Stir Fried Pumpkin with Eggs

Never did I know that stir-frying pumpkin can be so scrumptious.  I saved some of the pumpkin fresh from a pumpkin that we carved earlier.  I had pumpkin porridge before and I really liked it as it was sweet and filling.  But I know my girls don't really fancy porridge so I thought I would try something different.

I stir fried zucchini with this recipe and we all loved it, so why not try it with pumpkin.  It was my first time cooking a stir-frying pumpkin and it was so yummy.  The fish sauce gave this dish an extra boost.  If you have extra fresh pumpkin at home, give this dish a try!  I took this picture at night, so it did not look very appetizing, but don't be fooled by it's look, this is a dish I will make again and again.

Ingredients:

1/4 of a medium Pumpkin, julienne

1/4 cup of dried shrimps, soften in warm water and drain

3 cloves of garlic, minced

2 large eggs, beaten and seasoned with soy sauce and white pepper

(A)

Fish sauce to taste

Salt (optional)

1 tsp. sugar

1 tsp. chicken stock powder

Method:

1.  In a heated wok, add in some cooking oil.  When hot, add in the beaten eggs, stir-fry until cooked.  

2.  Scoop the eggs to the side of the wok, add in garlic and dried shrimps in the remaining oil, stir-fry until garlic is slightly golden and dried shrimps are fragrant.  Add in pumpkins and mix all together and stir-fry well.

3.  Stir-fry until pumpkin is cooked and soften.  Season with (A).  Serve hot!

Steamed Eggs with Topping

I didn't know how to steam a smooth eggs before but now I know.  I learned it from watching the Chinese cooking show.  I have been watching the CCTV 4 "Everyday Food" Chinese cooking show and learned some cooking tips from there.  I learned this steamed eggs with topping from that show as well.  Have been seeing two different Chinese chefs making this dish with their variation of topping and find it doable!  I have not seen people steamed eggs this way before, we normally steamed it plain or with minced pork or with salted egg or thousand years old egg in Malaysia.  So, this way of serving is new to me.  The chefs guarantee this way of steaming eggs will produce a smooth and silky soft eggs and they made it seem so easy so of course I had to try it myself.

Well, they were right, it is really that easy to produce a smooth and soft steamed eggs.  Now I have a new dish to prepare for my family.  We all loved this easy dish and with the topping, I can even make it a one dish meal.  This dish is suitable for young and old alike as the steamed eggs make it easy to swallow.

Ingredients:

3 large eggs

Topping:

10 large shrimps, each shrimp cut into 4 pieces

1 small carrot, cut into small cubes

1/4 cup frozen green peas

2 cloves of garlic, minced

Seasonings: salt, sugar, white pepper, chicken stock granules.

Sesame oil and cornstarch water (cornstarch:water, 1:2).

Method:

1.  Beat the eggs and add some water, Eggs to water amount is 1:1.  Season with salt and white pepper. Beat again and strain into a 9" Pyrex pie plate.  Cover with a cling wrap and steam on high heat for 8 minutes.  Set aside.

2.  While steaming, prepare the rest of the ingredients.  Heat up a wok, when heated, add in a little oil.  Add in garlic and shrimps, stir-fry a little, add in carrot and green peas, stir-fry well.

3.  Add in some water (about 1/2 cup) and seasonings.  Stir well.  Add thickening (cornstarch water) and lastly a dash of sesame oil to finish.  Pour the thicken sauce on top of the steamed eggs to serve.

Chives Fried Eggs

As I mentioned earlier, I am going to buy more chives from now on as eating chives is good for our body as it said to be mild-antibiotic, anti-inflammation, antioxidant and prevent certain types of cancer.  Just do a search to read more about the benefits of chives.  Sharing with you is another way of enjoying chives the delicious way.  I think this is one pretty common dish for people who eats chives regularly.

This is definitely an easy dish to prepare, even for people who don't normally have chives in their diet, but wanted to eat for prevention, like me who just started.  My girls loved fried eggs and they had a hard time picking out the chives and thus had to eat it.  My elder girl is the worst, she doesn't like green onion, yellow onion (basically onion of any kind), mushrooms (except Enoki), tomato, pieces of ginger and she would just picked it out from the food.  What got me upset was the little one wants to imitate her sister, now she also followed her sister and picked out those food to set aside on her plate (she used to eat everything!). *sigh*

What other delicious way do you cook your chives?  I added it in stir fried noodle, bean sprouts (coming soon), and this fried eggs, what else?

Ingredients:

A bunch of chives, chopped it

3 eggs

Soy sauce (about 1/2 Tbsp.)

Dashes of white peppers

A little garlic powder

Some dried onion flakes

Method:

1.  In a bowl, mix all ingredients together and beat until combined.

2.  Heat the wok, add in some oil.  When hot, add in the beaten eggs mixture.  Fried until eggs were cooked.

Stir Fried Chicken with Eggs (雞肉炒滑蛋)

We had a beef version of this dish in Denver authentic Chinese restaurant and loved it. The beef was tender and the eggs was smooth. Since I don't buy beef at home and trying to cut down on pork intake, I used chicken breast instead. I added milk in the eggs mixture to give it some milk fragrant.

Growing up in Asia, fresh milk is not in our diet at all. All we had were milk powder and we only consumed it when we were kids. Coming here in America, I noticed that people drink fresh milk all the times, not just for breakfast, but anytime they want. It was a culture shock at first. Even to these days, a lot of Asian can't get use to the taste of fresh milk. In China, in order to let the children or elders have some fresh milk, they used it in eggs or bakes or dessert. For example, instead of water that the recipe calls for, they used milk instead. It makes the food more nutritious and also added the fragrant of fresh milk (奶香). I thought that was brilliant!

Ingredients:

1 skinless and boneless chicken breast, thinly sliced and marinate with rose wine, sesame oil, salt, pepper, sugar, garlic powder and cornstarch.

4 eggs, add some 2% milk (about 1/4 cup) and season with rice wine, salt, white pepper and chicken stock granules, beat well.

1 green chili, sliced

Method:

1. In a heated wok, add in some oil and stir-fry the chicken slices until cooked, dish out and set aside.

2. In the same heated wok, add in more oil and turn the heat to medium. Add in the beaten eggs, keep stirring the eggs. When half cook, add in the chicken slices and green chili. Mix well and dish out to serve.

Special Fried Eggs

Why is this fried eggs so special? Because I added black sesame seeds in it! Sesame seed has antioxidant and anti-cancer properties and rich in iron, magnesium, copper, calcium, manganese and contains vitamin B1 and E. It is pretty hard to incorporate sesame seeds into our diet unless we use sesame oil frequently or eat cookies or bread made with sesame seeds. So, one day when preparing my beaten eggs for stir-fried, I saw my bottle of black sesame seeds in the cabinet and thought why not. I could hardly taste the sesame seeds at all, so my girls ate it with no problem. Well, unless of course you have an allergy reaction towards sesame seeds, this will be another way to consume sesame seeds.

Evy had some sort of reaction like swelling of eyelid, face and lips and hives on her body. We took her to her pediatrician and he said it was an allergic reaction. Now I am wondering whether it is the sesame seeds. Since she started having diarrhea after consuming some toasted sesame seeds noodle, but what strange was she had sesame seeds cookies, sesame chicken, sesame seeds oil cooking before and never encountered any allergic reaction. After two days of observation, I finally discovered the cause, and it was the new non-stick pan that I bought. Now, it's all fell into pieces as she started having diarrhea when I started using the new pan. After that, she started having hives and swollen lip, etc. I gave her the allergy medicine and it was all gone, she was having the sesame chicken and peanut butter & jam bread with no problem. And then, after she had some fried eggs cooked with the new pan, her condition resurfaced. So, that was how I found out it was the new non-stick pan, otherwise, I would not have thought of this. As this is the only new thing that I bought recently and used. So now, back to my good old wok. At the mean time, also wondering what's in the new non-stick coating that made her have such an allergic reaction.

Ingredients:

4 large eggs
A handful of fresh cilantro, thinly sliced
2 tsp. black sesame seeds
A little milk (I used 2%)
1 tbsp. dried onion flakes
White pepper to taste
Salt to taste
1/2 tsp. Chicken granules (optional)

Method:

1. In a bowl, cracked in the eggs, beaten well. Add a little milk and the rest of the ingredients. Beat well.

2. In a hot non-stick wok pan, add in some cooking oil of your choice. When hot, pour in the beaten eggs batter. Cooked, flipped on both sides until cooked. Serve hot.

Scrambled Eggs with Shrimps and Asparagus

Have you tried scrambled eggs with asparagus or asparagus omelet? Let me tell you, it is delicious. I happened to discover it by accident three plus years ago when I was trying to finish few asparagus left in my refrigerator. Now, I used it often to fry eggs. Try my omelet recipe here.

Ingredients:

Asparagus, about 10, chopped
8 large shrimps, cut into small pieces, 4 in 1
1/2 carrot, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 cup of chopped cilantro (optional)
3-4 large eggs, beaten, season with soy sauce and white pepper
1 tsp. chicken stock granules
Oil for cooking (olive or canola)

Method:

1. In a wok, heat up some cooking oil. When heated, add in garlic, fry a little while, add in shrimps. Cook until shrimp is almost cooked, add in chopped asparagus, carrot and chicken granules. Stir-fry until asparagus is cooked.

2. Add chopped cilantro (if used) in the seasoned beaten eggs, mixed well. Pour it on top of the asparagus and shrimps in the wok. Stir fry the eggs and mixture together until eggs are cooked. Serve hot.

Eggs Zucchini

Another of my newly created eggs dish with zucchini. I never cooked this dish before because this version of the eggs were more soggy and soft. But I wanted to try something different again. I think I really converted my hubby from not eating zucchini to eat zucchini because he never liked it before. Now I used it to stir-fry and even in cooking curry and he ate it all. This simple dish turned out to be surprisingly delicious. I will sure to cook it again.

Ingredients:

1 zucchini, thinly sliced like above picture
2 Tbsp. of Chinese dried shrimps, soaked until soften, drained
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
3 eggs, beaten and seasoned with salt
1 tsp. chicken stock granules
Salt to taste
Canola oil for cooking

Method:

1. In a wok, heat up the oil. When heated, add in the dried shrimps and garlic. Stir-fry until fragrant, add in the zucchini. Stir-fry until the zucchini is cooked, add in beaten eggs.

2. Stir until eggs are cooked and season with salt and chicken granules. Dish out and serve.

Chai Po Tan (菜脯蛋) / Salted Turnips Omelet

Chai Po Tan or 菜脯蛋 is one common home cook eggs dish at my house. My husband and Evy love anything with eggs, either boiled eggs, eggs in soup, scrambled eggs, omelet or stir-fry eggs. This salted turnips omelet is something I had when I was small so naturally I love to buy and cook this for my family. Here's my recipe to share, for newbies who doesn't know how to make this easy dish. :P Good with rice or porridge!

Ingredients:

1/4 cup of minced sweet salted turnips (can easily get it at Asian store)
3 eggs
2 tbsp. of chopped scallions (optional)
1/2 tsp. light soy sauce
1/4 tsp. white pepper powder
About 3 Tbsp. of cooking oil

Method:

1. In a bowl, break the eggs, add in the salted turnips, scallions, soy sauce and white pepper. Whisk until well blended. Set aside.

2. Heat wok with oil. When smoking hot, pour in the beaten eggs. Stir and flip to cook both sides. Dish out to serve.

Scramble Eggs with Sweet Snap Peas and Preserved Veggie

I was left with some sweet snap peas, not enough to make a dish, just enough to use it as a side to a dish. So, I was cracking my brain again and decided to try it in scramble eggs. I love this crunchy snap peas and thought it would be great in scramble eggs or an omelette. I also have some preserved veggie (chai por) that I needed to finish so it went into the scramble eggs.

Ingredients:

3-4 large eggs, whipped with soy sauce, white pepper

1/4 cup of preserved veggie (chai por)

1 cup of cut sweet snap peas

Cooking oil

Method:

1. Heat the wok with cooking oil. When heated, add in the chai por and sweet snap peas. Stir-fry until the snap peas are cooked. Then, add in the eggs. Scramble until the eggs are cooked and dish out to serve.

Note: Instead of scrambling the eggs, you can do an omelette.

Disaster Steamed Eggs?

What do you think? Disaster? Or just plain ugly? LOL!

I got tempted by Singarishgirl's Steamed Triple Eggs and decided to steam minced meat eggs for dinner. This will be my 2nd time making the steamed eggs as my first time was unsuccessful and I was never tempted to make it again. This time I'm using Soy & Pepper Chawanmushi recipe and pray for the best. Oh well, not exactly the same, but I used the 3 eggs and 500ml water/stock measurement.

It turned out way better than my first attempt. The outer ring of the steamed eggs was actually very smooth. Actually it was smooth but got lots of liquid came out from the ground turkey (Note: Ground pork would be more fragrant). I marinated the ground turkey with soy sauce, white pepper and sesame oil and mixed in some "chai po" (Chinese preserved veggie). See, the oil also came out from the ground meat and made the surface looking like that. And my whole piece of ground meat floated to the top instead of stayed down nicely. Anyone knows why? Is it because the liquid amount is very high in this steamed eggs recipe and made the meat float? I ended out steaming mine for 40 minutes. I guess it's because mine was a big bowl as compared to her individual smaller bowls. But I like how smooth the steamed eggs tasted and will certainly make this again (my girls loved it too, but not the hubby though) without the ground meat and try the oven version. :o)