Steamed Prawns with Butter-Garlic and Green Bean Noodle(Bean Vermicelli)蒜茸牛油蒸粉絲大蝦

Families and Friends, hope you had a wonderful day today, either at work or with kids! I know y'all are busy, but we still have eat. Sometimes eating at home costs the same as eating out, but at least you know what you eating. So eat at home more often! Ok, for today I will show a traditional dish but with a little  twist. It's called Steamed Prawns with Butter-Garlic and Green Bean Noodle(Bean Vermicelli)蒜茸牛油蒸粉絲大蝦. You'll see how easy and simple this dish is.

Alright, let's cook!!!

Ingredients

• 1 lb large white shrimps( cleaned and devined)
• 2 pcs dried bean noodle(soaked)

This dried and fried garlic is super tasty. It pairs great with steamed food because of its contrasting intensity.

I've seen this at local grocery stores as well as the Asian ones.

Seasoning

• 2 tbs unsalted butter(melted)
• 4 clove fresh garlic( minced)
• 1 tbs fried garlic
• 1 green onion (chopped)
• 1-2 slice tomato(diced)
• 1 ts salt
• 1/2 ts sugar
• 1 ts sesame oil
• 2 ts cooking wine
• 1/2 ts chicken bouillon

Save some of the green part of the scallions and the tomatoes for a garnish at the end.

Mix in all the seasonings into the melted butter. This will be for seasoning the raw shrimp.

How to melt the butter? Place the butter in a bowl and put it the microwave for about 25 seconds. Now you have some nice melted butter. Mix the melted butter with all the seasoning, except the diced tomato and half the green onion because we will be using it for a garnish later. Now set it aside.

Soaking the green bean noodle

In large bowl, fill it up with warm water and soak the noodle for about 10 minutes. Then drain it, and finally set it aside.

Soak in WARM water for about ten minutes. The noodles will only be softened and par cooked in this process because we will be steaming later.

I recommend cutting the noodles a little bit shorter before plating. It helps when eating it in a family style setting. Long noodles get hard to share from the same plate (which usually ends up getting cut anyways).

Seasoning the shrimp

In a large bowl, mix up the shrimp with the butter-garlic seasoning we prepared and set it aside. If you do not like to eat shrimp in the shell, feel free to clean and trim the shrimp to your liking BEFORE you season it. I prefer the shell because it has a lot of flavor which brings a good seafood flavor to the entire dish.

Shelled for more flavor OR deshelled for preference and convenience. It's up to you how you want to do it. I know some kids don't like their shrimp shelled....

Distribute the seasoning as evenly as you can.

On a large plate, place the soaked noodle in the middle of the plate and top it nicely with the seasoned shrimp. Set it aside

With the noodles acting as a nest, place the shrimp in an even layered pattern as shown here. It will let the shrimp cook evenly. That is the biggest purpose of this step (besides it looking pretty fancy lol).

Once your water is hot and boiling, place the cover and let it steam for about 5 minutes or until the shrimp is done to your liking.

Now, bring 1/4 pan or steamer of water to boiling, (we don't need too much water, bcz the shrimp only needs to steam in very short time) place the shrimp into the pan/steamer and let steam for  5 minutes the most.  Take out the shrimp carefully and garnish with diced tomato and green onion! That's it, Steamed Prawns with Butter-Garlic and Green Bean Noodle 蒜茸牛油蒸粉絲大蝦! Enjoy
It!!

Carefully remove the hot plate from the steam pan and place it aside to rest for just a moment.

Final garnish and you're done! This dish will have very delightful shrimp flavors that have steamed onto the noodles and throughout the dish. Mmmmm like a Chinese Shrimp Scampi! lol

Coming next!!
Beef Shank in Hot Oil
紅油牛腱

Psalm 37:4
"Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart."

詩篇37:4
"你要以耶和華為樂， 他就把你心裡所求的賜給你."

Fish Fillets in Black Bean Sauce 豉汁魚片

Families and Friends, it's time again! So today I will show you how to make a classic dish, Fish Fillets in Black Bean Sauce. It's very simple and delicious. This dish will use some of the left over vegetable from the previous dish Singapore Mei Fun.

Ok let's cook some fish!!

Ingredients

• 1 lbs fish fillet(any fish fillet) (cut up an inch length)
• 1/4 red and bell pepper(cut up square pcs)
• 1/4 yellow onion (cut up square pcs)optional
• 2 slice ginger(strips/minced)
• 2 clove garlic(minced)
• 1 green onion(diced)
• 1 tbs preserved black bean(washed and drained)

Cut fish into smaller sizes. Anywhere from 1.5 inches to 2 inches.

Similarly, you want the cut the bell peppers around the same size as well.

Chinese dried black beans have a lot of very strong flavors. I soak mine in water to mild down the saltiness a bit. Then I drain them.

Fish Coating

• 1/2 cup cornstarch
• 1 egg
• 1/2 ts salt
• 1 ts sesame oil
• 1 tbs vegetable oil

In a big bowl, crack in one egg with the cut up fish fillet, cornstarch, salt, and sesame oil. Mix it evenly till the cornstarch becomes thick enough to give the fish a nice coating(if it's too thick, add little water if needed). Finally, add a tbs of oil and mix it up. Set this aside for now.

Add in all the ingredients and mix it up very thoroughly until it creates the batter. Once it looks like this, you are ready to go with the frying.

The Sauce/seasoning

• 1 tbs mushroom dark soy sauce
• 1 tbs oyster sauce
• 1/4 tbs chicken boulion
• 1/4 tbs sugar
• 1/2 tbs sesame oil
• 1 tbs cooking wine
• 1 cup water/chicken stock
• 1/2 tbs cornstarch( in a small bowl mix 2 tbs water for later use)

In a bowl mix up all the seasoning( except the cornstarch) and set it aside. The cornstarch mixture we will use at the end to thicken the sauce as we cook it.

Cornstarch at the end to thicken the sauce.

**This sauce is also good for Braised Ribs, Spicy Wings,Beef with Bitter Melon, Beef Chow Fun with Gravy, Shredded Pork with Green Bean or Spicy Beef Honeycomb etc...

Frying the Fish

Since we only fry a lb of fish fillet, so we don't need a big pan or pot. So a medium/small pan should be good! Heat it up in high heat with half oil. Wait till the oil is hot enough before frying.  To check if it's ready, just throw a small pc of your fish (or the batter itself) into the oil. If it floats up right away and it's golden brown, that means the oil is ready. After you fry the first few pcs fillet, just wait for the oil to heat up again before frying the next set because the temperature would have dropped significantly. Place all the cooked fillet on a plate with a pc paper towel.

You want it to be this 'busy' when it fries. If it is anything less, the fish will just soak up the oil and get greasy instead of crispy.

Fish doesn't take but a few minutes to cook because it's very thin. You also have to remember that we will be adding this back into the saute pan when we cook the dish all together.

Golden is the color you are looking for here. If all the pieces are cut to the same size, they should all be cooked enough.

If you like your fish extra crispy, REFRY the fish you just fried once more to get an extra crisp on the outside.  Set it aside.

Tossing the Fish Fillet..

Heat up a pan/wok in high heat with 2 tbs vegetable oil, threw in the black bean, garlic, ginger, green onion, yellow onion( optional) red and bell pepper. Stir it for few second, add the sauce. Let it cook for a minute then add in the cornstarch/water mixture a little at a time. Be cautious with it because you don't want the sauce to get too thick.  Sometimes the sauce thickens more from the batter on the fish.

Bring out the aromatics of the garlic, ginger, black beans, and scallions.

Stir fry the bell peppers until they develop a slight blister on the outside.

Add your sauce to the pan. Then stir in slowly the cornstarch. Once the sauce looks thick enough, add in your fried fish fillets.

 Now throw it the fish fillet, and toss it till the sauce cover all the fillets. Once it's fully incorporated, you're done! That's it, a classic fish fillet in black bean sauce 豉汁魚片! Enjoy it!!

This dish doesn't need a lot of sauce because of the saltiness from the black beans and the seasoning we created in the the batter mix for frying the fish. 

You will have this beautiful shiny coating of sauce that is just enough to glaze your mouth with every bite.

Coming up next!
Steamed Prawns with Butter-Garlic and Green Bean Noodle(Bean Vermicelli)
蒜茸牛油蒸粉絲大蝦

2 Corinthians 5:17
"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come."

哥林多後書 5：17

"如果有人在基督裡，他就是新造的人，舊事已經過去，你看，都變成新的了！"

Singapore Mei Fun 星洲炒米

It's hard not to start eating at this step....

Families, Friends and Fans, today I'll will show you how to make Singapore Mei Fun (or some place called it Singapore Chow Mei which is the same dish!) This dish is about preparation,timing and the right brand of Mei Fun/Rice Sticks. Some are either too big or too small (the brand in the picture is one I personally like to use for making Singapore Mei Fun). The cooking and the seasoning parts are pretty easy and simple, but lots of restaurants screw up on this dish. Either the wok is too hot (taste burnt), broken Mei Fun(cook to long in the wok and looks ugly), too much curry (so too overpowering), the curry is added too early(taste burnt/bitter and looks brownish-yellow), shrimp and chicken are way over cooked( too chewy), or they added too much oil(too greasy) etc.

So my recommendations are- 

• pay attention when precooking the chicken and shrimp! Don't over cooked it  bcz the chicken and the shrimp will cook again with the Mei Fun.
• Cook the egg with the right amount of oil. Don't put in too much oil at once(3 tbs of oil is plenty).
• Don't add in the curry seasoning too early, add it in towards the end or last. Shorter the time in the hot pan/wok would help the curry powder stay bright yellow and won't taste bitter...

Ok, let's cook some Singapore Mei Fun!! (and I hope you saved some pork from the last recipe as it will greatly enhance this dish!)

Ingredients

• 2 patties dry Mei Fun(Rice Stick)(soaked with "cold" water at least 30 minutes)
• 10 slices bbq pork(strips) **FROM LAST RECIPE! :)
• 10 pcs shrimp(cleaned and cooked)
• 2 oz chicken thigh meat/ chicken breast(cleaned and strips and marinated)
• 2 large egg
• 1/4 red pepper(strips)
• 1/4 yellow onion(strips
• 5 slices carrots(strips)
• 1 green onion(cut an inch length)
• 3 pcs of cabbage(strips)

This is the brand that I prefer but you may use any similar brand.

One of my favorite (and more common) curry powders in cooking Cantonese style curry dishes.

Sooo colorful :)

Preparation

On a cutting board, cut up all the vegetables and set it aside. Wash the cutting board and cut the bbq pork into slice and then strip it.

Then place the bbq pork with the veggies and set it aside. Now wipe the cutting with a cloth/paper towel.

Do the same with the chicken, skinned it and cut it into slices and strips. Then marinate the chicken with 1/2 ts of salt and 1/2 ts of sesame oil for 10 mins.

Chicken should be cut to this size. Seasoned and marinated for just a few minutes.

Boiling the Shrimp

In small pot, bring  half pot of water to boiling and throw the shrimp into the pot. Let it cook for about a minute,( we don't need to fully cook the shrimp, bcz we will cook it again with the Mei Fun)

Take it out and drain it. You may place it with the veggies and BBQ pork for later use (as we will cook all of it together when the time comes).

Cooking the Chicken

Heat up a non  stick pan with 1/2 tbs oil in high heat, add in the chicken. Stir it a few times and it will only take about 2-4 minutes to be fully cooked. Then you may add it with the rest of the previous ingredients we have been preparing.

Thigh meat of the chicken doesn't dry up when cooked for too long like the breast meat. So don't worry too much about over cooking it. BUT it is better to have cooked chicken than raw chicken....

Here you can see all the meats have been par cooked and ready to go into the stir fry.

Boiling the Mei Fun

**Remember to have your Mei Fun soaked for 30 mins in COLD water before hand. This will rehydrate the noodles but not cook them. It makes it easier to cook. I would suggest getting these noodles soaked as you prepare the rest of the ingredients for this dish. Then by the time you get to this step, the noodles will be ready.

30 minutes in cold water while you prep the rest of the ingredients.

 Use a pot that's big enough to boil two patties of the Mei Fun noodles. You can measure this by putting the dry noodles into an empty and dry pot to see if it will fit. If it's too crowded, the noodles will not cook evenly and you will have bites of chewy, undercooked noodles.

Bring the water to a boil (pot should be perhaps half way filled), and then add in the softened/soaked Mei Fun. Let it cook for a minute! Taste a piece to see if it needs to cook a little more. An "al dente" texture is what we want, and it usually doesn't  take long to cook the mei fun noodles because they are so thin.

Drain it from the hot water and then rinse with cold water. This will stop the cooking process. Drain it well again.

Drain it and set aside.(tip: Rinse the noodles in cold water to stop the Mei fun from cooking from the hot steam and residual heat from the boiling water. Then drain it again once it feels cool to the touch, and then add a little oil to keep it from sticking together.) **Your dish will cook better if the noodles are properly drained. The dryer the noodles, the less they will stick to the pan when cooking them.

Seasoning 

• 3 1/2 ts yellow curry powder
• 2 ts salt(add more if you like a bit saltier)
• 1 ts chicken bouillon
• 1 ts sugar
• 1 ts sesame oil
• 4 tbs water

In small bowl mix up the seasonings evenly and set it aside.

Bottom bowl is the seasoning consistency you are looking for.

In a large non stick pan or wok, heat it up in high heat with 3 tbs oil, and then crack in two eggs( make sure the oil is hot enough) then scramble it. The idea of cooking the egg with the oil is to help the noodles from not sticking to the wok/pan. Read some tips below or skip ahead to the next step.

Tips:
Essentially, cooking on a wok in a restaurant is a bit of yin and yang. You have to mix patience and speed because you are dealing with a wok that burns hotter than an oven. You wait for the wok to get hot...and then strike with speed and grace! We can emulate this process at home as well (but our stove tops are more forgiving than a 600 degree wok flame). So when you stir fry this dish, here are some tips to ensure your food is cooking properly in a hot pan-

• Turn on high heat with a dry pan. Add in the oil as you normally would. 
• Wait for the oil to glide across the pan when you move it. It will look almost like water at this point. 
• When adding the egg, it should cook almost immediately. DON'T touch it right away! Let it cook underneath till it turns white. This will happen in just moments. 
• Once this happens, break the egg and scramble it about. Try to evenly get it across the pan until it fully cooks.

We essentially are creating 2 barriers that prevent the food from sticking to the pan- one with the hot oil and second with the cooked egg. It's a little bit of Chinese magic...not really. BUT remember these tips the next time you cook fried rice, and try doing it WITHOUT the egg...I can guarantee you it will not taste the same and more than likely will stick to your pan like a burnt pancake.

Wait till it looks like this before touching it......

....and then give it a QUICK STIR! You will see the egg make bubbles in the oil. This prevents the food and noodles from sticking to the pan.

OK- back to the Mei Fun....

After you have cooked the egg, add in the yellow onion first, stir it for a few seconds, then add the rest of the ingredients.

Let it cook for a couple minutes.

Now add the Mei Fun and stir it evenly with the ingredients by using a pair of chopsticks or tongs.

The idea for cooking this is for it to be a quick process. If we waited to cook the shrimp and chicken at this stage instead of par cooking it, our vegetables will be wilted and overcooked. The thigh meat of the chick will also lend to an excess of grease in the dish which is not what we want.

Add a little more of the curry powder at the end of the cooking cycle to give it a bit more taste and color.

Once all the ingredients have been incorporated, they should be near finished cooking. Then we add the curry seasoning. Mix and stir fry the Mei Fun noodles frequently for few more minutes till the curry has evenly covered the dish. Try a taste test with a few bites to see if it's good or not. Sometimes I like to add a little more curry and sometimes the noodles need a little more time to cook (which is better than them being overcooked).

That's it, Singapore Mei Fun!   Enjoy it!!

Next up:
Fish Fillet in Black Bean Sauce
豉汁魚片


1 Peter 1:8-9
"Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls."

彼得前書 1:8-9

"你們雖然沒有見過他，卻愛他；現在雖然不能看見他，卻信他。因此，你們就有無法形容、滿有榮耀的大喜樂， 得到你們信心的效果，就是靈魂得救。"