Long Bean Flavorful Mixed Rice (豆角有味饭)

This cooked long bean rice is full of flavor. Some of you must be asking what is 豆角 (dou jiao). 豆角 is literally long bean in Cantonese. We usually called this 长豆 in Singapore.

This is a ONE POT dish that my grandma used to cook for me during my childhood time. This pot of flavorful rice can serve the whole family with little effort, and it is really good if your cooking need to be done way in advance, because this can be well kept in your rice cooker up to 2 hours or longer if you want. It is not a quick meal. Because you need some effort when it comes to preparation. I would say, it’s more on a quick-quick-slow meal. Like Tango dance 🙂

It’s a busy Saturday today. Max went Bintan for company trip. I’ve got to send my car to the garage to get it serviced, drive to the market and get some fresh ingredients. Reached home around 1pm, and start to do all my cooking preparation. I choose to cook this mixed rice today because I’ve got some errand run around later at 4pm, and need to fetch Max from the ferry terminal at 5pm, which this timing supposed to be my dinner preparation time. I don’t want him to reach home without dinner being served after his long day. So… here it is.

The ingredient that I’m gonna use here is common ingredient that you could easily get from the market. This recipe could easily feed 4 to 5 adult.

Ingredient A – (Rice)
3 cups of Jasmine Rice (the ordinary chinese rice that you have at home)
500ml water

Seasoning for Rice
2 cloves garlic – peeled, washed, chopped
1 tbsp light soy sauce
1 tsp dark soy sauce
1 tbsp oyster sauce

Ingredient B – (Long Bean)
3 tbsp oil
4 shallots – Peeled, washed, and sliced.
3 slices of ginger – Julienned
3 tbsp dried shrimps – Washed, soaked till soft, drained.
1 pair Chinese sausage (腊肠)- Washed with hot water, drained, remove skin, sliced.
10 long beans – washed, cut into 1 inch length.

Seasoning for Long Bean Mixture
1 tbsp Shao-Xing Wine (Chinese cooking wine)
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
a dash of pepper
a dash of sesame oil

Ingredient C – (Roasted Pork)
1 tbsp oil
1 clove garlic – finely chopped
200g Roasted Pork (烧肉) – chopped into bite size

Seasoning for Roasted Pork
1 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp soy sauce

The list of ingredient is long eh? But It’s worth preparing. Trust me.

Method
1. RICE – Rinse and soak rice in water for 30mins. Drained and set aside.

2. ROASTED PORK – Heat up wok, a tbsp oil, chopped garlic, fry till fragrance. Add in roasted pork, give it a quick toss under high heat. The pork will release some oil during stir frying. And this is what we want. The oil! Add in sugar & soy sauce, fry till the pork looks brownish and caramelized. Heat off, dish up. And by now, your kitchen is full of stir fried roasted pork aroma, that makes you wants to put one into your mouth immediately… Cantonese called this method of stir-frying roasted pork as 爆烧肉 (bao-siu-yuk). It’s simply enhancing the flavor of the roasted pork.

3. LONG BEAN MIXTURE – Heat 2 tbsp of oil in wok, fry shallots till golden brown, add ginger and fry till fragrant. Add in the rest of the ingredients – Chinese sausages, dried prawns, long bean. Sizzle in Shao-Xing wine, give it a quick toss. Add in seasoning – salt. sugar. pepper, sesame oil. Heat off, dish up, set aside. You don’t need to thoroughly cook this. What you need is just kinda combine all of them and make sure that they are evenly coated with flavors & fragrance.

4. RICE – Heat 1 tbsp of oil in a wok, fry garlic till fragrant. Reduce to low heat, sizzle in seasoning for rice – light soy sauce, add rice, dark soy sauce and oyster sauce. Fry evenly at high heat for awhile. Off the heat. Transfer fried rice and add 500ml water into rice cooker. Switch on and cook for about 13 to 15 minutes. Using time to time yourself is always the best choice.

5. When the water almost dried up, add in fried long beans mixture, and roasted pork.

6. Cover it, continue to cook until the rice cooker automatically turn to “Keep Warm” mode. Leave it there for another 5 to 10 mins. Stir well – But I would prefer to use the word “Messed it up”. LOL!

8. And serve!

I couldn’t tell you how delicious this pot of mixed rice is. But the fact is that, my dear father-in-law ate HALF POT of the rice on his own. Scroll up the picture and see the rice in the rice cooker once again. The rice in my rice cooker is almost full. The space is juuuuuust nice when i shut the rice cooker cover. When we return home, and I open my rice cooker. Wanted to serve Max some rice, I rubbed my eyes twice when I saw my pot of rice left with half pot only. If I knew this mice my father-in-law could eat so much, I would have cooked more.

So, you want a bowl?

Max loves it too. He ate two bowls 🙂

Review : My Zojirushi NP-HBQ10 Rice Cooker (Part 1)

Before I start off with my rice cooker review. Let me briefly tell you what I had been using all these while.

This is my old rice cooker. The big one belongs to my Mother-In-Law. The small one is mine. My mother gave it to me. All of us loved this rice cooker so much because of it’s petite size. It can only cook upto 3 cups. That is juuuuust nice for us. The big rice cooker is more suitable for party time tho. Haha…

Seriously, I don’t feel like throwing away the mini rice cooker that my mama gave me. I just keep it.

As all of you aware, I’ve got myself a new Zojirushi Rice Cooker that cost me alot.

I love eating rice. I’m rather particular and opinionated on how rice should taste. But people always says rice makes me fat. Serve me some noodles, porridge, bread, pita & whatever, and I’ll kindly stick up my nose and pout about the lack of plain rice to eat my meal with. Okays, I shall cut the crap about myself.

Here’s the function available on this rice cooker…

Another reason why I spent so much for this rice cooker is because it comes with stainless steel inner bowl. It has real heavy weight. I like it.

And another impressive part is that, the upper detachable lid is also stainless steel. In which, none of the Tiger rice cooker models has this. This lid is a real thing!

It has this steam vent set on top, to capture the steam water. Detachable and washable.

This morning, I decided to give it a try. But I’m not really hungry. So, I just cooked half cup of rice. I used Japanese Sakura Hitomebore Rice here. Added the water according to the white rice level. The water indicator is really really useful.

Pressed Regular White Rice on the menu and start cooking. 45mins later, my rice finally ready. It looks ordinary when it’s just cooked.

But when I loosen the rice, the rice gives me a deliciously fluffy texture.

Side track abit… Saw the rice paddle? The rice paddle comes with little bumpity bumps, which are supposed to help with mixing your rice and is supposed to keep rice from sticking to your paddle. Unfortunately, I don’t like the paddle, as rice still sticks to it. If you want to keep it rice-free, you’ll need to have a little bowl of water to store it in, otherwise when you store the paddle in the holder, the rice will simply crust on it.

Let’s take a close look at the rice.. Nice?

Ahhh… The rice tasted utterly fantastic.

And let’s see the fluffiness… It doesn’t looks only nice looking. It taste delicious too.
It’s not just it’s immediate taste; there’s a distinct aftertaste with the rice that is, in fact, sweet and tasty. I appear to be addicted to the rice, which isn’t exactly the greatest thing when you’re trying to lose weight.

Let’s add some furikake on top…

What about making it into Onigri?

Yummm~!!!

In overall, this rice cooker produces very delicious rice on a consistent basis provided you use the correct amount of water and the setting.With Extended Warm, keeps rice moist and fluffy for a much longer period of time without drying up. It’s easy to clean outside and inside too. For the cons part, so far the rice paddle not the greatest, which it doesn’t really affect me. I can always get another one.

Upcoming next, I will blog more about my experiment on my rice cooker. The next one would be GABA Rice.

Stay tuned!

Quick Meal : Bak Kwa Fried Rice

A real rush hour today. No bluff. Max is coming home to fetch me in 20mins time. Max don’t have the time to eat dinner at home. So, we’re heading to coffee shop for a simple meal, which could makes my life much easier by just eating coffee shop food. But I just don’t feel like eating outside food today. I’m kinda… Urgh! I’d rather eat my own simple cooking than eating out. But he’s in a rush, and he wanted me to eat dinner with him.

Since I need to sit at the coffee shop and eat with him, and he need to rush for his duty after his quick dinner. I decided to make myself a real quick bento for myself to bring along.

Looking at these ingredients… It’s obviously fried rice lah!

As usual, I dig out whatever I have in the fridge…

Actually, I don’t have much left-over. I knew it. But when I saw a bowl of left-over Japanese rice in the fridge, I’m so mad happy! Hahaha… And I saw a pack of Bak-Kwa lying on the table. And immediately I know I should make fried rice!

Ingredients (Serve 1 hungry girl)

• a bowl of left-over rice
• a tablespoon of oil
• 1 beaten egg
• a handful of Bak Kwa
• a chopped shallot
• a handful of spring onions
• some red chilli
• some chinese parsley (optional)
• 4 to 5 tablespoons of soy sauce (judge by your own taste).
• few dashes of pepper

Method
1. In a wok, toss the Bak-Kwa till it looks lightly charred. Just lightly charred will do. Don’t over fry it. No need to add oil on the wok. Bak-Kwa itself is oily enough. Dish up, set aside.

2. Beaten eggs on the wok. Just fry it messily. Like frying scrambled eggs. When it is about 70% cooked. Dish up, set aside. Eyeball it yourself. I always do this additional step instead of frying the egg directly onto the rice and fry, because I felt that the eggs would looks nicer on my fried rice if it’s been scrambled beforehand, so that it would be evenly distributed in pieces.

3. A tablespoons of oil on the wok, fry chopped shallot till fragrant. Add in chilli & rice. Give it a quick toss. Add the rest of the ingredients (eggs, spring onions, bak kwa, chinese parsley) into the wok. Not to forget soy sauce & pepper. Give it a toss for another 2 to 3 mins should be good enough. Dish up & serve.

Tada!

You will have to agree with me that this is really easy.

If you were to notice, I only used Soy Sauce & Pepper for this fried rice. Reason is because I don’t want to add too much of a flavor that might mess around with the Bak-Kwa taste. It’s Bak-Kwa fried rice. The “lead-actor” must be Bak-Kwa then.

Some people like to use salt for their fried rice, and used dark soy sauce to achieve brownish color for their fried rice. But for me, I always like to use Soy sauce alone, sometimes will use abit of fish sauce to enhance the taste (when I don’t feel lazy). Soy sauce itself is light dark in color. It will give the fried rice a pale brown color, which I find it really nice looking. And it has it’s unique oriental saltiness that goes very well with fried rice.

Look at my bowl of fried rice… It’s simple, and it looks nice 🙂

I get this done in 15mins time. Another 5mins to wash up the mess in the kitchen. Total 20mins. Thou it’s abit of work here, but I can assure you that this fried rice taste much better than coffee shop Cze Char fried rice that cost at least S$4.00 a plate! 😀

Would you like to have a bowl now?