Sweet and Sour Sardine Dish

This is one of my go to dishes whenever I only have 15 minutes to prepare a meal. Just opened a can of sardine, chop the other ingredients, 

  Stir fry on the pot, then Ta Da!

 Sweet and Sour Sardine Dish

Ingredients:

Stir-Fried Si-Gua / Chinese Okra with Salted Egg

We first tasted this dish at a local Taiwanese restaurant in town. It was so good that we kept coming back to order it. After a few trials in the kitchen, I finally found the winning recipe. Well, at least it won my hubby's approval.

A little note: I think that the salted duck eggs from Taiwan taste better than the others we found at Asian Supermarket.  I also prefer buying the Chinese Okra from local farmer market if they are in season.

Crispy Baked Chicken

Our family love El Pollo Loco Chicken so I challenged my self to make the homemade version with organic chicken. A few weeks ago I shared some of this chicken with my neighbor and she said her picky eater son like it a lot. Yayyyy

First thing first:

Season the chicken with plenty of salt and pepper. I also add dashes of Old Bay Seasoning

then brown chicken on skin side for about 5 minutes (this can get pretty messy with the oil splatting all over so you may want to do it outside)

Homemade Lasagna Recipe

The boys are into Garfield books these days. I am not a fan but I let them read those books as long as they are also reading other books that I picked from the library. Anyway, lasagna is Garfield's favorite food so they asked if I can cook it. They pretty much involved in my menu planning nowadays.

I tried to cook it a few times and my boys do not like the ricotta/ cottage cheese so I use sliced Muenster Cheese instead. I called this our family lasagna because we tweak the recipe according to our preference. If you are looking for the real classic lasagna please do not follow this recipe but if you trust our taste then please give it a try.  :)

Quesadillas

My neighbor and friend, Silvi, taught me how to make this one day. Since then I have been making it often. This is also one of my go to meal for camping or at lunch time when we don't have any dinner left over.

Ingredients:
Flour Tortillas. My favorite is this one from Trader Joe's:


Next is cheese. Any kind would do but Silvi told me Muenster is her favorite, not too cheesy or too salty.

Cooking Beef Bourguignon with Pressure Cooker

I was inspired to cook Beef Bourguignon when I read my friend Marina's post about her cooking it on her blog a few years ago. However, I didn't own a dutch oven, I still don't have one until now, in addition, it was summer time when I wanted to give it a try and there's no way I would turn on the oven for 4 hours. So I tried other way to cook the dish: using pressure cooker or instapot.

The ingredients

The cooking process:

Homemade Macaroni and Cheese

When my friend, Meilina dropped off her kids for a playdate one day she brought along a homemade Mac and Cheese. She said, "I hope you like it. My kids like this more than the blue box one". We like it too. It's indeed better, way better. Want some?

Ingredients:

The process:

Cook the macaroni in a big pot. In separate pan, melt the butter, cook the spam:

Add the flour:

Mapo Tofu is one staple Chinese dish. There are many variations of this dish and this one is my favorite taught by my friend, Lily who made this dish one day when I came over to her place. Not only it's delicious but easy and quick to make as well.

First prepare all the ingredients:


After a few minutes of stir-frying it's ready to be enjoyed:


Enjoy with rice and chili

Mapo Tofu

Printable Recipe

Cook time: 15 minutes
Ingredients:

3 Tb oil

3 cloves of garlic

1 box (about 3 oz.) tofu (medium firm) - cut into 1 cm square cubes

1 cup ground pork

1 cup medium size shrimp

½ to ¾ cup water

2 Tb oyster sauce

1 Tb fish sauce (or soy sauce)

1 teaspoon Tapioca Starch mixed with 1 Tb water

1 Green onion - chop into small pieces

Pepper - as prefer

Direction:

Heat pan, then add the oil, when the oil is hot, add the garlic and ground pork - stir fry 'till they changed color.

Add the shrimp, tofu, oyster, fish or soy sauce, pepper, and water - cook 'till boiled.

Turn down the heat. Add the tapioca starch mixture and green onion stir gently 'till thicken. That's it!
Eat with rice and chili.

Lemongrass Chicken

My sister in law cooked this for us when we visited them last year. I love it and like it even more when I learned it's easy to make and can be frozen.