Shreaded Chicken Salad - Chinese style

This dish is more of an inspiration from San Zhong Liang Jian's (SZLJ) Sam Sui Chicken. Some might be concern over how to make the ginger sauce from SZLJ, the recipe is very easy.

1 Ingredients:
1.1 Chicken leg x 1;
1.2 Ginger x 1 lump, grinded;
1.3 Romanian Lectuse X 1;
1.3 Sesame oil X 2 table spoon;
1.4 Salt 1/2 tea spoon for sauce and 3/4 tea spoon for stock;
1.5 Spring onion x 1 stock;

2 Preparation:
2.1 Chicken:
2.1.1 Boil up a pot of water, place in 3/4 tea spoon of salt and a stock of spring onion;
2.1.2 Place in the chicken leg when boil, continue boiling the chicken leg for 5 minutes, turn off the fire and cover the content for another 45 minutes;
2.1.3 Take the chicken leg out, shread it with hands. Eat the rest (knuckles and bones area) because your hands have limit and you don't want to waste the chicken;
2.1.4 Leave to cool;

2.2 Romanian Lectuse:
2.2.1 If your Romanian lectuse has been in the fridge for a while, it would be dehydrated. Take the lectuse, remove the leaves from stem piece by piece, cut into smaller pieces;
2.2.2 Soak in cool water for about 15-20 minutes, this will rehydrate the leaves to give the crunchy texture. You can also use the same technique on other leafy vegetables;
2.2.3 Take the leaves chunk out from soaking and remove excess water ( for best effect, use the spin dryer);

2.4 Ginger sauce:
2.4.1 Heat up the frying pan, pour in the sesame oil and heat;
2.4.2 Pour in the grinded ginger, stir fry for a while;
2.4.3 Take a scoop of the stock that you used in boiling the chicken and pour it into the frying pan;
2.4.4 apply 1/2 tea spoon of salt, stir and mix well;
2.4.5 turn off the flame;

2.5 Integration:
Place all ingredients into mixing bowl and toss, it will be ready to eat.

Fish fillet and Zucchini in home made tomato sauce.

Okay, it taste better than its look, except for the Enokitake (straw type mushrooms). The composition of my lunch today is Zuchinni and fish fillet in tomato sauce. What I want to create is a tomato flavour sauce so to cook my fish in.

The ingredients as follows:

1) Zuchinni X 1;
2) Enokitake one packet;
3) Fish fillet X 1;
4) Tomatos X 3 (large ones);
5) Salt and pinch of dried Parsley;
6) Garlic chopped;
7) Olive Oil 2 table spoons;
8) Chicken stocks;

Process:

1) cut the Zucchini and tomato into chunks;
2) Marinate the fillet with salt;
3) Separate the Enokitake mushrooms;
4) Heat up the frying pan, add 2 table spoon of olive oil, add in garlic when heated up, stir fry for a moment or so;
5) Pour in the tomatos, add in the chicken stocks, cover lid;
6) Open the lid after 2 minutes or so, use a squasher to squash the tomatos into paste;
7) add in the Zucchini chunks, ried parsley and Enokitake, let the dish cook for a while;
8) clear a space on the frying pan, place the fillet onto the pan, then covers it with the sauce and some of the vegetables.
9) Covers the lid and let it cook for 3-5 minutes or so;
10)turn off the fire and ready to serve.

The water came out from the Zucchini after a night of cooling in the fridge, making the dish very watery. It would be best if served immediately. However, there is no artificial additives (except for the chicken stock) so the sauce can be drunk off.

My lunch for today

This is my lunch for today. It consist of a fish dish and a Lady's finger dish. The fish dish is simple to prepare because the preparation is very little. The Lady's Finger dish would need more work.

1 Tomato Fish:
1.1 Ingredients:
1.1.1 Fish Fillet;
1.1.2 One Tomato sliced;
1.1.3 Salt;
1.1.4 Aluminium foil;
1.1.5 Olive Oil;

1.2 Process:
1.2.1 Place the tomato as base on top of the aluminium foil, apply salt;
1.2.2 Place the fillet on the tomato, follow by some salt, then cover the fish with the rest of the tomato;
1.2.3 Apply a table spoon (approx) of Olive Oil, wrap the whole thing with the Aluminium foil;
1.2.4 I would normally use the Oven but in this case, I used the flat bottom frying pan to cook the piece for 10 minutes, turn the piece from time to time to ensure it is evenly cooked.

2 Lady's Finger:
This is more conventional way of cooking because I do not want to spend a lot of time preparing my meal.

2.1 Ingredients:
2.1.1 Lady's finger one packet, sliced thin;
2.1.2 one Red Chillie, sliced thin;
2.1.3 Tofu for frying, cut into cubes;
2.1.4 Garlic,chopped;
2.1.5 salt and soy sauce;

2.2 Process:
2.2.1 Apply oil to the wok when it is hot, pour in the tofu when the oil is hot, stir fry for a minute plus;
2.2.2 Add in Garlic and Chillie, apply some salt, continue frying for a minute;
2.2.3 Add in Lady's fingers, stir fry for 30 sec to a minute, sprinkle with some water, cover the wok for a minute to 2;
2.2.4 Open the cover, stri fry for a while, then apply some soy sauce across;
2.2.5 Turn off the flame and ready to serve.

After tasting the food I noted that:
1 There is still a strong smell on the fish mainly because I have not put any herbs or Ginger to cover the "stench". It would probably be better when Chinese Parsley is added to create the fragence. I would also normally add black pepper but my dishes recently has been using a lot of that and I want to cut down.

2 The Lady's finger dish is definitely less spicy than I expected, the number of chillie can be increased to 2. Further to that, adding dried shrimps would help to improve the taste.

Are Female Lawyers always that bitchy?

I do not have much opportunity to meet a lot of lawyers. Those who I normally see are the legal counsels employed by my company. My experience of female lawyers to be honest are not really that pleasent.

My company has so far been through 3 legal counsels, 2 of which are female. We were quite alright with the guy personally but as my boss mentioned, he is not that reliable at work ( keep missing details ), I guess his personality as a perceiver does not work well with the trade.

As for the 2 female legal counsels, I find some similar pattern between them, there are:

1) They love to talk telling people of their opinion while shut their ears on others;
2) They form a barrier surrounding them which seemingly protect themselves from being hurt by others. They are very comfortable behind a table because that is their fortress;
3) They will ask you what you want to discuss and when you make attempt to do so, they will cut in inpolitely, hurry you to cut it short and claim that they have no idea what you are talking about;
4) Rather than listening they will just tell you what you should do, let them know what you want. The irony part is that they don't listen when you tell them so. The best part is that when you need them to do something, they will ask you thousand and one questions and in effect silence you to give up on the request;
5) They always seems to be into details and fail to see the BIG PICTURE;
6) They show much disrespect to others yet demand others to respect them;
7) There is only one way to get things done, theirs, all other ways are wrong.
8) They do not and don't want to understand others, but expect others to understand them;
Of course this statistics are base on my experience of the 2 female legal counsel my office has employed. Others might have a different experience.

The cake from Art Pastry @ Upper Aljunied Lane

I brought my son to our regular doctor at an old estate in Aljunied today after he came down with a bad case of cough. While we were there, we visited the Cake shop next door. The name is Art Pastry which I considered was newly open considering the age of the estate. I believe it is opened here for not more and a year. It is a quiet estate and the only people crossing the shop are the residents and patients of the 2 clinics next door.

While looking for some pastry for my little boy ( yes, the one with needles and tubes poked into him when he was born ), I just happened to remember that it was November last year that I have bought a Birthday Cake for my daughter. I meant to write about the episode but was delayed by procastination. Since my son is now asleep in his bed, I guess this is a good time to do so.

It was during November last year that we needed to celebrate my daughter's birthday at school. One of the important item on our list was the cake and we were asking each other where to get it? Eventually this apstry shop came into my mind and 2 days before the event, I went to make an order for it.

Although it was very isolated, I was surprise that the shop was quite busy. They do not have off the shelf cakes and every cake has to be pre-ordered. The Chef also expressed concern that he might not make it. Eventually after a brief negotiation, the Chef think he could deliver if it was after lunch time (12:30PM-1:00PM). I made an order of a Chocolate Truffle Cake, my daughter's favourite.

I was in a hurry on that very day, after taken half day off my work, I have a few errants to run. I collected the cake without much examination. It was at my daughter's class that I have my first glance at the cake. The first surprise I have was that the cake looked really thin for a 2Kg. I gather that it is the most 2 inches instead of the normal 3inches. My first fear was that there might not be enough to go around with 16 5 year-old, 2 teachers with added 2 adults.

My worries were unfounded after I have my first taste of the cake, I immediately understand the reason for such thinness. The cake was compress and a single bit let off a feeling of richness in Chocolte in your mouth, yet the swetness is well controlled to my standard. It is relatively moist as compared to those made of standrd sippon cakes.

Another part of the Chef's winning recipes in this cake was the amount of Almond that he put in. It is almost impossible to miss out Almond with every single bite. The almonds added a crunchy texture to the soft sticky sensation made by the chocolate.

Other than that, the chef also made an effort to give enough decoration to the cake, so that it pleases the children.

On my way out, I met with a teacher from another class. There is enough cakes afterall to even distribute to teachers of other classes. The comments from the teacher was very positive and even she was surprise of how tasty the cake is. I guess my instinct was right on picking this shop. Perhaps the most valuable part of it is that this shop built on order, guaranttee for the cake's freshness.

What happened to my 1/2 cooked chicken?....

Want to know what has become to my 1/2 cooked chicken? Check out my lunch today....

I made sure the chicken is fully cooked, shreaded all the meat, mixed it back with the sauce. I chopped up some tomato, mixed with extra virgin olive oil, salt, black pepper and chopped up Chinese Parsley. Lastly, I chopped up some lettuce.

After taking the picture, I mixed them up ( after warming the shreaded Chicken to separate the whole thing ). Surprisingly the whole thing turned up quite well. The sourness of the Tomatos created just the right effect on the dish, added with the rich flavors of my left over chicken. The Lettuce provided the crunchy feelings to enhance the biting sensation.


Fig 1 Shreaded Chicken Salad

Our Dinner on Saturday...

Fig 1 Whole Dinner Presentation, Baked Vegetables on the left, Roast Chicken in the Middle and Stir Fried Brown Button Mushroom on the right


Fig 2 Roast Chicken Dish




Fig 3 Baked Vegetables Dish

I have decided on Saturday that we would make our dinner simple. So we went for Roast Chicken and Oven Baked Vegetables plus Stir Fried Brown Button Mushroom (Whole). The recipe was from Kylie Kwong. I have done this once before but kind of forgotten part of the recipe.

The ingredients as follows:

1 For the Chicken:
1.1 Chicken (Whole);
1.2 Salt (to rub on Chicken body);
1.3 Butter ( to be placed in between the skin and flesh of chicken);
1.4 Rosemary ( it was not in original recipe but I added this since I have a pot of this herb);

2 For the Baked Vegetables:
2.1 Zucchini;
2.2 Pumpkin;
2.3 Parsnip;
2.4 Big Onions;
2.5 Carrots;
2.6 Olive Oil ( 1 table spoon);
2.7 Sea Salt ( 1/2 tea spoon);
2.8 Black Pepper;

3 For the Stir Fried Brown Button Mushrooms:
3.1 Raw Brown Button Mushrooms (whole);
3.2 Garlic (finely chopped);
3.3 Dried Parsley;
3.4 Extra Virgin Olive Oil;

4 Baking Process:
4.1 Preheat the Oven to 175 DegC;
4.2 Fill the oven container with the mixed vegetables;
4.3 Place the Chicken on top of the vegetables;
4.4 Place the whole thing into the Oven and bake for 1 hour;
4.5 Tune the oven to 240DegC and continue to bake the whole thing for another 1/2 to 3/4 hour;

I actually covered the set with Aluminium Foil for the first part to retained the moist and probably it was a wrong strategy because the chicken was only 90% cooked and blood were all over at the end. Removing the foil would probably enable the chicken to be fully cooked.

5 Stir Fried Brown Button Mushroom:
5.1 Heat up the frying pan to medium heat and pour in 2 table spoon of Extra Virgin Olive Oil. You will spoil the aroma if you turned to high heat;
5.2 Pour in the chopped garlic and stir the content;
5.3 Pour in the Mushrooms and continue stirring for another 5 - 10 minutes, add salt;
5.4 Pour in a pinch of Parsley, stir for another 1 minute;