Salted Fish Fried Rice

Did I ever tell you that I'm a friend rice fiend? I love rice, all kinds of rice. This salted-fish fried rice is one of my absolute favorites whenever we go out to a Chinese restaurant.

Ingredients:
- garlic
- rice
- egg
- salted fish (Salted Threadfin)
- sliced chicken
- spring onions

1. cut / shred the Salted Threadfin into little pieces - you could probably use other types of salted fish but this is the real deal. This fish comes in dried form but we just this because you're not supposed to use a lot anyway.

My hands and fingers hurt after making himay this fish because the flesh was so hard! I use 2 slices for the 2 serving fried rice that I usually make.


2. Saute the garlic and sliced chicken in oil (I use a little bit of the oil from the Salted Threadfin). When the chicken is cooked, add the shredded fish and saute a bit more.

3. Add the rice and egg.

4. Garnish with egg slices and spring onions.

Sotanghon with Pork Leg

I don't even remember how I prepared this but it was mostly a lot of cutting up the ingredients and stir-frying.

ingredients:
- 1 can stewed pork leg
- carrots, julienned
- scallions
- green veggies (cabbage, perhaps ?) - did not add
- sliced mushrooms

Salted Pork and Century Egg Congee

Hubby and I have been craving for congee since the weather started getting colder last fall. I only used to be able to prepare good-'ol arrozcaldo but hubby had other (and better) ideas.

He preferred to have a different kind of lugaw and wanted me to try making salted pork congee. So I googled a few recipes and we called up MIL for some tips and instructions and this was what we came up with.

Ingredients:
- pork cubes
- salt
- century egg
- salted duck egg
- a couple of thin slices of ginger
- rice
- dried scallops (optional)
- sesame oil (to coat the rice grains)
- chicken boullion powder (for flavoring)

Steps:
1. Cut the pork into cubes, rub with salt and keep them in the refrigerator overnight.
2. To start cooking, rinse the pork and boil in a pot of water.
3. Prepare the rice by coating it with sesame oil.
4. When the pork has been boiling for a few hours (I like my salted pork so soft that they are falling apart when I bite into them), add the dried scallops and then, the rice.
5. Stir and continue cooking until the rice is cooked and you have congee.

6. Taste and flavor with chicken boullion powder.

7. If the congee is bland, use some salted dug eggs (cut up into small pieces or mashed) to flavor the congee. I've prepared this dish a few times and sometimes I had to add the duck egg and sometimes, the congee came out salty from the pork already.

8. Slice up some century egg and mix into the congee. The pic below shows the congee with bits of salted duck egg (the white stuff) and century egg slices.

This is good, we prepared this for Mom/Dad during our visit to California, they loved it and finished the whole pot.

Lunar New Year Celebration

This was what we had for our hot pot dinner:
1) broth made from pork broth boiled and simmered for hours, this was later flavored with Sate sauce
2) spicy broth was from #1, but with some Chiu Chow spices

and the dippers:
1) sliced rib eye (shabu shabu beef)
2) vegetables - Sweet pea & Baby bokchoy
3) shrimp

4) shrimp balls
5) cuttlefish balls
6) fish cake - balls and sheets
7) kani - crab sticks
8) Enoki mushrooms
9) sweet corn

We also had 2 kinds of noodles - sotanghon and soba.

Kalbi

Kalbi or Korean BBQ is one of my favorite dishes because:

(a) it's beef - all meat!
(b) it has bones (we all know that the meat near the bones is the tastiest) but the cut makes it easy to separate the meat from the bones if you don't want to gnaw on the latter
(c) the marinade, once you get it right, is easy to prepare
(d) you can marinade the short ribs before hand and have it ready for cooking any time
(e) you can pan fry it, bbq or grill it - perfect for any season

I first got the recipe for the marinade from my Aunt last June and we have prepared several batches since then and have refined / modified the recipe to our taste (hubby's tastes, mostly). Hubby has a keener sense of taste than me because I didn't have any complaints for all those times that we were experimenting with the measurements of the ingredients.

Marinade Ingredients:
1 cup sugar
1 cup soy sauce (we used lite soy sauce)
1/2 bulb garlic (original recipe calls for 1 big bulb)
1 red onion
pepper to taste
water

Toss ingredients in blender, add just enough water to get the blender going (not thick).
When done, marinate the sliced short ribs in the mixture.