Omelette in Apple Vinegar Sauce

I made dinner a few months ago, and the omelette was the nicest!!! 

The takikomi gohan was very nice too. I will share some recipes of takikomi gohan soon! 

Meanwhile, here's the recipe for the omelette! ^^ Please try! It's very versatile and easy. :)

Ingredients (for 2 pax):

- oil

- dou miao / prawn / crab meat / carrot / minced pork / minced chicken / beansprouts / anything you like 

- salt and pepper to taste

- 3 eggs

Sauce
- 100ml kombu soup / vegetable stock / chicken stock
- 2 tablespoons Soysauce
- 2 tablespoons Mirin
- 1 tablespoon Apple Cider Vinegar
- 1 teaspoon Sugar
- 2 teaspoons Cornflour

1. In a small frying pan, using medium flame, heat up oil. Fry the ingredient you are using for the omelette first. Add salt and pepper to taste. Put cooked ingredients aside on a plate.

2. Beat eggs in a bowl. In the same frying pan, heat up oil. Pour in egg mixture. Use chopsticks to constantly beat it in the pan till it's cooked, but still a little watery. About 2~3 minutes. Pour cooked omelette in a serving plate. The heat in the omelette will continue 'cooking the omelette'.

3. In a small bowl, mix all the ingredients for the sauce. Rinse the frying pan. Dry with a cloth or with paper towels.

4. Heat frying pan over small-medium flame. Pour sauce mixture in and wait for sauce to thicken. Once sauce is thickened, pour it over the omelette in the serving plate.

5. You can garnish it with chopped spring onions or coriander if you like.

Hope you will like it! 

Join us on 'Facebook' for daily updates~! ^^

Colourful Raw Cold Noodles with Dipping Sauce!

I have other recipes awaiting but I can't wait to share this really simple dish with you.

By the way, I realised pictures in my older entries are all gone. My pictures all link to the Facebook page, and it's a glitch or something. I don't think they will ever come back on ever. Facebook never replies, ever. I'm still linking my pictures from Facebook though just because it's convenient. Sigh! 

Ok let's hope some miracle happens.

Yesterday was a blistering hot day and my body was craving for something cool and filling. I brought out all the vegetables and fruits I could find in my fridge and made this dish. Really, there aren't any specifics about the quantity of the vegetables you can top the noodles with. Here are what I used though:

Main noodle dish:

- Konnyaku noodles (you don't have to cook them!)

- Corn (Just cut them out with a knife from the cob)

- Japanese zucchini (julienne it. I used about 1/3 of a whole piece)

- Carrot (I peeled the skin and julienned it. About 1/2 a carrot)

- Strawberries (I just chopped 3 berries up)

- Dou Miao (I just grabbed a handful)

I used organic veggies and strawberries for this dish. They just happened to be organic as I went to an organic supermarket just the day before and bought all the organic stuff they had that were on sale! Such a great steal! I have no idea why they were on sale as they all looked fresh and great! 

The critical ingredient for this dish is the dipping sauce, so here I'll share the recipe for my dipping sauce! ^^

Dipping sauce:

- 225ml of Tamari Sauce/ Soy Sauce/ Soba Sauce / Kombu Dashi Stock* (recommended!!! ^^)

- 25ml of Apple Cider Vinegar

- drizzle of Sesame Oil

- some Brown Sugar to taste 

I made some kombu dashi stock during the weekend and it can be stored in the fridge for about 3 days. There are lots of ways to make dashi stock. I will just post some links here. 

To make Kombu Dashi:

From Lettuce Cook.

From Savory Japan.

Very easy to make and it gives your food a Japanese taste. ^^

I hope you like this dish!

Soymilk and Okara Patties

I'm so sorry that I've been gone for so long!

I've been making a lot of food but I kept thinking what's the best way to present them to you...

Anyway, I promised so many recipes on Facebook, so I'm going to start with the earliest I've promised, which are Okara patties!

What is Okara?

Okara is a soy pulp you get when you make soymilk.

You can buy it readily in some countries, but not over here in mine.

So, today, I'm going to teach you how to make your own soymilk, so that you will get okara, and then you can make these delicious vegan patties!

How to make soymilk:

Picture from here.

Actually, I have many different recipes of making soymilk, but I'm going to teach you the easiest and most flavourful one.

My ratio: 
60g of uncooked organic soybeans to 750ml of mineral/spring water

1. Wash soybeans thoroughly.

2. Soak them overnight in a pot for at least 8 hours. Water should be 3 times the volume of soybeans.

3. Rinse soybeans again. Pick out the bad soybeans. Fill pot with 750ml of fresh water.

4. Boil soybeans in water. When water is boiling, keep stirring for 10 minutes.

5. Transfer mixture into a blender and blend till smooth.

6. Pour blended mixture into a porous cloth bag over a colander placed over a pot.

7. You can let the mixture cool before handling it. Press cloth bag holding mixture with a ladle into the pot. When you feel that you can't press with the ladle anymore, squeeze out more soymilk using your hands. Squeeze till the pulp inside the bag is dry. This pulp is what we call Okara! ^^

7. Enjoy your homemade soymilk! Feel free to add sugar if you like sweetened soymilk! :)

How to make Okara patties:

Ingredients (Makes about 6 patties): 

- 2 tablespoons of olive oil
- 4 cloves of minced garlic
- 1 red onion, minced
- 1 cup frozen mixed vegetables, rinsed and defrosted
- 1 tablespoon each of salt and pepper
- 1 1/2 cups of okara
- 1 cup of bread crumbs

1. Heat up oil in a wok over medium fire.

2. Throw in garlic and red onion first.

3. Next, throw in the mixed vegetables.

4. Season with salt and pepper.

5. Throw in okara and stir-fry till it loses most of its moisture.

6. Let it cool for a little bit, and then shape them into patties.

7. Roll patties in breadcrumbs*.

8. Line patties on baking paper in a tray**. Send them into the toaster oven/ oven at 120℃. Bake for 10 minutes. Flip them and bake for another 10 minutes.

These patties taste great on its own, in a salad, or in a bun! Enjoy!

*Get breadcrumbs quickly by tearing stale bread into pieces and pulsing them in a food processor!

**Pan-frying is possible too! ^^

P.S. A good question was asked on Facebook! How do you know it's a bad soybean? Well, it's black in colour unlike its good yellow bean friends! Discard it if you see it among your soybeans.

Also, you may notice the skin of soybeans floating about in the water when you soak them overnight. You may dispose them too. They give a really beany taste to your milk, which most Western people don't like.

Join me on Facebook to clarify your doubts~! Or, of course you can leave a comment here! ^^

Oyako Don

One night, I was watching television and this programme taught how to make Oyako Don!

Oyako Don is a Chicken-and-Egg Rice bowl. Oyako means Parent-and-Child, so it's easy to understand why this dish uses chicken meat and egg right? ^^

I once went to a Japanese restaurant and there was this item on the menu: 他人丼 (Ta-nin Don)

Ta-nin means stranger. 

I was very curious because I've never seen this dish before, so I asked the chef what it was. He explained that, instead of chicken meat, he used pork. A pig and an egg are not related, so it's ta-nin (stranger) don. 

Haha!  It's interesting right!

My Ta-nin Don!

So, you can make ta-nin don too, if you are not fond of chicken meat. Honestly, I'm not a fan of chicken meat. ^^" But, I was strangely attracted to making Oyako Don for that week. I wanted to see if I could make it delicious.

For Oyako Don, these are the ingredients you need:

Ingredients (Serves 2):

- 2 chicken drumsticks (chopped into bite-sized pieces)

- 1/2 teaspoon of salt

- sprinkle of white pepper

- 1 teaspoon sesame oil (optional)

- 1 teaspoon of mirin / hua diao jiu (optional)

- 1 teaspoon of cornflour

- 1 onion

- 1 tablespoon of soy sauce

- 3 tablespoons of water

- 1 tablespoon of mirin

- 2 eggs

- 1 stalk of spring onion, chopped into tiny pieces

- 1 cup of rice, cooked

Side vegetables (Optional)

- A few leaves of cabbage

- 1 teaspoon of salt

- 1/2 tablespoon of vinegar

- 1 tablespoon of sugar

- 1 stalk of spinach

How to prepare chicken:

I'm sure some supermarkets sell chicken thigh meat that are already prepared for you (deboned, de-skinned, chopped into bite-sized pieces). Or, if you are buying from the market, you can ask the chicken seller to help you do it. 

However, if like me, you could only find chicken drumsticks like these...

...I'm actually going to teach you how to peel off the skin and debone your thigh meat for this recipe. If you are scared of meat, or disgusted by meat, I'm really sorry. >"< You may use vegetables to replace chicken meat. ^^"

If you find this too hard, get prepared ones, or chicken breast meat which will be so much easier to handle. 

1. Wash the chicken. I washed it 3 times.

2. Drain the chicken on a colander. 

3. Make a cut at one part of the chicken's skin and peel off the skin slowly. At hard to peel places, use your knife to cut it away from the meat.

4. Your chicken now has no more skin. 

5. Using this similar method, make a cut at one part of the chicken's meat till you hit the bone with your knife. Now, slowly use your knife and cut around the bone, removing the chicken meat. You will end up with a piece of chicken fillet.

6. Now, chicken meat has super many tendons, and one of the major reasons why I hate eating chicken is this. So, cut them away from the meat. This is very easy and straightforward. You see a white tendon, just pull it, then use your knife to slice it off. 

7. Chop your chicken into bite-sized pieces and season it with salt, pepper, sesame oil, mirin, cornflour. Mix thoroughly with your fingers.

8. Slice your onions! 

9. Add onions into a pot. Add in soysauce, water, and mirin. Boil them under high flame.

10. Beat egg slightly. You still want to be able to see some egg white so your finished Oyako-Don will look pretty with white and yellow egg streaks~

11. Add in chicken and let them simmer in the pot till fully cooked (about 15 mins)!

12. Add in half of your egg mixture.

13. Just before serving, add in the other half of the egg mixture and garnish with spring onions. 

14. Prepare 2 hot steaming bowls of rice. Divide chicken-and-egg mixture into the 2 bowls, on top of the rice.

Side vegetables (optional):

15. Boil spinach until leaves are slightly soft (about 1 minute). Drain and put on rice.

16. Boil cabbage leaves until soft (about 3 minutes). Season with salt, vinegar, and sugar. Pour out excess liquid. Add onto rice. 

And we're done~!!!! ^^

Even though I cooked this myself, I still don't really like chicken meat and didn't really want to eat it. Haha! If you don't like chicken meat like me, you can replace with lots of mushrooms/ some other meat! I think it would still be delicious~ I think it's delicious because of the egg and sauce. Hehe! My sauce mixture for this recipe is awesome~! So please try it! 

Where to buy:

1. Mirin

All major supermarkets. Check out the Japanese section! ^^ I'm using Kikkoman! 

Hiyashi Soba

Hello!

Do you know what is Hiyashi Soba (冷やし中華）?

My boyfriend has been crazy about soba ever since when our March trip to Japan neared, and his obsession lasts until now!

He came to my house yesterday with a pack of Uji green tea soba noodles (which smelled so good when cooked!), and his trusty bottle of soba sauce and tube of wasabi.

He was always making the most basic of Hiyashi Soba, which looks like this:

Source

Except his Hiyashi Soba is really plain...just soba and the dipping sauce and wasabi. Hahaha!

The other day I was surfing the net and chanced upon Soba Salad. That recipe was very much like Pasta Salad, but instead of pasta, the author used soba noodles! I couldn't find that recipe after that, but the image of vegetables and soba noodles stayed in my head, and I wanted to make it!

So we prepared some ingredients and we started to make what I thought was Hiyashi Soba. -___-" Actually, I was confused, because I was thinking Salad Soba at the same time.

Ingredients (2 servings):

- 2 carrots

- 1 Japanese cucumber

- 10 sticks of crab meat (imitation is fine too)

- 1 stalk negi (spring onions)

- 2 eggs

- pinch of sugar and salt

- 2 teaspoon oil

- 1 pack of soba noodles

- some nori (seaweed) strips for topping

- wasabi (optional)

Sauce (recipe from here)

- 2 tablespoons soy sauce

- 4 tablespoons vinegar

- 1 tablespoon sesame oil

- 1 teaspoon sugar

- 2 teaspoon ginger powder

1) Wash all your vegetables thoroughly. Peel off the skin of the carrots with a peeler. Cut away the head and roots of the carrots, cucumber and negi. Slice all the carrots, cucumber and crab meat. Chop the spring onion into tiny pieces.

The thinner you can slice them, the better the sweetness, crunch and ease of eating them later.

2) Put some salt on the carrots and cucumber to dry them a bit. Set them aside. 

3) Crack your eggs. Season with salt and sugar. Beat until fluffy.

4) Heat up the oil in your frying pan. Pour the egg mixture in when you hear your the oil sizzling in your pan. 

Turn your heat to medium-low. Leave your omelette like this for about 2 minutes. If you have no idea how to flip your omelette, it's alright. Just leave it like this. It will be cooked soon enough. Turn off the heat. 

5) Slice your omelette. 

6) Make the sauce by combining all the ingredients for the sauce. Transfer half of the sauce into another bowl. Put the sliced cucumbers in one bowl, and the sliced carrots in another.

7) Fill a large pot with half a pot of water. Boil your water in a large pot over high heat. When you see bubbles, it means that the water is boiling. Put in your soba noodles and let it cook for about 4 minutes.

8) When 4 minutes is up, drain your noodles over a large colander over a sink. Be careful of the hot water!! Don't burn yourself!

9) Run your soba noodles under cold water. If your water is not cold enough, you can put in some ice cubes over your soba noodles.

The noodles will have a springy texture to the bite. ^^

10) Take out the carrots and cucumbers from the sauce. Transfer your sauce to 2 dining dishes. Put half of the soba into each dish. Mix your noodles thoroughly with the sauce.

11) Top with all the toppings you have prepared, including the nori strips. 

Here is my confused version of Hiyashi Soba. 

It ended up looking like Bibambap or Hiyashi Chuka. 

This is how（冷やし中華）Hiyashi Chuka looks like:

Source

I asked my Japanese friend, Junko, the difference between Hiyashi Soba and Hiyashi Chuka.

Firstly, Hiyashi Chuka uses egg noodles, and secondly, the sauce used is sesame sauce. I suddenly recalled the taste of Hiyashi Chuka after hearing both of these ingredients. I only tried it once so many years ago, and it was really delicious. I should attempt to create an authentic Hiyashi Chuka next time! T^T

Here's my boyfriend's version of Hiyashi Soba.

His version is so much more popular than mine for some reason. I put both of our soba dishes on Facebook, and more friends preferred his!

Anyway, you can tell that it's a man's version of soba with all the crab meat and egg. All the lovely vegetables are hidden underneath! -___-"

I must say that when he came to the dining table with his version, I was shocked!!! His looked so colourful and enticing! 

Well, we really enjoyed our soba noodles. My mum loved it too. The sauce recipe which I found at Vegetable Gohan was so delicious. It really felt like we were eating at a Japanese Soba House. ^^

This recipe is not difficult to make. It's just a lot of slicing work. Please try it on a hot summer day. The coolness of all the ingredients and the sauce makes it a refreshing and comfortable meal. 

If you like Happy Girls Cute Food's recipes, join us on Facebook for even more fun and more delicious recipes ~! New updates everyday over there!

UPDATE!

Some readers have feedbacked that it'll be better if I can tell them where to buy the ingredients and what brands of ingredients I recommend. From my next post onwards, I will do a little section telling you where you can find the ingredients, or any substitutes you can use.

I live in Singapore, so for now, I can only let people living in Singapore know where to get the ingredients...

1. Soba noodles

Nissin brand. My boyfriend bought this and I forgot the price. I believe it's less than S$6 for a pack. You can find it easily in Cold Storage. Try Takashimaya's Cold Storage. I believe you can find similar soba in Liang Court's Meidi-ya and Isetan Supermarket in Orchard.

2. Soy sauce

It'll be so much nicer if you can buy actual soba sauce. It looks like this:

You can find soba sauce in the above mentioned supermarkets too.

3. Negi (spring onions)

This is how spring onions look like. It will cost less about S$1 for this bunch. This is the easiest to find. You can find it in your market and all supermarkets. Look for that purple bulb down there! Don't mistake chives for negi! 

4. Ginger powder

I'm using MasterFoods Ginger Ground Powder. You can find this easily in the spices and seasoning section in Cold Storage. Ginger powder is actually optional in this recipe, so if you can't find it, or you find this too expensive, you can skip it. You can add chilli powder if you still want that spicy taste. Otherwise, just skip it.