food i would go home to

We Asians know how to cook good.  And this is the kind of food I would find myself arriving into everyday from a long slog (or short one… or none at all).  Grandparents have a special talent for having huge amounts of spare time, and they put it to good use!

Privileged to eat

You’re not going to believe how lucky I am to have Taiwanese grandparents staying at my house and a mum who’s on holiday (at home)!

I get home and nearly get bowls of food slingshot at me from a distance as soon as I open the door. Braised pork, home-salted vegies, fresh yellow nectarines, bananas that are just unripe (the way I like it!), stirfry greens, tofu, fried rice combinatins of all sorts, basil and egg…. Can you imagine the aromas and colors I see every time I open the front door? Sheer delight!

Even as I am walking back from the bus stop at 7.30pm, I am reminded of dinner as the smell of food is thick in the neighbourhood–the best part is knowing that I’m going home to a good, hearty meal.

These meals below have been prepared by my loving mother/grandma who are both fantastic chefs.

Baby bamboo shoots, pickled vegies w. pork

Fried egg w. spring onion and basil & steamed garlic silverbeet on rice

Fried rice w. garden basil and egg & home-salted vegetables w. pork stirfry

Fresh corriander & spring onion, home grown, perfect garnishing for delicious Asian dinners

 

Wholegrain fried rice w. chicken, peas, corriander, spring onion, ham, egg and soyabeans

Mien pien (literally “noodle pieces”) w. mince pork, mushroom, carrot, celery and lettuce

Spicy-pepper sugar pork & tofu w. corriander and spring onion

Indian potato chips w. curry leaf, black mustard seed & onion

Thumbnail 1: how it starts
Thubmail 2: how it’s not supposed to end!

Braised pork w. tofu, chinese white radish & bean sprouts and chinese chives on rice

Stirfry garlic chilli prawns w. cucumber, spring onion & stirfry beef w. corriander on rice

meet the chef

Everybody, this is my Mum. She’s an amazing chef with an extraordinary nose. She aways says to me that you can tell how food will taste by the smell of it. ‘Marinate with your nose.’ ‘You can add whatever you like. If it smells good, it will taste good.’

She’s learnt most things herself, through reading books and cooking in Singapore and Australia for nearly thirty years now. Mum can make pretty much anything except for baked foods and western desserts (cos she can’t be bothered reading the instructions in English cook books). But anything she sets her heart and mind to generally turns out pretty damn good.

Above: Typical “stunned deer” look.  Mum eats rice with black bean icumbilies (small dried fish; anchovies) of three varieties. You get them out of a can but we enhance the flavour by adding garlic and chilli. Great simple meal with rice porriage, shredded pork, salty egg, century egg, seaweed and sesame seeds.

lemon lime drink w/ sour dried plums

The title explains it all! It’s a bit of an acquired taste, and someone thought it was alcoholic (and he looks alcoholic too, so it was a fair comment!). I like it though! Serve chilled with lots of ice.

prawn stirfry w/ cucumber & capcicum

We had Chinese New Year’s celebration on Sunday night.  Someone wished me happy new years on Thursday and I asked, “Why?” thinking she was an idiot because, “It’s already February.”

Anyway, Mum’s prawn stirfry with cucumber and capsicum was a huge success as always – it was the first dish to run out.  Deliciously healthy and fresh too!

chow mien

Fried noodles.  Wasn’t particularly happy with the presentation but I was hungry to eat Mum’s food.  It’s been about a week since I’ve had home made stuff… been eating lots of fruits (white apricots, banana, grapes, and about three varieties of peaches!).  But it’s been fruits all breakfast, lunch and dinner.  I need carbs and protein.  Real bad.

 

chicken & prawn chive dumplings

I love making dumplings, and gobbling them – to the point where I can’t move and need to lie down afterwards! Made these with Mum, including the dough. Sauce flavoured by Chinese BBQ sauce, vinegar and good quality soya sauce.

The dumpling story…

Once upon a China Town, Uncle Do needed a pharmaceutical tablet. Without it, he was doomed to imminent death. But alas, the tablet was way too costly for any ordinary man. And unfortunately Uncle Do was but an ordinary man indeed.

Unbeknownst to all, he had an extraordinary culinary ability to make soft dough, discovered by his Mother when he was only 3 months old. (That’s how he got his name.)

Uncle Do’s mother had a motherly solution common to all mothers around the world when things go wrong: she nagged. Oh did she nag Do. To the ground did she nag. “You are Chinese! Don’t dishonour your father by dying young. You listen to me and do as I say. Make your good soft dough and I tell you what to put in the filling.”

So Do did as his mother told. And she described how to marinate the filling in detail: “Put chicken and prawn. Seafood always make a man very happy. Then put soya sauce and chicken stock powder, salt, pepper, garlic chives, mushrooms, fried egg and garlic oil. I make that myself. You make it smell nicer, so put sesame oil also. Don’t forget to put Jim Bean in to get the pharmacist drunk. Then you can ask him for anything you want.”

“And then when you boil it,” she continued, “make sure you add cold water everytime it boils. Three times, remember, you stupid boy. Who told you to go gambling and smoking all night? Now you got heart failure problems and you can’t even pay for the water when you flush the toilet. That is all your fault.”

thai salad w/ apricots, coriander & toasted peanuts

Really light, healthy dish and perfect for hot days.  Came back home from Bright when it was stinking hot in Melbourne.  Mum had just returned from Taiwan and this is the first thing we did together. I think the sauce we used was made from fish sauce, garlic, chilli and sugar.

Stirfry pork with 3 Cs

Capsicum
Celery
Carrots

Beef and vego stirfry

 Actually, there’s two stirfries here.

The one one the left is a vego – carrots, chinese cabbage, ginger, mushrooms and seasoning.

On the right is a yumo thinly sliced beef with mushrooms, spring onion, garlic, ginger and chilli.

(The bowl’s sitting on zucinni stems, which we used later to stirfry in another dish.  It’s a different taste… crunchy, kinda like celery).