Ever since being discharged from the hospital, I’ve been itching to cook but everyone (especially the lovely ladies at Singapore Home Cooks!) has been telling me to close my kitchen and rest.

I felt fine after taking Tramadol as painkillers for the first day but found that it caused me to have shallow breathing – that’s one of its side effects. But being someone with a slight anxiety disorder, the symptoms were getting too familiar. The weak breathing reminded me too much of having an anxiety attack. In order not to confuse my brain, I decided to put myself off Tramadol and just take Panadeine, which really isn’t of much use in relieving the pain.

I haven’t really cooked for the past week. Ok, I tried to cook on Wednesday (I was discharged on Tuesday) but felt so useless after feeling tired cooking ONE airfried salmon dish. I tried again to fix a pasta dinner on Friday but it took me so much effort just to cook penne. I stopped cooking and went back to bed, super disappointed and dejected like WHEN WILL I BE A NORMAL HUMAN BEING AGAIN?

It didn’t help that the next day, my aunt decided to tempt me to cook by buying home a gorgeous head of USA purple cauliflower and some sweet mini peppers.

I sent the husband to go get some bacon from the supermarket, because I knew exactly what I wanted to make with those sweet peppers!

I didn’t want something too complicated or labour intensive so cream cheese stuffed peppers sounded perfect. I gave Jason instructions to make a cream cheese dip with fried bacon, garlic, chopped spring onions, some truffle salt and a little bit of lemon juice. Mix it all up like so:

The peppers were then sliced lengthwise and seeds removed. We stuffed the filling into the cavity of each pepper, wrapped them with bacon, then baked the whole lot in a preheated 190C oven for 22 minutes, until the bacon were crisped. We baked them in the oven so we could make more at a go, but you could make these in the airfryer too, at 160C for 12 minutes. We tried both methods and preferred the baked ones, although the airfryer was a real timesaver.

I remember having a similar version at one of the hippy cafes recently but because they used Jalapeno peppers, the heat was too much for me to take. Making these with sweet peppers was just perfect. You could also make a meat stuffing and top with mozzarella cheese. Or leave the crunchy peppers raw and fill them with cold chicken mayonnaise. I think that’ll just be as interesting.

My family loved these.. 88 even asked for second and third helpings! Thank you to the husband for taking instructions so well.. but sigh! I can’t wait to cook again!

The post Bacon and cream cheese stuffed sweet peppers appeared first on Budgetpantry | Singapore Mummy Blog on Food, Recipe & Baby.

Recently, I’ve been thinking of ways to cook tofu. I’m not exactly a fan of tofu in its purest form – soft and silky with not much of a texture at all. Don’t get me wrong. I do eat steamed tofu or tofu in soup, and absolutely enjoy my agedashi tofu, but if given a choice, I’d much rather eat stuff with contrasting textures than say, chawanmushi.

I’ve been wanting to make these for some time now. Tofu puffs stuffed with soft tofu. These are easy to make, fun to eat and taste fabulous. You’re getting interesting textures of both crispy and soft tofu all in one dish. The kids would like them! All you need? Tau pok, tofu, prawns, corn, and fish paste. You could even omit the half teaspoon of salt as the fish paste is already salted, but one of my aunts always complain food isn’t salty enough, so I didn’t want to take chances.

/Sidetrack. The aunts ended up drowning my precious tofu puffs in stupid chilli sauce. It’s really a pet peeve of mine.. whenever I cook ‘Western’ food – grilled fish, battered fish, roast chicken leg, pork chops, whatever – the first thing they do is reach for that bottle of Lingham or Maggi chilli sauce and then go on to slather the offensive thing on my yummy food! My delicious sauces, wonderful marinade, painstakingly thought out combinations of flavours…. all murdered by chilli sauce. And all you taste is the chilli sauce!! Super hate.

That said, these tofu puffs would go well with a *little* bit of sweet thai chilli sauce. That’s mayo in the pictures – I had two dips – but felt sweet chilli tasted better. These would be a great idea for a party. They make great finger food. Just be sure to *not* let the tofu mixture sit around before stuffing and frying. Tofu gives out lots of water. Best to mash, mix, stuff and fry without stopping in between. The first time I made this, I was cooking a few dishes at a time (as usual) and let the mixture sit for a tad too long. It became more watery than I would have liked. Not what you want.

This is the tau pok (tofu puffs) that I used – mini type:

Cut a slit across and invert, taking care not to tear them. I made these in the airfryer. There’s simply no other way for me, but you could also deep fry these yummy bites. Have fun this weekend and check out all my other airfryer recipes =)

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