Simple Keow Teow Soup

Simple Keow Teow Soup

I often cook a quick Keow Teow noodles soup at home if I have leftover noodles. So, few days ago, I cooked this dish with kids. It is a very simple dish. I made only 2 portions because I only had 1/2 pack of noodles left.

I boiled about 430g chicken breast in 1.5 L water, 2 tsp salt, a bit of pepper and 4 instant cuttlefish nuggets. Boiled the noodles in a separate pot until just soft. Kids helped to chop 2 cloves of garlic and spring onions. Sarah fried the garlic to make garlic oil. Peeled or sliced the cooked chicken breast...tatata...our breakfast is ready. Have a nice day everyone and keep safe!

Black Pepper Pork Ribs

1 kg (2 lb 4 oz) pork ribs, cut into pieces

6 cloves garlic

1 teaspoon whole black pepper

4 tablespoons sugar or palm sugar

1 teaspoon salt

3 tablespoons fish sauce

Place the garlic and black pepper in a mortar, and use a pestle to grind to paste. Add sugar, salt and fish sauce into the mortar and mix well. 

Marinate pork rips with the garlic and black pepper mixed sauce for 2 hours or overnight in the refrigerator. 

Preheat the grill on 220⁰C. Grill the ribs 20 minutes or until cooked through or cook in the air fryer. 

Hokkien Char (Fried yellow noodles)

Hokkien Char- This is our simple way of cooking Hokkien noodles (yellow noodles) without lard. It is simple and delicious! hope you like it too!

Ingredients:
2 tbsps vegetables oil
2 cloves garlic
5-6 prawns - preferred skin-on
500 g yellow noodles
150 g choi sim or more

Soy mixture (mix in a bowl):
2-3 tbsps dark soy sauce
2-3 tbsps oyster sauce
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp raw sugar or to taste
A bit of black ground pepper
1/4 tsp salt (optinal)
2 cups water

Heat the oil in a wok or big fry-pan and stir fry the garlic until lightly brown. Add prawn cook for 1 minute, or until coloured. Add noodle and stir fry for 1 minute. Pour the soy mixture and let it boil for 5 minutes.

Add choi sim into the noodle, stirring couple of times. Cover the wok with lid on and let it boil for another 5 minutes or thicken. Serve hot.

Homemade pickled chillies

Well, before the chilli plants stop producing during winter, why not harvest all chillies and turn them into pickle? Enjoy pickled chillies during winter.

Making pickled chillies is very easy. I suggest use green chillies because red chillies tend to turn soft when pickled. Anyway, I was a bit naughty and this time I didn’t listen to my inner voice, I did chuck in all what I had, red and green. I thought I would eat the red ones first and I did eat the red first indeed.

Back to the process of making pickle, firstly, wash the whole chillies a few time, drain and dry under the sun for one or two days. Slice the chillies (only those big and long) and put all in an airtight jar. Bring a couple cups of vinegar in a saucepan (just enough to cover the chillies) to the boil. Add 1 teaspoon of salt and ½ teaspoon of sugar. I do love sour flavor, so I didn’t add much salt and sugar. If you love a bit salty or sweet, you can add more. Let the mixture to cool a bit, pour it into the jar and leave uncover until it completely cools down. Cover with the lid and keep for a few days then the pickle is ready to use. Pickled chillies go along very well with noodles. 

Authentic Asian Cooking- Kimchi Fried Rice

Kimchi Fried Rice

It is the season of Chinese cabbages, so I’d like to touch base a bit of Korean food here – Kimchi. I have been making my own kimchi for nearly 20 years. Thanks for my lovely Korean friend who shares me her authentic Korean cooking. Making kimchi needs a bit of work but I will skip this process because you can find it easily in Asian grocery stores. What I love to share is how to cook kimchi fried rice. It is simple kimchi fried rice that I love to cook at home. My kids love it and I hope you will enjoy it too.

I wouldn’t write the fish sauce seasoning measurements in here because kimchi has its own sourness and saltiness and you need to season it properly by yourself

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons oil

1 clove of garlic (chopped)

300g of beef mince or pork mince

4 cups cooled steam rice

A cup kimchi or more

Fish sauce for seasoning 

1.      Heat the oil in a fry-pan or wok over high heat. Add garlic and stir fry until lightly brown. Add beef mince and stir fried until half cooked. Add kimchi and keep stirring for about 1½ minutes.

2.      Pour in rice and seasoning with fish sauce, stir fry for 2 minutes or until the rice is heated through. Serve hot.

Tata…is done. Happy cooking!

Easy Asian Cooking- Stir-Fried Okra

What do you have for your lunch today? I am having the healthy, simple and quick stir-fry okra or lady’s fingers. Take less than 5 minutes to cook. If you like to try, this is the simple way….with 4 main ingredients - garlic, chilli, okra and soy sauce.

Heat 1 tablespoon of oil, add in 2 chopped cloves of garlic and 1 sliced chilli and stir fry until the garlic turn lightly brown. Add 200 g of sliced okra and keep stirring for few times. Add 1 tablespoon of soy sauce and stir fry for about 5 seconds. Cover with the lid for about 45 seconds (if you like the okra very soft then cover it for a minute with adding couple tablespoons of water). Serve hot with rice.

Secret tips:

-          Is not like old day you can trip the end of the okra to find it is young okra or not. So, look at the lightly green and small okra instead of dark green okra, this is the high chance to buy the young okra.

-          Sliced okra better not to stir-frying too long in order to avoid the mucilage because mucilage increases when heats it applied. That is the reason I try to cover with lid to slightly steam it to make the dish present to eat. 

  By Jean's Asian Cooking 

2 Ingrediets - Asian Cooking

2 Ingredients – Simple and Healthy Turmeric Chicken

This is my favourite childhood party dish. Nowadays, I don’t have to have a party to enjoy it and I’ve come up with a healthier option by cook it in the oven.

You simply need two ingredients- 1kg of chicken and a packet of turmeric powder, I normally don’t count salt as an ingredient because we all have salt in our kitchen. Then you need to spend just a few minutes to marinate the chicken and put it aside at least 1 hour at room temperature or overnight in the fridge. Cook it in the oven at 200⁰C, go to enjoy a cup of coffee and it should be ready in 25-35 minutes.

1kg chicken, cut into pieces (chicken drumettes/chicken thigh with skin on)
2 teaspoons turmeric powder
1½ teaspoons salt

Preparation time: < 5 minutes
Cooking time: <35 minutes
Serve 4-6

I hope you enjoy it. Happy Cooking!

Jean 

Asian Cooking Class- Melbourne

Stir-fried Lettuce with Garlic (1 dollar dish)

As far as I can recall, imported vegetables such as iceberg lettuce, celery, broccoli were very expensive in where I grew up. They were mainly consumed during special occasions and my mum used to said: "this is special and for occasions only". When she visits me in Melbourne she always asks for iceberg lettuces, celery, broccoli for stir fry. I told her that I am happy indeed because they are good for health and widely available. 

Here how one dollar dish works in Melbourne. If you’ve already got oyster sauce and soy sauce in your pantry but if you don’t, it is worthwhile investing a few dollars for these basic ingredients for Asian dishes. You don’t need them much and they cost you peanuts every dish.  

An iceberg lettuce is $1 to $3 depending on season. I paid a dollar for a good size iceberg lettuce at Coles last week and I used half of it only. It took me about few minutes to prepare and less than five minutes to cook. The sweetness and crunchiness were great and natural.

Stir-Fried Iceberg Lettuce with Garlic

300 g (10½ oz) iceberg lettuce

1 tablespoon oil

1 big clove garlic, finely chopped 

Soy mixed (mix all in a small bowl):

1 tablespoon oyster sauce

½ tablespoon soy sauce

1/8 teaspoon sugar

Break the lettuce into pieces, wash and drain well.

Heat oil in a fry-pan or wok and fry the garlic over high heat until almost golden. Add the lettuce and soy mixed and stir fry for about 1½ to 2 minutes.

Preparation time:  5 minutes                                         
Cooking time: 4 minutes

Serve 2 - 4

I hope you will enjoy this simple dish. Happy Cooking!

Phat See Ew

Phat See Ew

My daughter asked me if I can cook soy sauce noodles for her because we haven’t had it for a while. For us, that is a soy sauce noodle dish – Phat See Ew. It is really stir fry noodles with soy sauce as the name tells in Thai. Actually, the name of ‘See Ew’ is soy sauce in Teow Chew which is a dialect from Guangdong province in China. It is one of the popular street stir-fried noodles after Pad Thai in Thailand. It is also a kind of sister or brother of Char Kway Teow.

Phat See Ew is traditionally cooked with sliced pork. However, my daughter is not a big fan of pork, so I mostly use beef or chicken, nothing wrong with that.

Phat See Ew has its unique flavour of slightly sweet which comes from Thai sweet dark soy sauce. I have two versions of Phat See Ew – with Thai dark sweet soy sauce and with normal dark soy sauce. Both work beautifully. Below is with normal dark soy sauce because sometimes it is hard to find the Thai sweet dark soy sauce.

It normally takes me less than 15 minutes to prepare and cook. The recipe looks slightly long, compared to other recipes, but after making soy mixture everything becomes very easy. The most important technique to remember is you need very high heat and do it one plate at a time.

I hope you will like it too!

Phat See Ew Recipe: 

Marinate the meat:

100 g (3½ oz) pork/beef/chicken

½ teaspoon fish sauce

½ teaspoon dark soy sauce

Soy mixture (mix in a bowl):

½ tablespoon fish sauce

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1 teaspoon dark soy sauce*

½ teaspoon palm sugar

1 ½ tablespoons vegetable oil, divided

1 clove garlic, chopped

1 egg

250 g (9 oz) fresh flat rice noodles

70 g (2½ oz) Chinese broccoli (phak khana), trim the end and cut into 5cm (2 inch) lengths

¼ teaspoon ground white pepper

To serve (optional): pickled chillies or chilli flakes

Marinate the pork with fish sauce and dark soy sauce in a small bowl.

Heat ½ tablespoon of oil in a wok/fry-pan and fry garlic about 15 seconds or until lightly brown. Add the pork and stir-fry for about 1 minute. Take it out and put it in a small bowl.

Clean the wok and heat 1 tablespoon of oil in high heat, crack in the egg into the wok and slightly scramble for about 15 seconds and push it to a side.  Add the noodles and soy mixture and toss well until the noodles are heated, about 45 seconds. Mix the noodles and egg together for another minute (stop stirring the noodles for about 15 seconds if necessary to get the noodles slightly burned) or until soy mixture is absorbed.

Add Chinese broccoli and cooked pork and stir-fry for 1 to 1½ minutes. Add white ground pepper and keep stirring the noodles until mixed well and cooked through.

Serve with pickled chillies or chilli flakes.  

*(I used thick caramel dark soy sauce, if your dark soy sauce is not thick/dark enough, you can add more)

Preparation: < 10 minutes                                                

Cooking time: < 7 minutes

Serve 1

Chinese Cooking Class, Melbourne

Stir-fried Snow Pea Leaves (snow pea shoots) with Garlic

Snow peas, everyone knows snow peas. It is commonly used in either western or Asian cooking. How about snow pea leaves or some may call it snow pea shoots? If you have ever seen them in the market or you already have them in your backyard, what the next thing to do is turn them into a simply delicious stir-fry dish. I cannot describe much in here how tasty they are. I only can tell you that my toddle loves it very much. Basically, they taste naturally sweet. Try this simple and healthy way to cook snow peas leaves.

Stir-Fried Snow Pea Leaves (snow pea shoots) with Garlic

300 g (10 ½ oz) snow pea leaves

2 tablespoons oil

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped 

¼ teaspoon salt or to taste

1 tablespoon soy sauce

Discard the coils of the leaves and rinse the leaves thoroughly.

Heat oil in a fry-pan or wok and fry the garlic over high heat for 20 seconds or until lightly brown. Add the snow pea leaves, salt and soy sauce and stir fry to coat well in oil for about 2½ minutes. (If they are still tough, cover with lid and cook for another 1 minute).  

Preparation time:  >5 minutes                                   

Cooking time: 5 minutes

Crispy Fried Egg Salad

Hi, fried eggs again this week! Why? Well, continue to discover this simple and easy ingredient what can do beyond its nature. I am going to use fried eggs to make delicious Thai-styled salad. My both kids love this dish, especially the spicy and sour flavour.

Meanwhile frying the eggs, I run to the backyard to pick a few sprig of Chinese celery and coriander leaves and start making sauce and salad. It takes less than 10 minutes to make the salad. I hope you will enjoy it.

Crispy Fried Egg Salad (Yam Khai Dao)

2 large eggs, carefully cracked into a small bowl

1/3 cup vegetable oil

½ medium onion or 1 big shallot, sliced

2 sprig Chinese celery, coarsely chopped

2 sprig coriander leaves, coarsely chopped

Dressing:

1 bird’s eye chilli or small chilli

1 small clove garlic

1 ½ teaspoons palm sugar

1 tablespoon lime juice

1 tablespoon fish sauce

Heat the oil in a small fry pan or wok until very hot. Add the eggs to the fry pan and fry for about 1½ minutes (the egg white bubbles) or until the bottom of the eggs turns brown and crispy over medium heat. Carefully flip the eggs with spatula and keep frying for about 1 minute or golden brown. Remove the eggs and drain on a paper towel. Cut the eggs into bite seize or about 16 pieces in total. 

Pound the chilli, garlic and palm sugar with pestle in a small mortar. Add lime juice and fish sauce and mix well. Transfer the sauce into a large mixing bowl and add all the salad and eggs and toss well. Serve on a plate.

Note: If you don’t have mortar, simply chop the chilli and garlic into mince. 

Rice and Fried Egg

Last week was a busy week. I was busy with cooking demo in the city and also preparation for classes. My lunch, thus as simple as rice and egg but I was happy with it. I'd love to share the recipe with you here.

Rice is the staple food in many Asia countries, it can have as simple as fried egg to serve with in anytime or when there is a last minute situation (I mean with a busy lifestyle, sometimes there is no time to cook or maybe there is only eggs left in the refrigerator and sometimes I just feel like eating it). In fact, this is a common way and the most convenience cooking in Asian family recipes. Honestly speaking, I do enjoy the nice taste of it. My grandmother and mother had fed me with this delicious egg and now I sometimes cook it for my daughters as well.

Fried Egg

2 tablespoon vegetable oil

1 egg

1 bowl of warm steam rice

1 tablespoon soy sauce

Heat the oil hot in a small fry-pan over high heat. Fry the egg until well cooked or medium cooked and turn over let it fry until well done or medium cooked.

Pour soy sauce into the fry-pan and turn off the heat. Let the soy sauce stand in the fry-pan for a few seconds. Pour the egg and sauce on top of the warm steam rice. Serve hot.

Note: It looks simple but the secret of making the soy sauce nice in here is the method of cooking it.

Cooking time: 5 minutes

Stir-fried Choko with Prawns

Stir- fried Choko with Prawns

Choko (chocho) or Chayote, when did I start to love this funny looking shape vegetable/fruit (I did ask myself when I first saw it many years ago)? It is to native of Central America. But it has become one type of popular vegetables in Vietnam and Cambodia. It provides a good natural sauce of fibre and vitamin C, especially where there is a lack of supplements.

Back to Melbourne, I need to wait for the season to cook. Yes, yes, there are a lot in the market now. Thus, ya! Time to cook choko! I love to use it for simple stir-fry, like normally used in Vietnamese and Cambodian cooking. I love its natural flavour that surprisingly matches well with other ingredients. Here a simple recipe called “stir-fried Choko with prawns”.

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

1 clove garlic, finely chopped

120 g prawns, peeled and de-veined (if use large prawns, diced)

1 choko (400 g or 14 oz), peeled, deseeded, cut into strips

Soy mixture (mix in a bowl):

½ tablespoon fish sauce

1 tablespoon soy sauce

Dash ground white pepper

    Heat the oil in a fry-pan, add the garlic and prawns stir-fry for 1 minute or until the prawns are nearly cooked.

Add the choko and the soy mixture and stir well. Cover the fry-pan with a lid and cook for a minute. Add two tablespoons of water and have a quick stir, cover it again and keep cooking over medium heat for about 2 minutes or until the choko is softened (if you like it crunchy and tender you can cook for just a minute instead). Serve hot with rice.

Prep & cooking time: <15 minutes

Serve: 2-4

I grew a couple of choko plants a few years ago in my back yard and it was very easy. You may think about doing it.

Easy Stir-fried Pasta

I used to live in a remote town where there was very limited Asian grocery around. Whenever I travelled to a city, I would buy many important Asian ingredients I need the most to fill up my pantry but they never met my cooking needs. So, I used whatever I could get my hand on as cooking is always flexible and can be creative. When I missed stir-fried yellow noodles but didn’t have, I used pasta (spaghetti- looks like yellow noodle). It was a humble stir-fry, even without Chinese greens or bean sprouts. The taste was just right and as good if not better.

Nowadays, I still use the same recipe but I do not purposefully boil pasta for stir fry - I often used left over pasta from my Bolognese. (Yes, I do love Italian food especially for my young children, they love the fresh and rich Bolognese sauce with cheese on top, yum…oh with extra chilli flakes too). So don’t waste it if you have leftover pasta.

The stir-fried pasta recipe is very simple. It just needs ingredients that are available in your pantry – oil, garlic, eggs, pasta, soy sauce, ground pepper and any greens in your fridge.

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

1 clove garlic, chopped

250 g (9 oz) cooked pasta (spaghetti)

1 egg

Dash of ground black pepper

1¼ tablespoons soy sauce

¼ green capsicum or green leaves (spring onion, lettuce, choi sim), cut into pieces

Heat 1 tablespoon of oil in a fry-pan or wok until hot, add garlic and stir fry until light golden.

Toss in pasta, stir fry for 30 seconds. Push the pasta to a side, crack the egg into the other side. Slightly break the egg yolk and mix with egg white and cook for 30 seconds and cover it with pasta for few seconds.

Stir the egg and pasta well for another 30 seconds.

Add a dash of ground black pepper, soy sauce and capsicum and stir well until the pasta is heats and cooked through for about 1- 1½ minutes. 

Preparation time: 5 minutes (if using left over pasta)                                                 Cooking time: < 5 minutes
Serve 1

Happy Cooking!

Healthy Oven Bake Fish

I bought a few fish from the market and decided to use the same recipe that I published weeks ago - 2 ingredients. If you are not a meat lover, use the same ingredients with different formula as below. The recipe turns out a good dish as well.

600 g (1 lb 5 oz) fish (mackerel, yellow tail fish or any fish fillet) 

½ teaspoon salt

1 ½ teaspoon turmeric powder

2 teaspoons vegetable oil

Clean and scale the fish and make 2 slashes in in the middle of the fish (if using whole fish). Season the fish with salt and turmeric powder and oil for 15 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 200⁰C.

Line a baking sheet with aluminium foil (to make it easy to clean). Bake the fish for about 15 minutes or until cooked through.

Enjoy your fish and happy cooking!

Note: In the original Asian cooking, we use deep fry method. 

Garlic- How to peel garlic in few seconds.

One of the most important ingredients that I use in Asian cooking is garlic. I mean raw garlic. Garlic has its pungent flavour, spicy that mellows and sweetens considerably with cooking. Besides, it is not just for culinary use but also extensively used in medicine.

Here, I am going to share with you my simple and quick technique to peel the garlic in just a few seconds. Firstly, pick one of the garlic cloves from the bulb. Put it on a chopping board, cut off the root end, place the flat side of the knife on top of the garlic clove holding the knife handle firmly and use another hand (hand palm) to smack the knife to crush the clove. The skin will easily break and makes it easier to peel.
Enjoy your cooking!

Easy Asian Recipe - 2 Ingredients

2 Ingredients – Simple and Healthy Turmeric Chicken

This is my favourite childhood party dish. Nowadays, I don’t have to have a party to enjoy it and I’ve come up with a healthier option by cook it in the oven.  

You simply need two ingredients- 1kg of chicken and a packet of turmeric powder, I normally don’t count salt as an ingredient because we all have salt in our kitchen. Then you need to spend just a few minutes to marinate the chicken and put it aside at least 1 hour at room temperature or overnight in the fridge. Cook it in the oven at 200⁰C, go to enjoy a cup of coffee and it should be ready in 25-35 minutes.


1kg chicken, cut into pieces (chicken drumettes/chicken thigh with skin on)
2 teaspoons turmeric powder
1½ teaspoons salt

Preparation time: < 5 minutes
Cooking time: <35 minutes
Serve 4-6

I hope you enjoy it. Happy Cooking!

Jean 

Thai Cooking Class, Melbourne

4 ingredients with 2 minutes preparation and the rest is have a cup of coffee while waiting for cooking

This is an  easy meal to cook with left over curry paste.
I marinated 400g chicken (thigh or breast fillet with skin on) with 1 tablespoon of Paneang curry paste, 1 tablespoon of fish sauce and 1 tablespoon of palm sugar. Let it over night in the fridge. Cook it next day in the oven (200c) for about 25 minutes or until cooked through (you also can cover it in foil if you want it a bit juicy).

Serve it with rice or slice some for sandwich

Next coming up Thai cooking class this Saturday at 10am
More details of Thai cooking classes, please visit www.jeanasiancooking.com.au

Basics Asian for Beginners Cooking Class

No secret in cooking

If you are not sure how to cook simple Asian meals with big flavour, there is a good news. The good news is there is no secret and what you need is to understand and have basic skills. Here are some tips:

1.       Understand the flavour of each fresh ingredients

2.       It is simple- use the right amount of sauce, minimum as possible

3.       Who is “marrying” who? (It means which ingredient is a good match with another)

4.       Who “jump” in to the wok first, second then on and on

5.       Right cooking utensils

Asian Basic for Beginners, Melbourne

You may have tried to cook Asian food but wondered why you cannot quite get the taste that you wanted. This may be the time to find out how to master the basic Asian cooking. Try our easy recipes to start your cooking journey or join our Asian Basics cooking class. 

Latest Testimonial:

I did the Thai and Malaysian/Singaporean classes with Jean and loved them!  The small class sizes meant it was really hands on and all the dishes were amazing.  Jean helped direct me to places where i could find ingredients i was missing and i have been trying out the recipes at home, with great success!!  I had never really tried cooking asian food at home before but after doing the classes i am a lot more confident and feel like i know what i'm doing which has been awesome.  The family has been very impressed!!  Thank you again Jean, you are a lovely person and a great teacher!  

Thanks!!!

Jess