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!

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Simple and delicious Thai spring rolls.

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!

Vietnamese Cooking Class

How do you like your Pho? I love to have it with beef bone (I love the juice of the bone) and extra paddy mints.

Melbourne's Golden Bananas

After a few weeks of ripening, our home grown bananas turn golden and ready to eat. Backyard and organic bananas’ flavour is so unique and great for sweet and warn creamy dessert – bananas and sago in coconut milk which is prefect for winter.

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