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........

Day 4 of mat leave: Dessert in slow cooker success! Kind of.

Yesterday I made some Cantonese basics for dinner once more- stir fry Bok Choy and stir fry soy sauce-garlic-salt-sugar marinaded chicken breast. Both came out quite passable! Lessons learned:

-more salt for bok choy and cut the stems in half for easier stir frying. 

-need more marinade for chicken! I was so afraid of making the chicken too salty, I went super light on the sauce-garlic-salt-sugar combo. My mom suggested light and dark soy sauce with a bit of Hoisin in the marinade for next time. 

-chop chicken waaay thinner so I don't have to overcook the meat because I'm afraid it won't come out thoroughly cooked !

What I love about stir fry- the actual cooking takes about 45 minutes for a noob like myself, for someone like my mother, cooking time can be cut down to 30 minutes and even 20 minutes depending on quantity. Prep time for the chicken was another 15 minutes as the chicken breast came nicely packaged from the grocery store. The lengthy task was washing the damn Bok Choy. Now I get why my mom and aunts get annoyed when we don't finish the vegies :) It's a pain in the ass to wash. So next time you are enjoying Chinese leafy vegetables, don't waste what's on your plate! Washing a full bag of those leaves took me 45 minutes on it's own to rinse and wash 3 times as I like the water to run clear...

The dish that warmed my heart though and that I looked forward to all day was my apple crumble! Baked ... or cooked in our slow cooker! It took 5.5 hours to cook. Prep time was about 40 minutes as I was too lazy to find our blender for the crumble and I'm just slow at peeling and coring apples. Adding to the eagerness I'm sure was the heavenly smells of apple and cinnamon wafting through our home all, day, long ! When it was finally done, which was after dinner was served and dishes washed, I thought it was delicious! At least for my first serving. My mom and husband found the crumble a bit overpowering which upon my second serving, I also felt the same. As a quick remedy to even out the sugar-y and butter-y crumble, we peeled 3 more apples and just cooked them in a pot for 15 minutes until they were soft and added it to the crumble. Problem solved, now my crumble is a nice balance of sugar-y with tart and acidic. 

All in all, a good day for my culinary training. Here are some pictures of yesterday's food: