House of Annie

Sweeter Without the Shrimp

But every so often, my mom would make this style of egg fuyong—she would dice up some french or green beans and add some chopped up shrimp. After frying them, she would add the beaten eggs. Another dish I love!

These days I don’t eat as much shrimp. Firstly, they are expensive here in Kuching. Secondly, I am trying to cut down on shrimp (even though I love it very much) because of our concerns with wild-caught shrimp, and shrimp farming practices. So for this dish, I no longer add shrimp. I add diced onions instead for sweetness.

Also, I find that pickled daikon (takuan) or pickled radish works really well in this egg fuyong. It adds some sweet/sour flavors to this already umami-filled fuyong. And this is a great way to get my kids to eat their veggies without complaining.

Faster than a Frittata

What is an egg fuyong anyway? I actually didn’t know that they were called fuyongs until I went to the US. To me, they were just egg dishes. I believe that they are to the Chinese what frittatas are to the Western world. They are savory egg dishes with fillings mixed in.

However, the Chinese versions are much faster as we are not as concerned with keeping the dish together looking like a pie. It’s a quick toss and turn of the eggs and if some chunks break off, no biggie! Just flip pieces around until everything is cooked through and plate up.

Try it and let me know what you think.

Egg Fuyong with green beans, onion and daikon recipe

Ingredients:
3 Tbsp vegetable oil
2 cups french beans or yard-long green beans, diced
1 large yellow onion, diced
1/4 cup diced takuan or pickled radish
5 large eggs, beaten
2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp white pepper
1/2 tsp soy sauce

Method:
1. Heat oil in a non-stick pan or well-seasoned wok over medium heat.
2. Add onions and stirfry till starting to turn translucent, about 1 minute.

3. Add takuan and green beans. Add 1/2 tsp salt. Saute till green beans are slightly cooked, about 1-2 minutes. Watch heat, make sure vegetables are not burning. If too hot, lower heat a little.

4. Beat eggs with remaining salt, white pepper and soy sauce. Beat to incorporate flavors.
5. Pour beaten eggs over beans and onions. Make sure that egg covers all the vegetables. Let uncooked egg run to the sides as you cook.

6. When one side is set, about 2 mins, turn over to other side. It’s ok if you end up breaking the eggs a bit. I normally flip about one quarter at a time.

7. Let other side set. If needed, flip over once or twice more to fully cook.
8. Plate up and serve with rice.

Enjoy!

Cheers, Annie

The following Saturday, we picked up a squash from one of the vendors at the community market. These hard squash were kind of like long butternut squash.

Squashes for Sale at Stutong Market

The next time Jessie came to our house, she showed us how to make the dish.

Braised Squash with Lemongrass Recipe

Ingredients:

1 kg hard squash, seeded, peeled and cut into chunks
2 shallots, minced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 stalks lemongrass (white part only), minced
1 tsp chicken bouillon or salt
2 Tbsp oil
water

Squash Chunks and Minced Aromatics

Method:

1. Heat 2 Tbsp oil in a wok over medium heat. Fry the aromatics for 1 minute until fragrant.

2. Add the squash and stir to combine.
3. Add water to the wok until the squash are almost covered.
4. Mix in 1 tsp chicken bouillon or salt to taste.

5. Bring the water to a boil, then lower heat, cover, and simmer until the squash are just fork-tender, approximately 15 minutes.
6. Remove the cover and let the remaining water boil off.
7. Plate up and garnish with chopped cilantro or green onions.

Braised Squash with Lemongrass

The flavor of the lemongrass is so profound in this dish. It is incredibly easy to make, so much easier than our other squash dishes. The only dish easier than this one would be our Kabocha No Nimono recipe. I do hope you get to try it!

Aloha, Nate

How Sweet It Is

My friend Paul and his wife, Adeline, told us that this veggie is really easy to grow. Cangkuk Manis is actually the leaf of a bush commonly grown in Southeast Asia. Contrary to what you read in an earlier blog post on Paku, it is actually Cangkuk Manis that you can grow easily from it’s stem. “Just stick it in the ground and pretty soon it will start to produce leaves again” was how Paul explained it to us. I haven’t yet tried to do this because it’s so cheap to buy Cangkuk Manis at the store. For RM1, you get a big bunch!

Cangkuk Manis for Sale at Stutong Community Market

We’ve also ordered this dish in several restaurants and most times we’ve cooked or ordered it, they stir-fry this vegetable with eggs. The sweetness of the Cangkuk Manis really complements the egg nicely. Be that as it may, I was puzzled that at one particular restaurant, their Cangkuk Manis stir-fry was always sweeter than the ones I made at home. From the instructions I had been given, it was a simple stir-fry—just some garlic, shallots, egg, cangkuk manis and a bit of salt. But somehow, when I made it, the veggie did not sing with sweetness the way this particular restaurant’s did.

Anyway, after asking around and not being able to figure it out, we went to yet another restaurant where the dish was also sweeter (in a savory way). And that was when it dawned on me, they used oyster sauce!

D’uh! I should have guessed and tried it earlier. After all, oyster sauce is one of my favorite condiments to put on stir-fry veggies.

So, in this latest attempt at stir-fried Cangkuk Manis, I added some oyster sauce and finally, I had the flavor mystery figured out. Try this quick stir-fry if you are able to find this vegetable near you. I believe that in KL, they use this same vegetable in their Pan Mein. If you know it by another name, would you share?

Stir-Fried Cangkuk Manis Recipe

Ingredients
2 Tbsp vegetable oil
1 large bunch Cangkuk Manis, leaves stripped from stem and crushed
2 cloves garlic, minced
3-4 shallots, sliced thin
2 eggs, beaten
1-2 Tbsp oyster sauce
1/2-1 tsp salt
pepper to taste

Stripping and Crushing Cangkuk Manis

Method
1. In a large wok, heat oil on medium high heat.
2. Add garlic and shallots and stir-fry for about a minute, until garlic is lightly browned and shallots are slightly translucent.
3. Add beaten eggs and stir them around quickly till they are all broken up and form little pieces. Be careful not to let them brown, you just want them barely cooked.

Stir-Frying Shallots and Eggs

4. Add Cangkuk Manis leaves and stir around.

5. Add seasoning (oyster sauce, salt and pepper). Stir to incorporate the flavors. Add a little water if necessary to keep vegetables from drying out.
6. Taste and adjust seasoning.

Plate up and enjoy over rice!

Stir-Fried Cangkuk Manis

Cheers, Annie

This post is entered into this week’s edition of Weekend Herb Blogging, administered by Haalo and hosted by frequent Grow Your Own contributor Graziana of Erbe in Cucina.

You Like Me, You Really Like Me!

Thankfully these days, I am just as fond of bell peppers as he is. I do think that what Jeffrey Steingarten had to say about trying something many times before saying you dislike it is true. As I’ve eaten bell peppers (and celery and bittermelon), I’ve actually come to like them. And once I discovered the colored bell peppers (red, orange, yellow), I totally fell in love with them. They are so sweet and delicious.

This particular dish really brings out the best in bell peppers—they stay crunchy and their sweetness is accentuated by the saltiness of the black bean sauce. I just love this dish and I also love the fact that it is such a simple meal to fix up! It doesn’t hurt that Nate loves this dish too so whenever I make it, he always has an extra helping of rice to go with it.

Black Bean Chicken and Bell Peppers Recipe

Ingredients:
2 Tbsp vegetable oil
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
2 chicken breasts, cut in half length-wise, then sliced medium thin
1 yellow onion, large diced
3 small bell peppers (one green, and the other two colors are up to you), large diced. If your peppers are very big, just use two or half of each.
1 heaping Tbsp black bean sauce
1/2 tsp sugar (or to taste)
freshly ground black pepper

Black Bean Garlic Sauce

Method:
1. Heat up the oil in a wok over medium high heat. Add garlic and onions and stir-fry for about a minute. Onions should still be firm.
2. Add chicken breast, black bean sauce and sugar. Toss around until chicken is coated with sauce and cooked through, about 4-5 minutes.

3. Add the bell peppers. Stir it around till coated in black bean sauce, another 1-2 minutes.

4. Taste and adjust seasonings—if needed, you can add a little bit of soy sauce (but black bean sauce is salty already so make sure you taste first). Add your black pepper.
5. Plate up and serve with rice.

Black Bean Chicken and Bell Peppers

Enjoy!

Cheers, Annie

Do you have foods that you didn’t like before, but love now? Leave a comment and tell us!

This post featuring bell peppers was entered in the Weekend Herb Blogging roundup #218, hosted by The Crispy Cook and organized by Haalo.

Hungry for more stir-fries? Click below:

Simple Tomato Stir-fry

Cooking with Leafy Midin (Fiddlehead Fern)

Stir-Fried Green Beans with Savory Tofu and Peanuts

Five Quick Asian Dishes: Stir-Fried Beef with Ginger and Egg

Vegetarian Chap Chye (Stir-fried Mixed Vegetables)

Leeks at the Market

Leek and potato soup first came into my consciousness when I read the book “The $64 Tomato: How One Man Nearly Lost His Sanity, Spent a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest for the Perfect Garden”. I don’t remember much about what he wrote but somehow he made this soup sound really heartwarming and it stuck in my head as something I should try to make someday.

Well, I’ve made leek and potato soup several times now and recently while shopping at the market here in Kuching, I came across a vendor selling leeks. They weren’t as large as the ones I find in San Jose but they were definitely leeks - when I picked them up to give them a sniff, they smelled very pungent and aromatic. That decided it for me and I took home three to make this very soup.

Good to Go

Most recipes you come across will tell you to cut the leek at the point where the green parts meet the white base and use only the white base. Well, I find that in soups, you can get away with using more of the green leafy part and so for this batch, I trimmed only the top third of the leek and used the rest. I think it’s quite possible to use the whole leek if they’re not too fibrous. What do you think?

Another thing about leeks—you have to wash them good. And the only way to get to all the dirt trapped between the layers is to cut them in half length-wise and get in there with water to rinse out every layer. Once they’ve been washed of dirt, they are good to go.

Extra Oomph

Now back to this leek and potato soup recipe. This is a seriously EASY recipe and the flavor is really good. When I made this last week, the whole family devoured the soup including my picky kids. I’m going to have to try to make this soup much more often now seeing as to how easy it is and how much everyone likes it.

You basically need some leeks and potatoes (um, d’uh!), a little bit of garlic, some butter/olive oil, some chicken broth, milk, seasonings and you’re done. If you want the soup to be smooth, you can blend it with an immersion blender or in a regular blender. But if you don’t have a blender, just mash the potatoes up a little in the soup and you’ll still have a yummy soup, just chunkier.

This time around, I chose to add a little extra seasoning to my soup. Normally, just salt and pepper will do it but I have plenty of herbs and spices lying around and sometimes I like to try them in recipes to see what will happen. So I decided to toss some dill in and after tasting the soup, I thought it still needed a little kick so I thought, why not some Old Bay Seasoning? So I did. Put some in, I mean. And it was wonderful—the celery seed and spices in Old Bay gave the soup an extra oomph this round. I think I will be adding it in on a regular basis from now on.

So, if you’re busy and need a quick weekday dish, try this soup. It’s hearty so that on its own, it’s quite filling. Add a salad or some bread and you have a meal. Or you could roast or panfry some meats and have this soup as a side (this is what we did the last time, we pan fried some lamb chops which is also a quick weekday dish).

Leek and Potato Soup Recipe

This recipe will serve 4 for a main course or 6 as a side.

Ingredients:
2 Tbsp butter or combination of butter and olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 large or 3 medium leeks, cut in half length-wise, washed and trimmed of the top third green parts, and sliced thin
2 large or 3 medium potatoes, diced small
4 cups low-sodium chicken broth or if you don’t have it, use 4 cups water with 1 1/2 cubes chicken bouillon (of course, home made chicken broth is best but that makes it less easy)
1 cup milk (whole milk is tastier but if you would prefer less fat, it’s fine to use low fat)
1/4 tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp each freshly ground black pepper and white pepper
1 tsp Old Bay Seasoning
1 tsp dill (I used dried but feel free to use fresh, just add more to taste)

Slicing Leeks

Method:
1. In your dutch oven or heavy bottomed pot, put in the butter/olive oil and heat till melted on medium heat.
2. Add garlic and stir for less than a minute being careful to not let it burn.
3. Add leeks and salt and stir around and cook till leeks have softened but not browned, about 5-6 minutes.

4. Add potatoes and chicken broth and give it a stir. Let that simmer for about 10-15 minutes or until potatoes are soft.

5. Add in your milk and then the rest of your seasonings—the peppers (don’t miss out on the pepper, they really add a lot to this dish), Old Bay and dill. Stir and let the flavors come together for another minute or two. Leave the soup at a gentle simmer at this stage.
6. Taste and adjust your seasonings accordingly.

Plate up and enjoy! We garnished with a little chopped parsley and some crumbled bacon.

Leek and Potato Soup

Cheers, Annie

This post was entered in the Weekend Herb Blogging roundup #216, administered by Haalo and hosted this week by Maninas

Hungry for more soups? Click below:

Chinese Winter Melon Soup Recipe

How to Make Miso Soup From Scratch

Barley and Lentil Soup with Swiss Chard

Cream of Corn Soup Recipe

Roasted Butternut Squash Soup with Bacon