Food/Travel, Frugal Recipe

Tea Eggs/ Cha Ye Dan

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I feel abit lazy these days. Lazy would only means two things when it comes to dealing with mealtime in my house. Either eating out, or one pot meal. LOL. I’m lazy, I would either cook curry, ABC soup or tomyam and just serve it with rice.

The ravenous sharks in my house has been eating and snacking like nobody’s business ever since Chinese new year started. I’m getting rather wary about it. They keep stuffing their mouth with junks that will never make them feel full, and therefore, I decided to feed them something much more tasty, filling and satisfying (not necessarily healthy or cholesterol free, though).

I got myself a fresh tray of grade AA eggs from my regular egg seller and a pack of Tea Eggs Herbs. The AA eggs from my regular eggs seller is pretty cheap and reasonable. It cost me only Rm 9.00 per tray. Elsewhere, it would have cost me a bomb.

And so, after boiling the eggs, I crack them gently and re- boil it together with the tea herbs a couple of hours. I boil it on very slow fire for 6 hours. (Damn, now the house is so hot!)

The outcome is this: A marble-like eggs. LOL.

Here’s how you can make your own tea eggs. It makes a very good snack on rainy weather. (It’s not rainy now, but who cares)

Ingredients:

6-15 eggs

4 cups water

6 tablespoons low-sodium soy sauce

3 tablespoons pu-er tea

1 cinnamon stick

1 star anise

3 cloves

1/2 teaspoon Chinese five-spice powder

1 teaspoon sugar

(Alternatively, just get yourself a pre-pack of the tea egg ‘herbs’, and just add in soya sauce, sugar and salt into the boiling water)

First of all, boil all of the eggs, and when it’s done, take it out, and crack all the eggs slightly before putting it back into the pot along with the herb packet.

Boil on slow fire for 4-6 hours, take out, and serve hot. You can serve them with rice, but I usually have them on their own. It’s very yummy and make an excellent comfort food/snack. 😀

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Food/Travel, Frugal Recipe

Prawn Sambal/ Sambal Tumis Udang Recipe

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I make a terrible Nyonya and even more horrible photographer. I lack skill and flair needed for both, but I certainly have a few tricks up my sleeves. I’ve gotten my hands on some gigantic prawn recently, and it was almost as big as my palm, and I decided that there’s no better way to enjoy it than make a ‘sambal tumis’ for it and have it with plain rice along with a shrimp omelet.

Here’s the recipe for my sambal tumis prawn:

Ingredients:

Prawns

1 whole onion, sliced thickly/thinly according to taste

3 tablespoon of chilli boh

1 tablespoon of chilli sauce

2 tablespoon of tomato sauce

3 spoonful of tamarind juice

Some water

Salt to taste

It’s very easy to cook. Simply sauté the sliced onions with the chilli boh, chilli sauce, tomato sauce and tamarind juice til fragrant, add some salt to taste and water along with the prawn and cook til it sizzles. Simple, no? Well, I’m not much of a cook, so if I can do it, so can you!


Cleffairy: I love to keep my cooking as simple as possible. First it’s because I’m bad at it, and second is because life is complicated enough, so why complicate cookings? After all, the best things in life are simple. 😀

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Food/Travel, Frugal Recipe

Egg in a basket/toad in a hole

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I like comfort food. It doesn’t matter if they are not healthy. Comfort food makes me feel happy and good. And I like feeling happy and good-such emotions makes me feel healthy. Quite a twisted logic, eh?

Anyway, here’s one of my favourite comfort food. One of a must have in the morning during breakfast, or when I’m pretty hungry and in desperate need of a quick bite. Egg in a basket. Some people might recognize this dish as toad in a hole.

Here’s how you make egg in a basket/toad in a hole:

Make a hole by cutting a circular hole in the center of a piece of bread with a cookie cutter or an upside down glass.

Spread both side of the bread with margarine/butter generously.

Fry both side of the bread slightly on the frying pan.

Crack in an egg into the hole when the bread is slightly crunchier, and cook for a while until the bottom part of the egg hardens before flipping the bread over and cook the bread and the egg to a desired consistency.

And this is what you’ll get. One toad in the hole 😀 Take out, and serve with either jam, ketchup or even cheese.

Cleffairy: I’ll have this kind of toad anytime of the day.

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Frugal Recipe

My take…

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The other day STP posted his ‘tuna toast on his blog’. And it occurred to me that before my oven goes KABOOM on me for baking too much, I made such toasts, or rather,pizza bread quite often too as my snack. Nothing much to be proud of, but it keeps me satisfied nevertheless. It’s some sort of a comfort food for me when I’m feeling down or too busy to cook elaborate meals for myself and my family.

Ingredients:

4 slices of bread

Some tomato sauce/pasta sauce

Shredded chicken breasts

4 slices of cheddar cheese

First of all, spread some tomato sauce on each of the bread slices generously.

Top the bread with cheddar cheese and shredded chicken breast, and bake it in the oven for around 5 minutes at a medium heat.

And you’ll get this…mine usually turned out to be quite disgusting looking, but they serve their purpose as comfort food pretty well. Don’t let their looks fooled you.

Anyway, you can be creative with this. Instead of using shredded chicken, you can use ham, sliced sausages, tuna chunks or even crab-sticks as the topping.

My personal favourite got to be the ones with crab-sticks with tomato sauce and a bit of thousand Island sauce along with melted cheese as the topping.


Cleffairy: It’s all about chemistry. I treat my kitchen like a chemistry lab. Therefore, my food always turned out weird and the equipments KABOOM pretty often.


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Food/Travel, Frugal Recipe

Fried beef fettuccine with cheesy toast

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This is yet another of my attempt to be creative in the kitchen. I bought some Australian beef on sale the other day, and didn’t really know what to do with it cuz I kinda got sick of making steaks out of it. I bet Gratitude can’t wait to get his hands on me and shake me til I rattle for screwing around with pasta again.  But I have no doubt that STP and Pete will be very proud of me. LOL.

Anyway, here’s how I do it:

Ingredients for fried beef fettuccine:

Some beef, cut into small pieces

1 egg

3 spoonful of chilli sauce

2 spoonful of ketchup

2 spoonful of oyster sauce

Salt and pepper to taste

1/2 glass of water

1/2 pack of fettuccine, boiled til al dante.

Some oil

Fry the beef until it’s half cooked with some oil, add in the 1/2 glass of water and the oyster sauce.

Dump in the fettuccine, let it sizzle for a while before adding the ketchup and chilli sauce.

Make a ‘hole’ in the middle of the frying pan, and crack in an egg.

Sprinkle some salt and pepper, and stir well. The fettuccine should have sticky texture by now. Take out, and place it in a plate, and prepare the side dish: Cheesy french toast.

Ingredients for cheesy French toast:

1 egg

1 slice of cheddar cheese, shredded

1 teaspoon of chopped garlic

1 teaspoon of mayonnaise (optional)

Some sliced bread (I used some stale bread for this)

Crack the egg into a bowl, shred 1 slice of cheddar cheese into it, add in the chopped garlic and mayonnaise and beat them up before dipping the sliced bread into it.

Pour in some cooking oil into the frying pan, and fry the bread til golden brown. take out, and serve with the fettuccine.

Preparation time for the dish above: 30 minutes

Yield: 3 servings


Cleffairy: The kitchen is my chemistry lab, all right.

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Food/Travel, Frugal Recipe

Soya sauce fettuccine

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I’m a huge fan of pasta, but the Italians would send me to the gallows for not following the rules.

Here’s a yet another quickie fusion recipe from me:

Ingredients:

1 strip of chicken fillet, cut to pieces

1 tablespoon of chopped garlic

7 tablespoon of soya sauce

3 tablespoon of oyster sauce

1/2 glass of water

A dash of pepper

1/2 pack of Fettuccine pasta, boiled til al dante

Some cooking oil

Here’s how you cook the quickie soya sauce Fettucine:

Sauté the chicken with the chopped garlic til fragrant. Add in the soya sauce and oyster sauce as well as 1/2 glass of water and simmer it til the sauce thickens. Add in the fettuccine, and stir will so that the sauce coated the fettuccine evenly. Sprinkle a dash of coarse black pepper on it.

Take out and serve.

Preparation time: 15 minutes

Yield: 3 servings.


Cleffairy: Nobody ever said you have to play by the rules. Rules are meant to be broken. 😀

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Food/Travel, Frugal Recipe

With vengeance

16 Comments

*sigh* Retribution comes without fail. A few weeks back, I tempted some hungry ghosts with my fried sotong. Now, Ghost no.1, Ghost no.2 and Ghost no.3 all ganged up against me at the same time and tempted me with their own fried sotong.

*SOBS* I have no sotong to fry, and therefore, I ended cooking those above. Typical Western junks. Home made cheeseburgers with French fries.

So…junks, anybody?

Cleffairy: Never, ever offend Hungry Ghosts.

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Food/Travel, Frugal Recipe

10 minutes springroll/popiah

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I was craving for some fried popiah the other day, and seeing that I have some popiah skin in the fridge, I decided that some fried popiah will just do for my tea break snacks. Be forewarned, though, my popiah is not your ordinary popiah where the fillings is made of cucumber, turnips or even shredded carrot. My Popiah is the lazy people’s popiah. The fillings is made from  canned sardines. 😀

Ingredients:

1 can of sardines/mackerel in tomato sauce

1 chilli, sliced

1 shallot/Bombay onions, sliced

A bit of lime juice/a sprinkle of salt

Here’s how you do it:

Prepare the fillings by dumping the content of the can into a small bowl and mash the sardines/mackerel. Mix the mashed sardines/mackerel with sliced onion/shallots  and the thinly sliced chillies along with a bit of lime juice/a sprinkle of salt. Mix well.

Wrap up the fillings with the popiah sheets and deep fry them for about 5 minutes or til golden brown.

And serve with your favourite sauce.

Cleffairy: Well, don’t be jealous. I’m the kind who won’t even grow fat even if I’m dipped in a tub of lard or oil!

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Food/Travel, Frugal Recipe

Tomato+ minch meat soup

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I was running out of ideas on what to cook the other day, and recalling that STP used to ask if any of us has ever seen any recipe on the blogs and tried it, I decided to do just that. Seek for some recipe on blogs and share it here with all of you over here.

Initially, I wanted to try making my own version of STP’s nasi goreng cincaluk, but I don’t have any cincaluk. So hop again I went, and this time, I landed on Claire’s blog where she cooked up some sort of tomato soup with minced meat and potatoes quite some time ago.

I thought Claire’s cooking is good and simple enough to cook, and so I decided to cook something similar to that.

I tweaked the original soup that Claire cooked, anyway. While Claire used potatoes, tomatoes and meat, I used tomatoes, button mushrooms and meat instead. I don’t know how Claire did it, but this is how I did it:

Ingredients

4 large tomatoes, cut into half

Some button mushrooms, sliced

100 grams of minched chicken/beef/pork

2 bowls of water

1 teaspoon of sugar

Salt and pepper to taste

Oil

Heat up some oil, sauté the sliced mushrooms and meat until fragrant with some ground black peppers and sugar. Add in 2 bowls of water, and throw in the tomatoes and bring to boil.

Observe the soup. When the tomatoes turned mushy, that means the soup is ready. Take out and serve it with your favourite bread or plain rice.

Preparation time: 15 minutes

Yield: 2 servings

Cleffairy: I’m going to ask the same question as STP. Have you ever tried any recipe that you saw on the blogs that you visited regularly?

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A Penny For Your Thoughts, Down The Memory Lane, Fairy's Tale, Food/Travel, Frugal Recipe, Time Heals What Love And Reason Cannot

Cleffairy’s Simple Mee Jawa

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I couldn’t help myself when I saw STP’s post on mee jawa the other day, and it sent me down the memory lane, to the time where my late grandma was still alive. Being a nyonya, she was very particular when it comes to food.

She spent most of her time in the kitchen to feed the family. Her day began as early as 6am and ended usually after 10pm. Typical meals in her house would be breakfast, lunch, hi-tea and supper.

On Saturday or Sunday, when her children and grandchildren visit, she would often prepare Mee Jawa for lunch. It’s one of her specialty, and the recipe was passed down to my mum, and later on, to me and all her granddaughters whom she considered old enough to cook;usually, at the age of 7. There were no written recipes though. All of us had to memorize the recipe and the steps by heart.

I was craving Mee Jawa the other day, and so I decided to cook some for my family, but I don’t think it did justice to my grandmother’s recipe, cuz I… *ahem* simplified it.

Ingredients:

1 packet of yellow noodles/spaghetti

200gm shrimps cleaned, de-shelled and grinded

500gm chicken bones

5 shallots, sliced thinly

3 garlic, sliced thinly

5 tablespoon of tomato sauce

3 tablespoon of chilli paste

Some bean-sprout (optional)

Fried beancurd

Vegetable fritters ( you can fry em yourself or get them from your nearest mamak stall)

1 Boiled egg

1 potato boiled/fried

So here’s how I modified my late grandma’s recipe.

Make the soup stock by boiling together the chicken bone and the shrimp. And heat up the oil in the wok. Sauté the shallots and garlic til fragrant. Add in the chilli paste and tomato sauce and let it sizzle for a while before adding the soup stock. Stir, and add in the yellow noodles/spaghetti. Simmer for 5 minutes and  garnish with the sliced fried beancurd and sliced boiled potatoes. Add in some bean sprout if you wish, but that is optional. I just used a bit of it in my recipe cuz I can’t take beansprouts.

Note: Add in some vegetable fritters/fried keropok if you happen to have them.

Yield: 3 servings

Preparation time: 30 mins


Cleffairy: Having a trip down the memory lane makes me hungry!

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