5 Other Ways of Using the Oven Besides Baking

It wasn't till I was in secondary school that I had a chance to bake something out of an oven even then opportunities to operate an oven was rare. We didn't have an oven at home during my younger years, naturally I wouldn't have imagined the oven is such a wonderful kitchen appliance.

Fast forward to recent years, I'm now an owner of a counter-top oven and a toaster oven. Both work wonderfully well and are the appliances I've used more often than even my rice cooker!

Photo Credit Link

I love that preparing meals with an oven could save me loads of trouble - it's one of the easiest kind of cooking I've ever done! Best of all, the end result of this simple cooking method is healthy and flavourful food. What's more, it saves me the trouble of standing before the stove stirring/frying or keeping a lookout at the heat. The best part of it all is I save loads of time and water from washing! Here's how I ensure that I minimize washing as much as possible when using the oven to prepare food.

I am listing the 5 main ways I've used my oven/toaster oven since I started preparing regular meals for my family.

GRILL
I love grilled chicken winglets and using the oven for grilling can't be any easier. When preparing grilled chicken winglets, remember to dry the chicken winglets with kitchen paper towels thoroughly. Marinate the meat well and all you need to do is just prep the baking tray and pop the meat into the oven. It'll save more time if you use a toaster oven because a toaster oven takes a shorter time to heat up.

Grilled Chicken Wings (click link for recipe)

SLOW COOKING
Preparing stews or casseroles the oven makes the best of these one pot meals! An all-in-one meal always saves the day when you need time to focus on other matters at home while the oven does the cooking.

Boeuf Bourguigunon (click link for recipe)

STEAM
I always find steaming with a pot of boiling water troublesome because I need to wash so many items after the food is cooked. When I discovered that the oven can be used to steam meat or fish too, Oh! I didn't look back at the days of using the pot of boiling water to prepare steamed food anymore!!! Besides, I need only to rinse my baking tray after the entire process and wrap up & discard the parchment paper and aluminium foil after the food is served. You can imagine the glee on my face!

Steamed Chicken (click link for recipe)

Teochew Style Steamed Fish

FRYING
In view of developing a healthier eating habit I try to make chicken katsu (deep fried Japanese chicken cutlet) and potato wedges by "frying" them in the oven. I wasn't disappointed by the end result!

Oven Baked Potato Wedges

Oven Baked Chicken Katsu

GRATIN
My children love anything with pasta sauce and in order to interest their palate I try to vary the different uses of pasta sauce. So lately, we have been having these for lunch. One pot meals never fails! *grin*

Baked Pasta

Ratatouille in Meat Sauce 

Lasagne 

Cottage Pie (click link for recipe)

I am sure there are many other ways of using the oven besides just baking. The above 5 ways of usage are my favourite ways to prepare meals for my family. I hope you've found the sharing useful.

[Recipe] Chicken Dashi Shoyu Ramen

As I take more time to focus on what's more important lately, I've prepared more one pot meals. I still desire to feed my family well but I will not attempt something fancy which is time consuming or requires a lot of new fancy sauces that I have to accumulate in my already close to 'exploding' kitchen storage space.

Ramen, something I've made quite often which requires very little effort and time. In the past, the Ramen that I prepared was made in miso soup base. Today, I tried something different, and it was great! I just had to share the recipe with all of you! *smile*

The broth was made with chicken breast meat, dashi stock and soya sauce. It's simply a perfect combination. The thing is, it's not bothersome nor require many steps to get the broth prepared.

This is the dashi stock powder that I've used as part of the ingredients for the soup base. It can be easily found in most supermarket's Japanese food section.

As for topping for the Ramen, it's as fancy as you want it to be. I prefer char siew as I have a great char siew recipe that always never fails.

Nice oven grilled char siew ready to be served.

To save time, I always purchase this pack of bean sprout as the head and tail end of the bean sprouts are already plucked. Alternatively, you may also use baby bok choy for this ramen meal.

Surprised that I use pasta for ramen? heh... the idea was taken from here in which these Japanese ladies who lived in the USA couldn't find another noodle that has a texture as close to ramen as these pasta. So take it from the Japanese, not me, about using pasta as an alternative if you can't find ramen noodles in the supermarket nearby you.

So seriously, how easy is it to make this Ramen meal? See for yourself -

Ingredients
*serves 4 people
400-500gms shoulder butt pork (see char siew recipe here)
1 large skinless chicken breast meat (approx 300gms)
100gms bean sprouts
Angel Hair pasta (amount of pasta as required accordingly)
4 eggs (recipe for lava egg here)
2 tbsp light soya sauce (adjust to your preference of saltiness)
1 tsp dark soya sauce
2 sachet packs of dashi stock
Chopped spring onions and chilli (optional)
Nori sheets or Nori topping

Process
1) Wash chicken breast meat thoroughly and place it into a soup pot filled with approx 3ltrs of water. Bring it to a boil and let it simmer for 1hr.
2) 15mins before soup base is ready, boil pasta in boiling water (follow instructions on the time of cooking the pasta accordingly).
3) Once soup has simmered for an hour, add in seasoning of light soya sauce, dark soya sauce and dashi stock stir till well combined. Set it aside for later use.
4) On a separate saucepan, boil some water to blanch bean sprouts (or any other green vege you plan to use) till it's sufficiently cooked.
5) Assemble all the ingredients together - add soup in bowl, followed by cooked noodles, top with char siew, bean sprouts, spring onions and nori sheets if you have otherwise, you could use nori topping like I did in my ramen.

Enjoy!

Our Dinner The Past Two Weeks

When the week has been peppered with public holidays or no-school days, I do get thrown off my routine, which explains my lack of updates on my grocery hauls and dinner plan updates. Not that I didn't do any grocery shopping or didn't prepare any dinners, just that I haven't got the luxury of time to fill in the details into this space.

So this is a consolidation of what we had for dinner in the past two weeks. Once again, I am a no frills person, so dinners have as usual been simple, easy & fast to prepare.

Hope this gives you some ideas as you make your dinner plans.

Our $60 worth dinners two weeks ago -

Monday - Taiwanese Braised Pork Rice served with Bok Choy

Tuesday - Pan Seared Fillet in garlic cream sauce served with fries and baby french beans

Wednesday - Fried Kway Teow

Thursday - Ayam Pongteh and Stir-fry vegetables

Friday - Soba Noodles

Saturday - Potato Beef Soup and long bean omelette

Last week, our dinners costed $50+ -

Monday - Claypot Chicken Rice with Watercress Soup
Tuesday - Chicken Macaroni Soup
Wednesday - Minced Pork Tofu and Spinach & Eggs Medley
Thursday - Steamed Fish in Japanese sauce, Lotus Root Soup and stir-fry vege
Friday - Tauhu Goreng with premade peanut sauce

I was really heartened to learn that another mommy (click on the link) shared her $50 budget dinners and you'll be inspired too!

[Recipe] Hearty Vegetable Omelette

On days when I am tired of eating out, I'll prepare something simple yet hearty at the same time for brunch. This is way better than MSG, salt & sugar laden food out at the food centre. It doesn't take a lot of time to prepare either.

I have a special liking for omelettes that I cannot explain. Any topping/stuffing would do fine as long as they are wrapped in egg.

Here's one omelette I prepare quite often. I love colourful food, it makes it visually very appetising hence I'd usually consider the colours of the ingredients that I will work them together accordingly.

In this omelette, I've included the 3 different coloured bell peppers (aka capsicum), cherry tomatoes and mushrooms, not forgetting the colour from the egg as well.

It doesn't take a lot of have this made, so here's what is needed -

Ingredients

2 Eggs (whisked)

3 fresh shitake mushrooms (thinly sliced)

About 1/4 of each coloured bell peppers (diced)

1/2 medium size yellow onion (chopped roughly)

1 slice of cheddar cheese (or your choice of sliced cheese)

Seasoning

Salt & Pepper

1/4 tsp Italian herbs

Crushed red hot pepper (optional)

Process

(I used a 18cm non-stick frying pan)

1) Whisk eggs together with all the seasoning ingredients

2) Heat up a non-stick frying pan and saute the onions till tender

3) Add the vegetables and stir-fry till tender

4) Pour in the whisked egg mixture and top it with the cheese that's torn into pieces

5) Cook on low heat till you see the egg form a crust along the side of the pan and when the bottom doesn't stick you are ready to flip half side of the egg over

6) Continue to cook on low heat till the egg is cooked through

7) Serve the omelette with cherry tomatoes if you like

5 Days Dinner At Only $50

Last week, I shared about my grocery haul and the week's dinner I will prepare. Here's a recap of what I've prepared for dinner last week. It was simple but delicious nonetheless!

I was so glad I didn't need to go back to the supermarket or wet market to get anymore groceries, it has free up a lot of my time to pursue other important matters for the family instead! So once again, a meal plan and a grocery list in place helped me to be more time efficient.

*Note: Some of the recipe links of the dishes below are attached for your reference.

On Monday evening, we had Prawn Paste Chicken (supposedly, I'll talk about that in a bit), and Stir-Fry Chinese Spinach with Oyster Mushrooms.

When it comes to recipes, one should really read it thoroughly before jumping right into cooking the dish. I have learned a lesson on Monday evening while preparing this Prawn Paste Chicken dish. I've completely missed the step of dusting the wings with flour, baking soda & baking powder. As you can see, my Prawn Paste Chicken has turned out to be grilled instead of crispy! Oh well, we all learn! Thank goodness it didn't taste weird at all.

Tuesday, I made a mixture of 8 different ingredients into a dish. This Vegetable Medley consisted of bean sprouts, carrots, chinese mushrooms, bamboo shoots, firm bean curd, black fungus, celery, red chilli. A refreshing change from my usual green leafy stir-fry vegetables.

The other dish that I made for Tuesday evening, was this Prawns in glass noodles. Also a new dish that I made for the first time. The kids and the hubby loved it as much as I did. The sauce was savoury and sweet and the aromatics made it extra flavourful! 

Wednesday, Steamed Fish in Lemon Sauce and Stir-fry Broccoli with beef slices were for our dinner. We just cannot have enough of this super appetising fish dish, the Sauce is the key of it!  

The taste and presentation of Taiwanese bentos remained vividly in my mind after I visited the place about 4 years ago. So Thursday, we had Taiwanese bento-style dinner. It was the easiest meal to prepare of the week (anything prepared in the oven is easy)! Simply grilled boneless chicken thigh meat and add on some stir-fry vegetables and voila!

Vegetarian Yee Fu Noodles, was our dinner on Friday. Another quick and simple meal done!

With all that time saved, I had some spare time to sew a Sock Monkey softie, oh how I love to sew!

Kitchen Tip: The Use of Parchment Paper

I love to bake, grill, roast and even steam using the oven! It's my way of saving myself the trouble of cleaning up pots and pans laboriously that's because I don't have a helper and neither do I enjoy standing before the kitchen sink for long periods of time whenever I have to prepare and clean up after each meal.

I love my oven to bits! Therefore, I use it heavily. But because I detest all that washing and cleaning up, I'd tend to find ways of minimising the cleaning up process! So I use a lot of these -

Top two rolls of cooking sheet were bought at Daiso, Glad Bake was bought at local supermarket, the bottom roll of parchment paper (with Korean words) was bought through Taobao.com

Yes! Parchment paper. It's a life saver! I've read up and also heard a lot of horror stories about aluminium poisoning that causes brain and nerve issues (read more details here), I try as hard as I could to reduce the contact of aluminium foil on the food that I prepare.

Those are the various brands of parchment paper that I use for oven-cooked/baked food. There's a difference between wax and parchment paper as I've read here and here, so read in detail if you are interested.

Nonetheless, I still use aluminium foil to save me from cleaning the baking tray/sheet in case there's spillage in the process of cooking/baking in the oven.

Baking Tray wrapped in aluminium foil to save from washing

How I use the parchment paper -

Ingredients wrapped up in parchment paper to prevent direct contact with aluminium foil

Here's a quick and easy way of preparing salmon or even cod fish -

Oven Baked Miso Glaze Fish

Ingredients:
200gms of fish fillet (salmon or cod)
1 Tbsp Miso Paste
2 tsp Sugar
1 tsp Mirin
1 tsp Sake
1 Tbsp Water

Process:
1) Mix Miso Paste, Sugar, Mirin, Sake and water till well combined
2) Prepare baking tray with aluminium foil and parchment paper
3) Place the fish fillet on the parchment paper
4) Coat fish with the miso mixture evenly
5) Preheat oven to 180C
6) Grill fish (on middle rack) for approximately 20mins
7) Remove tray from oven and glaze the fish fillet with another thin layer of miso mixture
8) Place the tray of fish just below the heating element in the oven to grill it for 5-10mins or till surface of fillet is nicely browned (the fish should turn brown very quickly so beware to standby the oven)

Serve immediately with steamed rice! It's so simple and tasty, try it some time!

Soup That Nourishes

One of the things I enjoyed most during my growing up years was the wonderful daily freshly boiled soups. While I am not a Cantonese, my late dad grew up in the old Chinatown where he was deeply influenced by the habits of the Cantonese who appreciated a daily bowl of slow-cooked soup (老火汤）

In those growing up years, I was most definitely spoiled by my mom who relentlessly prepared soup for us daily. I could go without dinner but not without my mom's wonderful soup.

My preference towards soup was actually formed during the first four to five years of my life. The aroma, texture, and flavour still live vividly in my memory and I'll usually subconsciously associate the soups with fun, carefree days in which I feel secure and had few anxieties.

Now that I have a family of my own, I still enjoy a good bowl of soup, though it's prepared by myself instead. It is one of the best nourishing food that I can provide for my loved ones.

I will share more of the soup recipes that I've grown up drinking and I hope it will benefit you one way or another.

Tuna Sandwich

Before I was married, I don't really cook at all, and there was a time I was assigned to prepare some finger food for a workshop that I attended. It was quite daunting to a person who did not know how to cook then, but with a stroke of luck, I made tuna mayo combined with apple and it was an instant hit with the group. You can imagine how I was beaming away.

Now, on busy days when I really need to have something to fill the tummies of my family, I'd prepare this fast and easy breakfast. It's so easy to prepare it's almost laughable for me to share this recipe.

Tuna Mayo with Apple Sandwich

Where there's no cooking involved this easy meal can be whipped up in less than 15mins! All that's needed is the cutting of apples and mixing the ingredients together, it's really that simple & definitely FAST!

Here's a quick look at the nutritional value of canned tuna:

Typically it's recommended by most healthy food websites to purchase tuna canned with water but to this recipe I am sharing below I have used tuna canned in olive oil instead. It is said on some of the websites I've read that water canned tuna tends to retain the omega 3 fatty acids better. In addition, the essential fatty acids will not tend to be drained away as we drain away the excess oil from the can when we prepare the tuna sandwich.

Here's what you need -

• Canned Tuna (drained and pour out onto a mixing bowl/plate)
• Add Salt (you may omit if you prefer) & Pepper to taste
• Add approximately 1Tbsp mayonnaise
• 1 small apple diced (the apple adds a nice layer of crunch to the taste, so try not to dice the apple too small - approx 1cm).
• A sandwich press (if you have one)

Just mix all the ingredients together, spoon the mixture onto a slice of bread and stack another slice on top and just press!

I love using this sandwich press, this makes handling the sandwich when consuming much cleaner and mess-free as it seals all four sides of the sandwich! It's very inexpensive, I've seen it at Daiso, so go grab one if you haven't done so :)

Go make yourself some Tuna Sandwiches today!