This dish of pasta with eggplant and tomato sauce is for all eggplant lovers out there. It adds a lovely texture and bite to the pasta, and makes the dish a lot healthier, of course. If you are in a hurry to whip up dinner, just dice up all of the eggplant and cook them in the tomato sauce itself. That will save you a whole lot of time.
This is the Eurasian take on squid stir-fried in onions, garlic, dark soy sauce and squid ink. This is adapted from the a similar dish in Portugal. My mum also stir-fries squid in dark soya sauce once in a while though the Teochew tradition has never actually used the squid ink to fry our dishes – just simple dark soya sauce.
To be honest, this is my first time using handling the ink sacs from squids, and I must say it was a very fun experience. It was really amazing how a small sac like that could produce so much ink! And the ink was pure black – a natural dye that can’t be replaced by any artificial colouring. Love it.
I’ve cooked many different types of chicken stew before, and mostly with potatoes: Chicken & Potato Stew, Korean Andong Jjimdak etc. The former is easy to make as you will just need to dump all the ingredients into the slow cooker to let them cook and braise. It’s gravy is thicker and great to eat with plain rice. The latter is a mixture of sweet and savoury, served with sweet potato noodles which is great to slurp up the braised gravy with. This one here takes a slightly longer time to simmer and is lighter in its flavour and texture. You can slurp it up as it is and it probably makes for a good winter soup to warm your spirit.
The Indonesian nasi goreng, or Indonesian fried rice, is a stir-fry using overnight cooked rice, some meat and some vegetables, all fried together with beaten egg and sweet soy sauce. It originates from Indonesia and is very popular in countries within Southeast Asia, including Singapore.
This is one of my most favourite vegetables (if cooked well and properly). There were times when I order Yong Tau Foo and the aubergines tasted bland and crunchy, much like I was biting into a soft cucumber. These are the disappointing moments when you realise you can’t have the perfectly cooked aubergines for a meal but still have to finish them. There were times when you see them sliced thinly and nicely, and realise they are soft and mushy when you bite into them. These are the times when you feel like you have loads of gratitude towards the chef, whoever he or she is.
