4 One Dish Home-Cooked Dinner Recipes

One-Dish Dinner is definitely a good alternative for weekday dinners, if you have no time to cook up a 5 dishes dinner like I did over the weekends. Over the last week, I have cooked up 3 One-Dish Dinner which received good reviews from my kids and Laogong. Maybe you can try cooking them too

Tomato-based Spagetti with hotdog and crispy nuggets Vs Tomato-based Macaroni with fishballs, meatballs and hotdogs

Spagetti is one of the easiest one-dish lunch/dinner to make in less than an hour. 

My kids used to like the creamy pasta but now they are into tomato-based pasta. You must be wondering how come I used mainly processed food as the ingredients for my pasta. Well, I did wanted to use fresh real food but Laogong taught me one thing. Instead of cooking what we think is best for the diners, we should just cook what the diners prefer to eat. Otherwise, the cook may not get the appreciation she wants. True enough, I see more smiles on my kids first when they eat the Spagetti coz they like Spagetti more than Macaroni nowadays. 

Okay, to cook Spagetti or Macaroni, first you boiled a pot of water and then add the required amount of pasta into the boiled water. I am really bad in estimating the amount of food to cook and often I tend to overcook (meaning instead of cooking for 2-3 adults + 2 kids, I would always think i am cooking for 4-5 adults). But I now learnt that we can use our palm size to estimate. One full palm to one adult and one half palm to one kid. Try it and let me know if it works. 

While the pasta is boiling, we can fry the ingredients in a frying pot or wok with some oil. When all the ingredients are cooked, add the pasta sauce. You can also add cream carbonara or alfero sauce too. 

When the pasta are cooked, remove the pasta from the boiling water and pour the pasta into tap water to cool it down. They will be more Q or chewy instead of all stick together if you add this step.

After frying the ingredients, Stir the sauce thoroughly with the ingredients. You can then choose to pour the cooled pasta into the ingredients and simmer for 2-3 minutes and serve. Or you can serve the ingredients and pasta separately. We prefer to serve them separately so if we cannot finish the sauce/ingredients or pasta, we can recycle them for other uses/dishes. 

Note: Crispy nuggets were made by cutting them into thin slices and airfried at 200dC for 10-12 minutes.

Tomato-based Spagetti with hotdog and crispy nuggets

Tomato-based Macaroni with fishballs, meatballs and hotdogs

Talking about recycling unfinished sauce/ingredients, I made pasta for lunch yesterday and added more hotdogs and crabsticks to the leftover sauce & ingredients and transformed it into another dish to eat with rice or the leftover pasta for dinner. Alternatively, you can also fried the pasta to make alio olio pasta or make soupy pasta with fishballs and minced meat. 

Transformed dish from recycled pasta sauce! 

Shredded Crabsticks and Mushrooms Soup plus Ma Po Tofu with minced meat

These days I learnt to be more flexible in what I decided to cook. Sometimes I planned to cook something more fanciful but due to lack of time, I had to change to something simpler.

The night before I cooked the crabstick and mushroom soup I was trying to follow an online recipe to airfry shredded crabsticks. However, it didn't turn out fhe way I wanted it to be, so I decided to save the remaining shredded crabsticks to make some soup on the following day.

Laogong loves golden mushrooms and Jamie loves shitake mushrooms so I decided to add them into 

Good traffic and knocking off on time allowed me to get home pretty early. This bought me some time to cook one more of Laogong favorite dish and steamed a piece of salmon for James. 

First I boiled a pot of water and then I placed the shredded crabsticks, sliced shitake mushroom and cut golden mushroom into the pot. When all was cooked, I cracked two beaten eggs into the soup and stirred. I learnt that there are two ways of creating a texture for soups. One is to add corn flour and the other is to add beaten eggs. The soup tasted wonderful and very fulfilling.

Shredded Crabsticks and Mushrooms Soup

I bought ready-mixed Ma Po Tofu Sauce from NTUC and you can use any type of square tofu, preferrably suitable for stir frying. I marinated the minced meat with soya sauce for 10minutes, before frying it with the tofu. When the minced meat was cooked, the ready-mixed sauce was added and corn flour mixed in warm water was poured in too, to create the starchy saucy feeling. And it was done. Simple right?

Ma Po Tofu with Minced Meat

Laogong and the kids were so happy that they ate additional servings of food ^^ Isn't this what the Cook/Chef will always like to see to feel assured about her cooking skills? 

One-Pot 四神 Soup with chicken and lotus roots

Thursday I was home late because I went for my eyebrow and eyeliner embrodiery. I will share more about this in a separate blog post.

However, I really hope the kids can have a good meal. Hence, I defroze a packet of mini drumsticks by putting the frozen chicken into the chiller compartment the night before and sliced the lotus roots too. 

I also woke up 15 minutes earlier, to put all the ingredients into a 2-litres pot of boiling water, together with a ready-packed 四神汤herbs.

Heehee, I didn't managed to take a photo fo the cooked soup because there was nothing left of it when I got home! Feel accomplished! ^^

Okay, that's so much for now. I will continue to share the different recipes I learnt and tried to cook! Hope it helps all the cooking-working mama finds time-efficient dishes in their dinner menu! 

Supermum Day 12: Cooking a mini storm; for her sick children

This early morning, I received two bad news. 

James was rejected by school due to suspected HFMD. I do not blame them though James did not have a fever nor any symptoms for being sick. I was told there was spots in throat but doctor clarified there was nothing in James' throat and issued him a letter of fitness. We were in a dilemma if we should send him to school still since Jamie was down with high fever since last night and I had eye infection. In the end, I decided to sacrifice my rest and keep both kids at home. 

It was not difficult to get them to nap after their first round of medication. 

And I used the "peaceful" time I bought to prepare lunch and soup for dinner. I decided to cook their favorite dishes during lunch to encourage them to eat as I know sick children usually have bad appetite. It was also a good choice to cook porridge instead of rice for lunch because both children complained of sore throats and unable to swallow hard food. 

Simple recipe to share for this lunch coz the dishes are pretty simple to cook:

Cauliflowers with fried eggs

1. Beat two eggs

2. Cut the califlowers

3. Add some oil and heat the cooking pot. I prefer using cooking pot than frying pan or wok to fry small amount of food. 

4. Fry cut califlowers, Add corn starch dissolved in hot water. Cover the Lid for 3-5 min. Califlowers will be cooked to soft texture.

5. Add the beated eggs and stir fry

6. Done. But if you don't want to end hp with starch/scamble eggs alike texture then use one egg instead.

Steam Salmon 

1. Dethaw a slice of salmon. I prefer thin slices than the thick ones so easier to gauge the time taken to ensure the salomon is not overcooked.

2. Marinate with soya sauce for 30min

3. Place fish in steamer with some water

4. Wa-Lah in 10-15minutes

Note: for thick slices of Salmon, I will usually sliced the salmon halfway through the steaming to ensure the inside is cooked thoroughly but not overcooked.

Airfry Nuggets

1. Dethaw the frozen nuggets

2. Cut them into two. Laogong likes them cooked till crispy.

3. Put them in airfryer for 15 minutes (constantly stir them every 5 minutes)

When the kids were sleeping I also managed to put the soup for tonight to boil and simmer at low fire for 45-60minutes before placing the pot into the multi-thermal pot to continue to simmer till dinner time.

The soup I prepared only need 4 ingredients. Mini chicken drumsticks slices mushrooms, ready-packed soup ingredients and white fungus. Please note that I marinated the mini chicken drumsticks and sliced mushrooms with soya sauce. The soup can also be cooked as a hot or cold desserts. You can prepare this easy-to-do desserts by just adding rock sugar and white fungus together with the ready-packed ingredients into the pot.

Wa-Lah! Dinner is that easy :) Try the recipes when you have time :)

Supermum Day 5: Assured and Surviving...

Day 5.

Though I had no ME time after work to catch up with my piling work...

Though I had to "fly" home everyday after work to be the cooking mama...

Though I had insufficient sleep since day 1... coz need to wake up at 3am daily to make milk for James and 5am daily to prepare Jamie for school...

BUT what I gained over these 5 days is priceless. 

I gained more smiles from my kids that assured me I cook well...

I gained more love from my kids for giving/spending more undivided attention and time with them...

I gained their needs for me for putting them to sleep every night, packing their school bags for the next day and waking up early to prepare them for school...

I feel so much more confident as a mother in just 5 days. 

People used to call me "Princess" or "Spoilt brat" for being over-reliant on my helper. Sometimes I started to wonder if I lost my cooking skills and routine care skills too. Over the 6 years, I did doubt myself too. But every two years I was given the chance to assure myself over and over again. 

Today I cooked a two-dish yummy dinner which took me about an hour plus, including preparation time. As time is required to thaw the fish and minced meat hence I took more time to cook dinner tonight. Cooked double mushroom soup with shredded crabsticks and ma po toufu tonight. Steamed salmon for James too because he needs to eat salmon almost everyday. 

Will share the recipe in a separate post :) 

24 more days to go! Jiayou! 

5 Dishes Home-Cooked Dinner in an hour

Friends asked why don't I just buy all my meals or tingkat for the month. Afterall, it is normal for working mummies to be exhausted after a long day of work, hence have the "right" to be excused for not cooking dinner. 

But nothing beats homecooked food, even if they taste only so-so. I always feel that I can only make simple, similar and few dishes but the smiles on the faces of Laogong and the kids have always been my confidence boosters ^^

Beside it only takes me less than an hour to cook the 5 simple dishes, of which I spent 15-20 minutes thawing the frozen food and thinking of what to cook. Hahaha! 

While thinking of what to cook, I realized the "trick" is to do a variety of dishes that require different types of utensils and electrical applicances. You may end up with more pots and pans to wash but this allow us to mulitask, eg. within 15min, we can actually complete at least 3 dishes at the same time using different utensils and appliances. This method is good for families with children and adults having different food preferences, eg. Laogong needs a fried dish or processed food for every meal but does not like vegetables; Jamie loves white rice, broccoli, califlower, mushrooms and fried eggs but do not like fishes; James loves salmon, likes leafy vegetables but does not like eggs; mil is health conscious. 

But there are two other alternative methods for smaller families or families where everyone likes similiar food: 

1. Place your preferred meat and vegetables in a slow cooker, together with a pre-packed soup mixture or ingredients that can withinstand long hours of brewing, before you set off to work. When you get home, you will have a nice one-pot soup of protein and vegetables. You will only need to cook rice.

2. Otherwise you can cook an one-pot dish like fried rice, fried bee hoon, mian xian soup, claypot chicken rice etc. 

If you have the happy call pan or the air fryer, they can actually do more than you thought they can do. I will share more witth you as I do my "experiments". 

Anyhow, this is how I cook the 5 simple dishes in less than an hour.

First 20 minutes: 

1. Thawing of frozen food, such as hot dog, japanese seaweed chicken and salmon.

2. Cut hot dog and seaweed chicken.

3. Marinate thawed salmon with soya sauce

Next 15 minutes:

1. Cook Rice

2. Steam Salmon

3. Airfry seaweed chicken (checked every 7-8min and flip the seaweed chicken to ensure they are cooked thoroughly. 

4. Cooked Baked Bean with Hotdogs. Off fire when bake bean begins to boil and hotdogs begins to "open up" its "designs".

Next 15 minutes:

1. Cook Campbell Chicken Soup with Eggs. Add in corn starch into stirred eggs for the texture.

2. Fried Eggs with frying pan. Add soya sauce and serve.

Last 5 minutes: Serve the food. 

Ta-Da! Ready for dinner ^^ Haha! 

Cooking Tomatoe-based Spaghetti on Monday Night. Will share recipes ^^

Supermum Day 1 - Mission accomplished!

Finally, my little prince is asleep. But he is sleeping in a position that gives me no opportunity to move. Feeling insecure, he had placed his head and buttock on each of my legs.

But his reactions today had showed me that children's basic instinct is to look for their mummies when their usual caretakers (who are not their mummies) are unavailable. Didi has been sticking to me like glue the whole day and only looked for my mil occasionally. While previously, James only look for my helper and mil. 

Was happy to watch the kids enjoyed their dinner tonight. My cooking skills are rusty but yet able to produce nice food I guess. Seriously due to my flu i lost my sense of taste and smell, so I could not test the food I cooked. However, the happy faces of Laogong  and children showed that they enjoyed their food. 

It was a good first day. Tomorrow we will be attending Remus' birthday party! Hope Didi can behave himself tmr! 

Night Night to all! 

Overnight Non-cook Rolled Oats (Banana-Chocolate)

Had heard my friend, Qiuling, mentioned a lot about her healthy recipes of overnight non-cooked rolled oats and salads.

Had wanted to start my own healthy recipes too. But had been 'lazy'... 

Finally I felt that I had enough of my 'laziness' and decided to put my thoughts into actions... 

I googled various yummy recipes and decided to adapt and come out with my own. 

I am starting off with something 'not so healthy' this round... 

Step 1: Lay out the ingredients you want to use. 

As I had been feasting too much lately during breakfast and lunch, I knew cutting off my carbo suddenly will drive me crazy. Hence I am starting with fruits with higher sugar content eg. Banana. Next time, I will use blue berry or strawberry instead.

I fell in love with non-fat and non-sugar yoghurt since my weight loss regime and would stick to it. Alternatively you can try Greek yoghurt too. 

I didn't have plain milk at home so I used the mini milo packet instead. U can also try using almond milk, soya milk or juices too if you are lactose detolerance. 

Oh yes, you need to get a glass bottle with either plastic or metal cap. I didn't have a plastic cap bottle so I recycled my salsa sauce glass bottle. The size of the bottle looks just nice (about 200-400ml),

I used whole rolled oats instead of steel cut oats coz I heard C said it's better. 

Step 2: Scoop your choice of rolled oats into the glass bottle. 

You decide how much you want to eat. But try to keep it to 1/3 of the bottle if you have lots of ingredients. I was too greedy and filled to half the bottle and ended up it's right to the brim now. However if you only have milo/Choco milk, rolled oats and yoghurt then you can have more oats. 

Step 3: Pour in the milo and yoghurt, then shake the bottle. 

You can decide not to shake the bottle too. See how pretty it looks if you don't shake it. 

Step 4: Mash half the banana and Cut half the banana. 

C taught me to create two different texture of banana. But you can either mash all up or just cut all up and stir evenly. 

You can also use other fruits like strawberries, blueberries, oranges etc. I even saw people using cut pumpkin too. Some put ieftover cheesecake, ice cream or cakes in too. 

Tomorrow morning (23 Oct) I will add in the sunflower seeds to complete the meal, you can also add in other types of nuts eg. Peanuts bits, pumpkin seeds, flax seeds, almond flakes or chia seeds. Chia seed is new favorite but very expensive, about $10 per packet. But heard it's very nutritious.

Post Note: 

Ended up I didn't added in sunflower seeds coz the oats turned out to be very rich in taste. 

Yummy yummy filling breakfast! Will try other flavours next round! 

Try to make one for yourself someday too! 

Jelly-Making Day with Jamie!

It's a rare mid week public holidays and we wanted to do something "special" together!

Hmmm.. I know she wants to make pancake or do pancakes together. However, we do not have an conventional oven nor any pancake ingredients.

Dug through the kitchen cabinets and found a packet of jelly powder.

Jamie was really excited and kept saying "Mummy, this is my first time making jelly together with you!"

She smiled happily as she assisted in the making..

Step 1: Pour in the Powder

Step 2: Pour in 1000-1250ml of water slowly and stir the mixture until powder is dissolved

Haha.. After this step Jamie ran off to "rest" and I completed the rest of the steps. 

Step 3: Boil the mixture at high flame until boil. Then boil for another 3min in low flame. Off the stove.

Step 4: Add in Malic Acid and stir evenly. 

Step 5: Pour the warm mixture into smaller containers. 

Step 6: Cool down mixture and put in fridge. Ready to eat in 3hrs time!

Happy Jamie and her Jelly!!! 

First Time Baking!!!

Another tick in my 'things to do' list!!!

Starting work next Thursday and I thought I won't get a chance to bake before that.

LUCKY!!! I got a ready cookie mix in my drawer and the rest of the ingredients too - an egg, water and margarine! That's all that take to bake some cookies!

I got my little helper today too :) Had wanted to bring the two darlings for a swim initially, but weather was bad. So we decided to stay home and bake instead!

Jamie really enjoys helping out and see how serious my great chef looked when she was busy at work :)

The first batch of double Choco chunk cookies tasted really nice! Hence we going to continue with the rest of the cookie dough ;)

Mission accomplished! I am going to get more cake and cookie mix next time :)

Posted the photos on fb and friends were already requesting to try out great chef Jamie's cookies ^^

White Fungus Dessert (Hot/Cold)

Last week, I bought a packet of white fungus soup/dessert ingredients from NTUC. Had always the dessert and the instructions on the packet of ingredients looked really simple, I decided to buy the packet and give it a try.

Frankly, I had always fancy cooking. However since I don't have an oven, nor staying in my own house, hence it will be hard of me to take over the kitchen. But because the new house till TOP in 2Q 2011, hence I had decided to start to learn how to cook from now onwards, so that I can make our own meals next time.

So I am going to start with this white fungus desserts (hot/cold). This is how you make it:

1. Wash the packet of ingredients with tap water and rinse them dry.
2. Boil a pot of 2-3 litres of water.
3. Pour the ingredients into the boiling pot of water.
4. Turn to low fire and let it boil for 2-3 hrs.

If you will like to make it like a soup, you can add in chicken or pork meat too. However, if you like to have it as a dessert, you just need to add rock sugar on top of the packet of ingredients.

When the time is up, you can either drink it hot or put it into the fridge to chill it down. It tastes really nice when it's cold :D

I like it chilled :D

I heard it's really good for pregnant woman, because it helps to build up the lungs for labour. Kids with asthma or cough can take this too to strength the lungs.