Creamy Fish head Curry with Prawns 咖喱鱼头和大虾

入冬，今天终於下雨了！ 细雨綿綿又刮风，吃咖喱来养胃暧软是在好不过了。这次是自己调了咖喱粉非常有成就感。浓调带有香料和椰奶香的咖喱汁是我所喜爱的。吃着时想起小时所喜欢的印度咖喱鱼那味道太怀恋了。食谱参考了Cooking Ah Pa的Facebook video. 

Steamed Eel in Black Bean Sauce 鼓汁蒸鳗鱼

This steamed eel in black bean sauce was created in early February. 

The first encounter with this dish was when I was in Melbourne, use to order it from a Taiwanese Restaurant. Love the tender texture of this steamed eel! In Doha, eel is not cheap, it is selling at QR169 per kg, I bought mine around QR79. 

In MegaMart, we are able to get Amoy's brand Black Bean Sauce 鼓汁酱 with QR12.50 per bottle. The taste of this black bean sauce is not so authentic but I'm happy that I managed to get this sauce here. A lovely simple dish! 

Bechamel Prawn Croquette 虾子奶油可乐饼

This is a gorgeous prawn croquette, with a crisp outer skin and creamy bechamel prawn filling.  A bit of preparation time needed because need to prepare the bechamel sauce but you can store the extra prawn dough balls in the freezer until you need to consume. 

I made 18 pieces and fried six for each meal. My son loves the croquette very much! No doubt, it is flavourful and yummy! It can be a gorgeous finger food for the coming party as well! A recipe from Masa again :) 

Salmon with Shredded Ginger

I think many of you must have tried this dish before. Initially pan-fry a fish to me is a scary task, I'm afraid of the boiling oil scalding my hands :) But it is totally a different story when I have...the Happycall pan! The Happycall pan is one of my saviour in the kitchen, I started to do more pan-fry on fish as no worries of oil splash around!

Salmon, a fish high with omega 3 fatty acids is not just good for development in kids brain but good for us as adult too. The omega 3 fatty acids in it help slow down cognitive problems such as Alzheimer’s disease and age-related cognitive decline. (refer to http://lowcarbdiets.about.com/od/lowcarbsuperfoods/a/salmonbenefits.htm) Haha...I think I urgently need Salmon :D

The original recipe from Mum's Favourite Dishes Cookbook (妈妈暧心菜）, I forgot to coat the Salmon with cornstarch, and the ginger burnt a bit...Oops! Anyway, Gabriel loves this fish!

Recipe from Mum's Favourite Dishes Cookbook (妈妈暧心菜), p 85

Ingredients:
1 piece salmon, season with 1 tbsp salt, wash and drain
5 slices of ginger, shredded or cut into thin
2 tbsp light soy sauce
2 tbsp cooking oil

Method:
1. Heat up Happycall pan with 2 tbsp cooking oil. Pan-fry both sides of salmon over medium heat till golden brown. Remove salmon from pan.
2. Place shredded ginger in the pan, fry over medium heat for 2 mins or until ginger turned crispy.
3. Add light soy sauce, remove the ginger from heat. Pour the shredded ginger together with light soy sauce over fried salmon. Serve warm.

Oven baked Barramundi: Asian Seabass

After a few weeks of doing my groceries shopping at the local wet market as well as the Asian groceries shops, I discovered some of the ingredients which we (Asian) usually need is selling at a very expensive price here. For instance, ginger, a common ingredient which is a must in my kitchen is selling at $18/kg at a farm market and the price is $20~$24/kg at some Asian groceries shop!!

With this expensive ginger, I better put every inch of it into good use! This round I try to oven baked barramundi or Asian called it seabass.

Place the tofu, slice tomatoes, and fish into the baking tray, cover it with slice ginger and spring onion from my garden. Add 3 tbsp of light soy source, 1 tbsp of sesame oil and 100ml of water. Cover the tray with aluminium foil and place into oven at 220C for 25 mins.

The meat of the fish will come out soft and silky like steamed fish, we golloped the fish once it it out from the oven...sorry forgot to take the photo of the cooked fish :)

Prawn Fritters (Cucur Udang)

I made this prawn fritters two weeks ago. My sister in Melbourne loves prawn fritters, she used to buy it from Chew Jetty 姓周桥 in Penang, the place where we were born. So you know my surname now :) My family moved out from Chew Jetty when I was 5 years old. Now Chew Jetty has been classify as one of the Unesco World Heritage. Attached a link (created by Eunice Khong, founder of Travelerfolio) which has photos of Chew Jetty and the prawn fritters stall for my son future reference, hopefully the link will still be there when he read the post.

Dumplings

Saw 子瑜妈妈美食坊 made the beautiful mini prawns dumplings, at 子瑜妈妈爱米美食坊  she shared how to make the store bought dumpling skin thinner. By using the rolling pin to roll over the store bought dumpling skin a few times, we can get a thinner skin. Trying her recipe with the store bought dumpling skin.

Indeed the dumpling skin becomes bigger after rolling, whether it has becomes thinner, this you have to justify it yourself. I always deep fried the dumplings, this is the first time trying to boil them in boiling water. When I used the chopstick to poke the dumpling, gravy oozing out from it, I love this! This is definately a healthier choice if compared to deep fried dumplings. 

  

Chilli Crabs

I cooked this dish last Friday to celebrate WT finally has a break to stay in Singapore for two weeks! Cooking Chilli Carbs really not an easy task, you need to have live crabs, the frozen one is not advisable. In this post I'll share with you on how I put my crabs into "sleep" before it goes under the chopper. 

Fried Clams with Ginger, Vinegar

One of my favourite seafood...clams! This is a dish which I love since young, my mother will always prepare this dish for me when I go to visit her. I always buy clams when I  see it in the wet market. The sauce from this dish contains the natural sweetness from the clams and a bit sourness from the vinegar which make me finished the whole plate of rice!