As most of you would know by now, we are Japanese food junkies and The Food Critic especially LOVE the Japanese Sukiyaki soup SO we started cooking our own Sukiyaki soup using chicken breast meat at home instead of spending more $$ on Japanese restaurants.

It is pretty simple to make sukiyaki, actually so, here it is:

Japanese Sukiyaki Soup Recipe

Ingredients

2 large carrots, cut into chunks

3 medium sized tomatoes, quartered

300g chicken breast meat, sliced thinly (and about 1/4 of chicken carcass), all seasoned with salt

10 fresh shiitake mushrooms, sliced thinly

1 stalk of medium sized Chinese white cabbage

I think this is called Chinese white cabbage

Cut it this way

Half clove of garlic, peeled and crushed

2 Japanese tofu, sliced

An assortment of fish balls (the quantity depends on how much you want to eat)

8 tbsp sukiyaki sauce (you could always get the Kikkoman Sukiyaki Sauce or if you are in Penang, I’d recommend you go to this shop and they’d recommend you some really great sukiyaki sauce)

Instructions

1. Boil a big pot of water.

2. Dump in the chicken carcass

3. Then in goes the carrots and tomatoes

4. Let it simmer for a while before adding the cabbage

5. Time to pour in the sauce

6. Then add in the mushrooms

7. Finally, add in the tofu and fish balls

8. Let the soup come to a boil and taste to see if there’s enough flavour to it. If not, add more sauce.

It is ready to be served hot with rice or it can be eaten as it is.

The original recipe also calls for bamboo shoots but we don’t like bamboo shoots so we gave it a miss. Still the soup was out-of-this-world!

Keep a lookout for more chicken recipes and chicken breast recipes here.

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Recently, I bought a packet of soya noodles. So, I decided to give it a try in a basic and easy stir-fried noodles style.

This is the soya noodles I bought

It’s soya mixed with wheat. And this is what it looks like:

Here’s the recipe for:

Fried Vegetarian Soya Noodles

Fried vegetarian soya noodles

Ingredients

Mushrooms, carrots and green leafy vegetables

5 fresh shiitake mushrooms, sliced

5 fresh brown mushrooms, sliced

1 large carrot, sliced

1 cup any type of green leafy vegetables (siew pak choy, choy sam, kale), washed and roughly chopped

2 pcs of the noodles (as you can see in the picture, the noodles are shaped in one piece by piece and there are two in the picture)

water

salt

2 tbsp diced garlic

3 tbsp mushroom sauce

2 tbsp light soya sauce

2 tbsp dark soya sauce

Instructions

1. Boil a pan of water, add a dash of salt, then put in the noodles.

2. Let the noodles boil for a few minutes until softened and then remove and place on a plate.

3. Heat up the wok with some cooking oil (about 2 tbsp), then sautee the garlic till fragrant.

4. Add in the mushrooms and carrots, then stir fry for a few minutes over medium heat

5. Add in the green leafy vegetables and stir fry for a minute or so

6. Add in the noodles and continue stir frying over medium heat

7. Finally, add in the sauces and some water (about half cup to one cup)

The reason you need to add water is because this type of noodles dry up pretty fast and it absorbs water pretty fast. So, adding water will not make it soggy but moisten it so that it won’t be too dry.

8. Continue stir frying it for several more minutes and then remove from heat and serve immediately.

Here it is, fried vegetarian soya noodles

As for you meat lovers out there, don’t worry.

You can also add some meat to this dish:

Just add some homemade char siew or roast pork to it

You can find the roast pork recipe here. I hope you try out this fried vegetarian soya noodles (or any other noodles you have on hand) recipe and tell me how it turned out. Feel free to tweak it to your liking as stir fried noodles are pretty free form and you can add anything you want.

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Ping Pei Mooncake

So, here’s my Ping Pei mooncake recipe:

Ingredients

450g cooked glutinous rice flour

300 ml cold water

350g icing sugar

4 tbsp shortening

2 tbsp pandan essence

2 tbsp strawberry essence

2 tbsp chocolate essence

1kg – 2kg lotus-paste filling or cheese filling or filling of your choice. (You can get prepared, ready-made fillings here)

Instructions

1. Combine icing sugar, shortening and water.

2. Add in the flour and blend till it became a smooth dough.Then set aside for about 15 minutes.

3. Divide the dough into three equal portions in separate bowls.

4. Add strawberry essence to one portion, pandan to the second and chocolate to the third.

Divide into three equal portions and add the flavouring

5. Dust your work surface with ample of the glutionous rice flour and dust your hands with the flour too.

6. Divide the dough into small balls, about the size of a ping pong ball or smaller, depending on the size of your mould.

7. Divide the filling into equal portions too.

8. Flatten the ball of dough and wrap it with the filling.Form a ball.

9. Lightly dust the mould with the flour and place the dough ball with the fillings into the mould and push.

10. Lightly knock the moulded mooncake out and place it in an airtight container. Refrigerate it for several hours and it is ready to be served cold!

This recipe makes about 15 medium sized mooncakes if you use less dough and more filling (you have to use 2kg of filling).  You can also add salted egg yolks and melon seeds if you want.

Place in an airtight container and refrigerate it

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Soya Sauce Chicken

I like to cook this dish too because it is quite simple and easy to prepare. It is also quite versatile where you can add different ingredients at different times. So, here’s the recipe:

Soya Sauce Chicken Recipe

Ingredients

One whole chicken, chopped into quarters

3 pods garlic, smashed with skin intact

3 – 5 slices ginger

1/2 stick cinnamon

Five-spice powder (optional)

Dark soya sauce

Light soya sauce

Sugar

Pepper

Oyster sauce

3 – 5 dried Chinese mushrooms, soaked and sliced (alternatively, can use fresh shiitake mushrooms)

Sesame oil

Soya Sauce Chicken

Instructions

1. Season the chicken with the five-spice powder, 1/2 tsp sesame oil, a dash of pepper, 3 tbsp soya sauce and 1 tbsp dark soya sauce. Best to keep in a container and refrigerate it for at least one hour, preferably several hours.

2. In a wok, heat up some cooking oil and saute the garlic till fragrant. Add the mushrooms and ginger and 1 tbsp sugar. Stir till the sugar has melted and add 4 tbsp light soya sauce and 2 tbsp dark soya sauce.

3. Add 1 tbsp oyster sauce. Add the chicken and coat it with the sauce mixture. Then add in 1 cup water. Let it simmer for about 5 minutes before adding the cinnamon.

4. Let the mixture simmer for another 15 to 20 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through. It is best served with steamed fluffy white rice.

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I could probably say that this is the only soup using a fruit that I can cook all the time and both the men in my household love it! Yes, winter melon is essentially a fruit although we, Chinese, tend to think of it as a type of vegetable.

That’s not all, winter melon which is also known as wax gourd, contains great nutritional values too. It contains:

• Dietary fibre
• Vitamin K
• Thiamin
• Iron
• Magnesium
• Zinc
• Manganese
• Vitamin C

And it is low in saturated fat, cholesterol and is low calorie (at 24.5cal for 175g).

This soup is usually cooked with pork ribs but I used chicken instead.

Winter Melon Soup Recipe

Ingredients

1 slice of a large winter melon, skinned and cubed (about 200g)

1 pc dried cuttlefish

4 dried red dates

1/4 chicken

Water

Salt to taste

3 pods of garlic

Instructions

1. Season the chicken with salt for about an hour. Optional: remove the chicken skin before seasoning. Then scald it in hot boiling water for a few seconds to remove the scum (just dip it in and take it out).

2. Heat up a pot of water.

3. Dump all the ingredients into the pot including the chicken.

4. Let it simmer for 30 minutes to 45 minutes over low fire. Add salt according to taste.

Alternatively, you can use a slow cooker to cook this overnight. Enjoy.

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