vietnamese cooking but mostly, as far as I know, in stir-fried dishes.
And this is one of the quick and easy-to-eat stir-fried dishes made with bell peppers.
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It’s quick and simple to cook this dish. Stir-fried foods are popular in Vietnamese cuisine in particular and Oriental cuisines in general. In Vietnam, it is still a strong tradition that family members eat together at meal times, including breakfast, lunch and dinner. Everyday the mother or daughter prepare the meal and every family members return home after work or school to have fun time around the dining table.
A normal and typical meal often contains three dishes (we don’t have such definition of a meal with several courses as we eat all the dishes at the same time and everyone serves himself). So, with two main meals a day, I can say that stir-fried dish appear almost everyday on dining table in a family.
Therefore, a simple yet delicious, and more importantly, time-saving stir-fried food is always welcomed by most housewives (as they are working and busy too). This is one of the stir-fried dishes many Vietnamese housewives know and like to cook for their families.
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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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This is one of the very popular dishes that frequently appeared on dining tables of Vietnamese people. Some mothers prefer frying the potatoes before stir-frying them with beef, some just go straight with the raw potatoes.
In my family, my mom went for the second method. By cooking this way, the potatoes should be braised so that there is enough steam for the potatoes to be cooked through. By frying the potatoes first, there is no need to braised the potatoes. Two cooking methods offer different texture and flavor to the dish.
This time I cooked in the fist method by firstly frying the potatoes. The fried potatoes will change from hard and cripy outside to chewy texture after being stir-fried. The starch in the potatoes also has no way to get out of the chunks themselves. In contrast, cooking this dish without frying the potatoes first makes the dish more creamy and less oily.
So, you may choose either way to cook this dish. For me, I like both.
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To many Vietnamese people, pig heart is believed to be good for our heath due to its nutritional value. Pig heats are always very expensive at the butcher’s. Only better-off families can afford buying and eating pig hearts frequently.
When I was small, only when her children got sick, my mom would ask if we had any appetite for pig heart and she would buy one and cooked into porridge or stewed dishes so that after eating, we could regain our strength.
In Singapore, pig hearts are not so expensive as such. And sometimes I buy pig hearts to cook into delicious food. For two people, I only use half a pig heart each meal.
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This way of cooking asparagus turned out quite strange to my taste. I was not surprised by the dish for its amazingly deliciousness, still I enjoyed it to the last pieces. I liked the freshiness of the vegetables even after cooking, since both the asparagus and the bean sprouts were cooked until just tender. In my mouth, I could feel clearly the crunchiness of the vegetables. The roasted almonds were slightly fragrant and offered a little buttery taste and also added texture to the dish.
The dish should be served while hot or warm or it would lose the best taste when cooled.
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Normally I go shopping for fresh food ingredients once a week at weekend. So when it comes near to the weekend, I often run out of main ingredients in large quantity. What still left over after I have cooked other dishes during the week are often few in quantity. So I play around thinking how I can make use of those left-over ingredients so that I can buy all fresh food in my next shopping. I don’t feel comfortabe with leaving fresh food in the fridge week over week.
So this time I cooked this stir-fried dish with vegetables. When I was still living with my mom, she often added lean pork to this dish, which brought in the sweetness from the meat to the dish. However, the dish I cooked here was totally vegetarian.
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