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.

I adapted this fabulous Potato Salad recipe from Just One Cookbook and am just so glad I made it for lunch today. This was the first recipe I’ve tried from Nami, and going by how quickly my family devoured this, it certainly won’t be the last!

Jason has a thing for potato salad, specifically the potato salad from Pacific Coffee from HONG KONG from the outlet at The Peak 山顶. Yes, he is a bit 坚持 like that, when it comes to potato salad. Haha.

I used regular mayonnaise instead of Japanese mayonnaise, reduced the mayo from 12 tablespoons to 5 (I really think we don’t need that much!), increased the amount of carrot and cucumber, added one extra potato and egg, plus added some sugar. I loved the result, and am positive you will, too!

I don’t know if being on detox has anything to do with this, but this is the most delicious potato salad I’ve ever had. Yes, I cheated a bit on this round of detox because when you cook, you gotta taste. It’s not an excuse.. it’s a fact of life! I had a small bite of this potato salad and they’re so good, I am quite positive I can finish the entire bowl on my own! If you’re feeling fancy, add some freshly fried bacon for an even better version of the best potato salad you’ll ever have, promise!

The post Japanese Potato Salad appeared first on Budgetpantry | Singapore Mummy Blog on Food, Recipe & Baby.

I was supposed to be on my way to meet the girls for Boon’s going-away-to-do-her-PHD party this evening. With 15 minutes to spare before I had to get out the door, I suddenly had this compelling urge to do a blog post on Char Bee Hoon! So what’s a girl to do except sit down dutifully to write a blog post at the risk of being veryyy late.. and this same girl is now now pretty miffed because the post got accidentally deleted!

In any case, I hope (re)blogging about Char Bee Hoon cheers me up. If the Char Bee Hoon you’re familiar with is a version stir fried with light soy sauce with dark sauce added for colour, change your mindset now! Your family will thank you for it. That type of Char Bee Hoon tastes fine, like uh, how something would taste when it is stir fried with light soy sauce with dark sauce added for colour. For me, Char Bee Hoon should always be braised in stock. When the correct amount of (chicken, fish, or vegetable) stock is added to the pan, the bee hoon would have soaked up all the goodness by the time it is ready to eat.

As you can tell by my cooking, I am kinda obsessed with stock. I use them everyday.. in soups and stews, in vegetables, in stir-frys, in noodle dishes like this one. And with instant stock available everywhere, it’s not like you need to put in a huge load of effort to prepare them. I would even go as far to say that discovering stock cubes changed my kitchen life.. they are a quick and easy way to add flavour, providing you with a base to experiment.. and you do just that, knowing at the back of your mind you’re covered.

Cooking with stock is like being in a safe and long term relationship which gives you the power to explore and do a little dance in the universe, knowing that you can always go home.

Makes 6 servings

What I used:

Half packet bee hoon, soaked til just soft and drained (do not oversoak!)
1 egg, beaten, omelette it and slice. Set aside
12 prawns
1/3 beijing cabbage, chopped
4 dried chinese mushrooms, cut into strips
1 carrot, chopped into strips
2 tbsp minced garlic
1 tbsp chopped shallots
Red chillies, fried shallots, spring onions and parsley for garnish
1 tbsp oilve oil
For the flavour stock (mix everything together):
Half a stock cube (chicken or fish) dissolved in 800ml hot water
1 tbsp fish sauce
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp oyster sauce
White pepper

1. Heat oil in pan til hot, then fry shallots and garlic til fragrant.
2. Add in the mushrooms and fry for 2 minutes, then add cabbage, carrots and prawns.
3. Add the bee hoon, then slowly pour in the flavour stock til it comes up to about half the level of bee hoon.
4. Lower the heat, allow bee hoon to absorb the stock (about 4-5 minutes) til dry. Toss with chopsticks to mix.
5. Top with omelette strips and garnish with red chillies, fried shallots, spring onions and parsley.

How much I spent:

$0.60 for bee hoon
$4 for prawns
$0.30 for egg
$0.30 for carrot
$0.40 for cabbage
Everything else from my pantry

Total cost per serving: $0.94 (or $0.27 without prawns for a basic but still delish version!)

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Every household has its recipe for Char Bee Hoon, and this is how I cook mine!

The post Char Bee Hoon 炒米粉 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.

Quick-fix meal!

I re-created this hawker dish and my family loved it! Jason even went as far to rank it up there along with the Creamy Mushroom Risotto I spent 2 hours cooking and preparing. I remember for the risotto, I was physically standing at the stove for an hour stirring the broth into the rice!

This Fried Fish Bee Hoon took me a much lesser amount of time since I prepped the fish overnight. You don’t have to. I used an airfryer for oil-free “deep frying”. If you don’t have an airfryer, I would suggest you pan-fry the fish in shallow oil instead of deep frying them.

For the type of fish, if you can, go to the market and buy snakehead/snapper fish fillets and ask the fish monger to slice them into good sized chunks. Supermarkets do sell them pre-sliced but they’re used mainly in Sliced Fish Soup. If you don’t mind, you can also buy better quality cream dory or sutchi fish (they’re the same thing) which are cheaper, fatter and chunkier, but don’t have a good reputation. When you eat fish and chips or fried fish soup outside, it’s normally made with dory/sutchi fish too.

The post SG Hawker Favourites: (Air) Fried Fish Bee Hoon appeared first on Budgetpantry | Singapore Mummy Blog on Food, Recipe & Baby.