MCO - Day 84

9 June 2020     Day 84 of Movement Control Order 

        18 March 2020 to 9 June 2020...a total of 84 historic days...a record of 82 homecooked dinners and 2 takeout dinners. I’ve amazed even myself! It all shows that when there’s a will (plus flexible time), there’s a way.

        I started this lockdown with Fried Nam Yu Pork Belly so I decided to end it with Fried Nam Yu Chicken. It’s not a difficult dish to cook, but requires sufficient time for marinating. This time, besides the very flavourful red fermented bean curd, I added Shaoxing wine, ginger juice, sesame oil, black pepper, chilli powder, rice flour, cornflour and egg to the marinade. Easy-peasy tasty dish!

        

Fried Nam Yu Chicken

Pork Ribs, Cranberry Beans and Black-eyed Beans Soup

MCO - Day 83

8 June 2020     Day 83 of Movement Control Order 

        As we approach the end of this lockdown period, I wanted to try another Marion Grasby recipe. During this MCO, she has been  my source of inspiration a total of 12 times (at times, more than 1 recipe a day)! I think Safari on my phone must be getting tired of being directed to her blog, marionskitchen.com, every time its owner goes online.

        Tonight, I had the mental image of my kitchen goddess cum idol as I cooked her Easy Tantanmen. Tantanmen is Japan’s answer to Szechuan’s Dan Dan Noodles (担担面). Unlike its Szechuan cousin, which can be served dry or in a soup, Tantanmen is ramen in soup, a spicy mellow nutty sweet soup to be precise. The spicy element comes from the use of dou ban jiang chilli bean paste (豆瓣酱) and chilli oil while the mellow nutty sweetness is derived from the combination of white sesame paste and unsweetened soya milk. I did not adhere to Marion’s recipe 100% as I just made use of what was available in my pantry. Chilli oil was replaced by a small teaspoon of XO sauce, white sesame paste was substituted with peanut butter (as advised by Marion) and a dash of sake was modified into a few drops of vodka. I did not have fresh ramen as well but egg noodles worked well. I regret not planning this meal in advance for if I had, I would have tried making ajitsuke tamago or ramen soft-boiled eggs in its soy sauce, the way Marion does. Oh well, there will always be another time. At least, today I managed to nail the slightly runny, jammy yolk!

Easy Tantanmen 

A closer look at the flavourful spicy minced pork topping the bowl of noodles

Mix everything up, especially the soup!

Scrutinising the heavenly soft-boiled egg

        What did hubby have to say to this Easy Tantanmen? “Ooh! Different! Nice! Mmm...good!” 😄

MCO - Day 82

7 June 2020     Day 82 of Movement Control Order 

        MCO, then CMCO (Conditional Movement Control Order), and now RMCO (Recovery Movement Control Order)...names and acronyms...for all of us who have survived this unprecedented period, there’s a lot to tell the future generation. Basically, RMCO means the end of this lockdown. Hence, this 84-day (till 9 June) blogging of meals from my humble kitchen should end too. Schools will be re-opened in the not-too-distant future and hubby should be thankful if a simple dinner is served. But it really has been enjoyable documenting the meals and new recipes that I tried out. It will be an excellent reminder of this once-in-a-lifetime period (fingers crossed!).

        Day 82’s dinner consisted of hubby’s favourite Stir-fried “Siew Pak Choy” with fried garlic (featured a total of 7 times during this MCO) and Chicken in Cheong Cheng Sauce (酱蒸鸡丁). Cheong Cheng sauce, which is made up of chopped shallots, garlic, ginger, cili boh, pickled leeks, plum sauce and taucu, can be easily made and is an extremely versatile sauce to be used. It complements fish, seafood, pork and pork ribs very well. I don’t use pickled leeks but opt to replace them with a dash of vinegar.

Chicken in  酱蒸 Sauce

Greens for us

No, it’s not crepe for dessert...just a simple omelette made from leftover egg used for marinating the chicken pieces 

MCO - Day 81

6 June 2020     Day 81 of Movement Control Order 

        After 59 days, we had Fried Grouper in Sweet and Sour Sauce again. But tonight’s dinner still featured one new dish, an easy one to cook, though. It was Salted Egg Seafood Tofu (recipe taken from nofrillsrecipe.com). The aroma of frying the mashed steamed salted egg yolk together with the curry leaves and cili padi stirred hubby’s interest so he took a break from pumping iron and popped his head into the kitchen to investigate.

Salted Egg Seafood Tofu

Fried Grouper in Sweet and Sour Sauce

Stir-fried Beansprouts

MCO - Day 80

5 June 2020     Day 80 of Movement Control Order 

        My travels abroad have not included the United States of America, so I’m not aware of how famous Nashville Hot Chicken is. It, apparently, is quite a BIG thing. I heard about it only recently, and it’s all from Marion Grasby. Her tweaked version, Not Nashville Hot Chicken, got me interested and when I showed hubby the video, his eyes sparkled with excitement. He enjoys fried chicken (our only 2 takeout dinners during this MCO were from KFC) and he has a penchant for spicy food.

        The only snag of this dish is it involves deep frying. But to please hubby, I was game to give it a try. And after trying it out, I find it’s not difficult, just a trifle more tedious, but the taste made up for all the labour! Marion’s Nahm Jin hot sauce, which was used to brush all over the crispy chicken, was utterly scrumptious. Her concoction of Nahm Jin sauce is made up of tamarind juice, fish sauce, finely chopped shallots, brown sugar, sweet paprika, Thai chilli flakes and lime juice. Instead of Thai chilli flakes, I used Thai shrimp flavoured crushed chilli and I used chilli powder to replace the sweet paprika. One bite into the spicy, sweet, tangy, milky and crunchy chicken pieces, hubby remarked, “Oooh! Nice!” Needless to say, hubby was one happy tiger tonight, especially since the meal was complemented with lotus root, peanuts and pork ribs soup.

Another 5-star dish from Marion - Not Nashville Hot Chicken

Lotus root, peanuts and pork ribs soup

MCO - Day 79

4 June 2020     Day 79 of Movement Control Order 

        Is Malaysia’s lockdown coming to an end on 9 June? This must be the question weighing on many people’s minds. There is no answer yet, but signs of near-normalcy can be seen. The local wet market is not crowded, for example. There are no more long queues for pork and today, even the few RELA men stationed at the market to ensure MCO regulations compliance were no more to be seen.

        I managed to get my meat and vegetables without much ado. For tonight’s dinner, hubby was served Lemongrass Curry Pork Slices (recipe adapted from eatwhattonight.com) and Stir-fried Angled Luffa with Prawns. I’ve cooked angled luffa with pork, beef, fishballs and prawns, but it always tastes better with prawns.

Hubby was delighted with these Lemongrass Curry Pork Slices

Lovely prawns having a dip in the Stir-Fried Angled Luffa gravy

MCO - Day 78

3 June 2020     Day 78 of Movement Control Order 

        I had another recipe in mind for my pork ribs but having spotted jars of XO sauce on sale at a coffee shop this morning, another idea took shape. This XO sauce is made by the Kok Thai Restaurant in Tasek. I’d earlier wanted to make my own XO sauce but it requires the use of Jinhua ham, which I would need to source. So when I spotted the jars of XO sauce on sale, I was a happy bunny.

        XO sauce, for the uninitiated, does not contain the expensive XO (Xtra Old) cognac. But the liquor lends its name to this spicy seafood sauce to show solidarity in terms of prestige, high quality and luxury. After all, the ingredients of the XO sauce are all the higher end treasures like dried scallops, dried shrimps and Jinhua ham which is specifically from the Zhejiang province. 

        To introduce hubby to the umami flavours of the XO sauce, I decided to cook it with his favourite pork ribs. I found a good, easy recipe on a food blog, eatwhattonight.com. So for dinner tonight, we had Steamed Pork Ribs in Black Beans XO Sauce. What did hubby have to say? He enjoyed it, couldn’t believe that it’s named after the liquor but is alcohol-free, and at the end of the meal, slurped up some of the sauce and announced that it would go well with ramen too!

Steamed Pork Ribs in Black Beans XO Sauce

Stir-fried lady’s fingers

Little jar of umami goodness

MCO - Day 77

2 June 2020     Day 77 of Movement Control Order 

        It has been a gloomy day with intermittent drizzles. It even feels like the year-end monsoon season has come early. It’s definitely a bad day for doing laundry but I could get some other chores done, like ironing and cleaning. As for dinner, I wanted to cook something quick and easy. Mama Noi’s Thai Red Curry Fried Rice came to mind! I had day-old rice in the fridge and I also wanted to finish off the leftover Thai red curry paste (which was earlier used to cook Marion’s Easy Curry Laksa) - just perfect! 

Thai Red Curry Fried Rice

        And what did hubby have to say about tonight’s Thai Red Curry Fried Rice? “Simple, but very nice!” 😄

MCO - Day 76

1 June 2020     Day 76 of Movement Control Order 

        Flipping through one of my bilingual cookbooks the other day, a recipe caught my eye. I decided to try my hand at it today. Although I’m not a Hainanese, I love Hainanese food (in addition to Hakka dishes). Today’s dish is called Hainanese “O Dao You” Pork Belly (海南黒酱油腩肉). As most Chinese love the oink oink, cooking with pork belly is rather popular, and different sub-ethnic groups would have different ways of cooking it. This Hainanese version required deep-frying the meat twice, and steaming it in between. It’s definitely a laborious process, but I was keen to give it a try. And mmm...it was simply yummy! Hubby loved it too! This is not a pork belly dish that I would cook often because of the steps and oil involved, but it would be an indulgence to have it occasionally.

Hainanese “O Dao You” Pork Belly

Fried prawn rolls and fried vegetarian spring rolls

Spinach Soup