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Microwaved Pork with Pickled Vegetables

Just a quick recipe for me to remember. I had single serving packets of spicy pickled vegetables (湘满天老坛酸菜) which I didn't want to eat plain with rice/noodles, so I used it as an ingredient in a 3-min microwaved side dish. Since the pickled veg was already spicy and salty I didn't add more salt. Including prep time it was overall under 10 mins.

INGREDIENTS

~100g minced pork

~30g spicy pickled chinese veg

black pepper

soy sauce or miso

sesame oil (optional)

knorr haochi (optional)

STEPS

Mix minced pork, pickled veg and other seasonings (except sesame oil) in a bowl.

Microwave on medium high (600w) for 1 minute.

Mix them again to separate the pork into tiny bits so it doesn't get cooked into 1 big chunk.

Microwave for 2 minutes.

Drizzle sesame oil to taste.

I actually didn't add soy sauce or miso in the first step. Usually it'd have been soy sauce, but this time I wanted to eat it with the kishimen (flat udon) I had, so I skipped that and instead added miso and half of the finished dish into 1 portion of kishimen, which I then mixed together for sort of a 酸辣味噌拌面 / ピリ辛 味噌まぜきしめん.

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Instant Soup

Bulking up instant soups with mashed potato is nice, and can be done with instant mashed potato powder, frozen mashed potato or just boiling and mashing your own potato.

For ref on what I had that I enjoyed:

- instant cheese chowder powder, 1 serving - Picard Mashed Potatoes with Alaskan Pollock and Spinach, 1 chunk (13 chunks in the 450g pack, so ~35g of mashed potato) - a handful of frozen edamame - hot water

Mix hot water with instant soup as directed, add the other frozen ingredients, microwave on 600w for 2 minutes, then stir the mix to even out the blend. I had Skyflakes garlic crackers with the soup.

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Vegetable soup with grilled baby swiss cheese on sourdough bread with cracked rosemary and onion powder... I thrifted the soup cup too. :)

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Mashed Banana in Milk

There were too many bananas here in early November. They were already ripe then, so I froze them. I don’t enjoy ripe and sweet bananas; I like to eat them semi-ripe, when they still have a little tartness to them.

So I ate plenty of frozen bananas as a snack while I was sick end of last month.  Sibling didn’t know and bought more bananas, so they were frozen too while they hadn’t fully ripened.

I had 3 of the ripe frozen bananas left. I decided to snack on them tonight so they don’t become forgotten and freezer-burnt. 

I like to try odd/ unconventional food combos just because. I have a very ‘welcoming’ palate so I enjoy a lot of food (one of my few dislikes: coriander) and not everyone might enjoy this. 

INGREDIENTS

3 bananas

milk

fruit vinegar, to taste (I used muscat-flavoured vinegar)

chilli flakes, just because

STEPS (more like a log of what I did for myself)

I microwaved the bananas on medium for a short while to soften them, then mashed them in a little bit of milk. Too sweet, so I added chilli flakes. Still sweet and I couldn’t taste the spiciness, so I added muscat vinegar. Still quite sweet but tasted much better with a little tanginess.

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gingery pickled vegetable soup

Again, since it's for myself (rough reminder) I don't really measure ingredients; the below was enough for 1.5-2 portions.

INGREDIENTS

500g chicken broth (I used fresh, may substitute with Swanson; 250ml for 1 serving)

~3-5 coin-sized slices of young ginger

~100-120g pickled sour leafy chinese mustard (iirc I used ~1/3 of this per pot)

fish/ sausage/ fishballs/ tofu/ straw mushroom/ button mushroom/ any ‘liao’ (料: ingredients) suitable in chinese soups (would not recommend using strong-tasting stuff like salami or bacon lol i tried), amount as desired

salt, to taste

chilli flakes, to taste (I just like it spicy)

STEPS

boil broth + ginger + pickled vege first, dump everything in the pot and simmer until it tastes gingery enough

eat with rice or noodles or udon yes

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gingery chicken broth/soup

I like my chicken soup/broth gingery. One of my fondest childhood soup/broths was kuah merah (red soup) made of chicken/pork + ginger + angkak (red yeast rice) + salt, but I don't have angkak now so I tried something else which I enjoyed. Mainly for future personal reference.

INGREDIENTS

2 cups of chicken broth

4-5 coin-sized slices of young ginger

1 tsp rosemary salt blend

1 tsp sambal cabe merah (or chilli flakes to taste, just for the spiciness)

1 tbsp Mishima Nameshi furikake (三島の菜めし)

instant oatmeal

STEPS

Make chicken broth with fresh chicken ...or not. Ready-made if lazy.

Dump everything except the instant oatmeal in the pot with the broth, boil and simmer til it feels gingery enough.

Add oatmeal (depending on how thick I want the consistency) in a bowl and mix with a serving of the soup while still piping hot.

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Sometimes when I have leftover sauce I might not finish I'd just mix random ingredients in to see what the mix would taste like. This is a (personal) reference note for salad dressing since I liked the stuff I just mixed this time.

I don't have the exact ingredients since they're ready sauces, so just listing what they were

＊sweet chilli sauce from a frozen ngoh hiang set (close to sweet thai chilli sauce?)

＊Woolworth's secret burger sauce (close to thousand island)

＊Ikari Sauce Western Style Onion Dressing (イカリソース 野菜のドレス すりおろし洋風オニオン, basically tart vinegary onion dressing)

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non-alc sour lychee soda

Haven't made it in years. I miss it but I'm too lazy to get the ingredients since I rarely buy those. As usual, I don't measure.

INGREDIENTS

sprite (I like to dilute mine with club soda)

lychees (I use canned)

dried sour plums (super sour ones, not the mild sweet ones)

STEPS

mix them all in your serving glass

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microwaved short grain rice

Mum's verbal guide for Japanese short grain rice, for my own convenience

INGREDIENTS

rice

water

STEPS

rinse rice until clear, discard the water

soak rice in water in large microwavable bowl for ~30 minutes

1 cup: microwave on medium high (600w) for 5 minutes, stir with spoon, continue at medium low (400w?) for 8 minutes

1.5 cups: microwave on medium high (600w) for 6 minutes, stir with spoon, continue at medium low (400w?) for 8 minutes

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https://www.instagram.com/p/CP8L0oRleKs/

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choc milk agar agar

I felt like having some kind of jelly/ agar/ wobbly pudding. Other recipes usually call for cocoa powder and sugar, but I just had these conveniently on hand so I used the below ingredients. Poured the amount without much thought so it probably could be better, just that the sweetness was just right the first time I tried so I'm just reminding myself of the amount of syrup I used here.

INGREDIENTS

1 sachet Swallow Globe agar powder (unsweetened; 1l water in instruction, but I prefer the result firmer so I used a total of 600ml)

~100ml chocolate syrup

~500ml full cream milk/ your preferred non-milk

STEPS

Mix all ingredients in a pot, then turn on the stove and stir until it boils. Do not boil before pouring the powder as it would form clumps in the mixture instead. Do not leave the pot unattended as it's quickly done when it boils, and it might quickly boil over and overflow.

Pour into moulds, or your serving bowls/ containers, or a large bowl to slice afterwards

Wait for mixture to solidify. I usually keep mine chilled when it's no longer hot (semi-solid by then)

Makes about 6-8 servings.

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coconut chia dessert

Chia seed-based dessert. May be substituted with basil seeds but different nutrition & taste. Simple stuff you don't even need to cook.

My way may not be the best or most efficient, but it's simple and doesn't disrupt my routines so in this blog it goes. I like it this way as it reminds me of a sago dessert that I only had as a child when the extended family went to a restaurant for a huge family dinner, but sago is too troublesome for me to prep. Chia has a similar mouthfeel before you bite into it so it's an ok-lah substitute for lazy butts or busy butts.

INGREDIENTS tbh I don't measure when I make

~2 tbsp chia seeds (dry)

~100ml water (hot or ambient up to you)

~1-2 tbsp thick coconut cream

~1-2 tbsp condensed milk (to taste, may be substituted with your preferred sweetener/syrup/non-milk/fruit etc.)

STEPS

Put chia seeds and water in the glass, leave the concoction be to fully absorb water. Personally, I leave it for a few hours while I do other stuff.

Mix in everything else. Eat (or leave in fridge like I do til I want to eat it)

Other stuff I do:

chia seed x melon milk

chia seed x chinese almond (sweet apricot kernel) powder

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Must Love Herbs on Instagram

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@ 도레도레 신사점, by bbana_bbana

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Red Date & Ginger Soup

Everything tikam, no measurements here bc my brain slow like ahma walks slow.

INGREDIENTS

Chicken stock (or just use vegetable-based if you don’t want meat) A lot of ginger A few red dates Some goji berries Salt

STEP…S?

Everything boiled in a pot. Basically like the lotus root soup I posted earlier but much more gingery and without the flavours from the other ingredients. Just plain ol’ broth. Ma used fresh chicken so I grew up with the chicken taste, but if you want vegan/ vegetarian you can do without it.