the KTCHN corner.

Here's the place where all my cooking dilemmas and taste journey to develop where life forces the girl inside me to do something to feed my rumbling tummy at a student's budget price! But taste of course, absolutely matters, a French would comment.

About two months back when I don't feel like going out to eat I was wanting clear chewy noodles, and so I've got a big whole pack, which could last forever just for me! It is a lot.

Soup was standard where I mixed it in, and this time is something without recipe!

Ingredients A:

Clear Chinese/Korean noodles

Carrots (I always try to add this vegetable to nourish my eyes!)

Crab sticks

Ingredients B:

Tofu (I love the shrimp flavored tofu)
Ready-to-eat Fishcakes (or any kind)

Chopped garlic

Spices: Fish sauce, tom yum paste, pepper, salt, butter (in a change of oil)

OK, make sure you've got a rice cooker which saves your life and uses minimal electricity (better than gas) for steaming ingredients A till cooked. How do you know it's cooked? Of course when the noodles has gone transparent and you felt like eh, it dissolved into water?!




See the noodles are invisible in the rice pot... and the being cooked ingredients B.

On the cooking stove, for ingredients B since I only had Teflon pans which is OK, anything goes, melt the butter as oil, add in the garlic which adds the wonderful aroma and the whole house would think you're born to be chef till it's bit burnt brown, then slide in the tofu, pre-cut. Add the spices as desired, the whole ratio of tom yum paste now.

So you'll get a brown fried coated tofu in the end, make sure both sides are cooked, then turn off, waiting for the noodles to be cooked along together.




Dry A out of water, then finally mix together with tofu in the pan! Add spices to your like again. If it looks cooked then it should be done - turn off the stove!


And here's a measly look-like meal however the taste was surprisingly more than adequate! :)

Adding chilli powder before I removed it, immediately after I slurrrped it up and it was good, and thus there isn't any final food impression image. =P

 • • • •

Recent health conscious leads me to get fresh vegetables and lots of free time this week (no class drrrt drrrt) and cook like my mom, always a portion of greenery just plainly cooked.

Easy, simple, a change from fried brown things!

Spices and prepare: chopped garlic, fish sauce, chicken stock/concentrate, butter
Vegetable: anything green and doesn't have natural taste (e.g. spinach has another way of cooking and it has its own taste beforehand) like chaysim, watercress...


How to do:
Melt a bit of butter and garlic as usual till it has the aroma.
Add  the rinsed out vegetables, then spray over the spices as needed. Chicken stock needs only a bit.
Wait till the vegetables' leaves crinkle, meaning cooked!

You could see the fishballs and garlic on one side and freshly cleaned and added into the pan on the other side, the vegetables.
Pour accordingly
Prepare rice in bowl, so when the vegetables are cooked add on top of the rice with the bit sauce left (fish sauce, chicken stock) so the rice would also have taste.

Done! Healthy simple meal! Ones in the mixed vegetable rice stalls (esp. Singaporeans) are full of oil.