Steamed Tofu Serve with Fried Mix Vegetables #SundaySupper

Back to School Meals is this week #SundaySupper theme, hosted by Nicole Cook from Daily Dish Recipes.  Thanks Nicole for having such a great idea of theme that perfectly match for  #SundaySupper,  that has a mission to help to bring families together around the family table.  It is not easy to come out with a good meal plan for dinner after a busy day especially for those who have children.  Even though I do not have any children but this theme definitely is very useful for me too.  

As a working profession who has to spend more than 10 hours outside, I always value a quick and easy meal preparation too.  As for me who always will be earlier to reach home earlier than Simon by 30 to 45 minutes only.  So, just imagine, I am just like those rushing parents, to make sure the dinner is done or at least almost done when your loved one is home.  I always treasure for those quick, simple and easy recipes and am so happy I have about 50 over of the #SundaySupper members who is going to share their tips today.

Today I am going to share with all of you - Steamed Tofu Serve with Fried Mix Vegetables.  I have chosen the fried tofu as I like the savory taste  of it.  This recipe took about 30 minutes to be ready and the wonderful thing is you can come out with another dish from it.  How?  You can prepare a little more portion for the fried mix vegetables which suppose to be pour on top of the steamed tofu.  What I did was, I will take out 3/4 of the portions of the fried mix vegetables which I stir fried with some minced meat until it turned brownish and fragrance, before I add in with water that mixed with corn starch and other seasoning ingredients.  

The fried mix vegetables with minced meat always can be your second dish for your dinner or for me I will keep and fridge for my next meal.  This dish is perfectly goes with plain porridge or you can use it to make braised noodles, or even to go with pasta like spaghetti.  

Stewed Chicken with Beer

This was my first experience cooking with a can of beer.  I am not a beer person nor a wine fancy too.  I was thinking it will be make sense if I use it as one of my cooking ingredients.  The Chinese community usually will use the processed home-made white rice wine to cook chicken together with a large amount of ginger, is a main dish for those ladies during their confinement month to warm their body and health protection.

I believed beer which contains grain, herbs, water and yeast could easily enhance and blend into the flavors of the dish just like wine.  I have chosen the brand "Tiger" as I like the bitter taste of the beer.  If you like sweeter taste, you may go for other brands, is up to your taste of you may cut down the amount instead of putting in the whole can.

I marinade the chicken with ground black pepper and salt for about an hour before cooking.  It has added the complexity and the dept of the dish when its cook together with the beer.  It turns out great and I love it very much and am sure you will like it too!

Steam Mushroom Dumplings with Dried Shrimp

This recipe was in my mind for the past month.  Is a sort of "dim sum" (Chinese  small-bite food) or what we call as snack.  Normally, mushroom dumplings will prepared with others stuffed food that used minced meat or fish paste or mixture of both like - stuff tofu, stuff okra, stuff eggplant, etc or all these will be categorized under a very popular Chinese food in Malaysia named "Yong Tau Foo" or stuffed food, whereby all these stuffed food will be deep-fried before it serve in a bowl of clear soup or in another way is to deep it with special-made gravy processed from yellow beans or chili sauce.

As both Simon and myself are heading to a healthy lifestyle so I have decided to make some changes on the dish and make sure we won't miss out any delicious food at the same time.  I have changed the conventional way deep-frying to steaming.  Steaming is wonderful way of cooking that promise you that food that you cook will not lost its nutrients and of course it will keep the original taste of the food at the same time.  How wonderful it is!

Is a quite simple and easy method of dish.  I choose minced lean pork and blended it together with others ingredient to form a smooth and moist paste.  To make it more tastier, I have added in with chopped dried shrimp into the paste.  Hope you will like it!

Julia's Chicken Salad #CookForJulia #SundaySupper

I am super exciting with this week #SundaySupper!  This week #SundaySupper is celebrating Julia Child's 100th Birthday.  Hosted by one of #SundaySupper family members - Samantha from The Little Ferraro Kitchen.  Thanks to Samantha's great idea, that have made me to get to know more about this legend.

After reading all about Julia, am so fascinated with her enthusiastic spirit to learn French  cuisine - from enrolling in cooking and French classes up to talking to the fish mongers, bakers and fruit sellers.  And from there on, she has addicted and how she begins with her food life.  

“Find something you're passionate about and keep tremendously interested in it.” ― Julia Child.  I guess this is one of most fundamental requirement for every successful story.

After gone through few pages on the her web of her recipes, I came to realize that Julia not only a Master in French Food, I was amazed to see some Chinese recipes from her too!  Instead of Chinese food which are my familiar, I have choose a simple making dish - Chicken Salad, one of the recipes pick-up from Jacques & Julia: Cooking at Home Recipes, a favorite American cook show.  Salad is always our favorite.  I always aim for recipe that cater home cooking, so that I can share around the Family Table!