Day 7 of mat leave: Steamed chicken with stir fry Shanghai-nese veggie

Alright, so yesterday was theoretically, fairly simple. All I had to do was prep the chicken, marinade and then steam. With the veggies, just a wash and a quick stir fry. The result wasn't bad, though, I did not add enough salt..........again!.......... to the chicken so it could've been tastier. Also, I added way too much dark soy in the beginning so I had to try and salvage my meat by drowning in water to dissolve some of the soy resulting in a bit too much sauce after the steaming was done. Due to the amount of extra sauce, I stir fried some mushrooms quickly and packed it on to the dish in hopes that it would soak up some of the sauce which it did and it was actually quite tasty.

Last night I managed to sit my mother down to SHOW me what she means by "a little" and "a lot" when she gives me recipes. So now I know that "a little" means between 1 to 2 teaspoons and "a lot" means well... more. Anyway, here were the results with recipe for my own records.

Steamed chicken with ginger-soy-garlic marinade

1. Prep chicken- rinse and CUT OFF FAT! If knife skills attained, use knife, otherwise, for the sake of time, use a pair of scissors and cut out all the fat.

2. Slice really thinly and slice perpendicular to the natural lines of the meat.

3. Marinade chicken in- "a little" (drops here and there) dark soy (sweet flavor), "a little" light soy (salty flavor), 1.5 teaspoon of salt, 1.5 teaspoon of sugar, 1 clove of minced garlic, a few slices of ginger. Stick in fridge for an hour.

4. Take out chicken to set at room temperature before cooking. Slice up some scallions, take the white ends and sprinkle into chicken, take the green ends and save for later garnish.

5. Sprinkle a very overflowing teaspoon of starch to chicken before steaming as chicken will produce a ton of water during steam.

6. Steam for 10 minutes, remove pot top, stir meat around and garnish with green scallions, check the meat's cooking state and steam for another 5 minutes if necessary.

Stir fry any-leafy-veggies such as Bok Choy or Shanghai Veggie

1. During wash, cut off dirty ends of the leafy clusters. Dry well so that we don't dump a cup of leftover 'wash water' into pan when stir frying !

2. When stir frying, dump ALL of veggies into pan, even if it doesn't look like it will fit... it will once it's simmered down.

3. Keep moving veggies around, add half a cup of water if dish is looking super dry.

4. Add a full teaspoon of salt, at least, to a full pack of veggies (if serving is enough to feed 3 people).


Yeh so I didn't end up using wood-ear. I did a ton of laundry during the day for all the remaining baby things that we didn't wash and then I had to fit in 3 sets of 30 minute walk routines through the house in my efforts to prep for the big D-day which I really hope will be soon O_O. Plus I underestimated the time and effort for cutting off all the fat from the chicken, thus I totally forgot about intentions to include wood-ear into my dish. Ah well. Tonight, I will be revisiting the black bean steamed pork dish but I will do the marinade myself. Hopefully my mother's definition of "a little" and "a lot" is clear now........