woke up at noon after a tiring day at the beach the day before. had some braised duck with plain porridge before proceeding to affirm the online recipes to start working on dinner.
she was doing some window-shopping online, so he went ahead to mix some all purpose flour with one egg, chopped green onions and salt in a bowl.
when she finally came into the kitchen, she sliced the chicken breast open to make one large piece of meat. dusted some pepper, salt, rice wine, wrapped cheese within, threw the batter on and put it into the refrigerator for 20 minutes. she then ordered him to thinly slice the bitter gourd, since it seemed he liked to chop things up. sliced it all up like a sushi master (maybe not), smashed and peeled some garlic, chopped some chilli padi and ginger.
next, he proceeded to shallow-fry the now-ready-chicken in the wok. around 6 (maybe more) sinful tablespoons of oil on medium heat before golden-browning each side. once done, he placed the chicken onto a plate with paper kitchen towels to absorb the excess oil.
cheesy fried chicken - cut it up with kitchen scissors after it had cooled a little. looks a wee bit like roti john, huh? chicken tasted tender even though it hadn't been bashed up, amazing.
he washed up the wok for the next dish, and by this time, she had finished marinating the minced pork with salt, soy sauce and rice wine. heated 6 teaspoons of oil and started frying the ginger, garlic and chilli till he choked. that was the signal to cook the minced pork. the bittergourd was added only when most of the meat had turned opaque. kept on medium heat and continued with frequent stirs until the bittergourd became tender.
stir-fried bittergourd with minced pork - a little too salty, she had soaked the bittergourd with too much salt and misinformed him to add salt when stir-frying! probably would have tasted fine with plain porridge...alas....
he decided he wanted to cook congee with his newly acquired chicken essence cubes. got a cup of rice, 6 cups of water, 2 cubes of chicken essence and put them to cook in the electric cooker. next was to marinate the remaining mince pork with salt, soy sauce and rice white (nothing new here). wife said to add a teaspoon of flour so that the meat would stick together better for him to make meatballs. mixed well and used a teaspoon to shape some meat before putting them to cook in the congee. had to add another 2 cups of water since it was already drying up, making the ratio of rice to water 1:8.
minced pork congee in chicken soup base. littlest brother commented that the congee looked yellow, but he attributed it to the soup stock. while writing this post, it dawned upon him that he had forgotten to wash the rice. oops. luckily google yielded little negative comments.
