Sweet Pea Journey

Family, Friendship, Food, Fun and Everything in Between!

Tagged: Healthy and tasty

Cooking

Tomato and Fried Egg Noodle

This noodle dish is such a comforting, healthy yet flavorful dish. You can easily make it a non-spicy version for kids. Such a quick treat!

Ingredients:

2 eggs

1 roma tomato, sliced into wedges

1 small bundle of asparagus, bottom trimmed and cut at an angle about 1.5 inch pieces

a bunch of napa cabbage leaves, washed and torn into large pieces

2 green onions, thinly sliced

2 cloves of garlic, minced

1 chicken bullion

3 servings of thin dried Chinese noodles

2 spicy chilies, optional

Method:

Heat up about 2 TBSP vegetable oil in a medium size nonstick soup pot, pour the lightly beaten eggs into the pot, scramble for a minute or so, until the eggs are just set.

Add in minced garlic and tomatoes and stir fry for a minute or two until tomato wedges are softened and falling apart. Add garlic and chilies if using, stir fry until fragrant.

Add about 4 cups of water, bring it to a rapid boil. Add the chicken bullion to dissolve.

Add the super thin noodles into the soup. It will look like there isn’t enough water, but bare with it. Use a pair of chopsticks and move around the noodles constantly, so they don’t stick together. The noodles would soak up most of the liquid. Don’t panic. Add all the leafy greens into the pot too, yes, it will seem impossible… Looks like something like this:

Patiently and carefully turn the noodles over, on top of the leafy greens. Leaves will soon wilt into almost nothing.

Taste for flavor, add salt as needed. Add sliced green onions and serve!

Cooking

Steamed Eggplant Salad

Y’all, this one is one of my childhood favorite! If you can take spices, you will love this one! It’s super appetizing, you can serve it as an appetizer or a vegetable main dish. You can leave out the spicy oil and make it more kid friendly.

Ingredients:

1 American egg plant, or 2 Japanese eggplants. I prefer the skinnier version Japanese eggplants for this dish because it’s tenderer and the skin is softer too. But all I had was 1 ginormous eggplant, so I used that one.

about 4 TBSP of my signature spicy sauce. Leave out the spices if you prefer mild version.

2 green onions, thinly sliced

Method:

Cut the eggplant into roughly 2 inch slices. Put eggplant slices into a large bowl and steam in a steamer (if you have one) for 10 minutes.

If you don’t have a steamer, do what I did, put a wire tray, or 3 aluminum foil balls at the bottom of the large pot, fill water to about 1 inch deep – you only need about 10 minutes anyways. Put your eggplant bowl on top of the wire tray or aluminum foil balls.

Once eggplant is cooked, kill the heat, take the bowl out carefully to cool. Pull the eggplant into strips, or cut into strips. If you are using Japanese eggplant, you will be able to pull it into strips, I find the large American eggplant it is harder to pull, you can cut with a knife though.

Put all egg plant strips back into the bowl, after dumping out the liquid accumulated at the bottom of the bowl. Drizzle with my signature spicy sauce, top with green onion. Mix well and serve!

Cooking

Asparagus and Bellpepper Stir Fry

Another simple yet scrumptious dish. Super easy to make and very satisfying.

Ingredients:

1 bundle of asparagus

1 yellow bell pepper, use yellow for color contrast. Red or orange would do too.

4 slices of fresh ginger

2 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp pepper

1/2 tsp ground cumin

Method:

Prepare asparagus properly. By properly, I mean you have to snap each asparagus towards the bottom part, so the tough portion of the asparagus would naturally fall off. I can not stress enough, a tough bite of asparagus REALLY kills this dish. But don’t worry, you are not really wasting anything. Save the tough pieces in a Ziploc bag in the fridge for next soup you make. They add a nice refreshing flavor to the soup.

Cut the asparagus at a diagonal, roughly 2 inches long. Clean the bell pepper, remove seeds and the white membrane inside. Cut into thin strips, this way asparagus and the bell pepper will be roughly the same size.

Thinly slice your ginger and mince garlic. Then you are ready for the fire.

Pan on fire, medium high heat, about 2 TBSP vegetable oil into the pan, heat up the oil for about a minute. In goes the ginger slices and garlic. Move the aromatics around for about 30 seconds without burning the garlic.

In goes the prepared asparagus and bell pepper. Stir fry for about 3 minutes. You don’t want to overcook the vegetables, all you want is slightly soften them, that way the vegetables preserve the nutrients and the crisp texture.

Add salt, pepper and ground cumin, and mix well. Kill the heat and dish up. The cumin is the secret ingredient here, it gives the dish a little extra oomph, and also a bit of a smoky and almost fajita like taste. It’s quite nice.

Cooking

Tomato Egg Drop Soup

This is a fancier version of the all time favorite soup of Chinese restaurants. Believe it or not, one tomato makes a huge difference.

Ingredients:

1 ripe tomato, any variety

4 eggs, lightly beaten

1 heaping TBSP corn starch, dissolved in 3 TBSP cold water, give or take

about 4 cups of water + 1 chicken bullion cube, or 4 cups of chicken stock

Salt to taste

Method:

Boil liquid in a stock pot, add chicken bullion if using it. Score the top of the tomato, just deep enough to break the skin. Once liquid is boiling, put tomato into the pot for about 15 seconds, turn tomato around, so all sides are submerged in boiling liquid. This helps the skin come off easily.

Using a slotted spoon or a regular spoon, take out the tomato, lay on the cutting board for a minute or so to let cool. Peel tomato and cut tomato into wedges or bite size chunks. Shape doesn’t matter much. Put tomato back into the pot and let it boil for a few minutes. The broth will turn slightly pink, and some foam may form on top of the broth. Skim the form off with a spoon if you wish.

Once tomato chunks are soft, give the dissolved corn starch one good stir and slowly drizzle into the pot. The broth shall slightly thicken and seems slightly cloudy in color. Once it comes to a boil again, lower heat to medium low, and slowly drizzle in the beaten egg. Add salt to taste. Enjoy!

Cooking

Chicken Casserole Rice, Sort of

My daughter just had 3 teeth pulled. I made something soft, nutritious and tasty food that is least irritating to her gum.

So this is what I came up with – sort of a chicken casserole rice dish, whipped up on the whim.

Ingredients:

3 chicken thighs, skin on, bone-in, that’s what I got, so don’t judge me. Feel free to use boneless skinless breast or thigh, all good.

1 medium onion, diced

1 carrot, diced

1 small head of broccoli, cut up into small pieces

1 chicken bouillon cube

1 can of cream of chicken

salt to taste

1 tsp dried parsley

2 cups of rice

 

Method:

Fill a medium pot with water, boil chicken on high and turn heat to medium after boiling. Don’t worry if you had a lot of water, you will use this broth to make rice.

Prep all veggies, clean, peel, dice up.

In a large pot, add 2 tbsp oil, put on high heat. Add onions and stir till onions are softened. Then add broccoli and carrot. Sprinkle some salt to help veggies soften.

Add 2 cups of rice, stir for a minute or two to taste rice. Fish out chicken and put on a cutting board to cool. Dump all broth into rice pot. Add chicken bouillon cube, stir, cover and lower heat to medium. Boil rice for about 15 minutes. Make sure there is enough liquid, if not, add water to at least cover rice by 1 inch.

While the chicken is cooling, I was digging around in the pantry to see what I had on hand to thicken the rice a bit in the end, something that will make it a bit creamy. Since I didn’t want to add too much cheese into it – I know, I am Asian, didn’t grow up on cheese, sorry. I found a can of cream of chicken.

 

After I chopped up chicken, roughly 15 minutes into cooking rice, I added the cream of chicken into rice, and filled up the can with water twice, and dumped water into the pot too. Mix the cream of chicken into rice.

Add all chicken, I actually threw the bones and skin back into the rice for flavor. In the end I will fish these out and discard. Mix well, add dried parsley. Taste for salt and doneness of rice. I added about 1 more tsp of salt.

My rice was cooked through, but still got a bit of a bite to it. I want the rice to be quite soft so it is really easy for kids to eat, especially my daughter at the moment, until she feels better. So I killed the heat, put the lid on the pot and let the residual heat to keep cooking the rice and the rice will soak up more juices.

 

Cooking

Pork Belly Street Ramen

Ramen noodle is my latest obsession, besides tacos, well, that’s another post, another day.

As usual, I had to put my own twist on it. I combined Chinese traditional Pork Belly stew and Ramen noodle, and tons of vegetables, the result? I couldn’t stop eating it!

Anyway, the main take-away here is, whatever your favorite food is, you can always make a street Ramen version of it, and make it healthy.

I made Chinese pork belly stew, simply because that’s one of the family top favorite. All the men in my household LOVE this dish. And of course, for ladies, I added tons of vegetables. All ingredients are laid out, plus bean sprouts in the bag.

I brought water to a boil and dumped Ramen from the bags into boiling water and immediately killed the heat. Lid on and soaked for about 3 minutes. I do not want to fully cook the Ramen and make it soggy, just want it soft enough and still a bit under cooked, because I have a bigger plan – I want my Ramen to fully cook in pork belly stew juices and soak up ALL the goodness flavors! Yep, genius, I know!

Stainless steel wok on high heat, oil in, 2 eggs cracked directly into wok, and stirred up with a spatula. I went in with all veggies at the same time and the sliced garlic. Order doesn’t matter much, since in my case, pretty much all vegetables I chose to use are quite hearty, nothing too delicate that needs to be separated. Well, except for bean sprouts, but that is ALWAYS the last thing going into the wok, after killing the heat.

I sprinkled salt and chicken bouillon on the vegetables and stir fried them for a couple of minutes until they are slightly softened. In goes the softened Ramen noodles. I used a large ladle, scooped pork belly stew with juices onto Ramen, oh yeah… just like that, don’t worry about getting too much juices, because there is still room in Ramen noodles to soak up more liquid, this is going to be amazing!

Use two spatulas if needed, stir the noodles and veggies and pork around, I pick up a bundle with 2 spatulas and put them to the other side of the wok and repeat, until the color of the pork stew juices is evenly distributed throughout the noodles, and everything is mixed up beautifully. Now, very important, taste for additional seasoning. I know my pork belly stew was perfect if I ate it like that, but because I used that as a flavoring for my Ramen and veggies, you never know if the flavor is still strong enough to flavor the whole wok of goodness. Add more soy sauce, oyster sauce and a splash of sesame oil if needed. Kill the heat and throw in the bean sprouts (to be honest with you, I forget it 50% of the time :p )

Dish up and enjoy, or eat straight out of the wok, I won’t judge!

 

Cooking

Breakfast Sandwich – The One You Will Keep Making

If you are like me, I have the least amount of breakfast ideas, compared to main dish and desserts. But this one, I promise, is a keeper, and you can make so many alternations to it and dress it up or down.

Ingredients:

2 English muffins, split and toasted / broiled, you can use whole wheat, for even healthier option

Half an avocado, smashed

2 slices of ripe tomato

2 slices of bacon, cut in half and cooked

2 eggs

2 tbsp grated Parmesan cheese

2 slices of provolone cheese

freshly ground pepper

 

Method:

In a dry pan, put grated Parmesan cheeses into 2 piles, lightly flatten out into discs, about 2 inch diameter each. Pan on medium heat, Parmesan will start bubbling and melt quickly. Crack an egg on each pile, poke yolk for quicker cooking, or leave yolk whole for runnier yolk for the sandwich. Don’t worry about the looks, mine happened to be one poked yolk, one whole yolk – perfection!

When egg white starts to set, gently tri-fold the Parmesan cheese over eggs, make it small enough to fit the sandwich. In the meantime, slice tomatoes and cut prepare avocado.

 

Once the English muffins are toasted to your liking, spread mashed avocado on the bottom halves and sprinkle with freshly ground black pepper (I had to go fancy, and cracked the multi-color peppers on it). Top that with tomato slice, go shy than piling too much tomato, it will get watery and slippery for other toppings. Top tomato with toasted Parmesan wrapped eggs, then a slice of provolone, more cracked black pepper, bacon strips and cap it off with the English muffin top.

Enjoy!