Malaysian Food Recipes

Healthy Rice Porridge

2011-02-19T13:02:00.001+08:00

Healthy Rice Porridge recipe I’m going to share consist of these food ingredients:-

Rice grain (4 cups – washed twice with tap water)
Stewed peanuts in can (170g x 2 cans) (I love stewed peanuts!)
Spinach (200g – finely chopped)
Chicken breast (1 nos – skinned and sliced to desired size)

These ingredients are enough to serve at least 4 pax.

Healthy Rice Porridge fulfils the requirement of a balanced diet. I might be a bit biased when proportioning though…I don’t really like the taste of vegetables so I lowered the spinach portion. Cooking vegetables in porridge is merely to force myself into consuming more vegetables. This trick also works on my little brother who doesn’t like vegetables any better than I do.

Ingredients for my Healthy Rice Porridge recipe

All the Healthy Rice Porridge ingredients go into rice cooker. Add water up to at least 2 times the level of the ingredients in the rice cooker. Seasoning:-

A swish of light soy sauce
1 tsp of oyster sauce
1 tsp of chicken powder (optional, since I’m already using chicken)
1 tsp of salt
Pepper powder to taste (you can add this when porridge is ready to serve)

Let all the ingredients in the rice cooker boil until the rice grain is fluffy (expanded and soft). Add more water if the water evaporated/ absorbed by the rice grain fast. Rice cooker takes about 40 minutes but please check the water level occasionally. If you’re using slow cooker, you can cook the porridge during dinner and have it as a healthy breakfast the next morning! If you’re cooking the porridge in a pot over gas stove, monitor the fluffiness of the rice grain and don’t forget the water level too.

Cooking over gas requires more attention. If water level decreased without you noticing, you might get burnt porridge. Whether you’re using rice cooker or gas cooker, you must stir the porridge occasionally.

Rice porridge about to be ready. The rice grain is already fluffy.

This is just a simple rice recipe. You can adjust the ingredients to your liking. Rice porridge also tastes as good with just stewed peanuts in can or just chicken, as long as you can tweak the seasoning to taste the way you like, you can create your own rice porridge recipe.

When Healthy Rice Porridge is done, stir it. You’ll get a thicker rice porridge (my favourite!) as in the above picture. Add hot water if you prefer it more watery. The rice grain will continue to absorb water. If you do not intend to finish the rice porridge soon, you will need to add hot water before serving.

Hope you like this Healthy Rice Porridge recipe. Happy cooking :)

Flickr Tags: recipes,recipes for rice,healthy recipes,rice porridge recipe,simple rice recipe

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Minced Meat Egg Omelette

2010-12-10T13:40:00.001+08:00

Minced Meat Egg Omelette recipe’s main ingredients are minced pork, sliced onions and eggs. Ingredients are simple to find and the recipe is easy. Looking at the pictures is like reading manga/ comic (lol!).

^Ingredients: 200gm of pork (minced/ finely chopped)
1 no of onion (sliced)
2 nos of egg

Step by Step on How to Cook the Egg Omelette

Mix the ingredients then season with salt and pepper

Heat some oil in wok

Pour in the ingredients

Spread the ingredients to even the thickness of omelette and make sure all parts are well cooked at the same time

Flip the omelette to cook the other side
Tips: Easier to flip part by part :)

Minced Meat Egg Omelette ready to serve
(Well, its not really round but tastes as great!)

Mum cooks Minced Meat Egg Omelette very often as breakfast. This dish is especially nice when served with Teow Chew porridge (white porridge) together with other dishes such as fried peanuts, fried salted fish, Sichuan beancurd (fu yu) and a simple stir fried vegetables.

Simple Teow Chew Porridge dishes make great breakfast :)

Flickr Tags: egg recipes,home cooked recipes,chinese food,malaysian food recipes,easy recipes

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Long Beans Sticks

2010-11-28T18:10:00.001+08:00

Just to introduce a little about long beans – long beans are good source of protein, iron, magnesium, vitamin A and vitamin C. Tender ones can be eaten fresh but please ensure you clean them up thoroughly. Those who doesn’t like the raw taste of vegetables can eat cooked ones. Beginners should really try out this Long Beans Sticks recipe :)

Have been consuming too little vegetables recently...those deliciously flavourful fast food can be real tempting sometimes! Burgers with fries and coke sounds great to me. So must charge up with vegetables for a more balanced diet.

This is real peanuts (and idiot proof) so anyone who can cook Maggie (instant noodles) can cook this (or I should say those who can boil water can cook this) – Long Beans Sticks is a dish just so simple to cook. You can also use the same method on French beans if you so prefer.

First, clean the long beans. Remove about half cm off the top and bottom, pulling the sides off. Cut to about 10cm long stick. Boil some water in a pan with a little bit of salt. Stir in the long beans sticks. Let the long beans sticks cook till tender. Drain off the water and sprinkle with some salt and pepper. Long Beans Sticks ready to serve! They make great and healthy snacks :)

Flickr Tags: vegetables,long beans,long beans recipe,food,easy food recipes

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CNY Cookies - Fried Ngaku Recipe

2010-02-01T07:56:00.003+08:00

Chinese New Year is just around the corner and we’re all busy with the preparations! Spring cleaning? Later lar…now busy making Chinese New Year cookies – fried ngaku being the easiest to make CNY cookies! Ngaku is known as arrow head in English and I just got to know this when I saw the label on the ngaku I bought from supermarket. The price is decreasing as CNY comes nearer I wished I hadn’t bought so early :(

Forget about the shopping part. Let’s look at Chinese New Year Cookies Recipe. This CNY cookies recipe is a piece of cake. BUT easy as it seems, there are tricks in getting nice and crispy ones.

First tip: cutting ngaku into slices. Some people love thin slices and some prefer thicker slices. Well, I prefer thicker slices. Either way, you can use a peeler to cut the ngaku instead of using knife. Use a long peeler that can slice through a ngaku horizontally (else pick smaller ngaku). Hold the ngaku on its head, upside down (as if you would hold an ice-cream cone) so you can easily peel from the top (the buttock of the ngaku is now on top lar).

Second tip: make sure the wok is hot and the oil is hot before you deep fry the sliced ngaku. Otherwise ngaku will absorb too much oil and will not be crispy. This is common rule in deep frying.

Third tip: keep stirring to prevent the ngaku slices from sticking to each other causing uncooked of soft parts (not crispy). After a while, when ngaku starts to cook, they will curl a little and no longer sticks to each other so you can leave them till cooked. But must watch the fire lar…to prevent burnt.

Fourth tip: when ngaku turns a little yellowish, start scooping them up! They’re more cooked than they seemed. This is actually because they will continue to cook in themselves until they cool down.

Fifth tip: scoop up and drain off the oil. Then place on NEWSPAPER. I know some may think this is not hygienic but…it really works better than kitchen towel. Kitchen towel somehow made several batches of my ngaku too soft…not sure why. Remember not to stack the fried ngaku slices. Let the fried ngaku cool down.

Then, put the fried ngaku in container and sprinkle some salt (optional – some people prefer original taste without salt…me? nope, I LOVE salty food!).

Last tip: seal the container tightly with 2 layers or cellophane tape! Lol! I know it sounds funny but this tip is passed on by a Fried Ngaku expert so you better follow the tip closely :) Sealing the container this way shall ensure the container is really air-tight and keep your fried ngaku crispy until Chinese New Year!

Happy cooking and Happy Chinese New Year~~

P/S: How I wished I had better Ngaku photos for this post.

P/S 2: Ngaku, if planted in water in a nicely decorated pot grows into a nice indoor leaf plant. You’ll love them!

Update: Made more NGAKU CRISPS this year (2011)!! And very successful *grin. Frankly I forgot about the tips myself (making Ngaku crisps is a yearly occasion, not unusual to forget the tips when next year came! lol!) but luckily I blog this step-by-step guide in making successful Fried Ngaku. This year, I learned another new CNY cookies recipe I’m about to share…er…probably later when I those photos pop up somehow (not sure where I saved them). The new CNY cookies recipe is another easy recipe of the common CNY peanut cookies. Btw, I’ve got new and clearer photos of fried Ngaku this time…er…or did I? Geez…getting more forgetful…and where is my camera…

Flickr Tags: ngaku,ngaku crisps,cny food recipes,cookies recipes,easy cookies recipes,fried ngaku,arrowhead

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Clear Corn Soup

2010-01-20T20:56:00.007+08:00

Chinese soup recipes are some of the easiest soup recipes. Some can be complicated due to the ingredients used, source of ingredients for the soup, and the perfect timing to cook them. But this Clear Corn Soup recipe I’m doing is real simple. Using simple ingredients but cooked the Chinese way (I guess this is my own Chinese cooking style!).

Now let’s look at my Clear Corn Soup recipe:-

Clear Corn Soup ingredients:
1 no. of corn (cut to smaller pieces/ halved)
1 no. of onion (wedged)
1 no. of chicken whole leg (cut to desired size)
1 no. of large tomatoes (wedged)
2 litres of water

Clear Corn Soup seasonings:
1/2 tsp of chicken powder (knorr or maggie lar…this is optional, up to you)
Salt and pepper to taste

My soup recipes are always easy – toss everything into a pot of water. Bring to boil then simmer under low fire for 30 minutes. Is this not another simple food recipe? And well balanced too – with vegetables and meat. Serve Clear Corn Soup with rice and done with your dinner! That’s why I agree that soup should be considered main course instead! lol!

In fact most Chinese soups are easy. The only hard task is to identify the ingredients and find them. Most Chinese food ingredients are easy to find locally in Malaysia, I’m not sure about other countries. Here, you can easily get them from supermarkets and hypermarkets where there are labels for you to identify and make sure you get the right one too ;)

More Local Soup Recipes

Flickr Tags: corn soup,soup recipes,chinese food,chinese soup recipes,food,easy soup recipes

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Steamed Chicken Drumstick

2010-01-20T03:00:00.003+08:00

Are chicken dishes very complicated? Well, chicken dishes can be very simple as well. To begin with, let’s try out with Steamed Chicken Drumstick (instead of whole chicken). All that is required for this simple chicken dish is a chicken drumstick cut into desired size (or just leave it the way it is!); and half a teaspoon of salt to marinate. Unbelievably simple? Lol!...

This particular Steamed Chicken Drumstick was one of the very first simple recipe that a colleague shared to me when I was grumbling about not knowing what to cook for dinner. Cooking a one-pax meal was not easy for me back then. This recipe sounds so simple that I doubted the result but I was surprised how good the Steamed Chicken Drumstick (that “I” cook *proudly grinning*) tasted! I cook with the same method a couple of times after that until I got bored with the taste of chicken…

Here is the simple recipe for Steamed Chicken Drumstick:-

First, clean the chicken with tap water. Then “massage” the chicken with salt and optionally oyster sauce. Add a tablespoon of water in the process. Leave it for few minutes. Then steam the chicken drumstick in a steamer until cooked (about 8-15 minutes in boiling steam, depending on the size/ thickness of the chicken). Remember to use a metal or porcelain plate/ bowl to contain the chicken. Plastic is not so advisable.

Steamed dishes are convenient in a way that they can also be steamed in rice cooker at the same time when you are cooking the rice. And of course you can also cook Steamed Chicken Wing, Steamed Chicken Whole Leg or even Steamed Whole Chicken! Yes, using this same, simple food recipe!

There you go, another simple food recipe! Want more chicken dishes recipe? Click here.

Note: Oyster sauce is one of the must-haves in Chinese cooking. You’ll see the use of oyster sauce a lot in my recipes.

BuzzNet Tags: chicken dishes,chicken drumstick,steamed chicken,chinese recipe,chinese cooking,chicken wing,chicken recipe

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French Beans Egg Omelette

2010-01-20T01:16:00.013+08:00

French Beans Egg Omelette is a very simple food recipe but tricky in some ways (yeah…can sometimes get uncooked or burnt). Ingredients for French Bean Egg Omelette include diced French beans and beaten eggs seasoned with salt and pepper. Simple ingredients and easy to cook. Is this dish really a Chinese dish? (since it is using “French” beans! haha!) But sometimes I cook with long beans instead.

(such a pitiful photo…lol! sorry, my hands are all oily and this is the best I managed to snap)

Firstly, heat a bit of oil in a pan and stir-fry the French beans. Then add the seasoned beaten eggs, stir it slightly. Turn to low fire. When eggs set to an egg omelette, flip to cook the other side. Beware not to let burn. French Beans Egg Omelette is done! Another simple food recipe...

Although you should get a round shape for egg omelette, it doesn't really matter if you're eating at home. If you're very new to cooking, you may have difficulty flipping over the eggs without breaking the shape. So you can try to cut it to half or quarter using spatula (in the pan, no need to take out and cut in a chopping board lar...). Then flip over the eggs piece by piece.

Want something simpler still? Just make plain egg omelette without French beans then! Enjoy your egg omelette...

More Egg Dishes Recipes

BuzzNet Tags: french beans egg omelette,french beans,egg omelette,egg recipes,chinese cooking,chinese recipe

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Cutting Ingredients

2010-01-18T00:42:00.003+08:00

Clothes comes in different cutting, so does food! Some pants come in carrot cutting...(lol! off topic!). Well, when preparing food for cooking, you will come across terms like julienne, shred, dice...find out what they mean:-

Term	Description
slice	cut to thin pieces from 1mm to 1cm. food recipes will mention whether to slice thinly or thickly. in some cases you will know, eg. tomatoes are normally thick slices about 5mm to 1cm thick, while ginger is normally thin slices about 1 to 3mm.
julienne	cut to matchstick-like pieces
chop	cut food into tiny pieces. depending on the recipes, you may need to prepare “finely chopped” or “coarsely chopped” ingredients
shred	tear the food to smaller pieces normally using hand. sometimes also using knife for eg. when shredding cabbage
cube	cut food into square-like pieces about an inch. not necessarily really “square” la. say like carrot, the diameter is about an inch, so just cut to pieces of about an inch width, length and height. no need to trim the sides to make it square.
dice	cut food into tiny square-like pieces about 1cm (same rules apply as per “cube”)
crush	flatten food with stone and pestle (batu lesung) or just use a big knife to mash it
mince/ mash	similar to chop but normally processed with food processor (blender) or stone and pestle into very fine texture
wedge	halve the food (usually those globular in shape) by cutting from top to bottom, then cut the halved portion into another half also cut from top to bottom and so on to get smaller wedges.

Are these hard to understand? Well, hope the photos help a bit. I don’t have much photos but will share more when I managed to get some good shots while cooking (its not easy to cook and take photos at the same time you know, how many times I need to washed my hands when I do that…? uncountable! lol!)

Measure Ingredients

2010-01-17T00:36:00.003+08:00

Ok, time to learn about the ingredients measuring terms often used in recipes. Some are rather common and you should already know such as 1cm=10mm, 1kg=1000g, 1L=1000ml...so I will not elaborate much about that. If you look at the following table and know how to prepare the correct quantity of ingredients, you're pass and safe to buy a recipe book, else...don't waste money on expensive books for now. Here's the table:-

Term/ Abbreviation	Description
tsp	teaspoon, smaller than tablespoon
tbsp	tablespoon, bigger than teaspoon
to taste	as enough/ a sprinkle/ a dash
L	litre (can use mineral water bottle to measure)
ml	millilitre (can use mineral water bottle to measure)
g/ gm	gram (use kitchen scale to measure or refer to packaging)
kg/ kgm	kilogram (use kitchen scale to measure)
cup	(use the cup that comes with rice cooker)

Read Also:-
Cutting Ingredients – slice, shred, cube etc. what do they mean?
Cooking Methods – blanch, saute, stir-fry, deep fry etc. what are these?

Technorati Tags: ingredients measurement,measure ingredients,understand food recipe,learn food recipe

About Malaysian-Food-Recipes

2010-01-16T22:36:00.005+08:00

Objective of Malaysian Food Recipes blog? Em…just some ideas for those who are new to cooking and wanted to explore into cooking (just like me!). I managed to get those dishes (that I share in this blog) up through trial and errors (argh…) so I’m sure any amateur cooks will be able to do the same or better than me ;-). Only simple daily cooking jeh…

While reading recipe books and messing up the kitchen while Mum is cooking, I get to learn lots of things such as the shortcuts to preparing some dishes. That’s why most of the dishes I share here are simple and easy! I remove the ingredients that I can’t find easily and replace with some other ingredients. When you get adventurous, you invent new recipes! lol! Don’t worry, they’re edible and some are unexpectedly good.

Other things learned include understanding recipes. Initially I don’t even know the name of ingredients in recipe books and the abbreviation used in quantity of the ingredients. Some recipe books are detailed enough so I eventually got used to all of them. I find that most recipe books are created for those who already know how to cook and only few caters to us – those who wanted to start cooking from zero.

Cooking is fun! And I want everyone else to be able to become cooking “hero” from zero too! So, here are all the tips you’ll ever need. Oklar, those who are already expert may not need my simple cooking tips but they can share their expert tips with me by dropping me some comments. I’m sure readers would like them too! Hope I get more time to blog every now and then…you know, sometimes busy with cooking ma…haha!

Oh, forgot to introduce myself! Ehem! I’m a lazy cook, always wanted to get things done in the least time possible with the least effort and easiest to find ingredients (one of the many reasons why my simple food recipes are VERY SIMPLE food recipes). I always cook portion that is not filling so that people want more (if they taste good!) and will look forward my next cooking (haha! one of the great tips that had always worked!). And if it doesn’t turn out good, oklar, not too much of wastage. Those who eat will be grateful too.

Get started with some basic understanding of food recipes:

Measure Ingredients – 1tsp, 1/2tbsp, 2 cups etc. how to measure quantity?
Cutting Ingredients – slice, cube, julienne etc. what are these?
Cooking Methods – blanch, saute, stir-fry, deep fry etc. what are these?

LiveJournal Tags: daily cooking,food recipes,chinese cooking,chinese recipes,food recipes for dummies,food recipes for amateur,malaysian daily dishes,chinese daily dishes