Fresh prawns are very firm in texture and sweet in taste, which are enhanced by the sweet and spicy sauce. This way of cooking reflects the specific taste of sweet and spicy Chinese food.
The dish is best served with cooked rice, egg noodles or rice noodles.
SOUP WITH DUCK, GOURD AND GINGKO NUTS
Ginkgo nuts have some good values to the health, so when the ginkgo is available at the supermarkets with good quality, I will buy them to make a stew dish or sweet desserts. Ginkgo is popularly in Chinese dishes that use Cihnese herbs to add curing-illness effects to the dishes. What is even better is that ginkgo is quite cheap.
This time I made a stew dish of duck, ginkgo and long gourd. You also can replace the gourd with winter melon, which also tastes really good. In order to make the soup thinner, clearer and less fat, I removed all the skin and fat from the duck. You may used boned duck or boneless duck depending on your liking.
The secret to this dish is the application of dried tangerine rinds when stewing the soup. These rinds would bring a ver special fragrance and taste to the dish. Dried tangerine rinds can be bought at the supermarkets, however, I didn’t throw aways the rinds after eating the tangerines but sun-dried them for future use.
SPICY EGGPLANT STIR - FRIED
The dish has authentic flavor of Sichuan-style food, which uses chili bean sauce frequently in cooking. However, following the original recipe turned out too spicy for the taste of my family. So I reduced the chili and chili bean paste used in this dish.
Though I do not feel completely comfortable to eat spicy food on hot days. However, in Singapore it is hot all the year round. So, in order to bring in some new and strange flavor to our meals, particularly with spicy foods, I often choose to cook them on cool days, normally after the a long chain of days with heavy rain. The weather does have some effects on what kind of food I feel like eating for the day.
CHICKEN AND WHITE FUNGUS
If you are hunger for something simple and mild in the taste, still good for your health, then you may consider this soup made with chicken and white fungus.
This dish is another application of mine in using Chinese herbs in cooking, so as to make a dish not only tastes good but also provides other health benefits. Consuming this kind of dishes doesn’t mean to see immediate effect, but in the long run, they have curing effects that help prevent us from illnesses.
So let’s try this very simple dish and do something good to your health.
JIAOZI - CHINESE DUMPLING
