Sze Chuan Spicy Chicken

This is a dish perfect with rice. It is very easy and simple. If you've prepared some Chili Oil from my previous post and wondering what you could cook with it, try this and you'll have a wonderful main dish for rice.


Ingredients:
Chili Oil (recipe Here)
Chicken Breast x1
Soya Sauce
Sesame Oil
Salt
Pepper


Instruction:
1) Cut chicken breast into stripe, use the back of your knife roughly pat on the meat (this is to loosen the texture)
2) Marinate chicken with some sesame oil, salt, and pepper for about 10 minutes
3) Pan fried marinated chicken breast meat with oil until it is cook
4) Once the meat is cooked, add in Chili Oil and continue to stir until fragrance and serve.

Easy Pan Mee with different way of eating

Pan Mee is the hawker food that I eat very often growing up in Kuala Lumpur. It is basically egg noodles with mushroom minced meat and fried anchovies. It reminded me of a very famous Pan Mee stall near The Store in Jalan Ipoh.

I had my primary, and secondary education along this street, so I've pretty much tried every stall along this road. I'm not sure if it is still around but this used to be the stall where me and my mum will get our lunch fixed. I always go for the soup based Pan Mee and love their crazily spicy lime chili dip. My mum will get their 'Lor Pan Mee' or the dried version.

While I was in my secondary school, Chili Pan Mee become a hit in KL. The original stall was along the same street as well but the chili pan mee gives you a totally different taste and experience compare to the soup based.

I was craving for some Pan Mee the other day. However, the minced pork you get from the groceries here comes in standard weight i.e. 400g. Initially my plan was to use half for Pan Mee and the rest for meat balls. I ended up feeling lazy and cook everything because you can eat Pan Mee in many different ways.

So here's the recipe for different vrsion of Pan Mee that lasted me for 4 meals. LOL

First Version- Dried Pan Mee

Ingredients:
Dried Shitake Mushroom x5
Minced meat x 400g
Shallots x 1
Garlic x 4 cloves
Spinach x 1 cup
Sauce: Dark Soya Sauce, Soya Sauce, Oyster Sauce, Sugar, Salt, Corn Starch
Egg noodles x 1
Sesame oil
Fried Anchovies (Fried-less tips here)

Directions:
1) Soak Shitake Mushroom in warm water and cut them into small pieces.
2) Keep the water that you use to soak the mushroom. Stir in all the sauces together with mushroom water.
3) Minced shallots and Garlic
4) Pan fried shallots and garlic with some oil, until it is fragrance
5) Add in minced meat and pepper. Cook until the meat turn white (Add in some Chinese cooking wine if you have it, they are not available in Oslo)
6) Add cut mushroom and stir for awhile
7) Stir in all the sauce and water
8) Cover and cook it for 10mins or until the sauce become thicker or lesser
9) Lightly cook one cup of spinach in boiling water
10) Boil your egg noodles until it is soft (drain under cold water when it is half done to get better texture)
11) Place your cooked noodles in the serving bowl/plate with sesame oil and dark soya sauce,  If your minced meat is very salty you may just add sesame oil.
12) Place 2 big spoon of minced meat, spinach, and anchovies on top of your noodles.
13) Garnish with some Spring onions

Cook notes: I don't usually measure my sauce as that is very personal. Some like it more salty, some like it sweeter, and some like it less salt. You may adjust it according to your own taste. This is what I usually do when I read a recipe. You can adjust the color of your minced meat by adjusting your dark soya sauce amount as well.

Second Version- Chili Pan Mee

The second way of eating it is to add Chili oil to it. Basically this is to give the noodle a spicy kick with the fragrance from the Chili oil. This Chili oil I made is different from those Chili oil you use for Chili Pan Mee. I love the smell of Sze Chuan Pepper, so I would say my version is a fusion of Chinese cooking with Malaysian style. Click here for the Chili Oil recipe.

Directions:
1) Cook another Egg noodles in boiling water
2) Lightly boil some spinach
3) Mixed the noodles with  reheat leftover minced meat, anchovies, spinach and Chili Oil.

Third Version: Soup based Pan Mee

At this point of time i'm starting to get tired of the egg noodles, since I have some Soba Noodles at home, I just replace the egg noodles with Soba. So it turn into a delicious Soba. :)

Ingredients for the soup:
Anchovies 1/2 cup
Small Carrot
Water x 3 bowls
No Seasoning require

1) Wash and clean the anchovies, carrot cut into small cubes.
2) Boil water with anchovies and carrot for 30mins.
3) In a bowl, place your cooked noodles with minced meat and spinach.
4) Pour in anchovies soup and serve fried anchovies separately.

Enjoy!

Bloody Mary Smoothie

This smoothie uses very similar ingredients as Bloody Mary except that it is not salty. I love baby carrots and while I was shopping in Meny yesterday, it was on sale for 10kr/bag. I've also blend in half an apple to tone down the taste of tomato. The result was surprisingly good. A must try healthy smoothie.

Ingredients:
1 Tomato
1 celery stick
8-10 baby carrots
1/2 Apple
1/8 Lemon
3-4 Mint stick
Cold Water

Directions:
Cut all ingredients into cubes, squeeze in lemon juice and add just enough water to blend.

Chinese Chili Oil

I've traveled to China a few times and there's one spice that was use in almost all their spicy food. This spice is famous for it's distinctive aroma and it also gives you this spicy and numb sensation (麻辣Ma-Lak) that you would not get from Chili. The Sze Chuan (SiChuan) peppercorn（花椒）is commonly use in hot pot and stir fried. Besides that it is use to prepare Chili Oil to eat with noodles or as a dipping for food. It was super spicy but it was so addictive that you just can't let it go!

This extreme taste and fragrance will definitely wake up all your taste buds and add a little color in the super cold and gloomy winter in Oslo. You can get this Sze Chuan pepper in Asian store in Oslo.

Sze Chuan Peppercorn

Ingredients:
Shallots, minced x1
Garlic, minced x 2
Dried Chili, cut into small pieces x 10
Sze Chuan Pepper x 1/2 cup
Bird' Eye Chili x 3

Directions:
1) Pour a handful of oil in a pan and fried Shallots and garlic until it is fragrance
2) Add in dried chili, sze chuan pepper, and bird's eye chili until it is lightly crisp.


Fried it under medium low heat so it will not burn. Keep an eye on it, you don't want it to be burn as it will taste bitter.

This could keep for a long time under room temperature as long as it is soak in oil. You can use this for cooking, and also as add on for food. Beware it is really spicy!

Lazy Prawn Noodles

I always crave for Prawn noodles from time to time. The most important ingredient here is the soup broth and the chili paste. I bought this prawn noodles packet from KL and use them whenever i crave for it. You can also find this same brand paste from UK.

Basically everytime I'm home I'll load up my entire 30kg quota with food. This paste prawn noodles paste works well and you can enhance the taste on you own. The Norwegian cold water prawns is perfect for this dish. No other prawns could give you this sweet taste from the seawater. Of course this optional and is not a necessary, in my opinion this prawn makes the broth taste much nicer. So it is up to you if you wanted to use it. These prawns you can get it frozen in the groceries store. You just need to defrost it, peel, and use the shell for broth, Here's the recipe for a warm yummy prawn noodle soup.

Ingredients:
Norwegian cold water prawns(Reker)
Tiger Prawns
Bean Sprout
Morning Glory (Kangkung)
Hard boiled eggs
Meehoon
Vegetarian noodles (yellow noodles)
Fried Shallots
Prawn Noodle Paste (serve 4-6)


Instruction:
1) Defrost a handful of Reker and Tiger prawns and deshell it. Do not throw those shell.
2) Use those shells to boil you soup for about 15 minutes
3) Discard the shells and keep the broth. Add in prawn noodle paste and continue to boil.
4) Boil your tiger prawns in the broth until it is fully cook. Remove it from the broth (to avoid over cook)
4) In another pot, boil some bean sprout, kangkung, Meehoon, vegetarian noodles according to the amount you want to eat
5) Place all the ingredients in no.4 in a bowl, together with Reker, Tiger prawns and hard boiled egg.
6) Pour in soup that is enough to cover the noodles and serve

The Hulk Smoothie

Well from the name of it, you can guess what color it is. Lol. Yes, it is the color of Hulk!
Most of the ingredients use are green in color and I‘ve added in some Malaysian twist to it.
Avocado is a very healthy fruit however the taste might not be acceptable by everyone. This smoothie will definitely change your view about avocado and ask for more.

I served this as after meal dessert in small portion, however you can drink it for breakfast as well with a larger portion. I have a small smoothie blender with a size of 600ml. This will serve 3 small smoothies (200ml each) or just drink 500ml of it for breakfast. Thanks to my Nyonya bestie Rachel for the Gula Melaka (all the way from Malaysia), this immediately turn it into an Asian dessert. This is something that you will always come back for it.

Ingredients:
Ripe Avocado x1
Green apple x1
Spinach x 1cup
Diluted coconut cream or coconut and rice cream x 1.5cup
Gula Melaka/Maple syrup/Palm sugar
Some Ice

Directions:
1) Wash and blend all the ingredients together.
2) Place it in freezer for 10-20 minutes before serving if you are not adding ice
3) Heat up Gula Melaka with some water in the microwave over to make it into Syrup.
4) Create some swirl with 2 teaspoon of Gula Melaka Syrup before serving.

Eat it with a spoon!

Cook notes:

You can get coconut milk from Asian groceries store. However I find it too thick so I diluted it with water. Alternatively you can get coconut and rice cream from Coop or other groceries store.

Classic Banana and Berries Smoothie

This is the most common smoothie and it always taste great. You can easily get all the frozen berries from groceries store and just buy banana. I will usually freeze my ripe banana for smoothies so that I don't  have to add ice. Ready for some brain freeze if everything you use are frozen.

Ingredients
Ripe frozen banana x1
Frozen mix berries x 2 cups
Yogurt drink or Milk

Instructions:
Blend in all berries and banana with milk or yogurt drink

Cook notes: This will yield a big bottle of smoothies about 500ml for breakfast. Cut everything to half for normal serving.

I'm Lactose intolerance so I replace milk with Oat milk，soya milk, or almond milk.

After sometime I find those raspberries seeds are really annoying, So instead of using mix berries, I just use blueberries and strawberries.