Have you ever tried mustard greens and dried oyster soup? I love it!
Like many others, I rejected mustard greens because of its bitterness. My mother-in-law introduced it to me through braising mustard greens with Chinese-styled meat balls (狮子头) with soy sauce, I fell in love with it only after a few times, and that was like after a few years too. I guess, mustard green is similar to bitter gourd, you either like or hate it. Now I love it a lot, it is like bitter gourd (bitter melon), or blue cheese. It is an acquired taste. After eating, I felt cooler and lighter. Somehow, I guess it reduces my cholesterol too!
Just google-ing a while, I found this: http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=93
The cholesterol-lowering ability of steamed mustard greens is second only to steamed collard greens and steamed kale in a recent study of cruciferous vegetables and their ability to bind bile acids in the digestive tract. When bile acid binding takes place, it is easier for the bile acids to be excreted from the body. Since bile acids are made from cholesterol, the net impact of this bile acid binding is a lowering of the body's cholesterol level. It's worth noting that steamed mustard greens (and all steamed forms of the cruciferous vegetables) show much greater bile acid binding ability than raw mustard greens.
I am not kidding you! I could feel the cholesterol was being lowered!
If you follow my blog, you would know by now that I love mushroom, all kinds of mushroom. Shitake is one of my favourites, be it stir-fry, braise or stew, I just put a few in to enhance flavor of the dish.
Today, we had braised chicken with shitake mushroom, one of my preferred ways to cook mushroom. I find that eating braised mushroom is satisfying, because it is meaty, has umami kick and I like that with ginger. Simply delish.
Not going for fancy cooking nowadays (the last trial was the gumbo, that’s it!), just mushroom, ginger and chicken and some wine, soy sauce, that’s all.
Previously, I used to believe that we should retain the water used to soak mushroom for later part of cooking, now I don’t. I did so because I heard from someone that this would enhance flavor. From somewhere too, I read that the soaking water can be strained and used to add flavor to a stock. Little did I know that I was wrong! May be not for soaking mushrooms sold in Singapore?
A bit lazy on a weekday afternoon, I cooked this for lunch. I love instant noodle. Sorry to say that, but I really love instant noodle. Not all instant noodles but there are a few brands and tastes which I love a lot, such as the Myojo’s spicy dry noodle, Indo’s dry noodle and this one, Myojo’s abalone noodle. I love them because of their flavours. But as for springiness, I usually go for Mamee, they have the most Q noodle in this world, also, the Korean brands.
For my noodle, I usually add a lot of ingredients inside, such as tomatoes, mixed vegetables, shitake mushroom and egg!
This is my lunch that can last me until evening, by then I will be thinking of my dinner already.
Last Saturday was our BBQ day. We were action-packed throughout the day as we drove to Sengkang in the morning to deliver the mooncakes to the grandparents and then rushed to buy some seafood for the night’s BBQ. Spending just slightly more than 30 mins, we prepared the seafood and vegetables, then it was time to go to the BBQ pit! Not until I reached the venue, I realized that we were considered early, as everyone was late due to the MRT 2-day maintenance.
To play safe, we called for catering that day, but we still bought a lot of seafood. CY wanted to take the chance to practise his BBQ skills. He wouldn’t have the chance to do so in normal days. In the end, there was quite a lot of leftover because we didn’t have enough time to BBQ everything!
