Stir Fried Broccoli with Garlic Sauce

When I was in China, I attended some cooking classes at Hutong Cuisine. The classes I attended are of the dishes I like. After the class, I haven’t had the chance to try cooking it again since it’s cheaper and more time efficient to buy the food especially if you’re living alone. During the pandemic, since we’re trying to limit our outside interaction, I decided to cook this dish to my husband.

As broccoli is one of the vegetables both of us like to eat and is quite healthy, I brave the cooking world and tried recreating this dish. I burnt a little the garlic but everything was just as I remembered. I haven’t had the chance to try it with other vegetables but the slurry seems to be quite common on most Chinese stir fry dishes. Try it and enjoy!

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Easy Fried Rice

For the past two weeks, I’ve been making Fried Rice. I’m always scared of cooking as most of the time the food I cook doesn’t look and taste like what I’ve imagined. While scrolling through Facebook videos, there was a video by emmymade on how to cook fried rice. So, I muster up my nerve and followed the steps. I didn’t have spring onions so I omitted it from the ingredient list.

The verdict: my husband loves it and I liked it too. There are a lot of variations to fried rice. For proteins, you could use fish, chicken, pork, beef. You can make it vegetarian. You can use just egg white. You can add those tuna in cans. You can add salted fish. Whatever you want your fried rice to be, you can do it. Common ingredients in fried rice are eggs, rice, and vegetables. I tried the frozen vegetables with broccoli, baby carrot, peas and potato, it didn’t jive with the rice.

Side Hustle 4: Filipino Homemade Products

As I write this, I’m still recuperating from my surgery which I will detail in my later post.  It’s a bit difficult to type as my left hand is still not cooperating much.  However, I want to make my brain work so write it is.

When I was still in Beijing, I used to sell leche flan, puto and banana bread to Filipinos living there.  I remember during the Christmas party at the Embassy, some staff will order 30 to 50 batch of flan, or puto or banana bread.  I usually make extra and they would still be all gone.  At that time, my bread making skills is still limited as I was still learning how to bake at a Chinese baking school.  Anytime I get to go home, I try to attend baking classes too (Heny Sison).

Simple Chicken & Mushroom Soup Recipe

Since the local courier service wasn’t able to deliver the box of mushroom which I won during our annual company dinner, I asked around for simple Chinese recipes which I can cook with my dried mushrooms.   With the cool weather outside, a soup dish is something to look forward to warm our bodies.  Here’s to chronicling my two attempts of fixing a simple Chicken and Mushroom Soup from scratch.

Chicken and Mushroom Soup

Ingredients:

• 200g chicken breast, cubed in 1.5cm
• several thin slices of ginger
• several slices of green onion (white stalk portion only)
• dried shiitake mushroom, sliced in quarters
• 1 tsp light soy sauce
• salt
• pepper

Instructions:

1.  Boil water in a soup pan.

2.  Add ginger and green onion.  Let it boil for 2 mins.

3.  Add chicken breast cubes.  Let it boil for 3 mins.

4.  Add 1 tsp light soy sauce and shiitake mushrooms.  Let it boil for 10 mins.

5.  Add salt and pepper to taste.  Let it boil for 10 mins.

That’s it!  Simple right?  The first time I did this dish, the mushroom flavor was strong and  made the soup yummy.  The second time I did this, the mushroom flavor was lighter and the ginger flavor didn’t come out that much.  I guess the freshly opened mushroom bag and fresh ginger helped.  You can also put rice noodles for some carbs.