Fried rice is always an easy but boring dish to prepare.. I mean, how interesting can fried rice be? Using essentially the same ingredients as regular fried rice (minus the ketchup), I made Omu Rice for lunch one afternoon. Ah-mm, 88 and Jason raved about how delicious this was, although I don’t think it differed too much from normal fried rice. Don’t tell me the ketchup has super power?! And suddenly I think of the way I used to write in Pink-Pink!!. I guess only “oldies” will understand what I mean.

Makes 4 servings

What I used:

For fried rice (4 servings)
3 rice bowls cooked rice (best if leftover from yesterday)
A handful of frozen vegetables (corn, peas, carrots), defrosted–> this ingredient is such an oxymoron
5 slices ham, sliced into 1-cm squares
100g minced meat
Some prawns, cut into 1-cm pieces (optional)
1 onion, chopped
1 tablespoon olive oil
Black pepper
1 tablespoon light soy sauce
1 tablespoon ketchup and some to decorate

For omelette (per person)
1 beaten egg
2 tablespoons milk
1 slices cheddar/ normal cheese, cut into small pieces (or use mozzarella)

1. Use a non-stick pan!
2. Heat up the oil and fry onion til translucent. Add minced meat, ham, and prawns (if using) and fry til meat is cooked.
3. Add the vegetables, rice, light soy sauce, ketchup and black pepper. Mix well and remove from pan. Set aside.
4. Beat 2 tablespoons milk with one egg in a bowl. Clean the pan and oil it with olive oil using paper towels so that the omelette slides right off later. Once the pan is hot, pour the beaten egg and swirl it around the pan quickly. Lower the heat once the egg is half solid.
5. Layer the cheese in the middle of the egg, then put one portion of fried rice on top. Leave some space at both sides of the omelette as you need to fold in both sides quickly once the cheese and rice are added.
6. Fold in both sides of the egg to envelope the rice. Don’t worry, the egg won’t have to “meet” and it is ok for some of the rice to show. Remove the pan from the stove, then flip it onto a flat plate. Shape up the omu rice with paper towel to make it neat. Continue to make another omu rice until you’ve used up all the rice. Decorate with ketchup and tuck in!

For an extremely useful step-by-step guide, please go to this page from Just One Cookbook which I adapted this recipe from. The amount of time and effort Nami spends on each post makes my jaw drop.

How much I spent: 

$1.50 for breakfast ham
$1 for minced meat
$1.40 for cheddar cheese
Everything else from my pantry!

Total cost per serving: $0.98

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I’ve been wanting to make omu rice for some time now because I love tomato ketchup rice, but simply serving ketchup rice is uninteresting. The amount of rice in this one serving is less than your regular rice bowl. Initially I thought it wouldn’t be enough per person, but I guess they were too distracted by the novelty that they said they were extremely full. It was just a little bit of rice and one egg- the same ingredients you would use to cook fried rice. The only difference is, if I had served the fried rice with egg as it is, they would most probably eat double the amount. If a dish is familiar or boring, you’ll tend to eat more without thinking.

Presentation really does make a difference.. I’m going to experiment with more colours and more interesting ways to dress up my dishes! Who says you can’t play with your food?

The post Japanese Omu Rice ~ with cheese, ham and ketchup appeared first on Budgetpantry | Singapore Mummy Blog on Food, Recipe & Baby.

It’s been a long while since our family had lo-bak. Ah-mm used to cook a big pot with pork belly, extra pieces of lean meat (I don’t like those. haha!) and lots of eggs every 2-3 weeks when we were all still living together. At one time, there were 11 people in our household including our helper.. and dinner (and home) was always fun, interesting, and something to look forward to. The house was almost never quiet. Ah-mm would be watching her TV til late at night (as she does now), and Cheng Lip would be flying down the stairs to cook packets of instant noodles for supper. Alex and Michelle would be chilling in the adjacent room, and when Slimer was awake- and he rarely was- he would be plonked in front of his computer 打 game-ing. I still remember the “biu-biu-biu!!!!!!!!!!” that blasted on his speakers whenever he fought those enemies. And more distantly, I remember the time Slimer put Cheng Wu into the washing machine because the pesky toddler just wouldn’t shut up.

My family is a bit different.. but we have wonderful sibling relationships, even if Slimer refused to spend recess time with me on my first day of school in Primary 1 (he was in Primary 3). Well technically he fulfilled his duty, because Mom just told him to “meet” me during recess and made sure I knew where to go. So he just brought me to the tuckshop, made sure I was eating, and told me, 10 seconds later, “Ah-ger 你留在这里啊” while he ran off very quickly to play catching with his friends.

Whenever I think of my family, I think of home-cooked food. And whenever I think of home-cooked food, I think of Ah-mm, our Masterchef. And as I cooked this version of lo-bak for her yesterday, it made me happy that she took a bite and said, “好吃，好吃” and defended my cooking when 88 said it wasn’t salty enough. “lo-bak 都不用太咸”, she said. We called it “lo-bak” and not “lorrrr-bak” because we’re Teochew.

In other news, 88 everything also not salty enough la, but I cannot go against my principle by serving her sodium-laden food!

Here are some pics to help you along. The spice packet that I bought- star anise, cinnamon, and cloves:

Braise the pork belly in whole pieces, then slice only after cooking:

Some tips:

-Use pork belly which is already sliced length-wise and not too thick. When cooking, cook the whole piece together and only slice into smaller pieces when ready to eat. Choose pork that is not too fatty since the texture will be melt-in-your-mouth anyway. I got the pork belly from Sheng Siong. They’re sliced fresh and come in nifty packages. The packages are then sold by individual weight.

-When covering the pot with water, do not add too much water. The water level should come up to just above the ingredients. You wanna braise the meat, not boil it.

-Pan-searing the meat in caramelised sugar enhances the taste and creates the melt-in-your-mouth texture. Some recipes skip this step but you don’t want to!

-If you’re serving the whole pot, remember to remove the star anise and cinnamon sticks before serving. What? You’ve never accidentally bitten on a star anise?

-Erm last tip: Remove the topmost fatty part including skin before eating. That’s how I eat pork belly. And it still tastes good!

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The preparation time is worth it when you bite on a piece of melt-in-your-mouth pork belly that YOU cooked. This dish is not difficult, and definitely doable for a kitchen noob. Feel free to ask me any questions, and I have a confession: this is the first time I’ve cooked this, too!

The post Teochew Braised Pork Belly rice/ Lo Bak/ 卤肉饭 appeared first on Budgetpantry | Singapore Mummy Blog on Food, Recipe & Baby.

Ok, Jason is looking at me like I am mad because here I am blogging a Furong Egg recipe at 11pm on the eve of our pre-wedding shoot and I have not finished preparing the things to bring tomorrow (Toto and Tato are going on an outing). I have not moisturised my face, I have not put on my face mask, and oh we fly to Bali on Wednesday and I have not packed anything too.

But as always, I prioritise. Blogging about Furong Egg is important, okayyy?

I remember preparing allll the ingredients for this dish in a hurry one evening after 88’s eye appointment. After everything was chopped nicely in record time, I opened the fridge wanting to reach for my three eggs. But you guessed it, we were out of eggs. How to cook Furong Egg with no egg? How come there are no eggs? Luckily my knight in shining armour volunteered to buy eggs for me so that he can finally have his dinner.. so this recipe would not have happened if not for Jason. So thank you Jason. For you only, I will add more red chilli when I cook Furong Egg next time.

Makes 3 servings

What I used:

3 eggs, not those super tiny 10 for $1.30 types. Normal size
12 prawns, shelled, or use frozen cooked shrimp
1 stalk spring onion, sliced into rings
2 tsp chopped garlic
1 red (purple) onion
1 or 2 red chilli, not chilli padi, sliced or cut with scissors
Half a carrot, sliced thinly, for colour
Half tsp salt
White pepper
1 tbsp olive oil
Half tsp fish sauce (optional)

1. Beat the eggs with the salt and pepper.
2. Heat olive oil til hot, then add in onion. Fry for a minute then add in garlic. Stir-fry quickly.
3. Add prawns, spring onion, chili, carrot and mix well. Your pan should be a myriad of colours now. Add fish sauce if using.
4. Make sure the flame is on high, then pour in egg in step 1. Let it cook til nicely set then turn it over and cook the other side. You can break the omelette slightly when flipping over.
5. Cook for another 1-2 minutes and your Furong Egg is ready.

How much I spent:

$0.75 for eggs
$1.50 for prawns (I used bouncy frozen cooked shrimp)
Everything else from my pantry

Total cost per serving: $0.75

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This is one of my favourite zi-char dishes. Don’t leave out any ingredients especially the red chillies! If you decide to try this easy recipe out, ensure that the flame is BIG, and also please see to it that there are eggs in your fridge, unless you too, have a very hungry knight in a shining armour at home. Oh and if you have left over char siew, or char siew, add them in, but only if they are those red char siew with a tinge of sweetness and not those Hong Kong style dark-sauce-type char siew. I will blog again when I return from Bali, and wish me (us) luck for our photoshoot tomorrow! I hope my photographer is good at photoshop.

The post Furong Egg appeared first on Budgetpantry | Singapore Mummy Blog on Food, Recipe & Baby.