Here’s another version of my oyster sauce chicken! This time it’s with lots of dark sauce gravy (my niece loves this) so you can slurp it up with rice. Sorry for the less-than-fabulous pictures under poor lighting conditions!

My big tummy nowadays means I prefer to settle dinner using my slow cooker. Just prep everything the night before, add water and turn on the slow cooker on before leaving for work. Remember to cook this on low so the chicken doesn’t end up tough. Contrary to belief, meat doesn’t necessarily get more tender the longer you cook it! Overcook it on high, and the the ‘boiling’ water will overcook the meat. Same goes for cooking soup over the stove top. Simmer instead of boil for long hours to get the meat soft and tender.

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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!

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*Sorry for the lousy picture. It was taken at 8.30 pm, where there’s no sunlight!

Soup has got to one of the most fail-proof dishes. Really, there is only ONE true component to making tasty soup: time.

You can make a really sweet and savoury soup with just a few basic ingredients. If I’m trying to go meatless, the most basic soup would be ABC soup: corn, carrot, potato and onion. If I really want a rich, full bodied soup, I add pork ribs and honey dates, and boil for at least 2.5 hours over the stove top. You could also cook the soup in your slow cooker for 7 hours.

I used to switch my slow cooker to ‘auto-shift’ at 7.30 in the morning and come home 10 hours later to dinner. I don’t do it now because my 3.2 litre Takahi slow cooker makes hardly enough soup for my family of four, or sometimes six, if Cara and Slimer decide to pop over. ‘3.2 litre’ doesn’t mean it can take 3.2 litres of water hor, it means it has a capacity of 3.2 litres.. you have to factor in the pork ribs, the huge carrot, the corn, the onion, the honey dates… then you’re left with soup for two people.

I cooked this cabbage, pork rib and apple soup over the stove top the other night. I was home early from work and the husband had to work late so I had close to three hours to cook it. Ok technically he didn’t ‘have to’ work late but he always does because he likes to make sure everything is done meticulously. There was this one time that my ex-team mate (who was on night shift) had to whatsapp me at 11 pm saying, “Chris can you get your husband out of the office?” All I can say is, sometimes it works, most times it doesn’t.

Oh if you didn’t know, I met my husband at work but I quit almost two years ago, so we know the same people.

Anyway, I digress. This soup is incredibly easy to make. You don’t have to add the cabbage but I wanted an all-in-one dish that night. All you need: two large fuji apple, a carrot, honey dates, pork ribs, cabbage (optional) and onions. Be sure to simmer the soup gently instead of having it on a rolling boil throughout for the pork ribs to be tender, not tough. The version with snow pear at 老火汤 is said to have cooling properties, nourish the throat, and ‘enhance overall beauty’. Ok so want to be pretty, drink more soup!

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Oyster sauce chicken has always been one of my favourite dishes. There’s a stall in Clementi market and hawker centre that sells a really yummy version, but when you can cook it yourself at home, why not?

This dish is comfort food, a familiar favourite. I usually only cook this on days that I can eat rice.. I eat very little carbs and no rice/noodles/bread Mondays to Fridays. All I can say is: 如果你没有肥过，你是不会了解的。Haha. I like this dish with lots of gravy so I can spoon it generously over my precious bowl of rice on weekends. Sooo good!

I had some leftover chicken drumlettes in my freezer and thought to use them up in this dish. You could also use mid-joint wings or chopped chicken pieces. I recommend chicken thigh as the tender meat goes very well with the soft potatoes, carrots and glorious gravy. This dish is super easy to cook. In a nutshell: fry onions, add chicken, wine, carrots and potatoes, seasonings, cover and simmer. Don’t add the cooking wine together with the seasonings but directly to the chicken, before the rest of the seasonings. You’ll see how a splash of wine creates magic in the hot wok, instantly lifting the overall aroma and flavour of the dish.

I used Taiwan carrots and spring onions for this recipe. Chicken drumlettes (frozen) and potatoes from Giant and yellow onions – 4 for $4.65 杀人放火 from Cold Storage. I bo bian have to buy cos I needed it for a last-minute dish and the only accessible store was Cold Storage.

This portion is enough for the four people in my family. My pictures just show half a portion. This recipe yields two plates with lots of gravy! We eat quite simply. Most of the time, I cook one all-in-one dish or soup and the husband laps it up with rice. As an average family of four, 三菜一汤 is too much for us as an everyday meal.. (I’m not talking about Chinese New Year.. we go allll out *guffaws*).. how do people finish the food?

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Soup isn’t quite a big deal in my family when I was growing up. My childhood memory of soup is boiling water with omelette, tang hoon and spring onions, flavoured with soy sauce. That soup is delicious.. but it’s.. boiling water flavoured with soy sauce.

During Chinese New Year, Ah-mm would also cook a big pot of wong-bok vegetable soup with fishballs, meatballs, fuzhou meatballs, handmade meat balls and her-kiao (fish dumplings).. you know, all the teochew stuff. I still cook this soup often these days.. I love the sweetness of the soup when it is loaded with wong-bok, the magic vegetable created – I believe – just so it could be in soup.

For the past 3 weeks, the husband and I have decided to just eat soup for dinner Mondays to Fridays in our attempt to stay in shape, or not stay in round shape anymore. I have also started walking home from work (Boon Lay to Bukit Batok) and reach home about an hour later than usual, so cooking soup makes things easier for me since I basically just have to put everything in a pot and simmer for 1.5 to 2 hours over the stove top (we have late dinners). I like this arrangement! You could also cook this in the slow cooker and it’ll be ready by the time you get home from work.

I like to use honey dates as they lend a savoury flavour to the soup. When cooking lotus root and pork rib soup, I also add dried octopus, red dates (sometimes) and peanuts. I cheat and use canned braised peanuts (Narcissus brand) to save time, and also because my aunt can’t eat crunchy peanuts so I have to ensure they are real soft. You could use raw peanuts (remove the skin if you use them!) if you want to be authentic and all, but canned peanuts taste great to me. I also used to add a whole small piece of octopus without cutting, but I find that cutting them into small strips makes the soup tastier. Don’t be tempted to use a large piece of octopus thinking that it would do your soup good. All it’ll do is overpower it.

Before cooking the soup, be sure to clean the pork ribs and scald them in boiling water first. Doing so removes scum, dirt and blood water, so your soup is cleaner and clearer. It also makes the meat juicier. And be sure to simmer instead of boil for the 2 hours so that the meat becomes tender, not tough. You could add carrots, but I didn’t in this recipe.

That night, my little niece came over. She is real picky about food but look at her gulp down the soup! What a gem, this little one! p/s- if you’re giving pork rib soup to children, filter the soup through a sieve first, to get rid of any tiny bones that could exist. Enjoy!

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