Vietnamese Crispy Pancake- Banh Xeo

                                                Vietnamese Crispy Pancake- Banh Xeo

Birthday Party

I had been waiting for so long for this moment to celebrate my youngest daughter’s birthday. It was so precious and was not just for its purpose but also was to celebrate life, joy, food, memory of our family. The party menu plan was mainly to suit my little princess but it was a bit too much for her friends as she loves so much spicy food.  Thus, I decided to cook half of her favorites and other half to cater her littler friends and others.

I love to serve my guests with fresh food as possible with humble cooking methods- back from basics and oriental.  I decided to do Asian high tea with finger foods-mostly savory, a couple types of noodles, fruit and cakes. The day before the event, as usual, began with shopping, chopping, making spring rolls, preparing curry paste, Malaysian satay paste, satay, honey chicken, turmeric chicken and cake. The next morning, I started with curry, stick satay, curry puffs, fresh vegetables for gluten free Vietnamese paper rolls, stir-fried noodles, satay and chicken. Half way done by noon, my eldest daughter asked: “Mum, you forgot jelly!”  In fact, I didn’t forget it but I really ran out of time. Anyway, we tried it but I was sure we didn’t have enough time for jelly to set and as expected we did not have the jelly for our guests. It wasn’t too bad – we had it the next day. Fortunately, we had enough ice-ream for our friends. Finally, I prepared fruit plate and final assemble for all the dishes. Da, da, da…. off my stove, party started on time and food was ready to serve.

Even though it was a bit busy the whole cooking process was so relaxing and enjoyable. Everyone enjoyed the food and kids loved the play. It was the happy and precious moment to see little kids play and enjoy.

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.

Char Kway Teow (Malaysian & Singaporean Food)

Char Kway Teow or stir-fried flat rice noodle is one of the most popular hawker dishes in Malaysia and Singapore. The noodles are stir-fried over high heat with, Chinese sausage, prawns, de-shelled cockles, dark caramel soy sauce, soy sauce, egg, bean sprouts, Chinese chives and lard. Traditionally, a perfect Char Kway Teow is cooked on a charcoal stove. However, nowadays you hardly see any charcoal stoves in use in hawker centres any more.

I was quite lucky to have a Charcoal Char Kway Teow with my friends on Siam Road in Penang during my visit. An old vendor who is well known throughout Penang Island for his signature charcoal Char Kway Teow for so many years continues to use charcoal stoves. I was surprised to hear that and went to his stall. After an hour long wait, we finally got our Char Kway Teow and, no doubt, it was amazing. It had that kind of strong smoky flavour. We were happy and our long wait was paid off.

At home, one of the most important ways to cook good Char Kway Teow is to stir-fry the noodles one plate at a time. This method ensures that all sides of the noodles are thoroughly heat up. 

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!