Sometimes I need a break from Asian food - I will cook Italian instead 😉

This herbal chicken soup is sweet. Most herbal chicken soup can be bitter and kids do not like them. This soup, however, is sweet due to the ingredients used. With a combination of American dried fig, red dates, honey dates, gojiberries, dried longan, pei ji and yuk chuk , you can be assured of a sweet tasting soup filled with goodness. This amount of herbs used in this soup are estimates only and do not come under any special recipe from the chinese medicine store.

The herbs used are from top (clockwise) - red dates, dried longans, american dried figs, pei ji, honey dates and yuk chuk. Kei chee is not shown in the picture but you can see them floating on the 1st picture above.

This is my wife’s recipe for Herbal Chicken Soup Read the rest of this entry »

Steamed egg custard has probably got to be one of the easiest dishes to cook but difficult to master and make perfect. Using just eggs, water and salt, you can whip up a nice smooth custard looking dish or one which is less desirable in experience much unlike the craters of the moon if you don’t get the technique right.

The Steamed Egg Custard is just the basic recipe as you can improvise it by adding other ingredients as you like. The Chawanmushi, which is the Japanese Steamed Egg Custard, is a more elaborate version with other ingredients like mushrooms, crab stick and chicken meat. You can always start learning with something simple like this Steamed Egg Custard recipe before attempting the more difficult ones with added ingredients.

This is my wife’s recipe for Steamed Egg Custard Read the rest of this entry »

Ngor Hiang is also known as 5 spices in Hokkien. Ground into powder, you get the 5-spice powder. However, the funny thing is that Ngor Hiang also refers to this dish – which is essentially prawn and pork rolled in a soya skin. In Penang, they call it Lor Bak or Lobak whilst for us from Johor, we call it Heh Chor. There are many variants for the ingredients used but the main ingredients are prawns, pork and of course, the 5-spice powder. The 5 spice powder is popularly used for dishes like Chinese Stewed Duck and Kong Bak.

This Ngor Hiang recipe makes about 13 rolls using 1 piece of soya skin (fuchok). The soft soya skin is used rather than the usual hard-type which is commonly used for other dishes like Ginkgo Barley Dessert. It is not an easy dish to prepare as it can be a bit labourious preparing the ingredients, rolling them up and finally, frying them. However, this tasty Ngor Hiang is bound to make you eat non-stop. It is delicious on its own or a great accompaniment to steamed white rice. For added taste, give it a dip into chilli or tomato sauce.

This is my wife’s recipe for Ngor Hiang / Prawn and Pork Roll Read the rest of this entry »